SCIENCE AND THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN AMERICA 



The accruement of technical improvements in particularly the great 

 chemical industry is primarily dependent upon systematic industrial re- 

 search, and this is being increasingly fostered by American manu- 

 facturers. 



Ten thousand American chemists are at present engaged in pursuits 

 which affect over 1,000,000 wage-earners and produce over $5,000,000,000 

 worth of manufactured products each year. These trained men have 

 actively and effectively collaborated in bringing about stupendous results 

 in American industry. There are, in fact, at least nineteen American in- 

 dustries in which the chemist has been of great assistance, either in 

 founding the industry, in developing it, or in refining the methods of 

 control or of manufacture, thus ensuring profits, lower costs and uniform 

 outputs. . . . 



Without the chemist the corn-products industry would never have arisen 

 and in 1914 this industry consumed as much corn as was grown in that 

 year by the nine states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massa- 

 chusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey and Dela- 

 ware combined; this amount is equal to the entire production of the state 

 of North Carolina and about 80 per cent, of the production of each of 

 the states of Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin; the chemist has pro- 

 duced over 100 useful commercial products from corn, which, without 

 him, would never have been produced. In the asphalt industry the chem- 

 ist has taught how to lay a road surface that will always be good, and 

 he has learned and taught how to construct a suitable road surface for 

 different conditions of service. In the cottonseed oil industry, the chem- 

 ist standardized methods of production, reduced losses, increased yields, 

 made new use of wastes and by-products, and has added somewhere be- 

 tween $10 and $12 to the value of each bale of cotton grown. In the 

 cement industry, the chemist has ascertained new ingredients, has utilized 

 theretofore waste products for this purpose, has reduced the waste heaps 

 of many industries and made them his starting material; he has standard- 

 ized methods of manufacture, introduced methods of chemical control 

 and has insured constancy and permanency of quality and quantity of 

 output. In the sugar industry, the chemist has been active for so long 

 a time that "the memory of man runneth not to the contrary." The sugar 

 industry without the chemist is unthinkable. The Welsbach mantle is 

 distinctly a chemist's invention and its successful and economical manu- 

 facture depends largely upon chemical methods. It would be difficult to 

 give a just estimate of the economic effect of this device upon illumina- 

 tion, so great and valuable is it. In the textile industry, he has substituted 

 uniform, rational, well-thought out and simple methods of treatment of 

 all the various textile fabrics and fibers where mystery, empiricism, "rule- 

 of-thumb" and their accompanying uncertainties reigned. In the fertilizer 

 industry, it was the chemist who learned and who taught how to make 

 our immense beds of phosphate rock useful and serviceable to man in 

 the enrichment of the soil; he has taught how to make waste products of 

 other industries useful and available for fertilization and he has shown 

 how to make the gas works contribute to the fertility of the soil. In the 

 soda industry, the chemist can successfully claim that he has founded it, 

 developed it and brought it to its present state of perfection and utility, 



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