News and Views

Abstract

BRITISH chemical manufacture since 1913 has not only made rapid strides which have brought it into a position of commercial eminence and have kept it abreast of world-wide development, but it has also, at least so far as its leaders are concerned, taken care to consolidate the ground gained and to prepare for further progress by the establishment and endowment of research work. At a public meeting arranged by the British Science Guild at the Mansion House on April 24, an account of which appears elsewhere in this issue, Lord Melchett, Sir Frederick Keeble, Mr. A. B. Shearer, and Mr. F. H. Carr showed something of the immensity of the contribution which chemical manufacture is making, especially in Great Britain, to the welfare and prosperity of the people. The attention of the recipients is of course distracted at the moment by discussions and political promises of employment, industrial prosperity, peace, and social service. Perhaps it was fortuitous, but more probably inevitable, that the very same phrases were used, not of ideals, but of solid accomplishments, by the speakers. The artificial silk industry has already, directly or indirectly, given employment to hundreds of thousands of workers; creating its own demand, it has often brought a touch of colour and beauty where there was little that was not drab and formless, and it has probably not been without influence where of late years a notable increase in self-respect and self-confidence has been apparent. The nitrogen industry, in time of war a sharp sword for which the British Empire reached too late, has since been beaten into a ploughshare, which is already firmly harnessed to man's ever-increasing material needs, so that the fear of nitrogen-hunger has been completely dissolved. The drug industry has already been enabled in a multitude of homes to give health where but the spark of life remained, to free the mind from the assaults of the body, and to raise barriers between whole communities and the menace of disease.