Tinman,
The resister is there to "load" the battery. The actual load isn't that critical. The reason for the load is that Nicad (and maybe other types?) batteries will show a bogus high voltage reading when no current is being pulled from them. But as soon as you pull even a little current, the voltage drops to the "real" value.

In other words, with out the load, the battery will always show "full" even if it's actually quite "empty".