SCIENTIFIC AND INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH. 
trained commanded the resources in staff and equipment to permit its 
students to “cut their eye-tecth” in research. Failure is the result 
and research is to blame. But the actual blame attaches to the manu- 
facturer who chose a man for a special job with less inquiry into his 
fitness than he would have made into the fitness of a horse to pull 
his drays, and to the wealthy firms and citizens and legislators who 
permit their University to sink for lack of financial support to the 
level of teaching from the text-book and the lecture and the stereo- 
typed laboratory “exercise,” instead of leading its students to the 
borderland of the known and of the unknown and teaching them 
there to explore and to employ their knowledge for the practical 
ascertainment of new truths. Only men who themselves are masters 
of research-technique can teach this, and to be such men they must 
have time to think and work as well as teach, assistants to do the 
scullery-maids’ work, which abounds in every laboratory, money to 
buy new and replace old apparatus, all over and above the necessary 
staff and funds for routine elementary teaching. 
An amusing example of a “failure” of research is instanced by 
Dr. J. G. Fields in his article on “Industrial Research in the United 
States.”* A group of firms engaged in chemical manufacture had 
collaborated to solve a problem which had arisen in their works. ‘They 
- employed “ practical men” to work on the problem—men of long 
experience in handling their processes, but devoid of specific training 
in research. In this fashion they muddled away a hundred thousand 
dollars (£20,000) without any result whatever. It finally occurred 
to them to refer the matter to a trained chemist of well-known research 
ability. ‘They came to him and stated that they were ready to spend 
a hundred thousand more upon the problem, and that they were willing 
to wait five years for a solution. Three research men were put to 
work on it, and the matter was speedily cleared up. The bill was 
four hundred pounds. 
During the last session of the Federal Parliament, in the course 
of a debate upon the proposed Australian Institute for Industrial 
Research, a member is reported by the press to have inquired “whether 
we could point to a single pest eradicated from Australia by means 
of scientific research?” I am unable to answer this question, having 
been absent from this country, excepting as a visitor, for fourteen 
years. But if failures there have been, as I dare say may be the 
case, I will venture to assert that in the majority of instances the 
source of failure was not dissimilar to that illustrated by Dr. Fields. 
In. others it may not impossibly have been due to the exaggerated 
estimate of the power of science of which the Australian public 
man would appear to be possessed. An Australian City Council, 
for example, has recently allotted the sum of twenty pounds for experi- 
ments upon the eradication of flies. It may be that the age of miracles 
is not yet past, as some of us are inclined to believe, but at all events 
this question will be settled—the age of miracles will assuredly be 
here—if the City Fathers are enabled, by the wizardry of science and 
the expenditure of twenty pounds, to arrive at a satisfactory method 
of eradicating this ubiquitous nuisance. ; 
* University of Toronto Monthly, Scientific Research Number, vol. xix. (1919), p. 148. 
147 
