The hidden difficulties which beset a manufacturer are not unfrequently so inscrutable that the present state of knowledge in science fails to explain them. Who can tell why it is that wire-work of brass or German silver becomes gradually brittle by lapse of time? Or why varnish made in the open country has different properties from that made in a town? Or why silk dyed in Lyons should possess a finer colour than the same silk dyed by the same process in Coventry?
With our present extremely imperfect knowledge of Physical and Chemical science, we can perhaps hardly form an idea of the amount of knowledge yet to be discovered respecting the phenomena which manufactures present.
One of the inevitable results of these difficulties in manufacturing processes and of deficiency of knowledge, is the production of a large amount of goods of an inferior quality; and useless goods, technically called "wasters," the cost of which has to be laid upon the saleable ones, and thus the price of the latter is enhanced to the consumer. For instance, flint glass discoloured by iron has sometimes to be sold at a loss for making common enamel; waste window glass has to be sold as "rockery" for ornamenting gardens, and defective articles of glass or metal have to be re-melted.
In consequence of this want of new knowledge, manufacturers continue to suffer losses which might be avoided; high prices of useful articles are maintained; defects in their quality are not improved; preventable accidents still continue to happen; the health of workmen continues to suffer; many means of curing diseases remain unknown; medical practice remains full of empiricism, &c., &c.
The great sewage question is apparently in this predicament; we are probably trying to solve it without first discovering the requisite knowledge; inventors, engineers, and consulting chemists have racked their brains, and have not been able to devise a satisfactory
remedy, and meanwhile the health of the entire population of this country is suffering. If we so neglect the fundamental means of ameliorating our condition we deserve to suffer. One would suppose that cholera, contagious diseases, colliery accidents, pollution of air and water, enormous waste of heat from fires, and a multitude of other evils which depend upon physical and chemical conditions, are of but little importance, that we should so neglect one of the most effectual means of preventing them; and it is perfectly clear that by neglecting to aid research, those who gain so much money and advantage from original science, and render no return, are unwittingly sacrificing national interests upon a large scale to personal benefit.
The practice of some manufacturers using and deriving great profit from new knowledge evolved by research, without recompensing the discoverers, sometimes causes injury to the public welfare by preventing the publication of discoveries which have an immediate practical application. Experience of this kind has constrained me to postpone the publication of a method I have found of readily and quickly converting lumps of white phosphorus into the red variety in a state of powder without protracted heat or grinding.
"What will be the next chapter of British enterprise and invention, and who and where the men to perform the chief part in it? As to the work to be done, there can be no doubt or mystery, for not a day passes
without loud complaints, indignant remonstrances, fatal oversights, sad mis-calculations, terrible shortcomings, social or material evils to be remedied if possible, whole masses of people, indeed whole classes to be succoured and lifted out of the slough, and enormous difficulties placed by nature in our way evidently that we may exercise our wit and our virtues in the attempt to overcome them. Here, from all these Isles, there arises a despairing cry from agriculture, as if it had really reached the end of its tether, and had found itself landed in utter helplessness and insolvency—a bad speculation altogether. Here are countless problems, and at the same time countless discoveries, which if they lead to nothing else, prove the inexhaustible nature of our dominion over the elements. Then, for the sea, with its terrible average of wreck and total loss running on without intermission and with but rare abatement, who shall say there is here no work for the discoverer and inventor who will give his heart and soul and mind to it?"
It is indeed high time, that by means of discoveries which will enable us to predict with certainty the nature of coming seasons, we shall be better enabled to cope with adversities in agriculture; also, that the numerous wrecks, and the thousands of lives lost with them every year on our coasts, should be diminished. But these desirable results cannot be effected by invention based upon insufficient knowledge; invention must be preceded by general as well as special research, because the former often discloses important