SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY. 
The kind of chemist I mean is one who has been accustomed to deal with the 
practical needs of manufacturers, who, while entirely aw fait with laboratory 
procedure, is completely at home in a works, and can think as easily in tons and 
cubic feet as he can in milligrammes and cubic centimdtres. Above all, he must 
have a sense of proportion, and be able to realize without effort that an error 
which would be fatal in a laboratory operation may be insignificant in a manu- 
facturing operation, and be equally able to comprehend that some small difference 
of condition scarcely appreciable on a small scale may have a dominant and 
deciding elfect when on a large scale it is translated into terms of money. 
I must revert to the mistake often made by manufacturers when they wish the 
guidance of the chemist. Quite apart from the notion that he is often regarded as 
a mere hack or tester, the view that he is a person whose advice can be obtained 
at nominal fees is ludicrously prevalent, and coupled with this is the bizarre and 
touching faith that by putting something into a test tube, then into another test 
tube, and adding something called “a chemical,” the most difficult industrial 
-problems can be solved in about a quarter of an hour, 
May I give the gravest warning to all who cherish this belief? If they persist 
in holding it, our chemical pre-eminence dating from Elizabethan times to the 
beginning of the nineteenth century—from Bacon and Boyle to Davy—will never 
return. In the time of Charles. II. it was the sign of a finished gentleman to be 
an accomplished chemist, and in this more commercial age the consulting chemist. 
must take his place on the same plane as the consulting physician or surgeon, and 
must be rewarded for his highly skilled work on the same scale. 
At the beginning of the war certain noted persons were appointed at handsome 
fees to give medical and surgical advice to the Government. No sensible man 
can possibly object to this. ‘The cost is a trifle compared with that of the general 
conduct of the war. I do not find, however, that any corresponding posts at 
corresponding fees were allotted to chemists whose position was at least as high 
and whose national yalue was at least as great. ‘This kind of thing is obsolete, 
and must cease. 
Analyzing the causes of a difficult and dangerous situation, I have come to the 
opinion that the fons et origo mali is the curious educational system in force 
here. In Germany no’ man who claims to be decently educated is ignorant of 
elementary science; here his ignorance is so profound that he does not know why 
carbon burns and quartz does not. Yet what would he say to.a chemist who 
could not translate a common. tag—for example, rem tetigisti. acer, or the other 
tag which I have written above? Which of our present race of lawyer-politicians 
can write an intelligible letter even in mediwval Latin? Which of those who went 
to Paris to confer with the French Government can speak decent colloquial French, 
or could, if put to it, translate accurately and without.a dictionary a German 
legal document such as a patent specification? These are trifling accomplish- 
ments, and I mention them merely to show that it is useless to contend that 
neglect of science is justified by literary acquirements. 
To put the whole matter in the shortest terms: his nation has to learn to 
respect science, to learn all it can of it, to understand the difference between 
purely academical knowledge and the knowledge acquired in practice, and to 
choose its rulers from those trained in physical science and not from the ranks of 
the rhetorician, dialectician, and least of all from that of the lawyer politician. | 
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