Defining the industrial chemist in the United Kingdom, 1850-1921.

1. Introduction

Scientific and technical workers occupy a pivotal position within manufacturing industry and perhaps within industrial society as a whole. Their work and occupational location have received a good deal of attention in industrial sociology, but their historical origins have been less studied. Sociological accounts of such workers in the mid-twentieth century tended to focus on tensions in their assimilation to industrial organizations. Scientific and technical knowledge was frequently seen as the basis of a professional affiliation which was in conflict with the commercial and managerial imperatives of industrial firms.(1) More recently, the notion of a historical conflict between the professional and industrial positions of such workers has been undermined. The importance of employers and senior managers from industry within professional organizations has been recognized. So too has the orientation of such organizations to servicing members who were employees rather than independent professionals.(2) Edwin Layton and David Noble have, in their different ways, explored more widely the intimate relation between business and the engineering profession.(3) Technical workers have always appeared problematic in neo-Marxist writing such as that of Noble. Are they agents of capital, or potentially assimilable to the working class and its interests? Or do they, as Guglielmo Carchedi argues, occupy a dynamic class location, deskilling the labour of others while themselves being subject to this process in their own working situation.(4)

This paper is concerned with the origins in Great Britain of the category 'industrial chemist', the earliest academically-trained scientific worker to be employed on any scale within civil industry. The first part of the article contains a broad sketch of the early development of the occupation. It offers, so far as UK chemists are concerned, some support to Carchedi's view. But the majority of the article is concerned with a specific aspect of the identity of industrial chemists: the organizations with which they were associated. It examines the main chemical organizations which were created during the late nineteenth century and concludes that none represented or was controlled by industrial chemists. This situation did not begin to change until the second decade of the twentieth century, and precipitated a shift in the orientation of the main qualifying organization of British chemists, the Institute of Chemistry, from independent professionals to industrial employees. It will be argued that the Institute provided an alternative to unionization. It helped stabilize the boundary problems which arose in the dynamic occupational situation of industrial chemistry sketched in the first section of this article. Parallels with accounts of German chemists and US engineers will be visible, though the different configuration of German engineers, with its competing elite groups, indicates the danger of generalization.(5)

When did industrial chemistry, as an occupational category, come into existence in Britain? The place of science in industrial innovation in late-eighteenth-and early-nineteenth-century Britain has received a good deal of attention.(6) Entrepreneurs like Josiah Wedgwood and James Watt were alleged to have drawn on scientific knowledge for their work. Such men (men, at this time, they invariably were) are not the subject of this article. To describe them as industrial scientists is anachronistic, in part because the term scientist and its modern institutional settings had not yet been invented. More fundamental, however, is the question of their structural position. This article is concerned with workers who participated in an industrial labour market: that is to say, employees, rather than owners or partners (or relatives of these), recruited from a pool of other potential employees. Such men were replaced after leaving or being dismissed and their function within the works was defined by others. The development of a labour market in chemical knowledge within Great Britain occurred during the third quarter of the nineteenth century.

It required several conditions to be fulfilled: the creation of a set of institutions supplying chemical education in London and the provinces; the development of a stable chemical practice which could be taught and, eventually, examined; the recognition within commercial and technical settings of a role for this practice; and the existence of a body of students of chemistry willing or compelled to work in industrial firms. These elements came into existence hesitantly. Each was more or less contested and unstable.(7) Yet, interlocked and mututally supportive, they formed a sufficiently stable system to sustain the growth of a labour market.

2. 'Chemists to analyse'

The widespread existence of works laboratories in chemical works by the 1870s is well documented in the alkali industry and, with a different emphasis, in the dyeing and dyestuffs industry.(8) From there they spread across most industries dealing with substances which could be characterized in laboratory terms. The key scientific shift which enabled the systematic penetration of the categories of the academic laboratory into works and commercial relationships was standardized quantitative analysis of chemical substances. This process is not the main focus of this article, but its importance and the resistance to it should not be overlooked. It was represented by many contemporaries as a major step. The procedures of the analytical chemist reconstituted material commodities within a new set of institutions and practices.(9) Many commodities became identified with 'chemicals', the value and ontological status of which could only be understood through the interposition of the analytical laboratory.(10) The same procedures provided a quantitative metric within the works. Using this, the processes occurring could be redescribed as columns of figures, referring to inputs, outputs and intermediates. These data could be collected, stored, analysed and compared. They could be used to monitor and control processes, and the manual workers whose responsibility those processes had previously been, often on a real time basis. Where traditional processes (such as the manufacture of alkali by the Leblanc method) were involved, the shift to mechanization could be supported by protocols of analytical testing, replacing the complex psycho-motor judgements made by manual workers operating furnaces. In sum, analytical data contributed to a reconceptualization of the processes occurring within works, of the works as a system and of the relationship between owners and manual workers.(11) The process was paralleled elsewhere. In the steel industry attempts were made to develop spectroscopic methods for identifying the state of the furnace, and a range of other forms of instrumentation was developed during the late nineteenth century.(12)

These changes required a range of resources, human and conceptual. The analytical chemist developed as a new category of personnel. He existed in two forms: the works chemist and the consultant or practising chemist. The latter category was an independent practitioner undertaking analytical and sometimes technical work for fees, but it is the former which is the major focus of this article. The main function of the works chemist was to analyse, as one chemist put it in 1878, "everything that came in and went out ... and every intermediate stage".(13) Such laboratory work was routine and time-consuming. It did not resemble the heroic discovery of new substances and processes which is still often presented as the paradigm of the 'application of science'.(14) It was, above all, a practice which existed in the public domain. Both because of its uncertainties and its place in the commercial relationships between firms, employers required access to a body of expertise which could be challenged, compared and externally verified. In this it contrasted with other facets of the role of science in industrial practice, where secrecy was desirable.

Analytical chemists were recruited to works from a growing pool of trained men. The growth of this activity is difficult to estimate. The occupational data in the Census are too general to be informative, but some rather speculative national estimates are possible.(15) By the turn of the century the membership of the Society of Chemical Industry was about 3,500, of which about half appear to have had some technical responsibility in industrial firms in the UK. Data from other sources suggest that about half of those entering industry joined the Society. Thus 3,500 appears a useful benchmark figure for 'chemists' (loosely understood) working in British firms in the early twentieth century.(16) The equivalent figure derived from the early membership of the Society in the 1880s is about 2,000.(17)

Industrial capitalists recruited such men largely on their own terms. They were easily replaceable and their position in works was insecure. (Of course this is not to say that the work was unskilled or scientifically simple.) Analytical chemistry quickly became, to quote one contemporary, an 'out-at-elbows trade'. It operated within definable procedures and was susceptible to supervision and control at a physical and organizational level. The early chemists might have been educated at the London or Scottish colleges, or even in Germany. By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as the work itself had been increasingly standardized, analytical competence of a kind became available through a range of low level courses (part-time and accessible to working-class students) offered at the burgeoning provincial technical schools and colleges.(18)

But this is far from the whole story. Analytical chemists quickly shifted out of the works laboratory. One of the routes available for this has already been identified: they could establish themselves as independent 'practising chemists', providing services for fees, in the manner of the classical professions of law and medicine. Such services could be offered to chemical firms (even those which employed analysts also retained independent practitioners to check their work). But there was a wide range of other employment which such men could obtain, notably as public analysts. It was possible to earn a good living in this way.(19)

Two industrial routes were available. Both were essentially managerial: that of research chemist could not be said to have existed on any scale until the early twentieth century. Chemists could develop a managerial role within the laboratory, supervising the work of more routine 'chemists', and undertaking some more skilled or demanding tasks themselves. Or they could become involved with the management of the process proper. The latter activity implied that the chemist extended his technical knowledge beyond the laboratory into the works, as well as learning to manage and control the manual workforce. Nevertheless many chemists did make the transition and it was the aspiration of most. It is in the processes sketched in the preceding paragraphs that something resembling Carchedi's account can be recognized.(20)

3. Chemical organizations in the nineteenth century: the place of industrial chemists

Despite their numerical importance, industrial chemists were not clearly represented by any public organization during the nineteenth century. This reflects significant characteristics of their occupational situation. In this section I examine the major organizations which existed for those who earned their living from chemistry, and the significance within them of industrial employees. By the end of the nineteenth century there were three major chemical institutions in Britain: the Chemical Society (1841), the Institute of Chemistry (1877) and the Society of Chemical Industry (1882).(21) Other organizations, such as the Pharmaceutical Society (1841), the Society of Public Analysts (1874) or the Iron and Steel Institute (1869), were of importance in their own sphere, but did not have the generic character of these three.

The Chemical Society was established in London in 1841 by a combination of manufacturers, practising and academic chemists and men with medical and pharmaceutical interests.(22) Much of the motivation for the Society's establishment stemmed from the perceived utility of the subject. Many of the early members had a technical, rather than academic, link with the science. However, academics such as August Hofmann were central to its early development. Their authoritative scientific voice gave them a key role in controlling its work. Under their influence, the Society quickly emerged as an organization orientated towards the publication of original research. After the first few years the Society's publications contained little of direct industrial relevance. By the third quarter of the nineteenth century the Journal of the Chemical Society was the major specialist British location for academic publication in chemistry.

By 1900 the membership of the Society had reached 2,000. Identifying the occupations of these members is rendered difficult by the relative obscurity of many of them. A survey, using those obituaries which were published, and other sources of information, enabled the identification of some 42% of the membership in 1880 and 33% in 1900.(23) The total membership at these dates was 980 and 1,980 respectively. The survey reveals the following occupational profile:

Table 1

Occupations of Fellows of the Chemical Society(*)
(% of those identified in each category at each date)

Year      n      Education     Industry     Practice     Other

1880     413         29           38           26          7
1900     638         45           29           18          2

* The occupations of an insufficient proportion of members could be
identified at 1914 to justify reporting the figures. Sources for
tables 1 thru 4 are: Chemical Society, Institute of Chemistry and
Society of Chemical Industry, together with supplementary
information obtained by a systematic search of the main chemical
publication up to 1950.

These data suggest that, while many of the members of the society were academics, they were in a minority. The industrial membership of the society was substantial, despite the relative absence of industrial concerns in the Society's publications, and is probably underestimated here.(24) Yet these industrial members were not reflected proportionately in the Council of the Society, the membership of which is shown in Table 2.

Whatever may have been the situation among ordinary members, or the motivation of those members who worked in industry, the Society was run for and largely by academics.

The Institute of Chemistry was set up in 1877, to some extent as an off-shoot of the Chemical Society. Unlike that society, the Institute of Chemistry was explicitly a qualifying organization.(25) It sought to imitate some of the characteristics of the older professions, by controlling entry standards and behaviour. Its main emphasis was on the public certification of practising chemists working for fees. Associate membership of the Institute was dependent on formal, usually academic, qualification. In contrast with the Chemical Society this was a source of tension in the Institute for Chemistry. During its establishment some of the correspondence in the press, appealing for the inclusion of works chemists, indicated the marginal position which they were already perceived as holding. It was suggested that the 'rules for admission' were "preventing the admission of the very class which ought to be the backbone of such an association, the technical chemists themselves." Elsewhere I have argued that a large proportion of industrial chemists had no formal qualifications, though they may have attended a university on an ad hoc basis.(26) The occupations of some members of the Institute at 1880, 1900 and 1914 have been identified (72%, 78% and 68% respectively at each date). The total membership at these dates was 334, 670 and 1,074 respectively. The occupational distribution revealed by the survey is shown in Table 3.

Table 2

Occupations of Members of the Council of the Chemical Society
(% of total membership in each category at each date)

Year     n      Education     Industry     Practice     Other

1880     20         65           20            5          15
1900     37         81            8            5           6
1914     32         78           13            6           3
Table 3

Occupations of Fellows of the Institute of Chemistry
(% of those identified in each category at each date)

Year      n      Education     Industry     Practice     Other

1880     241        29            28           32          10
1900     523        27            29           38           6
1914     731        25            28           39           8

These data indicate that, despite the emphasis on academic training, a substantial industrial membership existed. But, again, this was not reflected in the institutional concerns dominating the Institute's activities (which focused on the work of practising chemists) or in the membership of its Council. As Table 4 shows, the Council was dominated by academics and practising chemists.

In sum, while industrial chemists demonstrated substantial involvement with both the Chemical Society and the Institute of Chemistry, they were marginal in both. There may have been contingent, external reasons for this. The Chemical Society developed its key characteristics before there was a major constituency of industrial chemists. The establishment of the Institute of Chemistry was driven by the concerns of practising chemists. But events in the succeeding decades suggest that there were also internal reasons in play, connected with the working situation of industrial employees. These reasons become more visible in the organizations which were created with a specifically industrial orientation during the late nineteenth century.

There were several such organizations, culminating in the Society of Chemical Industry in 1881. A short-lived section of the Manchester Philosophical and Literary Society of which "most of the members were chemists in works" was established during the early 1850s.(27) The connection with the older society is significant: this was not a potential trade union or even a professional organization. The connection was rather with a quasi-learned society patronized by the owners of works, which perhaps reflected the aspirations of the chemists themselves.(28) Other organizations were established in the main centres of the chemical industry, on Merseyside and Tyneside.

Table 4

Occupations of Members of the Council of the Institute of Chemistry
(% of total membership in each category at each date)

Year      n     Education     Industry     Practice     Other

1880     34         36            20          40          4
1900     30         47            23          30          0
1914     32         28            17          56          0

the Newcastle Chemical Society (1868) the Tyne Social Chemical Society (1870, the word Social was dropped in 1873) the Faraday Club (based in Widnes, St. Helen's and Liverpool, 1874)

Two of these showed embryonic signs of a collective identity among chemists, distinct from, though not necessarily hostile to, their employers. The younger society on Tyneside originated as "a social gathering, where a few chemists and managers of adjoining works met in the evenings."(29) It publicly rejected attempts to merge with the other Tyne society, which was dominated by owners:(30) "The Tyne Social Chemical Society is a society of managers and chemists only, and not of manufacturers...." The Faraday Club, existed from 1874, and experienced some opposition from owners. One member commented later that his employer, the alkali and soap manufacturer David Gamble,(31)

told me he had heard I was connected with a secret society and desired to know whether this was the case or not. I told him that whether it was called a secret society or not, it was a combination of chemists having no interest but their own profession, and had no adversaries so far as they were concerned.

It was from the activity in East Lancashire that the national organization for industrial chemistry grew. This was the Society of Chemical Industry (SCI) which was inaugurated at Burlington House in London in April 1881, and which by the turn of the century was the largest chemical organization in Britain, with some 3,500 members. The history of the process will not be discussed here.(32) It originated in an attempt to expand the Faraday Club. Its significance for this study is that it was associated with a major shift in emphasis. The 'List of Original Members' in the first minute book of the embryonic SCI in 1879 contains 64 names. Nearly all of those who can be identified were chemists in the local chemical industry. By the time the first Council of the SCI was elected, in 1882, it included only three of the original members, all three owners or directors of firms.(33) Almost the entire Council of the new Society consisted of employers or academics. One half of the 'Original Members' did not join the SCI.

The establishment of the Society of Chemical Industry involved, it seems, the appropriation by other groups of what had begun as an organization specifically for technical employees. Though the mechanism of the process is difficult to recover, its effects are evident. Unlike the Chemical Society and the Institute of Chemistry, the SCI was not under the control of the constituency to which it appealed, and while the Society was oriented towards the interests of industrial chemists, those interests were interpreted narrowly. The Society focused on technical knowledge and became, through its Journal, largely a source of information on new processes and, especially, patents.(34) Issues such as conditions of work, salaries and so on were not addressed. With the creation of the SCI the slight inclination which nineteenth century industrial chemists had shown towards independent organization was redirected, within a society dominated by employers and academics. Their group identity was constituted, in this forum at least, through the the technicalities of industrial practice.

4. The twentieth century

Despite its lack of an organizational focus, the occupational situation of industrial chemists was the subject of comment throughout the decades around the turn of the century, in a range of locations, though never to any significant extent within the Journal of the SCI. Comment focused on the physical conditions of chemists' work, the routinization of the work itself, their salaries and their perceived status. It was underpinned by the changing relationship between analytical work and process management and the increasingly formalized recruitment of low level employees to undertake the former work. As early as 1866 the periodical Chemical News printed a spoof advertisement for an analytical chemist required "occasionally to wait at table," and had to reassure outraged readers that the aim had been to draw attention to the problem.(35) The flow of complaints increased over the years. In the late nineteenth century the chemist was "treated as a mere analytical machine," and his work was suitable for "poor relations and younger sons."(36) By 1914 he was "a little less than a typist: the standard of menial work had changed but the message remained the same. Academics had a part in the process.(37) Whereas in the mid-nineteenth century analysis was a high status scientific activity, by the turn of the century it was represented, by figures such as the President of the Chemical Society (Alexander Crum Brown) and the first American President of the Society of Chemical Industry (C. F. Chandler), as the lowest form of chemical competence.(38) Analytical chemistry courses were established at most local technical colleges and targeted at part-time and working-class students.(39)

Nevertheless, for nearly three decades after the establishment of the Society of Chemical Industry there is no record of an attempt to establish any organization for industrial chemists. The Institute of Chemistry remained committed to its narrow role in certifying competence, and its main response to the growing number of industrial chemists was to set up examinations in technological chemistry, after much deliberation, in 1906.(40) The examinations attracted only five candidates in 10 years. The situation began to change during the second decade of the twentieth century. Several new organizations were established. Their development and relationships were dominated by two key questions. How should chemists respond to the increasing stratification of chemical work in industrial firms? And, how should chemical workers situate themselves in relation to their employers: as ordinary workers represented through trades unions and employing trade union methods, or as a professional 'service class', offering high-level qualification, and identifying their interests with those of their employers? An interplay between these questions was inevitable, and responses altered during the first two decades of the century. In the collectivist atmosphere of the War and immediate post-War years an independent organization, not dominated by academics or industrial leaders, appeared possible. But the difficulty of bringing together a group as diverse as those who might claim the title 'industrial chemist' soon became evident. Any possibility of widespread organization was dissipated amongst a complicated array of institutions, and the Institute of Chemistry effectively drew off the more highly trained personnel, around the 'service class' model, in the immediate post-War years.

The first organization to be established, the Association of Chemical Technologists (ACT), illustrated the shifting attitudes around World War I. The Association was established in London in 1911 under the Chairmanship of Charles Cassal. Cassal was an active member of the Institute of Chemistry, who had been critical of its relationship with academe.(41) Initially the ACT took a clear stance, at least in relation to the second of the questions identified in the previous paragraph. The Association's Secretary made clear that it was not a trade union and would not be aiming to "organize strikes and so forth."(42) An article published in its journal in 1912, entitled "The relation of employer and works chemist," called for the chemist to "make himself useful (to his employer)." The author added "with the ethics (or want of it) of the British workman I have nothing to do."(43) The Association had a more ambiguous answer to the first question, expressing hostility to academic dominance of the Institute of Chemistry and the need to recognize those who" 'qualified by working' rather than by 'learning' only."(44)

The ACT published no membership figures, but seems to have attracted little support. In 1914 it changed its name to the Institution of Chemical Technologists, but, more significantly, the language of its supporters and leaders began to reflect a wider shift towards collectivist and trades union sentiments. At a meeting in 1914 a London member, R. A. Mather, suggested that(45)

chemists could improve their moral and pecuniary status by co-operation and a united endeavour to gain control over the conditions of their work. Chemists must overcome any prejudices they might have against certain methods as being socially 'beneath them'.

Cassal himself criticized the Institute of Chemistry for seeking "only to place before the public highly trained men." He argued that the main problem was the 'segregation' of different classes of chemical worker and stressed the need for combination.(46) He suggested that there was a parallel with the situation of medical doctors during the implementation of the 1911 National Insurance Act: "The Insurance Act succeeded through the existence of blacklegs. The doctors were brought to heel because it was threatened to import blacklegs." This new language reflected wider changes. During the First World War the combination of external threat and civil manpower shortage meant that Britain experienced a substantial expansion in the size and influence of workers' organizations. The shift towards collectivism during the later years of the War was perhaps most vividly indicated by the creation of the Whitley Councils, and it extended into areas of non-manual work.(47)

Within this changing political and industrial framework, new organizations were established, each seeking to define a coherent constituency of industrial chemists. The explicit terrain of the argument between the chemical organizations was that of membership requirements. The possibility of representation on any Whitley Council which was set up was also a concern, though minor.(48) But the underlying ideological argument related to the questions identified above.

The National Association of Industrial Chemists (NAIC) was the most radical grouping. It was established in Sheffield, with the aim of recruiting as many chemists as possible, and particularly of "improv(ing) the status of the average man - the rank and file - in the works laboratory."(49) E. F. Thackeray, the General Secretary, suggested that the aims of the Association included "the protection of the industrial chemist as a class in his relations with his employer."(50) However, the difficulty of using this kind of language soon became clean The Association was "'accused' of being conducted on 'trades union' principles." Its leaders perceived this as a threat and claimed instead to be seeking to avoid the shift of less well-qualified chemists into trades unions.(51) However they soon found themselves in a cleft stick, since potential members then asked how it was to improve the payment of chemists without "adopting trade union principles."(52) The NAIC did not seek to be a qualifying association, which led to suggestions that it was open to 'lab. boys' or 'wash-up women', and precipitated a number of ill-tempered exchanges in the trade press.(53)

The generalist aspirations of the Association left it marginal to what was the key negotiation, which was concerned with those in intermediate positions in works and occurred between another organization, the British Association of Chemists (BAC) and a revitalized Institute of Chemistry.(54) It was claimed by a member of the NAIC that the BAC was formed in direct response to the activity of the NAIC, with the aim of preventing the unification of all chemists.(55) The BAC began as a 'provisional' organization at a large meeting in Manchester in November 1917.(56) Its aim was ostensibly to persuade the Institute of Chemistry to increase the number of chemists eligible for membership, and to organize local sections. It would then disband. The BAC engaged in a complex argument with the Institute, some parts of which were conducted in private, some in the press and some in a series of regional meetings.(57)

The key issues were the appropriateness of the Institute's entry requirements, the boundaries of the title 'chemist' and, in particular, the situation of men whose main training had occurred within works themselves. The underlying question of whether the Institute could shift from its role as a qualifying organization towards (in the terms of a debate where the use of the title 'trade union' was eschewed) a 'Defence' organization was settled almost before it was raised. The Institute was prevented by its Charter from any direct involvement with the salaries of its members and, as its officers occasionally pointed out, it was open to both employees and suitably qualified employers.(58) It was recognized that the Institute had relatively few members among the large and growing number of industrial chemists. Its entry requirements were held by some to be above the standard of a First Class Honours degree and exemption from the theoretical component was allowed only to students from a narrow range of institutions.(59) In fact the Institute did not certify industrial knowledge, except through the moribund technological examination. Defining technical competence was of little importance in this argument. It was the position of men trained by lower level routes and occupying subordinate positions within works which was the central issue.

The provisional BAC had two qualifications for entry. Of these, the so-called 'B' qualification was the more contentious. It required: "the production of satisfactory evidence of a sufficient general education, of having practised pure or applied chemistry for not less than seven years; (and) the holding of a responsible position." This made insufficient reference to academic knowledge for the Institute. After a meeting between representatives of the two bodies in December 1917 the Institute of Chemistry modified its requirements for the Associateship along these lines, but still required the applicant to have received some formal scientific training and been examined therein. The BAC Executive effectively agreed a compromise by modifying the phrase 'general education' in the B qualification to include scientific training. On this basis the Executive decided to consult with 'members' about the BAC's continued existence.(60)

This compromise did not satisfy many of those who had been involved in the BAC: for some it was seen as a capitulation to the Institute of Chemistry. One 'member' remarked that the Executive had misled "scores of persons who are perfectly entitled to call themselves chemists (but) who cannot for one reason or another claim the exact training as laid down by the new regulations of the Institute."(61) After much discussion, and several local meetings, it was decided in June 1918 that the BAC should continue.(62) It was ostensibly to undertake the activities which the Institute of Chemistry was not able or willing to develop, notably the organization of younger and less well-qualified chemists and "remuneration, employment and friendly society work."(63) The BAC was therefore established as an independent organization, but ultimately it appears to have possessed no clear ideological basis for its activities. After the decisions of 1918 it continued in existence with a small membership of about 1,000, until the mid-century. For a while, it continued to contest with the Institute for industrial membership. In August 1920 it registered as a trade union, though its status in this respect was ambivalent. This was confirmed by the election of the Manchester chemical manufacturer Herbert Levinstein as President of the Association in 1922. Levinstein adopted an uneasy stance about the registration as a trade union, claiming that the Association was not a trade union in the full sense, but merely registered because of the legal advantages this conferred.(64)

According to Henry Droop Richmond, speaking in 1921, the British Association of Chemists had, for a time, "threatened ... to engulf [the Institute of Chemistry]."(65) Though no authoritative data are available, the surge in the Institute of Chemistry's membership, which rose to nearly 6,000 by 1930, as almost certainly due to the recruitment of industrial chemists.(66) The Institute, which articulated a clear line of chemical professionalism, became the dominant voice of industrial chemists. It received the patronage of government (via the Board of Education): it was given professional control of the examinations for intermediate level employees, the National Certificate scheme, in 1921. Most significantly, for the issue discussed here, while seeking to adopt a rigorous approach to such training, it did not allow the scheme's qualifications to constitute a route towards the Associateship of the Institute.(67) By a carefully-judged compromise on membership, the Institute, supported by the the Society of Chemical Industry, succeeded in maintaining a clear boundary against lower level chemists, as well as resisting any shift from its role as a qualifying organization.(68)

5. Conclusion

Industrial chemists showed greater hesitancy, or experienced greater difficulty, than other groups of chemical workers in establishing a representative organization. Despite their growing numerical importance, they appeared to have little sense of independent identity. The initiatives in East Lancashire and Newcastle briefly showed signs of such an identity, but were assimilated to the technical orientation of the Society of Chemical Industry. Control of this organization was ceded to employers and academics, and the concerns and interests of industrial chemists were identified with those of their employers, expressed in the technical details of their work. The ease of this appropriation reflected the workplace situation of such men, where the route to promotion lay through an individual ascent into management, sustained ideologically and intellectually by a focus on the processes in hand. In the period between 1880 and the First World War this route into managerial positions became increasingly important for 'university' men.

The creation of new organizations for industrial chemists which occurred during the second decade of the twentieth century reflected the growth of an 'underclass' of employees, usually trained at local technical institutions. These men performed more routine activity and had few prospects of promotion into management. The process was catalysed by the thrust towards collectivization during the First World War. The events described in the previous section reflected the tensions which resulted. Though at the end of the First World War three organizations were available to industrial chemists, only two clear ideological positions were visible. The British Association of Chemists occupied an uneasy middle ground. The first position looked towards the organization of all personnel broadly categorized as chemists, whatever their training, and adopted some of the language of trade unionism. The second differentiated chemists on the basis of certified knowledge associated with high-level education and reinforced the academic requirements of employers (largely as articulated in the public domain by academics). After some adjustment of the knowledge requirements, it was the latter position which prevailed.

The efforts to enlarge (within clear limits) the Institute of Chemistry received the explicit support, through its Journal, of the Society of Chemical Industry, which effectively undermined the threat of large-scale organization presented by the NAIC. Whether such organization had ever any prospect of developing may be questionable. Though it has not been studied, the differentiation of social background amongst those trained as chemists was extremely large, extending as it did from the Oxbridge graduate to the evening student at local technical colleges, attending after work. Even with its more relaxed entry requirements and impeccable professional credentials, by the Second World War the Institute of Chemistry had not recruited the majority of eligible industrial employees.(69) Nevertheless the threat of widespread organization seems to have been perceived as real enough by employers, and the benefits of maintaining the distinction became clear enough during industrial disputes.(70)

Under these pressures the problems which had made industrial chemists marginal within the Institute of Chemistry and limited the professional organization of industrial chemists in the nineteenth century, were overcome in the twentieth. The Institute, originally a qualifying association for practising chemists, was adapted to function as an alternative to unionism. It appears to have had little difficulty in coupling disciplinary and managerial perspectives, reflecting the argument by Torstendahl cited in section 1 above. A conference held by the Institute in 1925 "on the place of applied chemistry in the training of chemists" heard J. F. Thorpe (Professor of Chemistry at Imperial College, London) claim that a chemical training based, for example, on dyeing would limit the chemist's aspirations: "instead of being able to take the position of a manager, he will have merely that of a foreman."(71) The BAC continued to play a role, harrying the Institute, and encouraging it to represent more forcefully, by propagandist and other means, the interests of industrial chemists.(72) But it was the Institute which defined the characteristics and limits of the category 'industrial chemist'. It integrated and articulated the agendas of academic chemistry and industrial employers. It also provided, as the strict boundary against the National Certificate indicates, a clear demarcation against the new, low-status forms of chemical training and employment. Finally, in the absence of a significant technical dimension to the certification which it offered, it also contributed to what Randall Collins has called 'credentialism' in the context of the chemical industry.(73)

Center for Studies in Science and Mathematics Education School of Education LS2 9JT Leeds Great Britain

ENDNOTES

1. S. Marcson, The Scientist in American Industry (Princeton, 1960); W. Kornhauser, Scientists in Industry (Berkeley, 1963).

2. R. Torstendahl, "Engineers in Industry, 1850-1910: Professional Men and New Bureaucrats. A Comparative Approach," in C. G. Bernhard, E. Crawford and P. Sorbom (eds.), Science, Technology, and Society in the Time of Alfred Nobel (Oxford, 1982), 253-70. See also K. Gispen, "German Engineers and American Social Theory: Historical Perspectives on Professionalization," Comparative Studies in Society and History 30 (1988): 55-74. S. Clegg, P. Boreham and G. Dow, Class, Politics and Economy (London, 1986), 193. Andrew Abbot has authoritatively analysed the sociology of professionalization in terms of conflicts over jurisdiction. A. Abbott, The System of Professions. An Essay on the Division of Expert Labor (Chicago, 1988).

3. E. T. Layton, The Revolt of the Engineers. Social Responsibility and the American Engineering Profession (Cleveland, 1971); D. F. Noble, America by Design. Science, Technology and the Rise of Corporate Capitalism (New York, 1979).

4. For surveys, see R. Carter, Capitalism, Class Conflict and the New Middle Class (London, 1985); C. Smith, Technical Workers. Class, Labour and Trade Unionism (London, 1987); C. Smith, D. Knights and H. Willmott (eds.) White-Collar Work. The Non-Manual Labour Process (London, 1991). G. Carchedi, The Economic Identification of Social Classes (London, 1977); idem, Problems in Class Analysis. Production, Knowledge, and the Function of Capital (London, 1983).

5. J. A. Johnson, "Academic, Proletarian ... Professional? Shaping Professionalization for German Industrial Chemists," in K. H. Jarausch and G. Cocks (eds.) German Professions, 1800-1950 (New York, 1990), 123-42. P. Meiksins, "Professionalism and Conflict: The Case of the American Association of Engineers," Journal of Social History 19 (1986): 403-21. K. Gispen, New Profession, Old Order. Engineers and German Society, 1815-1914 (Cambridge, 1990).

6. A. E. Musson and E. Robinson, Science and Technology in the Industrial Revolution (London, 1969).

7. The educational institutions struggled to exist. Chemical practice was challenged in the courts and academe. Industrial capitalists and their managers and foremen resisted a role for chemical knowledge. Men who studied chemistry commonly did not wish to be employed in works, though they may have wished to own or, later, manage them.

8. R. F. Bud and G. K. Roberts, Science versus Practice. Chemistry in Victorian Britain (Manchester, 1984); J. F. Donnelly, "Consultants, Managers, Testing Slaves: Changing Roles for Chemists in the British Alkali Industry, 1850-1920," Technology and Culture 34 (1994): 100-28; C. Russell, N. G. Coley and G. K. Roberts, Chemists by Profession. The Origins and Rise of the Royal Institute of Chemistry (London, 1977).

9. Compare L. Roberts, "The Death Of The Sensuous Chemist: Sensory Evidence In The Chemical Revolution," paper delivered to the conference "Bath 3. Rediscovering Skill," University of Bath, 1990.

10. To borrow the language of actor network theory from science studies, the analytical laboratory became a compulsory passage point: analytical chemistry and commercial relationships entered into a mutually reinforcing relationship. W. E. Bijker and J. Law (eds.), Shaping Technology/Building Society. Studies in Socio-technical Change (Baltimore, 1992).

11. Compare M. Nuwer, "From Batch To Flow: Production Technology and Workforce Skills in the Steel Industry, 1880-1920," Technology and Culture 29 (1988): 808-38. Parallels with new accounting practices are evident. M. Power, "From the Science of Accounts to the Financial Accountability of Science," Science in Context 7 (1994): 355-87. P. Miller and T. O'Leary, "Accounting and the Construction of the Governable Person," Accounting, Organization and Society 12 (1987): 235-65. Compare also Alfred Chandler's writing on the strategic restructuring of industrial firms. A. D. Chandler, "Technology and the Transformation of Industrial Organization," in J. Colton and S. Bruchey (eds.) Technology, the Economy, and Society: the American Experience (New York, 1987), 56-82.

12. S. Bennett, "Process Control in the Chemical Industry in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century," paper delivered at the European Science Foundation Workshop, "From Perkin to Bosch, 1856-1918," held at Maastricht, The Netherlands, 23-4 March 1995.

13. "Experiences of a Works Chemist," Chemical Review 7 (1878): 308-9.

14. The technical role of scientific knowledge has not so far been discussed. While it is usually understood under the rubric of applied science, this notion needs to be handled with care. Whether one calls, for example, the development of chlorine bleaching an application of science is largely a matter of semantics. If acknowledged as such, it appears a weak form of application, depending largely on the ad hoc technical exploitation of a new substance rather than the transfer of chemical theories into industrial processes. The analytical work which formed the basis of the early large-scale employment of chemists was also a weak form of application, but it was systemic in its role. It stands in contrast to the more sophisticated forms of industrial work which developed in dyestuffs and, later, in other sectors. A. S. Travis, The Rainbow Makers. The Origins of the Synthetic Dyestuffs Industry in Western Europe (London, 1993). L. Reich, The Making of American Industrial Research. Science and Business at GE and Bell (Cambridge, 1985).

15. J. F. Donnelly, "Industrial Recruitment of Chemistry Students from English Universities: A Reevaluation of its Early Importance," British Journal for the History of Science 24 (1991): 1-20. The issue is discussed further in J. F. Donnelly, "Chemical Education and the Chemical Industry in Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century England" unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Leeds, 1988.

16. This figure is comparable, pro rata, with William McMurtie's estimate of 5,000 chemists working in US industry at about the same time. W. McMurtie, "The Condition, Prospects and Future Educational Demands of the Chemical Industries," Journal of the American Chemical Society 23 (1901): 71-89.

17. Many qualifications could be entered about these figures. It is important to note that the chemical training of such men was extremely diverse. Perhaps less than half (around 1,000), were trained in universities, and then often without gaining a formal qualification. Nevertheless by 1870 the Royal College of Chemistry had sent some 200 men into industrial occupations, while in that single year Owens College Manchester had some 50 intending industrial chemists on its courses. When other institutions are taken into account, it is not difficult to reach a cumulative total of 1,000 trained men by the 1880s on this basis. It is also important to note that these men were employed in a wide range of industries outside chemical manufacturing narrowly understood. I have argued elsewhere that the importance of industrial recruitment of chemists from British higher education during this period has been underestimated. The figures just cited can be compared with the total of about 500 chemists who were employed in British universities and technical colleges by the turn of the century. Almost all of these, however, were formally qualified. Institute of Chemistry, Official Chemical Appointments (London, 1900).

18. It is worth noting that this process had begun more than a century earlier, with the first use of analysis in industry. In 1782 the French chemist Guyton de Morveau had written: "... il faut surtout pouvoir arriver a cette connoissance par des moyons simples, expeditifs, qui en peu de jours deviennent une routine aveugle main sur dans la main des Ouvriers les moins intelligens." R. Christophe, "L'Analyse Volumetrique de 1790 a 1860," Revue d'Histoire des Sciences 24 (1971): 25-44.

19. The tax-returns of one analyst/consultant, which have been preserved, indicate that he earned around [pounds]2,000 per annum at the turn of the century. Davis Papers, Science Museum Library, London, DAV3/3-1.

20. This is not to suggest that the theoretical detail of Carchedi's perspective (e.g. his distinctions between payment from profit and revenue or between co-ordination and control) is necessarily interpretable in empirical terms. An examination of the latter distinction is certainly of significance in any attempt to understand the place of science and technology in the social relations of industry

21. The first two organizations have been the subject of detailed study, the last has not. Bud and Roberts, Science versus Practice; Russell, Coley and Roberts, Chemists by Profession.

22. R. Bud, "The Discipline of Chemistry. The Origins and Early Years of the Chemical Society of London," unpublished Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1980. See also P. J. T. Morris and A. S. Travis, "The Chemical Society of London and the Dye Industry in the 1860s," Ambix 39 (1992): 117-26.

23. For methodological details, see Donnelly "Chemical Education."

24. Obituary data suggest that a substantial number of those who gave private addresses, but who cannot otherwise be identified, had industrial interests.

25. Russell, Coley and Roberts, Chemists by Profession.

26. Chemical News 32 (1876): 178-9; ibid., 43 (1881): 194. Donnelly, "Industrial Recruitment."

27. R. Angus Smith, A Centenary of Science in Manchester (Manchester, 1883), 348, n1. A. Thackray, "Natural Knowledge in a Cultural Context: the Manchester Model," American Historical Review 78 (1974): 672-709.

28. One of the active members of the Manchester society, James Young, is said to have left the alkali industry precisely because of a disagreement over the possibility of a partnership with his employers. J. Butt, "James Young, Scottish Industrialist and Philanthropist," Ph.D. thesis, University of Glasgow, 1964, 57-64.

29. W.W. Proctor, Tyne Social Chemical Society, Inaugural Address 1873-4 (Newcastle, 1873), 3. Tyne Chemical Society, Inaugural Address 1878-9 (Newcastle, 1878), 165

30. Chemical News (1872): 57.

31. Journal of the Society of Chemical Industry 34 (1915): 749. Correspondence in a St. Helen's newspaper about an, apparently, independent proposal at about the same time also made reference to the hostility of employers. 'Leo' wrote " ... the chemical manufacturers would not approve of it for obvious reasons (but) it would have the support of the majority of chemists." St. Helen's Standard, 2 October 1875; 9 October 1875.

32. It is recorded in several, somewhat confusing, published accounts and in the archives of the SCI. Chemical Trade Journal 34 (1904): 442; Journal of the Society of Chemical Industry 34 (1915): 749-50; ibid., 40 (1921): 29R, 47R, 86R; ibid., Special Jubilee Number, (1931): 9-21. Society of Chemical Industry, Minute Book of the Preliminary Meetings, held at the Society's Offices.

33. They were D. B. Hewitt, Ludwig Mond and E. K. Muspratt. Journal of the Society of Chemical Industry 1 (1882): 1.

34. It was later claimed that the rapid early growth in membership was due to the Journal. Chemical News 70 (1894): 95-6. W. Smith to Henry Roscoe, 21 April 1907, reprinted in Chemistry and Industry 66 (1947): 5.

35. Chemical News 8 (1866): 11 May and p. 249.

36. Chemical Review 10 (1881): 172-4; Chemical Trade Journal 7 (1890): 349.

37. Journal of the Society of Chemical Industry 33 (1914): 1130-4.

38. Journal of the Chemical Society 61 (1892): 475-82; Journal of the Society of Chemical Industry 19 (1900): 595.

39. R. S. Lineham, A Directory of Science, Art, and Technical Colleges, Schools and Teachers in the United Kingdom (London, 1895).

40. Institute of Chemistry, Council Minutes, 13 March 1903 and many subsequent entries. Proceedings of the Institute of Chemistry 30 (November, 1906): 35-41. Such examinations were only open to existing members of the Institute.

41. On Cassal (1858-1921) see Proceedings of the Institute of Chemistry 46 (1922): 59-60.

42. R. A. Dibdin, "The Status of the Works Chemist," ibid., 12-13. J. W. Green, "Technical Chemistry and the Chemical Technologist," ibid., 58-61.

43. W. E. Hughes, "The Relation of Employer and Works Chemist," Journal of Chemical Technology 1 (1912-13): 27-9.

44. R. A. Dibdin, "The Chemical Technologist," Chemical Engineering and the Works Chemist 1 (1911): 62-4. The ambivalent attitude of the Association towards academic qualifications is also visible in the comments of Hughes above. On the one hand, "a fortnight of actual experience is worth a year in the classrooms of some technical institute," but "the trained chemist has his knowledge of chemistry to aid him: he is already furnished with the idea of atoms, molecules, solutions, and the rest ..." (29).

45. ibid., 4.

46. ibid., 41-5.

47. The government-sponsored Whitley Councils (Joint Industrial Councils) discussed pay and conditions and were set up as a result of the 1917 report of the Whitley Committee on the Relations of Employers and Employed. They involved representatives of employers and unions and were effective mainly in the public sector. See R. Charles, The Development of Industrial Relations Britain 1911-1939 (London, 1973); H. A. Clegg, A History of British Trade Unions since 1889. II 1911-1933 (Oxford, 1985); George S. Bain, The Growth of White-Collar Unionism (Oxford, 1970); C. Wrigley (ed.) A History of British Industrial Relations. 2 1914-1939 (London, 1987).

48. In fact no organization for chemists achieved recognition on the Heavy Chemical Industry Committee. Ministry of Labour, Directory of Joint Standing Industrial Councils, Interim Reconstruction Committees and Trade Boards (London, 1919).

49. Report of the speech by A. C. J. Charlier to the first Conference of the Council of the Association. Chemical Trade Journal 62 (1918): 208.

50. Chemical Trade Journal 62 (1918): 454.

51. Journal of the Society of Chemical Industry 37 (1918): 29R. Chemical Trade Journal 62 (1918): 208.

52. Chemical Trade Journal 62 (1918): 513.

53. Chemical Trade Journal 62 (1918): 417-8, 437, 478. ibid., 63 (1918): 273, 289, 308.

54. The NAIC registered as a trade union in 1919 and survived, with a stable membership of around 1,000, until about 1921 At this time it was negotiating to amalgamate with the BAC, but the negotiations failed, because of the "difference in standard of membership." There appears to be no further record of the NAIC. Journal of the Society of Chemical Industry 38 (1919): 479; Chemical Trade Journal 68 (1921): 484; Chemical Age 5 (1921): 832.

55. Chemical Trade Journal 62 (1915): 344. The author went on to claim that the BAC's aim was to make "industrial chemistry the preserve of the graduate."

56. Manchester Guardian, 12 November 1917.

57. Journal of the Society of Chemical Industry 37 (1918): 4R and passim. The correspondence already cited in the Chemical Trade Journal also deals with this as does Proceedings of the Institute of Chemistry 42 part II (1918): 9-24.

58. Journal of the Society of Chemical Industry 37 (1918): 244. ibid., 4 and Chemical Trade Journal 63 (1918): 248

59. Proceedings of the Institute of Chemistry 42 Part II (1918): 20.

60. Journal of the Society of Chemical Industry 37 (1918): 51R.

61. Chemical Trade Journal 62 (1918): 417.

62. Hinchley, who was a consultant and lecturer in chemical engineering at Imperial College as well as a member of the Fabians, told the meeting that "it was essential that chemists should organize in order that they might have a voice in the deliberations of the Industrial Councils as outlined in the Whitley report." He had attended many of the meetings at which the future of the Association had been discussed, and it may be that his Fabian instincts had had a significant influence. On Hinchley (1871-1931), who was active in most organizations for chemists as well as the moving force behind the Institution of Chemical Engineers, see E. M. Hinchley, John William Hinchley, Chemical Engineer. A Memoir (London, 1935).

63. The decision was taken at a national meeting held at Manchester. The attendance at the meeting was about 500, two-thirds of whom qualified for attendance under regulation B. The Executive had apparently reversed the earlier recommendation to disband the organization, which had met with such disapproval. Journal of the Society of Chemical Industry 37 (1918): 199R, 243R-5R.

64. Chemical Age 7 (1922): 500-1, 640-1. On Levinstein (1878-1956) see Journal of the Society of Dyers and Colourists 72 (1956): 582-3.

65. H. D. Richmond, "Present and Future Prospects of the Chemical Societies of Great Britain," Journal of the Society of Chemical Industry 40 (1921): 4-6R.

66. There appear to be no data available to indicate the occupations of these new members.

67. On the National Certificate scheme see R. T. Briggs, "Development of ONC and HNC with Particular Reference to the Development of Chemistry Syllabuses," unpublished M.Sc. thesis, University of Sheffield, 1966. Russell, Coley and Roberts, Chemists by Profession, 265-6.

68. Journal of the Society of Chemical Industry 37 (1918): 5R.

69. Russell, Coley and Roberts, Chemists by Profession, 250.

70. See, for example, the account of an industrial dispute in the early twenties at the firm of Synthetic Ammonia & Nitrates, the firm which operated the British version of the Haber process. V. E. Parke, Billingham. The First Ten Years (Imperial Chemical Industries, 1957)

71. Institute of Chemistry, Conference on the Place of Applied Chemistry in the Training of Chemists held at The Salters' Hall, St. Swithin's Lane, London EC4 on Friday, 30th January, 1925 (London, 1925)

72. Russell, Coley and Roberts, Chemists by Profession, chapter 13.

73. R. Collins, The Credential Society. An Historical Sociology of Education and Stratification (New York, 1979). An obvious and important question is how, having helped define this boundary, the Institute responded to the sustained pressure towards routinized (often mechanized) activity which makes most forms of analytical chemistry amenable to deskilling and control. To answer this question would require a quite different study.