Abstract
THE majority of our large industries can claim to-day to be well managed. Two major depressions since the Great War and the need of continuous adjustment to changing world conditions, including the altered views towards labour at home, have provided a stimulus to which even the most conventional and conservative have been forced to react. The more successful industries are those which have favoured research both into new processes and to bettering existing practice. In the steel industry, for example, every time a new plant is erected-and there have been several in recent years-it represents all the most modern views with the addition generally of something new, peculiar to the particular plant. If successful, this novelty is copied in the next plant, though others in the industry can only benefit when the next new plant is built. Such an industry must bear a very high rate of depreciation if it is to replace its plant at reasonable intervals, and it has to solve some very difficult financial problems. In certain industries the amount of capital locked up in a particular type of plant is large, so that a new development which involves the scrapping of this plant whilst it is still in first-class condition is looked at askance.
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Progress in the Gas Industry. Nature 142, 549–550 (1938). https://doi.org/10.1038/142549a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/142549a0