MICHIGAN— AN IMPORTANT SOURCE OF RAW VEGETABLE 



PRODUCTS. 



HENRY KRAEMER. 



In the practical development of industry and commerce, there are two 

 viewpoints, and there are necessarily two classes of students. Those in the 

 one group,, consider only what is established and demonstrated by previous 

 experience. In the second group we find those who venture somewhat ahead 

 of present day practices. During times of peace, the capitalist keeps pretty 

 close to the shore line of conservatism. He listens only to that inventor or 

 originator who has demonstrated peradventure the practicability and plaus- 

 ability of a project. It is in time of war that the resourcefulness of a nation 

 means victory for her armies ; then it is that the men of initiative, the experi- 

 menters along original lines, are called in for assistance. The efficiency of 

 the enemy must be met by higher efficiency if victory is to be won. As soon 

 as a problem is announced it must be solved to avert destruction. During 

 the war we saw how gas offensive was met by an equal defensive, followed 

 almost over night by a higher offensive which spelt final disaster to the foe. 

 The whole store of the ingenuity displayed by the Allies has not reached us, 

 but we do know that the war changed the conservatism which is ordinarily 

 displayed into a spirit of venturesomeness which has never been surpassed. 

 Natural resources were developed in a spectacular fashion. Nature's forces 

 were harnessed in an almost superhuman manner, and human efforts were 

 coordinated in unity of pui'pose to a degree which no one would have prophe- 

 sied. The war showed, furthermore, that that nation that had command of 

 the largest quantity of raw material, or that could synthetically reproduce it, 

 would win the contest. The enemy found that if the nitrates of Chile were 

 denied her, she must develop processes to derive them from the air ; and if the 

 cotton of the United States could not reach her, she must manufacture the 

 supply from her forests. In the same way we found that if we could not 

 obtain potash from the mines which formerly supplied us, we must either 

 discover new sources in nature or devise special processes tor the recovery of 

 this element. In the case of lubricants, where the shipments from other 

 countries were slow and uncertain, the government did not hesitate to plant 

 thousands of acres of the castor-oil plant, which would give us an independent 

 harvest. Probably the most remarkable industrial achievement during the 

 war was the production of the inert gas helium, used in balloon work, at a 

 cost of 10 cents per cubic foot, when the pre-war price was about $1,750 per 

 cubic foot. At each point, lack of supply was met by a high order of resource- 



21st Mich. Acad. Sci. Kept., 1919. 



