ORGANIZATION OF INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH. 
mathematical mind with the viewpoint of the chemist in Willard Gibbs laid the 
basis for physical chemistry. But such a combination in a single individual 
is very rare. 
4. To avoid repetition and duplication of effort, first by rendering present 
knowledge readily available to research workers, second by applying clearing 
house methods to research projects. 
5. To stimulate research by emphasizing the importance of specific problems, 
making special grants, rendering material and facilities as generally available 
as possible. 
6. To furnish a sort of general staff for research which shall work out the 
plan of attack for major problems, assign the several lines to competent workers. 
and coordinate and focus the whole. 
7. To bring home to manufacturers the Bavaitares of research with the view 
of ie the establishment of private, corporation, and group laboratories. 
To make and publish a census of available research facilities in men and 
pate 
9. To survey the natural resources of the nation, and direct research toward 
their development. 
10. To appraise our great industrial wastes, and develop plans and methods for 
turning them to profitable use. 
There is a nearly universal tendency to attempt the accomplishment of these 
results through the agency of councils and other forms of committee organiza- 
tions, the members of which are almost without exception unpaid and involved 
in other activities which have prior claims upon their time. While such systems 
of organization may be temporarily efficient, and even the only ones immediately 
available in times of sudden crisis, they do not lend themselves effectively to 
the slow, constructive work of years without which it is impossible to. establish 
research in its proper place in the industrial and other activities of a nation. 
There is danger in an organization chart: danger that it be mistaken for an 
organization. 
The work of committees is notoriously cumbersome and slow. The capacity 
of a committee to achieve results is usually determined by its chairman, and is 
somewhat below his normal working ability as a unit. The reference is, of course, 
to executive capacity and ability. In the initial discussion and formulation of 
plans and policies committees plan an essential and most useful part. 
As the committee organization is extended to cover the diverging ramifications 
of a many-phased activity, the inherent weakness, for executive purposes, of this 
form of organization becomes increasingly apparent. More and more power 
must be developed by the central body to overcome the inertia of the augmented 
mass. ‘The whole may ultimately break down from its own weight. 
It appears, then, that we may have still to evolve a permanent, coherent, and 
progressively effective form of organization for the promotion and co-ordination 
of research. ‘This may, perhaps, appear in the shape of a great foundation closely 
affiliated with the Government, the universities, the technical societies, and the 
industries, which shall have its broad policies directed by a board, wholly divorced 
from politics, yet intimately in touch with the trend of science and the needs of 
industry, and which shall depend for the execution of its plans upon a permanent 
executive and well-paid scientifie staff, 
Any permanent research structure of national dimensions must of course have 
its foundations in the universities and technical schools. Unforutnately, in this 
time of greatest need, these institutions are seriously handicapped by the very 
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