Abstract
SOME anxiety regarding the future of the Shirley Institute was expressed at the annual meeting of the British Cotton Industry Research Association at Didsbury, Manchester, held on October 19. These misgivings were not about the ability of the Institute to continue to carry out fruitful investigations but about the necessary financial support. The Institute has a staff of two hundred, more than sixty of whom are university graduates, and Dr. R. H. Pickard expressed the opinion that the Institute could usefully employ at least twice as many people as at present on the investigation of scientific and technical problems to which the industry requires answers. The work on investigating current trade problems has grown to such an extent as to crowd out much of the fundamental research, and only one sixth of the work is now the long distance research upon which the future of the Association and the industry so largely depends. Financial arrangements made in connexion with the Rayon Department terminate next June and those for the Cotton Department in June 1934. With the exhaustion of the £1,000,000 fund, Government grants to the Association will in future come by annual vote and may accordingly be still further decreased through the need for public economy. The Institute costs about £65,000 a year to run and there is a deficit on the past year of £5,600, largely owing to a corresponding reduction in the Government grant. Only about £25,000 comes from the subscriptions of the 1,200 firms who are members of the Association and these subscriptions were described by the chairman, Mr. H. P. Greg, as ridiculously out of proportion to the size and importance of the cotton industry even in times of bad trade. Contributions of £10 from a firm with a capital of £100,000 or 50,000 spindles, or of £5 from a manufacturer with 1,000 looms are unworthy of the industry or of the results obtained.
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The Shirley Institute. Nature 130, 655 (1932). https://doi.org/10.1038/130655d0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/130655d0