, the
Perkins (father and son), and many other English chemists." Further, he
continues, two causes have invariably been indicated for the transfer of
this industry to Germany--"first the neglect of organic chemistry in the
Universities and colleges of this country" (a neglect which has long
ceased), "and then the disregard by manufacturers of scientific methods
and assistance and total indifference to the practice of research in
connection with their processes and products." I remember talking some
twenty-five years ago to a highly educated young student of Birmingham
who was of German parentage though of English birth. He had just taken
the degree of Doctor of Science in London University, and was on the eve
of abandoning the adopted country of his parents for a position in the
research laboratories of the Badische company, where he would be one
among a number of chemists, running into hundreds, all engaged in
research on gas-tar products. At that moment the great Birmingham
gas-company was employing the services of one trained chemist.

Such was and is the neglect of science by business men. Could it have
been otherwise, considering their bringing up? Let me again be
reminiscent. I suppose the public school in England (not a Catholic
school, for I was then a Protestant) at which I pursued what were
described as studies did not in any very marked degree differ from its
sister schools throughout the country. How was science encouraged there?
One hour per week, exactly one-fifth of the time devoted weekly, not to
Greek and Latin (that would have been almost sacrilegious), but to the
writing of Greek and Latin prose and alleged Greek and Latin verse--that
was the amount of time which was devoted to what was called science. I
suppose I had an ingrained vocation for science, for it was the only
subject, except English composition, in which I ever felt interest at
school. If the vocation had not been there, any interest in the subject
must necessarily have been slain once for all in me, as I am sure it was
in scores of others, by the way it was taught; for the instruction was
confided to the ordinary form-master, who doled out his questions from a
text-book perfunctorily used and probably heartily despised by a man
brought up on strict classical or mathematical lines. Our manufacturer
is brought up in a school of this kind, and it would be a miracle if he
emerged from it with any respect for science. Things have changed now,