208 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLIX, No. 1261 



INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH IN ONTARIO 

 AND PRUSSIA COMPARED 



Those who treat lightly the industrial re- 

 search of this contineat and lavish overdue 

 praise on the research of Germany do not use 

 a standard of measurement — a unit of popula- 

 tion in the present case — for the comparison, 

 which through the omission becomes a mere 

 arbitrary opinion. A common example of this 

 laxity is the remark of one who was speaking 

 of the United States and Canada : " Progress 

 along advanced industrial lines has not hith- 

 erto paralleled that of Germany." Scrutiny 

 of the statements of such writers on industrial 

 research always fails to show any trace of a 

 standard used in their comparisons, and it is 

 with a view to supply what they omit that the 

 following particulars are compiled: 



In 1909 the Ontario government commis- 

 sioned Dr. John Seath to report upon in- 

 dustrial education, and the report he submit- 

 ted ("Education for Industrial Purposes"), 

 bearing date 1911, contains some of the latest 

 statistics on technical education before the 

 war, and also contains incidentally some in- 

 formation on the allied subject of industrial 

 research. In particular, he gives a list (p. 

 161) of the thirty-three technical " schools " 

 of imiversity rank in Prussia which are in a 

 position to undertake research work. This 

 list for Prussia has more details than the 

 similar list in the " EncyclopEedia Britannica " 

 (1910-11), which relates to the whole of Ger- 

 many. The Prussian list consists of the fol- 

 lowing : nine technical schools, or polytechnica, 

 of which the one at Charlottenburg is the 

 chief example; three mining academies; five 

 forest academies ; four agricultural academies ; 

 five veterinary " high schools " ; five commer- 

 cial "high schools"; two schools of art. 



Junior industrial schools and technical 

 schools of the middle class, the former with 

 state contributions of 38 per cent., the latter 

 with 54 per cent., were educational, not re- 

 search institutions, and did little work in re- 

 search, compared with those of university 

 rank given above. If, therefore, we add to 

 this list of 33, the nine medical schools, which 

 are connected with universities in Prussia, 



and which are doing the public laboratory 

 work — omitting the literary faculties of law, 

 divinity and philosophy in the universities, 

 which are negligible in an enquiry relating to 

 science — we get a complete census of the 42 

 Prussian institutions that do advanced re- 

 search work. On a basis of population of 42 

 millions then in Prussia, we find one such in- 

 stitution for every million people. 



Next, consider the case of Ontario, where, 

 as in Prussia, such institutions are mainly 

 provincial or state, and not federal. Follow- 

 ing the same order, Ontario has : two schools 

 of applied science and . engineering (" poly- 

 technica") ; two mining schools doing assay 

 work for the mining industries; one forestry 

 school; one agricultural college at Guelph, do- 

 ing research for the past forty years (the 

 Ottawa college being federal). The bulletins 

 and reports from Guelph have numbered 

 several thousands. One veterinary college, 

 established in 1862 as a private enterprise 

 when there were very few on this continent, 

 and taken over by the government of Ontario 

 in 1908. Three laboratories, the central at 

 Toronto, with branches at Kingston and Lon- 

 don, Ontario, viz., one at each medical college, 

 doing public analysis like those of the Prus- 

 sian medical colleges. (The federal laboratory 

 at Ottawa deals with adulterations.) One 

 m.eteorological research observatory for in- 

 dustries, and especially for agriculture and the 

 shipping industries. It is now supported by 

 federal funds but was originally a local insti- 

 tution in Toronto. (The agricultural acad- 

 emies attend to this line of research in Prvis- 

 sia, the meteorological institute in Berlin 

 being mainly a collecting point.) 



This aggregate of eleven government insti- 

 tutions of research for the industries of On- 

 tario, on the basis of two and three quarter 

 millions of population at the outbreak of the 

 war, makes a total of four per million people, 

 or four times the number in Prussia for the 

 same imit of population (one million). In 

 making this comparison where the number of 

 institutions of research for the industries is 

 the criterion, there is no separation of re- 

 search for specific problems from research for 



