April, 1916] American Chemist and the War's Problems 225 



accelerating at the present, the gasoline and other problems 

 will be greatly affected. These interests will be found after 

 the war lined up behind the industrial chemists who have been 

 struggling for years against all kinds of unfair competition and 

 disreputable depreciation. Then again, any change in process, 

 be it ever so time-worn, chemistry or transient in its nature, if 

 it actually is put into successful operation under the then 

 existing conditions, must of necessity push out the boundaries 

 of experience to greater and greater distances and make us 

 better able to meet the problems of the future. Chemical 

 engineering is like any other division of engineering, it grows 

 by what it accomplishes. In this proof of ability to meet a 

 transient emergency the American chemist is certainly reaping 

 a hundred-fold, from his unadvertized care in the meeting of 

 his industrial problems of the years which have gone before. 

 Individual cases of progress and development which I have 

 mentioned it is easily seen are rarely of great importance in 

 themselves. We have not been revolutionizing on a great 

 scale, nor have we been jumping at once into great new national 

 industries, but we are rather directing the normal steady gait 

 of our progressive industrial development with keener per- 

 ception toward more complete selfcontainedness, and thorough 

 industrial preparedness. Some of the industries mentioned 

 which receive much public attention are of relatively little 

 importance compared with many other items affected. The 

 dyestuff shortage appears to annoy many, but the complaint 

 is out of all proportion to the facts and the damage done, 

 compared with that of other commodities. We import annually 

 for instance, $9,000,000 in coal tar dyes per annum and if we 

 should make them all ourselves — which we will only gradually 

 approximate — we would only increase our chemical manufac- 

 tures two per cent, and our total manufactures five one- 

 hundredths of one per cent. 



Though we have made reasonable headway on our problems 

 we are keenly aware that much remains to be done. We do not 

 expect to set the market right in the dye or other matters in a 

 year or two. These developments take time and have always 

 taken time. Neither should we deceive ourselves or the public 

 into thinking because of what we are doing that we could turn 

 out without the most careful and detailed previous planning, 



