222 The Ohio Journal of Science [Vol. XVI, No. 6, 



almost ceased to be so since the war began. Fertilizer plants 

 erect their own sulfuric acid works and insecticide makers their 

 own arsenic acid plants. Textile mills make their own bleach. 

 Numbers of manufacturers replace potash compounds by 

 sodium compounds and to my own surprise at least, often 

 with great improvement in results. Professor Watts has just 

 told you this afternoon how the ceramist is rendering this 

 country less and less dependent upon imports in that field by 

 scientific purification and utilization of domestic clays. Man- 

 ufacturers of numerous miscellaneous chemicals and phar- 

 maceutical preparations proceed to refine and produce their 

 own crude raw materials and intermediates. The dye famine — - 

 for it is real in certain quarters, stirs up corporations with 

 capital of hundreds of millions to enter the field. One of these 

 new companies has installed half a million worth of machinery 

 in the last few weeks. Indigo and other dyes are being made 

 in nearly half ton batches which will soon expand to several 

 ton size. Where formerly was the most peaceful of occu- 

 pations even fertilizer manufacture, every effort now goes 

 to the making of munitions. New plants spring up at the beck 

 and call of the new conditions such as the world has never 

 seen. Think of a battery of one hundred nitric acid stills 

 each charging 4,000 lbs. of sodium nitrate three times a day. 

 Think of the sulfuric acid required and the nitric acid produced. 

 Think of the fact that this one of a number such, (the largest 

 nitric acid plant in the world it is said), is a plant which a year 

 ago did not exist except in the minds and plans of a group of 

 chemical engineers. How little are we able to comprehend 

 the reality of producing 1,000,000 pounds per day of gun-cotton 

 where a year ago was merely pine-woods. What does it mean 

 with reference to design of plant, erection and operation to 

 anyone who has not managed chemical engineering operations, 

 to recount the engineering operations involved in this enormous 

 production of gun-cotton in a single plant? Work that is 

 conducted in ten to fifteen parallel procedures or "cotton- 

 lines," which with their accompanying accessories, include 

 cleaning and alkali digestion of the cotton; bleaching with 

 chloride of lime; manufacture of sulfuric acid for the production 

 of nitric acid and "mixed acid;" nitration of the cotton in 

 thirty pound batches; the hazardous wringing and hasty sub- 

 merging of the cotton in water, to avoid the consequences of 



