RESEARCH IN INDUSTRY

Southland Times, Issue 20080, 18 January 1927, Page 6

RESEARCH IN INDUSTRY

STATE’S AID ONLY TEMPORARY. BAKERS APPRECIATE NEW EFFORTS. Science and its application to industry’, more particularly in relation to the manufacture of bread, and what assistance the Government expected from private enterprise in conducting its scientific investigations, were matters outlined to the annual conference of the New Zealand Master Bakers and Pastrycooks’ Association by the permanent secretary of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (Dr. E. Marsden), reports the Dominion. Dr. Marsden stated that when the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research was created the various industries were circularised, asking for particulars and information as to the difficulties with which they were confronted. In many cases, however, it needed a scientific investigator, who had, in addition, a full knowledge of the particular industry, to realise the funda mental difficulties and the economic changes involved by their solution. The State, he took it, did not want, or intend, to carry the whole burden of research work, but expected assistance from the industries in which investigations were being made.

The Government’s aid was temporary, for, once an industry was benefited by scientific investigation, it should realise the necessity to carry out further work “on its own,” using the Research Council merely for co-ordinating advice. There was no doubt that scientific service was fully used and appreciated when substantial payments were made towards it, and a more direct interest was then taken in definite results. In some industries, however, the Government had a more vital stake where’ the researches had a value for the whole community as consumers, and were not necessarily of immediate economic importance to the particular industry’. In such cases the Government support might well be of more than a temporary nature.

“The trouble in the past,” continued Dr. Marsden, “has been that science and industry have never got together. The scientist has one point of view, while the baker, for instance, looks at the subject from an entirely different aspect. Although the Research Department has been established some few months only, quite a lot of useful survey work has already been accomplished. The whole effect of research in industry is standardisation of raw material and produces, and by finding out the causes of the many difficulties and their remedies, scientific research should make conditions simpler for all concerned.”

As an example of the importance which was attached to industrial research at Home, Dr. Marsden mentioned that £2,000 of the English taxpayers’ money had been allocated by the British Government to the New Zealand Research Council to carry out researches on the mineral content of pastures and its effect on animal nutrition. He stated that the large bakeries of America and Europe employed scientific staffs of chemists. In the Dominion, however, none of* the undertakings appeared large enough to take individual action, and scientific research would have to be carried out cooperatively by the whole of tho®> engaged in the industry.

A delegate to the conference suggested that it would be well for the conference to set up a committee of three to formulate research problems and discuss them with the Research Council, so as to decide how they could be attacked, what finance would be involved, and how the latter could be secured.

The conference carried a resolution congratulating the Government, on the formation of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, and added that it would welcome the department’s co-operation and assistance in dealing with the many problems confronting the baking industry.