144 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 
engineering workers. ‘The welfare supervisor is responsible for the mental . 
and physical well-being, the work, the progress and the destiny of each 
individual, and he must endeavour to provide such amenities as will lead 
to the achievement of happiness and the making of good citizens. Many 
works now provide a Boys’ Club, by which the natural desire of all boys 
for companionship may be fulfilled and a spirit of team work promoted. 
Indoor games of all kinds and reading and writing rooms should be 
provided. The club should be run entirely by the boys themselves, 
who thus learn the meaning of corporate life and individual responsibility. 
The need for physical training is now becoming much more widely 
recognised, and a gymnasium is thus an important adjunct. For the 
welfare of the employees generally there should be the library, and the 
‘recreation club,’ possessing its own sports field, where the sporting 
instincts of all employees—embracing the vigours of football, cricket, 
hockey, tennis, etc-—may be catered for; while the sociable habits of 
the men are also fostered by the ‘ Men’s Institute.” In the case of many 
firms much, indeed, is done, and very little is left undone, to improve the 
conditions of all employees, both within and outside the works, and such 
amenities cannot but result in a general widening of outlook and a greater 
happiness. 
In conclusion : these, then, are a few of the thoughts that have occurred 
tome. Whatever their worth, they have at least this advantage—that they 
are the product, not of ‘a cloistered seclusion, far from the heat and dust of 
life,’ but are directly derived from personal contact with, and observation of, 
men and things. And this, after all, is the essence of the scientific method 
as I understand it—to learn as far as possible directly from observation 
and experiment rather than indirectly from books. I find this view 
upheld by one of the greatest of former Presidents of the British Associa- 
tion, the late Prof. T. H. Huxley, who said: ‘The great benefit 
which a scientific education bestows, whether as training or as knowledge, 
is dependent upon the extent to which the mind of the student is brought 
into immediate contact with facts—upon the degree to which he learns 
the habit of appealing directly to Nature, and of acquiring through his 
senses concrete images of those properties of things which are, and always 
will be, but approximately expressed in human language.’ 
