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SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XV. No. 370. 



as well as to his employer; and his indus- 

 trial duties ought not to be incompatible 

 with his responsibilities as a scientific man. 

 The education of the manufacturer is one 

 of the functions which he has to perform, 

 and it is one which is not always easy of 

 accomplishment. Two points of view have 

 to be reconciled; self-interest is on the one 

 side, the benefit of science on the other. 



Several difficulties beset the pathway of 

 applied science, and interfere with the 

 work of its practitioners. The limitations 

 of the field have already been suggested; 

 but a more serious obstacle to progress is 

 found in the secretiveness of the employer. 

 The industrial chemist can not publish his 

 researches, or at best can publish little ; he. 

 therefore fails to receive before the world 

 the credit which is his due, and science as 

 a whole is the loser. A secret process, an 

 unpublished investigation, adds nothing to 

 the sum of human knowledge, and it rep- 

 resents a policy which is both short-sighted 

 and unwise. It often covers ground which 

 has been well covered befoi-e, and in that 

 case it stands for misdirected effort, for 

 wasted energy. I have seen, under the seal 

 of confidence, a ' secret process ' which had 

 been in print for twenty years ; its too prac- 

 tical inventor, ignorant of the literature 

 of his subject, had worked out his methods 

 independently; had he consulted others, he 

 might have saved both expense and time. 

 On still broader grounds I believe we may 

 claim that the publicity of science is more 

 economical than the current exclusiveness. 

 Where several competing establishments 

 produce the same class of goods, each one 

 tries to hide its workings from the others. 

 Each, therefore, gains only that new knowl- 

 edge which it can develop by itself, whereas 

 with greater wisdom it- might profit by the 

 experience of all. Secrets will leak out, in 

 spite of precautions ; a full interchange of 

 thought merely anticipates the danger, and 

 at last the manufacturer may find that in- 



stead of suffering loss, he has really re- 

 ceived much for little. Possibly the com- 

 bination of industries under the so-called 

 ' trusts ' may act favorably upon scientific 

 research, for when rivalry ceases, the in- 

 centive to secrecy disappears also. 



If we study the reaction between science 

 and industry at all closely, I think we shall 

 find that an economic revolution of remark- 

 able importance is well under way. Like 

 all the greater social movements, it is go- 

 ing on quietly, without noise or bluster, 

 but it is nevertheless far-reaching in its 

 effects. Manufacturing, once a matter of 

 empirical judgment and individual skill, 

 is more and more becoming an aggregation 

 of scientific processes, a system in which 

 accurate quantitative methods are replac- 

 ing the old rules of thumb. Exact weight 

 and measure are taking the place of guess- 

 work, and by their means waste is dimin- 

 ished and economy of production is in- 

 sured. I can remember the day when few 

 establishments in America gave regular 

 employment to chemists ; now laboratories 

 are maintained in connection with nearly 

 all productive enterprises, and the demand 

 for scientific service, which was formerly 

 sporadic, has become well-nigh universal. 

 A railway system, making contracts for 

 supplies, does so upon the basis of chemi- 

 cal reports; and the work is performed in 

 its own offices by experts who are perma- 

 nently retained. In the management of an 

 iron furnace, ore, flux, fuel and product 

 are analyzed from day to day, by methods 

 of amazing rapidity and considerable ex- 

 actness. Fertilizers are sold upon chemical 

 certificate after preparation under chem- 

 ical rules; sugar is refined by chemic- 

 al processes, and taxed according to chemic- 

 al standards; medicine is enriched by new 

 remedies of chemical origin; in short, our 

 science touches every productive industry 

 at many points, and aids in its transforma- 

 tion. Metallurgy is becoming more and 



