SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY. 
small scale, highly specialized, commercial manufacture, preferably of some pro- 
duet which it has itself originated. The least advantage of this procedure is that 
such manufacture of a properly selected product may frequently defray a sub- 
stantial proportion of the expenses of the laboratory. The major benefits are the 
acquirement of a certain commercial sense by the laboratory staff, an appreciation 
of the conditions and difliculties of actual production, and finally the strengthen- 
ing of the position of the laboratory through the increase in its turn-over and 
equipment. Such procedure, while perhaps not general, has been followed to great 
advantage by the research laboratories of the General Electric Co., the Eastman 
Kodak Co., and Arthur D. Little, Ine. 
As regards any research laboratory, it goes without saying that it is the 
personal factor which determines performance, and this is pre-eminently true of 
the laboratory director. Sir Humphry Davy truly said that his greatest dis- 
covery was Michael Faraday, and no greater problem is likely to confront a 
research laboratory than that involved in the discovery of a director. Successful 
laboratory directors may be of several types, but a militant optimism, contagicus 
enthusiasm, controlled imagination, and quick human sympathy are common to 
them all. Such a man will naturally, in selecting his subordinates, look for, 
these personal qualities almost as carefully as he will weigh specialized scientific 
training, and having been thus guided in his selections will find it relatively easy 
to inspire throughout his organization those relations of good fellowship and that 
esprit de corps which multiply enormously the effectiveness of any working force. 
Exceptional men are hard to find, simply because they are exceptional, and the 
director, in laying out the work of the laboratory and extending its personnel, will 
endeavour to augment the output of the exceptional man through the co-ordinated 
effort of properly directed men of secondary capacity. 
Fairness in apportioning credit, frequent conferences, and opportunity for self- 
development are essential to the attainment of high efficiency. 
Among laboratories thus constituted and directed, co-operation should not be 
‘difficult, and is, in fact, already frequent. The real need of the situation is con- 
operation among manufacturers for the support of research. The long first 
steps in this direction have already been taken in Great Britain by the Advisory 
Council for Scientific and Industrial Research. In the United States of America, 
the National Canners Association has been signally successful in applying to 
research the principle of co-operation. 
Those of us who believe that every waste that is prevented or turned to profit, 
every specification which gives better control of raw material, every problem 
solved, and every more effective process which is developed, makes for better 
living in the material sense, and for cleaner and more wholesome living in the 
higher sense, can render no more effective service than by aiding the manufacturer 
to understand what research is, what it costs, why it pays. 
