78 The Ohio Journal of Science [Vol. XVIII, No. 3, 



Industrial chemical tendencies during the war have been 

 governed by unusual demands for chemicals from abroad in 

 addition to war drains, healthy home requirements, new 

 demands from industries formerly supplied from abroad or 

 forced to use new raw material by scarcit}^ or high prices, 

 together with speculation, raising prices to unusual levels. 

 This resulted in expansion of existing plants, rapid installation 

 of new ones, hasty perfecting of new processes already slowly 

 maturing and the seizing of opportunities to profit by high 

 prices through erection of small plants for the production of 

 special chemical materials and through the development of 

 processes hitherto existing as possibilities, only, in the minds of 

 chemists. This has greatly extended also the supplying of 

 chemical construction materials and machinery and has 

 increased the opportunities for the rapid development of inven- 

 tions in this line. The progress made here alone has been as 

 great as has been accomplished in many individual decades in 

 the past. The importance of this is apparent when we consider 

 that if the chemical engineer had at his disposal as efficient 

 apparatus and materials of construction in his plant, as exist in 

 the chemical laboratories of the present day, or as the mechan- 

 ical and electrical engineers have in their work, progress in the 

 arts w^ould be at least a hundred years ahead of its present 

 development. 



The tendency to manufacture at the market is another good 

 development which has been greatly accentuated by the war. 

 For some time there has been a growing tendency for manu- 

 facturers who are large consumers of chemicals to produce 

 these chemicals themselves. Assisted by gradual price elevation, 

 this tendency has been greatly encouraged by the invention in 

 the last two decades of processes and machines of merit which 

 could find no sale as such, in well established chemical manu- 

 facturing plants, because they frequently offered insufficient 

 advantages to warrant discarding those already operating, or 

 were merely alternative in their character. A good example of 

 how this tendency to manufacture at the market, works out 

 normally where the impelling force is merely gradualty advanc- 

 ing prices, competition preventing excessive elevation, is to be 

 seen among others, in the case of bleach for paper manufacturing. 

 Consumers of alkali and bleach, such as progressive paper 

 manufacturers, operating on a large scale, and others have 



