1870.] On Practical Scientific Instruction. 223 



all those who have introduced such inventions has been to obtain 

 workmen possessing sufficient intelligence to manage their processes. 

 It is also a well-known fact, and frequent complaint with manu- 

 facturers, that highly-skilled workmen are much too few in this 

 country. The tendency of scientific improvements is to diminish 

 the physical labour of the workman, but they require in its stead 

 a greater degree of intellectual skill ; they have mitigated his physi- 

 cal toil, by giving him the duty of intelligently directing the labour, 

 instead of actually performing it. Workmen are now obliged to 

 exercise the faculties of observation and judgment, in watching the 

 results, and directing the action, of mechanical, physical, and chemi- 

 cal forces, instead of being themselves the physical machines, me- 

 chanically performing the work before them. A workman who is 

 occupied all the day in laborious physical exertion, however great 

 the skill required in that labour may be, arrives at his home at 

 night in a condition fit only for sleep ; whilst the man who directs 

 a machine for performing the same labour is able after his toil to 

 improve his miud by reading. Science has also increased the moral 

 responsibility of workmen, by entrusting them with the manage- 

 ment of all kinds of complicated and valuable machinery, requiring 

 great care and exactitude of attention, upon the proper action of 

 which the employment of many hundreds of workmen, and even the 

 lives of numerous persons, not unfrequently depends ; for instance, 

 in the management of steam-boilers and engines. The lives of the 

 whole of the passengers in a railway train also depend upon the 

 skill and care of the engine-driver and fireman. 



And it has been further objected to me by a manufacturer, that 

 " science does not pay," or that " it does not pay anyone except a 

 thoroughly scientific man ; it does not, for example, pay a manufac- 

 turer or man of business." No doubt science, like everything else, 

 benefits or pays only in its own special ways. With regard to this 

 objection, we must distinguish between abstract scientific investiga- 

 tions made purely for the discovery of truth, without the slightest 

 reference to personal profit, and investigations made for manufac- 

 turing or personal purposes ; the former benefit the nation, but do 

 not pay the investigator; the latter frequently benefits the manu- 

 facturer or person for whom they are made. 



Scientific investigations made in a manufactory for the purpose of 

 ascertaining the various sources of loss of materials, the circumstances 

 which affect the amount or quality of the product ; or made with the 

 object of substituting cheaper or more suitable materials, or for vary- 

 ing their proportions, or for many other kindred objects, have in 

 many cases resulted in great benefit to the manufacturer, and have 

 formed in many instances the basis of successful patents. In con- 

 firmation of these remarks it may be stated that some of the large 

 brewers, chemical manufacturers, candle companies, and many others, 



