THE ROMANCE OF RESEARCH
by L. V. Redman
(Vice-President and Director of Research Bakelite Corporation)

and
A. V. H. Mory
(Associate Director of research Bakelite Corporation)

Baltimore 1933
The Williams & Williams Company
And its Associates in Cooperation with
The Century of Progress Exposition

Conscious of maladjustment in our civilization we cast about for some authoritative confirmation of the fact and assignment of the cause. We find it in the official summary issued in January 1933 of the report of President Hoover's Committee on Recent Social Trends in the United States. We are told that while we have been pressing on in the development and application of the physical sciences, the science of human relations has been comparatively neglected and what we have learned has not found general application. In many parts of our civilization we have been merely drifting while the physical sciences and technology have been proceeding according to chart and compass and under a good head of steam. The result we are told has been maladjustment from different rates of change, a lack of coordination in our social machine, all parts of which-agriculture, labor, industry, government, education, religion, science-must function in unison, if it is notfrequently to be laid up for repairs. The committee states that "these interrelated changes which are going forward in such bewildering variety and at such varying speeds threaten grave dangers with one hand while with the other hand they hold out the promise to further betterment to mankind." After being reminded that "the objective of any conscious control over the process is to secure a better adjustment between inherited nature and culture," we are told that "the means of social control is social discovery and the wider adoption of new knowledge." We find encouragement in the statement that "a considerable amount of such work is now being done in universities and independent research institutes and the results are seen in the increasing penetration of social technology into public welfare work, public health education, social work and the courts." The belief is expressed that "while some of these inquiries may be fragmentary and often unrelated or inadequately related, there should nevertheless be important findings and inventions of great value to society." We are informed and encouraged by the following: "While the most recent phase of American development in the social field has been the recognition of the necessity of fact-finding agencies and equipment, and their actual establishment, the next phase of advance may find more emphasis Upon interpretation and synthesis than the last." (pages 135-137)