Industrial recruitment of chemistry students from English universities :sx a revaluation of its early importance .sx JAMES DONNELLY .sx INTRODUCTION In England , institutionalized locations for science in academe and industry sprang up at approximately the same time , that is to say , during the period from the mid-nineteenth century to the First World War .sx By the latter date science was well established within most academic institutions and , more rudimentarily , in many industrial firms .sx Standardized forms of practice were to be found in both sectors , and there existed mechanisms for the transfer of personnel , knowledge and finance between the two .sx Both sites were of course surrounded and sustained by a network of other institutions and practices :sx scientific and technical societies and journals , patent and company law , government agencies and so on .sx Nevertheless , during the period just identified these two developed as the key occupational sites ( outside schoolteaching ) for men trained in science .sx Their relationship was self-evidently symbiotic .sx However , the historical origins of that symbiosis remain sufficiently unclear to give point to the question which underpins this paper :sx was the institutional growth of academic science in England dependent on 'industrial demand' for scientifically trained employees ?sx Some twenty years ago D.L.S. Cardwell gave a negative answer to the question :sx until the universities were producing the specialist , industrial demand could not make itself felt - did not , in fact , exist - and young men could not enter industrial research in large numbers .sx This is a reversal of that theory which explains professional scientific training by reference to industrial demand .sx .sx 'Industrial demand' is commonly recognized to be more difficult to investigate than the supply side represented by academic provision .sx 'Demand' might be interpreted at various levels , ranging from recruitment ( the focus of the present paper ) through pressure on curricula and academic government , and ultimately as a directing influence on research programmes .sx Quantitative work bearing on supply has been published , notably on Germany by Peter Lundgreen , and a number of qualitative accounts exist .sx Several studies have indicated that industrial and other 'practical' influences on the early growth of academic science were considerable .sx Meinel suggested that in eighteenth-century Sweden academic chemists devised the novel categories of 'pure' and 'applied' science to exploit 'practical' support for their studies .sx Hufbauer traced the formation of a community of chemists in Germany during the eighteenth century to a shift towards a status both 'fundamental' and utilitarian in relation to medicine , mining etc. Steven Turner showed that the occupational destinations of nineteenth-century chemistry students in Germany were largely in the fields of industry , pharmacy and medicine , with schoolteachers ( " this most obvious of clientele " ) comparatively unimportant .sx David Cahan has suggested that German physics , too , had a large industrial element in its institutionalization .sx In France , Paul showed the importance of the applied science institutes to the growth of provincial science faculties during the late nineteenth-century .sx The argument for a seminal industrial influence on modern academic science has been pursued most vigorously within the Marxist tradition represented by writers such as Gorz , Levidow and Noble .sx Gorz has suggested that " in the United States applied research .sx ..has been more or less the only form of research since about 1870 " .sx Characteristically he does not document this statment .sx A key study from this perspective is David Noble's America by Design , in which he traces the multiple interactions between industrial capital and developing academic institutions in the United States around the turn of the century .sx He argues that interventions by industrialists in academic finance and government influenced curricula and helped propagate forms of academic activity which serviced the requirements of capitalist industry .sx Some writers have questioned the empirical bases of parts of Noble's approach .sx His argument fits within a wider Marxist concern with the role of education in the capitalist economy .sx An important element of this is Bowles and Gintis' 'correspondence theory' of the social relations of industry and education .sx However , this 'correspondence' refers to affective and hierarchical aspects of the education system , rather than its cognitive dimension .sx Noble himself is more convincing when dealing with the former aspects .sx Marxist scholars have also been concerned to trace the industrial utilization of trained men to further the real subordination of labour .sx There is a large literature in this field , concerned with such issues as the deskilling of manual workers , the separation of mental and manual labour and the emergence of a 'professional-managerial class' .sx The limited attention to substantive aspects of the role of science in this work stems partly from a tendency to see the 'application' of science as unproblematic , and partly from a neo-Marxist perception of science and technology as different 'moments' of the same instrumental appropriation of the world .sx The present paper is in part an evaluation of the extent to which the Marxist approach is supported specifically at the level of industrial recruitment .sx This Marxist canon is in some respects an alternative to the larger literature which adopts what might be termed a 'science policy' approach to the subject , and explores the variables which conditioned the deployment of science in the promotion of industrial development .sx The major distinction between these two approaches is of course in the extent to which they question underlying social and economic relationships , and the distribution of power .sx In both the possibility of industrial pressure stimulating the resourcing of academic science has a place , though it is used to develop different lines of argument .sx Is there a major historical alternative to industrial 'demand' as underpinning the growth of higher scientific education , that is , in the sense of providing employment for students ?sx The only real possiblity in the context of the growth of a mass education system in England around the turn of the century was , as Cardwell recognized , recruitment into schoolteaching .sx The main purpose of the present paper is thus to explore the balance of these two possiblities .sx It focuses on students of chemistry , quantitatively and institutionally the most developed of the sciences at that time .sx It aims to show that industrial recruitment of students of chemistry from English academic institutions was an important and widespread phenomenon during the late nineteenth century , and not a mere 'spin-off' from the supply of teachers .sx It will also suggest that the more specialist sic !sx a student's interest in the discipline the more likely he was to enter industry .sx Taking these and other more ideological dimensions into account it can be argued that industrial recruitment was a pivotal focrce in the growth of higher education in chemistry .sx As a potential mechanism for the transmission of industrial influence it was , at the least , strongly in play from the mid-nineteenth century onwards .sx The remainder of the paper consists of five sections .sx The first discusses the occupational destinations of chemistry students around the mid-nineteenth century .sx The second considers the situation at the turn of the century .sx The third evaluates evidence on the employment of chemists by British firms at the turn of the century , while the fourth looks at the balance between qualifications and salaries in education and industry .sx The final section of the paper draws together these strands and discusses the origins of the industrial recruitment of chemists .sx THE MID-CENTURY .sx The two major English foundations with a scientific orientation around the mid-century were the Royal College of Chemistry ( later assimilated into the Royal School of Mines ) and Owens College , Manchester .sx Gerrylynn Roberts has explored the complex of interests associated with the establishment of the former .sx Statistical evidence about the destinations of early students has indicated their largely practical motivations and the often casual nature of their attendance .sx A list of students of known occupations up to 1870 was given by Edward Frankland to the Devonshire Commission , and showed 54% whose motivations could be classified as practical ( industry , agriculture , medicine etc. ) Only 12% entered education .sx In 1857 Henry Roscoe replaced Edward Frankland as Professor of Chemistry at Owens College .sx It appears that Roscoe's emphasis on the industrial benefits which would stem from educating young men in chemistry was crucial in revitalizing the chemistry course , and perhaps the entire college , during the late 1850s .sx ( Whether the students were intended to be future employees or partners/owners it is difficult to decide .sx There is evidence that a labour market in 'chemists' was developing in the Manchester area and elsewhere by this time .sx ) Roscoe gave evidence to the Devonshire Commission about the intended occupations of his laboratory students in 1870-1 .sx He stated that 38 students intended to enter some form of industrial activity , while 5 intended to become teachers .sx More anecdotal evidence is available about the two London colleges , University and King's .sx At the former , practical chemistry had for some years been studied mainly by medical students .sx Alexander Williamson , Professor of Chemistry from 1849 , told the Devonshire Commission that many of the parents of students wished their sons to learn only about specific industrial aspects of chemistry .sx His own counter-arguments about the need for a general chemical education , and the technical claims he made for such an education , are of interest as reflecting the ideological landscape then under construction .sx William Miller , Professor of Chemistry at King's , told the Samuelson Committee that of only 12 to 14 students in the 'Applied Science' department ( the main active 'higher education' department outside medicine ) 8 to 10 were " studying with the express view afterwards of entering manufacturing works .sx " .sx The evidence for the mainly practical motivations of chemistry students during the mid-century is therefore considerable .sx The ideological contest , focused on chemistry , in the new foundations has already been touched on .sx In sum it constituted a campaign by the embryonic academic community of chemistry , and some of its 'lay' supporters , to exploit the utilitarian impetus for chemistry education and 'research' while retaining control and independence in relation to curricula and research .sx The contest was fought out at a number of levels .sx The hostility of the Professor of Chemistry at the Royal College of Chemistry , August von Hofmann , to William Perkin's move into dyestuff manufacture is well known .sx Nevertheless within a few years numerous students left the college to try their fortune manufacturing synthetic dyestuffs .sx At the level of publicly-articulated ideology a battle was fought to uncouple the benefits of research and education from any immediate orientation to technical problems .sx There was also a class dimension , as the importance of chemistry for owners and managers , rather than manual workers , was stressed .sx In their book Science versus Practice Bud and Roberts argued that the development of educational provision during the late nineteenth century can be understood as the working out of a tension between 'polytechnic' and 'science college' formulations of the science curriculum and its industrial relevance :sx that is , between an attempt to embody industrial knowledge ( as 'applied science' ) in the curriculum and a limitation to abstract science .sx I have argued elsewhere that neither the protagonists' views nor the institutions and their curricula can be dichotomized in this way .sx The negotiation of the meaning of 'applied science' was itself complex , and the creation of new stratifications of the industrial personnel , together with professional and class interests , all contributed to the process .sx The mid-nineteenth century activity under discussion here was small-scale , loosely institutionalized and in receipt of very limited public finance .sx By the turn of the century all of these characteristics were changing .sx The following section turns to this period .sx THE TURN OF THE CENTURY .sx By the first decade of the twentieth century wide-ranging public resourcing of education at the secondary level existed in England .sx The arguments which were deployed to support this continued in many cases to be economic in orientation , even when focusing on 'general' education .sx Within higher education such pressures had become increasingly intense .sx Overall , educational provision had developed a qualitative resemblance to that of the mid-twentieth century .sx The quantitative scale of higher education may be judged from the fact that about 500 students were graduating B.Sc. annually from publicly-aided institutions , that is , excluding Oxford and Cambridge universities .sx Chemistry also had developed much of the institutional and social apparatus of a mature discipline .sx During the mid-century many students had attended institutions on an ad hoc basis , without obtaining a formal qualification .sx This practice continued much longer than is often acknowledged .sx