THE ALUMNI JOURNAL, 



59 



up with any amount of interest, but it 

 was then that science took a good hold 

 on it and gave such universal interest to 

 the application of chemical principles, 

 that the farmer can raise two or three 

 blades of grass, or wheat, or com, where 

 he formerly could only raise one- 



Iviebig, the great father of Agricultural 

 Chemistry, was ridiculed when he said 

 that Chemistry was the foundation of 

 agriculture. The people of to-day can- 

 not realize the ridicule he had to endure, 

 and it was very annoying to those old 

 farmers that a chemist could sit in his 

 laboratory and tell them what to do, 

 which they only had obtained by practi- 

 cal experience and hard labor, — how to 

 raise potatoes, wheat, or cabbages, and 

 yet to day Liebig's ideas are followed to 

 the letter in all civilized countries. By 

 such studies as this we are shown where 

 sugar is found in other sources than the 

 sugar cane, and when I tell you that the 

 beet root, a tuber that formerly was fed 

 to cattle like turnips, and contained but 

 two or three per cent, of sugar, to-day is 

 cultivated and made to yield three or 

 four times as much of the saccharine 

 juice, you will not be surprised to learn 

 that one-third to one-half of the sugar 

 used in Europe is made from this source. 



We have been so prodigal with our re- 

 sources that we constantly hear the remark 

 "the best is not too good for an Amer- 

 ican," but a day of reckoning is at hand, 

 and in the West we are gathering flowers 

 of the best bloom from the soil. Our 

 cheap beef and cereals can only be pro- 

 duced for a time. What we take from 

 the soil we must put back again if we are 

 toleave it in a condition to utilize the 

 materials of the atmosphere which pro- 

 duce vegetable substances. 



We constantly hear of some young 

 man leaving the farm to come to the city 

 to learn a profession, because his father 

 has had a tough time in making a living 



for his family. In other words men are 

 leaving the soil for the city, and we con- 

 stantly hear of a lack of efficient labor to 

 cultivate the ground. This is due to the 

 lack of knowledge in the application of 

 the uses of agriculture and this lack of 

 instruction more especially in our public 

 schools is almost criminal. You will 

 find in many country places people learn- 

 ing music and foreign lauguages who 

 can hardly speak their own language 

 correctly, when every one should be 

 learning the principles of life which sur- 

 round them. Like every other problem 

 of this kind the path to success is beset 

 with difficulties, but yet, as the Greek 

 philosopher said, "Difficulties are the 

 things that show what men are," and it 

 is the overcoming of these in conjunction 

 with Chemistry that I have chosen as 

 my theme this evening. 



Agriculture is only one of the examples 

 of waste in the United States. We waste 

 our food; we waste our nervous energy; 

 we waste our lives in our haste to catch 

 the flying bubble in the sunbeam, and 

 which is gone as soon as we grasp it. 

 What we need is meditation upon the 

 laws of life which surround us. 



It is curious that some of the oldest man- 

 ufacturing industries known to mankind 

 involve the use of alkaline substances, 

 and I have chosen several of these in- 

 dustries as types of the application of 

 Chemistry to the utilization of waste as 

 topics to interest you. I have taken 

 one or two examples from the mineral 

 side of Chemistry and several others from 

 the organic, and if I occasionally give 

 you facts and figures which appear unin- 

 teresting, bear with me for a little time 

 and before I am through you will proba- 

 bly be thinking more seriously about 

 them than you have been hitherto. My 

 object is to interest you in the science 

 which I have made my life work and 

 before we leave I hope to feel that you 

 have appreciated these efforts. 



