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APPENDIX B. EXTRACT FROM REPORT BY SIR FRANK HEATH ON THE ORGANIZATION OF SCIENTIFIC AND INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH IN NEW ZEALAND. IY. The Secondary Industries. 35. I have taken great care to try and obtain a broad general view of the secondary industries of New Zealand and to meet representative manufacturers in each centre I have visited. All are agreed that more science is needed, and some are taking steps to appoint scientific men in their works, as others, and the more progressive, have already done. It is natural that the industrialists should be rather vague as to the best means of attaining the end they desire, for the majority of factories are too small to make it possible for them to face the expense of the smallest scientific organization in their works. It is noticeable that the Statistical Report on Factory Production, 1925 (page 23), shows over 80 per cent, of the factories in the Dominion employ less than twenty-one workers apiece, while there seems to be a tendency for the proportion of small works to increase—though the tendency is far less marked than: in Australia. Everywhere I have pointed out to manufacturers that the State could not possibly employ a staff adequate to solve all the manifold problems arising in the course of production in the many industries now carried on, and that even a staff adequate in numbers and scientific qualifications could not hope to solve these difficulties unless they were actually attached to the works. Here, as elsewhere, a choice must be made of the more urgent problems; and considerations both of economy and of man-power suggest that the firms in each industry should combine to finance, with some Government assistance in suitable cases, the conduct of research work on one or more problems of common interest to them all. In the case of the bigger industries co-operative research associations might be formed on a model similar to that adopted in the Old Country, while in the case of smaller and poorer industries a research worker might be selected by a suitable professor and directed to work at selected problems under his guidance. But either plan would necessitate the free access to the works of all contributors for the scientific worker, and full facilities for the making of works experiments. This suggestion was received with considerable sympathy in all quarters, especially when I emphasized the importance of initiative and individual effort for successful business, and the danger a State-controlled scheme would bring with it, of destroying these virtues just in proportion as it was successful. A relatively small sum of money placed at the disposal of the new central organization, to be expended in grants under proper conditions, to co-operative efforts of the kind indicated, would produce the maximum effect, and would have all the advantages of an experiment which could be abandoned if it proved unsuccessful. It is essential, however, that an experiment of this kind should have a fair trial, and manufacturers should be required to find a contribution of amount sufficient, with any State subsidy, to pay the salary and expenses of one well-qualified man of science at the least, and to guarantee a continuance of the contribution for at least five years. I strongly recommend that the central organization should press for a compulsory levy on the industry for this purpose, as is the practice in the dairy, meat, and fruit industries for marketing purposes, and that it should be very slow to accept voluntary contributions which it will be difficult to collect or to continue in times of bad trade. 36. For the rest, the State assistance to the secondary industries should be rendered by the work that it is hoped will be undertaken in the economical use of fuel, and by the work on the testing and standardization of materials and instruments, which is dealt with in Section V of this report. In addition, it should be possible for the new organization to give advice to industries as to the sources from which special information can possibly be obtained through a section of records which I shall recommend should be established ; by the organization of the science libraries of the country, which should be undertaken as part of the duties of the central authority ; and by its close liaison with the Research Department at Home, and similar organizations in other dominions of the Empire. 37. The new central organization will need all the assistance it can obtain in forming a just estimate of the needs and attitude of the secondary industries if mistakes are to be avoided and useful work is to be done. For this help it will naturally look to the Department of Industries and Commerce, which appears to me to be getting into daily closer touch with the manufacturers and business men of the community. In a later paragraph I recommend the Secretary of this Department should, with other high officers from other Departments, be appointed as assessor to the Advisory Council of the new organization ; but this does not seem to me to be enough. I suggest that the Department of Industries and Commerce should include upon its staff two or more well-qualified field officers of technical training and experience—one, say, on the engineering side, the other on the chemical—whose duty it should be to study the secondary industries of the Dominion at first hand and keep the Secretary informed of their technical difficulties and successes. The powers entrusted to the Department under the Act are so wide that some provision of this kind appears to me to be desirable in any case. If the industries are to be assisted scientifically by the new body, which will have many other scientific responsibilities upon its shoulders, this strengthening of the staff of the Department of Industries and Commerce appears to me to be necessary.

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