LEADERS OF INDUSTRY

Evening Star, Issue 20057, 24 December 1928, Page 6

LEADERS OF INDUSTRY

LESSON FROM AMERICA Among many suggestions made at the,meetings of the British Association at Glasgow for helping industry, one that surprised and delighted the conference was made by a young scientist, Mr R. J. Mackay, tbe psychologist of the Bradford Dyers’ Association (states a correspondent of the 'Daily Mad'). Speaking at short notice when Professor C. W. Valentine was unable to appear, he asked for improved employers, and put it in such a way that the employers present were the warmest in applause. Mr Mackay, a fair, keen-looking young man, who speaks decisively, said : “ British industry lias been said to be suffering from a surfeit of so-called captains of industry, many of whom in the army might risk selections as corporals. Many are old men who were unaffected by the war except in regard to the surprising ease with which they were able to make their profits, and whose fixations of mental outlook are dated with years of grace, which look impressive when seen on bottles of vintage port. “ Britons and Americans who have studied conditions on both sides of the Atlantic allege that whereas in the United States the best brains of the country are attracted to business, and the second and third best to the professions, the exact reverse is observable in the British Isles, This may offer at least a partial explanation of American ascendancy. “ With the ingress of more public school men into industry there should result modifications in the curricula, of the schools. With the removal of tho hard-l ying social stigma which attaches to ‘ being in trade ’ and the opening up of careers commensurate with the cost of higher education wo may expect the absorption in industry of'many typos of youths who would normally enter tho fighting professions or the Civil Service/ "The relations between industrial concerns and the universities will then change from a kind of ill-disguised mutual contempt to a whole-hearted collaboration. The relative values of bluff and brains will tend to be reversed, and the scientific worker may expect more tangible rewards than the vague hope of posthumous fame. • L hope that industry will tend to assume the nature of a well-run essential public) science, and that the secrecy complex of European employers will go as it has in America, where the financial affairs of a firm arc not regarded, like one’s underclothing, as subjects not fit for discussion.” Mr S. Mavor said that from the employees of a great engineering works suggestions came at the rate of 2,500 a year, or five ideas a year to a person, and 42 per cent, had been adopted. Office boys came second from the top, providing an average of fourteen ideas a. boy a year. Sir Josiah Stamp, president of the L.M.S., said: “Porters and engine drivers can be quite bright in their ideas for running hotels. One idea adopted was for reducing the consumption of coal in waiting rooms, though you would not think that possible. I believe it was a clerk who suggested the use of vacuum cleaners for cleaning horses.”