674 TECHNICAL CHEMISTRY 



pure chemistry for products, processes, and apparatus, modifying 

 the processes and apparatus to meet the conditions of factory prac- 

 tice. So rapid, however, has this adoption of the appliances of the 

 university laboratory by the technical chemists become in these 

 recent years, since university-bred chemists have been received 

 in continually increasing numbers in technical chemistry, that it 

 has proved a source of embarrassment to teachers of chemistry in 

 this country and for the following reason : 



From the founding of the United States it has been a settled 

 policy of the Government to foster education, and therefore the 

 first Congress, in legislating on the tariff, exempted from duties 

 philosophical apparatus and instruments imported for use in edu- 

 cation, and this legislation was reenacted with enlarged provisions 

 in every tariff act passed by Congress, except during the Civil War, 

 and once, in 1846, when it was apparently omitted by inadvert- 

 ence. This provision seemed to serve all intended purposes until 

 some thirty years ago, partly because there were but few active 

 laboratories for the teaching of chemistry, with a small number of 

 students, and that the supplies were imported for only a part 

 of these laboratories. However, with the increase in research 

 laboratories in universities and technical schools, the introduction 

 of laboratory courses for the large classes of pupils in the secondary 

 schools, and especially the appointment of a considerable number 

 of teachers of chemistry who had been educated abroad, the de- 

 mand for foreign-made apparatus and supplies became quite con- 

 siderable, and as the importations grew in magnitude and frequency 

 differences arose between the customs officials and the importers 

 as to whether the goods imported were actually those designated 

 in the act; the customs officials, as was natural, considering 

 their functions, ruling for that interpretation of the laws which 

 would yield the Government the greatest revenue. Controversy, 

 which became quite heated, arose particularly as to the meaning 

 of the terms "philosophical and scientific apparatus, instruments, 

 and preparations," and in 1884 the Secretary of the Treasury, to 

 avoid any appearance of arbitrarily overruling his subordinates, 

 which would have been subversive of discipline, took counsel of 

 the National Academy of Sciences; but its opinion as rendered, 

 while perfectly correct, failed of effect, and the controversies got 

 into the courts on issues between merchants and the customs serv- 

 ice in such form as to lead to decisions which the customs officials 

 regarded as supporting their controversies against the schools. 

 Such were the conditions in 1893, when the American Chemical 

 Society appointed a Committee on Duty-Free Importations, which 

 made an exhaustive search into the legislation, an inquiry into 

 the litigation, and a study of the entire situation, until, finding 



