BRITAIN'S INDUSTRIAL STRENGTH

Hokitika Guardian, 19 July 1928, Page 4

BRITAIN'S INDUSTRIAL STRENGTH

Hi; A INS AND ENERGY IN ABUNDANCE.

(By THE EIGHT HON. SIR ALFRED ROND, Bart., L1..D., M.P.)

As a nation it often seems that we in Britain excel in the art of self-dispar-agement. We are continually stressing and exposing our own faults and we are continually understating our virtues. This may he beneficial in our own domestic circle, but it is disastrous in the impression, it creates abroad, and even among that great free community of British peoples known as the British Commonwealth of Nations. When in Canada some time ago I was asked the amoving question:

“ What will Britain do when she ceases to manufacture?” To us in Britain busied and intent on our day’s work, the question seems so foolish as hardly to merit reply, but it does serve to show the curious impression which our habit of self-disparagement has created in certain quarters. What is the real position ? Far from merely living on her past Britain, has at the present day the best working population in the world, the most easily handled of any people, a population of straight-forward, honest and industrious workers. On the scientific and technical side her experts can hold their own and do hold their own with the chemists, engineers and so on of any country in the world. Add to this the fact that we have an unrivalled geographical position with our industrial centres, all relatively cjose to the sea, and that we have a temperate climate conducive to steady work all the year round, and you have some of the many reasons why Britain is still one of the biggest factors in in the world’s industrial and commercial rivalry. The facts demand further elaboration. If during the past decade Britain has seemed lagging in scientific advance, and scientific organisation, if her basic industries have been depressed and if she has had to support a burden of more than a million unemployed, if certain of her overseas markets have been captured from her, surely she has some small right to plead the heavy sacrifice of her young manhood, of her workers and her brainpower which she made in the war. Surely also she may plead the utter dislocation of European markets brought about by the war. If other countries less directly and less severely hit by the war have forged ahead into prosperity, that by no means implies that Britain will not recover, and that she will not once again get into her stride and give the lead in science and industry once more to the whole world.

The real truth is that she is even now getting into her stride again and recovering her old “ industrial punch ” and enterprise. Science and scientific research are the keynotes of Britain’s industrial future just ns they were the basis of her supremacy in the past. Lord Balfour once said that whilst Britain has always excelled in pure science, she has never applied science to industry satisfactorily, but has allowed brilliant ideas originally evolved in this country to slip abroad and to return hero as fully-fledged industrial processes, on account of our lack of ability to put such ideas into practice. I will take up Lord Balfour on both points. In the first place, pure science is the monopoly of no country and it is always possible to place one’s fingers on shining examples in this respect in all civilised countries. On the other hand I deny that Britain is in any respect behind in the application of science to industry. Take the question of Dyes. The public seems to have an obsession that because Perkin discovered the original mauve dye and the dye industry later bccamo flourishing in Germany, that the chemical supremacy of this country was thereby endangered. I deny any overwhelming importance of the dyestuffs industry. Dyes are not the beginning and end of the chemical industry.. One of tho principal reasons for the slow development of the dye-stuff industry in this country was due to the great legal skill shown by our competitors with respect to patents. They succeeded in the past in tying up the dyestuff industry of this country to an extent which has never been fully realised. The beginning of the industrial era was definitely and completely a British movement. !’ have only to recall the names of Watt and Stephenson to emphasise the point tljat the industrial revolution was horn in Britain. While the industrial revolution was commenced by inventions in engineering it was following by discoveries of first rate importance in metallurgy. I have only to mention the names of Bessemer, Siemens, Gilchrist and Lothian Bell, to prove that iff the sphere of metallurgy, Britain lias been tho pioneer. Similarly in electricity and modern engineering, Britain has led the world. I have only to mention the name of Sir Charles Parsons to establish this point. British achievement in the chemical and allied industries has, over the last one hundred years, been outstanding. Among the splendid hand of loaders have been Henry Muspratt, Alfred Nobel and Ludwig Rond. More recently,' two Englishmen, Cross aiid Bevan, established the artificial silk industry, now rapidly becoming one of the leading industries of this country.

.Since the war also there lias been a tremendous expansion in the British Chemical industry. This is the direct result of the first signs of the exhaustion of the more easily accessible fertile areas of the world. In this expansion a tremendously important part has been played by engineering. In engineering Britain has always been the pioneering country of the world and the lead is still maintained. Our achievements in the application of high pressure technique to the nitrogen industry is alone sufficient proof of our energy i'and invention.

!! One legitimate criticism is that in the past there has not been sufficient liaison between the academic and the practical sides of research in Biitain. In Imperial Chemjcnl Industries, Limited, we have met this by forming a Research Council. We have obtained the services of some of the most distinguished scientific men in the country to work on it. There is no question of them being asked to make immediate contributions to the practial preoblcins, their duty is to look ahead. Imperial Chemical Industries arc also considering a scheme whereby some of their chemical staff can work in the atmosphere of the University. From this mutually beneficial results to both the academic and industrial worker will accrue.

One of the most serious indictments which might have been levelled against British industry in the past was the timidity of the capitalist. While there is a complete answer to Lord Balroui ,s charge on the application or science t. industry in Britain, he would have been on surer ground if ho had. criticised the lack of the application of science to m dustrial organisation in this country. That intense national jndiyidualitj which has promoted invention in Britain has militated against industrial organisation. Nevertheless, I am optimistic about the complete picture of Britain’s industrial future. It is true that there are industries which are in backwaters and that there are industries which are bankrupt. Those industries, however, which -have appljeo the principle of the science of organisation are prosperous apd progressive. Those which have failed to utilise the

opportunities' which this science offered aro depressed and retrogressive. It is one of tho surer signs of the energy and brains behind British industry that we are forging steadily ahead, perhaps slowly but still steadily as is our habit, in the scientific organisation of industry. We arc beginning to grasp the principle and the promise of rationalisation, amalgamation and unity. In the near future the world will feel the cumulative effect and the repercussions of this new driving force behind British industry? In this country, as I have said, we have both the men and the material to carry out the ideas and to create. After all I have seen leaders of industry, plant managers and research experts in almost every country in the world, and I have come in contact with them and have some knowledge of their work, and I can say without fear of contradiction that we have to-day in Britain men with more ingenuity and more practical application of scientific principles to actual manufacturing practices, and with more direct minds, than any other country in the world. Given a problem the British industrial scientist will find a solution in a more direct and effective manner than those of any other country, who arrive at their results by a longer process and more investigation and more research. In the chemical industry with which I am most particularly concerned, we can claim with confidence equality, and perhaps more, with the chemical industry of other nations. We can claim to' have in our ranks leaders of ability, energy and foresight, who are prepared to take up and develop and put into practice any new ideas or new processes which come to their notice, and which seem fruitful and useful. I have instanced our triumph in the field of synthetic nitrogen and fertilisers. Then again there is tho oil from coal problem which we are energetical!}' following up, and there is indeed tho whole field of catalysis which is largely unexplored but in which we are certainly not behindhand or unprepared. In chemistry, engineering, electricity and in scores of other industries Britain is showing abundance of brains and energy. Given a little scope, a. little more time to recover and a lifting of the crushing burden of taxation, she will show equal enterprise in those basic industries which are at present so stagnant. Lastly we must not forget that just as in the past British brains, energy and enterprise built up that great entity—the British Commonwealth of Nations, so will those same qualities continue to develop that vast heritage in the best interests of civilisation and mankind. Tho British Empire offers tho finest field in the world for brains and energy to operate, and as I have said, in those two qualities we are fully Self-supporting. N The future of the British Empire is safe with Britons. That future, the future of the greatest single political entity the world has ever seen, is so full of promise and potentialities.as to defy prophecy. We of advancing years, while we may sec some of the promised land, yet there lies behind it a terra incognita which is still more stiihii>g than we have licen permitted to see, and which a younger generation will enter to maintain the great tradition of British industry and British enterprise already established.