April, 1916] American Chemist and the War's Problems 223 



heating by too slow dilution of the strong acid held spongelike 

 by the cotton; the conveying of this material in the cotton-line 

 to the washers where the remaining acid in the tube-shaped 

 cotton fibres is removed ; and finally the removal from the water 

 as wet or damp gun-cotton, the commercial product of many 

 plants. This end product of course is but the beginning or 

 raw material for the various nitro-celluloses, smokeless powders 

 and other high explosives. Yet this scale of operations is not 

 going on in just one plant of this kind or even in this one 

 industry. This is a sample of what is happening every day in 

 the shape of the American chemical engineers' answer to the 

 question, how are you meeting the war's problems? 



At some of these things we are permitted to take at least a 

 peep. No one man can know all of even such gross develop- 

 ments, and practically every chemist we meet has his enthusias- 

 tic story of the progress in his own and familiar fields. We all 

 do know, however, that if this is the character of the outward 

 developments, there must be legions of quiet research and other 

 experimental attacks on the new problems, and literally 

 hundreds of solutions being worked out for minor problems in 

 factory and plant, not to speak of the vast amount of work 

 in other departments of chemistry made necessary by all these 

 things. Then, too, there is the ever verdant crop of interesting 

 suggestions, revolutionary changes and inventions throughout 

 the list of the chemical industries. In fact they are doubly 

 numerous and aggressive under the stimulation of such a time 

 as this. It is never wise to predict their success or failure until 

 even years have elapsed in many cases. So that the lecturer 

 who wishes to entertain his hearers with pleasant and surprising 

 intellectual gymnastics in the shape of the newest and most 

 wonderful achievements in industrial chemistry is safe from 

 apparent error for from three months to three years, if he picks 

 his illustrations well. At the end of that time he can dodge 

 criticism for misjudgement by referring the back-fires to poor 

 business management, insufficient capital, tariff, trusts and 

 sometimes poor engineering. It is true that a large number of 

 these new things never make good. It is equally true that some 

 of them will make good and that all of them indicate progress, 

 for they are striving, and progress comes by striving. 



It is equally true also that many of the chemical experiments 

 which are in successful use under war conditions, will auto- 



