Jan., 1918] The Relation of War to Chemistry 73 



The equipment companies and their engineers are not 

 necessarily dishonest. They sell equipment, and who but 

 they are responsible if they do not sell you enough equipment 

 when you consult them for advice in designing your plant? 

 They, therefore, sell you enough. Experienced engineers 

 will often cut the estimates of such equipment manufacturers 

 in half. 



Another illustration of how this situation works out in 

 practice might be given in the case of benzol refining. This 

 is an important matter in modern high explosive manufacture. 

 Some little time ago the best text ever written in English on 

 Industrial Chemistry contained a chapter by a chemical engineer 

 who had ample opportunity of observing the best American 

 practice (which happens to be second to none in the world). 

 His chapter on this subject, therefore, is a classic, but in 

 illustrating the text he did not reproduce details of stills, for 

 instance, with engineering exactness but allowed the artist 

 who made the drawings considerable leeway to his imagination. 

 In fact, he left out entirely a vital feature in the construction 

 of such stills. Were it not for the loss of efficiency and the 

 expense involved, you would be greatly amused if you could go 

 with me to a number of the refineries built in this country in the 

 last two years under war pressure by machinery companies, for 

 good engineers who were not themselves experienced in this 

 industry, but who needed the industry as one of the links in 

 their larger operations. In every case the stills were built 

 exactly patterned after the picture in this text and in no case 

 were they efficient or as nearly efficient as was possible, if a 

 little thought regarding the use to which they would be put 

 had been given them. They were built to sell, not to operate. 



The same capital, newly invested in chemistry, is also the 

 easy victim of another evil which is necessarily costly to indus- 

 trial chemistry and is a heavy blow to the whole science. This 

 evil is the ignorant or unscrupulous chemist. The great dif- 

 ference between industrial chemical research and other chemical 

 research is that the former must produce results on the prob- 

 lem in hand while the latter may ramble if necessary into less 

 dif^cult fields. When inexperienced capital is seeking chemical 

 assistance the first individual it meets who claims to be a 

 chemist is assumed to be competent to handle any problem 

 without inquiry into his past experience. This same capital 



