390 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLIV. No. 1133 



happens we may say that we had occasion a 

 short time ago to make some inquiries as to 

 a particular kind of glass, and found that 

 though its formula was due to British re- 

 search, and though it had been and perhaps 

 is still being made in this country, commer- 

 cial control was in the hands of foreigners. 



The position with regard to the production 

 of fine chemicals and synthetic drugs and the 

 commerce in them is very similar to that in 

 which the authorities of the National Phys- 

 ical Laboratory found the manufacture of 

 optical glass. In commenting, in the Journal 

 of August 12, on the resolutions adopted by 

 the Annual Eepresentative Meeting recom- 

 mending medical practitioners to avoid using 

 drugs made in Germany or Austria if iden- 

 tical substances manufactured by ourselves or 

 by our Allies can be obtained, and instructing 

 the council to bring to the notice of the gov- 

 ernment the possibility of guaranteeing pro- 

 tection to firms willing to lay down plants to 

 manufacture drugs and chemicals made in 

 Germany before the war, we pointed out that 

 while it was probably the opinion of the major- 

 ity of chemical manufacturers that some form 

 of government assistance by tariff or other- 

 wise was necessary, yet a considerable degree 

 of cooperation among manufacturers is a more 

 fundamental requisite for the establishment 

 of the manufacture of synthetic drugs on a 

 sound commercial basis. 



It is probably owing to the resolutions of the 

 Annual Eepresentative Meeting and this com- 

 ment on them that Dr. Sidney Barwise, med- 

 ical officer for Derbyshire, has sent us a copy 

 of a pamphlet on economics and the war which 

 he published last May. Dr. Barwise refers to 

 the resolution adopted by the Chambers of 

 Commerce of the United Kingdom " that the 

 strength and the safety of the empire lie in 

 ability to produce what it requires from its 

 own soil and factories," and compares it with 

 a famous pronouncement of Alexander Hamil- 

 ton during the American War of Independ- 

 ence : " Every nation . . . ought to endeavor 

 to possess within itself all the essentials of na- 

 tional supply. These comprise the means of 

 subsistence, habitation, clothing and defence. 



. . . The possession of these is necessary to the 

 progress of the body politic; to the safety as 

 well as to the welfare of the society. . . . To 

 effect this change, as fast as shall be prudent, 

 merits all the attention and the zeal of our 

 public councils ; it is the next great work to be 

 accomplished." 



Far be it from us to enter upon the thorny 

 controversy as to free trade and tariff reform, 

 which excites a degree of bitterness in the ex- 

 treme champions on either side difficult for 

 persons of scientific training to understand, 

 but we are entitled to call attention to the 

 effect on the nation's health and virility of 

 the exodus from country to town, due in part 

 at least to the depression of agriculture and 

 the fact that peasant proprietors in Great 

 Britain are so few as to be negligible in any 

 general view. One result of the fiscal policy 

 of Germany has been to keep the people on 

 the land and to encourage small freeholders; 

 in thirteen years one and a half million acres 

 were thrown into small holdings. A similar . 

 fiscal policy in France has had a similar result. 

 Before the passing of the Meline tariff law of 

 1892 France imported 441 million francs' 

 worth of agricultural produce; ten years later 

 she was exporting an excess of 152 million 

 francs' worth, peasant proprietors had in- 

 creased and the tide of population was set 

 back from the town to the land. In thirty 

 years the import of cereals into Great Britain 

 more than doubled, while the population in- 

 creased by less than a third. In the same 

 issue of Nature as that from which we have 

 already quoted there is a note on a recent re- 

 port by Mr. T. H. Middleton, assistant secre- 

 tary of the Board of Agriculture. He shows 

 that it is not an empty boast to say that on 

 each hundred acres of cultivated land Ger- 

 many feeds seventy people, while Britain can 

 only feed forty-five. According to this re- 

 port, the two chief factors in the recent re- 

 markable development of German agriculture 

 are a settled economic policy and a well- 

 thought-out system of agricultural education; 

 coupled with these is the belief of the German 

 farmer that he was essential to the community 

 and that his land should not be allowed to go 



