MORE FACILITIES NEEDED FOR INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH. 
laboratory for analyses and investigations, and working in close touch 
with this, a staff and a small-scale industrial plant for developing and 
testing the suggested processes. It is this plant that imvolves the 
unending hunt for the commercial substitute for the glass beaker of 
the laboratory that faces the problem of handling materials, a problem 
unknown in the laboratory, and frequently the rock on which the 
process is most nearly shipwrecked. 
No existing institution, university, technical school, or Government 
laboratory has any facilities for work of this kind. Would it not be 
better then to make the necessary additions to these institutions than 
to undertake the expense of a new institute? 
For answer, examine a few typical investigations. The prevention 
of waste in the agricultural and pastoral industries—diseases of plants 
and animals, animal pests, plant pests, and plants that are pests. All 
this involves field or station work under constant expert supervision. 
No existing institution could take any such investigation under its 
wing; the only hope of success lies in the full-time attention of 
specialists. 
Or take the problem of the application of mangrove bark or red- 
gum kino to ithe tanning industry. Analyses and suggested processes 
will originate in the laboratory, but the real question must be solved 
with real hides, working on real commercial methods. Work in con- 
junction with an existing tanyard necessitates the complete separation 
of the investigation from the commercial work of the tannery, and 
no industry can check its commercial production for the sake of an 
experiment. Its commercial routine, output, and obligations cannot 
be interfered with. Production and experiment must be kept entirely 
separate, and are so in all industries that carry research departments. 
And this means building and equipping an experimental section and _ 
providing a staff of expert workers. 
No existing laboratories offer any advantage for this work—neither 
scientific, commercial, nor economic—for in addition to the objection 
of unsuitability there is the objection of economy. The establishment 
of a central Federal Institute would prevent the reduplication of 
equivalent establishments in each State. It would, as far as possible, 
make use of existing facilities, co-ordinate the work of the various 
sections so as to complete without reduplicating investigation; it would 
act as a central information bureau, collecting, indexing, and distribut- 
ing information on, a: mutually arranged plan, and would work also 
with other similar organizations throughout the world. Its own 
~ laboratories would undertake work that could not be efficiently provided 
for elsewhere. Its staff would work.in its own laboratories or in 
‘special stations or experimental sections, when the process suggested 
by the whole work would be tried out on a small industrial scale. 
But, it might be objected, these experiments should be, made by 
the person or firm interested. In some cases, where. the advantage 
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