Abstract
EVERY friend of science and true patriot must heartily welcome the sound and steady progress of the Iron and Steel Institute. The proceedings at the Manchester meeting last week, as also its Journal, just received, containing the papers read at the last London meeting, show that it is doing exactly the kind of work which is now becoming quite necessary for the maintenance of the dignity and prosperity of British industry. It also displays a very important feature of industrial progress. One need not be grey-headed to be able to remember when iron-workers and iron-masters, in common with other artificers, were nearly unanimous in believing that their trade interests were best served by each man hugging up to himself every bit of newly acquired trade information, and keeping his competitors as much as possible in the dark respecting it. Indentures of apprenticeship still describe our common trades as “mysteries,” and bind the pupil to abstain from revealing the secrets of the craft which his master solemnly agrees to communicate in return for the premium and seven years' servitude. The ceremonials, secrets, and degrees of freemasonry are based on the old practice of hoarding the arcana of a “craft”and communicating them in various degrees of profundity to certain privileged individuals, who were bound under dreadful penalties to reveal these sacred mysteries to none but the initiated.
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The Iron and Steel Institute . Nature 12, 432–433 (1875). https://doi.org/10.1038/012432a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/012432a0