Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/261

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N an article published a few months ago in the Revue Scientifique I pointed out a danger that threatens some of our chemical industries. I showed on the evidence of official documents that these very industries have taken a rapid start and had an immense development in Germany, while they have continued nearly stationary in France, the country of their origin. In the search for the causes of this standstill I believe I established that it is largely due to deficiencies in the chemical instruction given in France and to the indifference to industry manifested by our scientific men, while in Germany the teaching of chemistry has reached an admirable stage of perfection, and the alliance of science and industry is commended as a necessity of the first order. Like ideas have been developed recently in various publications; attention seems to be concentrating around the question, a happy sign which I remark with joy. M. Léon Lefèvre, who agrees with me in opinion on this point, speaks of the parallelism in the development of the color-making industry and of organic chemistry in Germany. "That country," he says, "now possesses the supremacy in both, and yet it did not assist at the birth of artificial coloring matters; for the honor of the discovery of the first aniline colors belongs to France and England"; and he calls attention to the very rapid growth of the Chemical Society of Berlin since that discovery was made in 1868 from 107 members to 3,129, as compared with that of the societies of London, 551 to 2,029, and of Paris, 269 to 736. M. Haller, director of the Chemical Institute of Nancy, presents a similar argument, and quotes Humboldt's prediction that those countries which neglect recourse to their scientific lights will see their prosperity inevitably jeopardized as neighboring nations develop and strengthen themselves under the vivifying influence of the arts and sciences. My opinion is further sustained by many other men of science from whom I have received letters. Some of them accuse our method of teaching, which, they find, has no direct bearing on the object for which the instruction should be given. One of them says it is all wrong, in that it gives prominence to the abstract and does not give importance to the application, and another finds fault with the method by which instructors are chosen and appointed.

We may look at the subject from another side and inquire whether manufacturers have done their best to keep their standards even with the highest. It will appear that the majority of French manufacturers do not appreciate as they ought the influence of