LIEBIG AND THE CHEMICAL INDUSTRIES. 539 



labor. This, indeed, is the essence and strength of the American 

 industry and was the cause for the development of the mechanical 

 industry, and in this respect America is the ruling nation and has set 

 an example to the whole world. 



But the conditions are quite different in the purely chemical branch 

 of the industry, the object of which is to convert crude materials by 

 means of numerous chemical processes and chemical forces into more 

 precious ones; where a new process devised by a chemist revolutionizes 

 the industries and makes the old processes unprofitable, even if they 

 are performed by the most ingenious appliances constructed by the 

 most talented engineer; where not only the art of construction, but 

 the genius of the naturalist in recognizing the forces of nature and 

 their products is necessary to accomplish the object in view; where 

 never or only rarely the production of large masses comes into consid- 

 eration, but where an endless chain of products of the greatest variety 

 must be prepared in small quantities. 



If I have sung the praises of the American engineer and of the 

 American mechanical industry in the preceding portion of this lecture, 

 I must now express my satisfaction with the German chemist and the 

 German chemical industry. In this field lies the strength of Germany 

 — a consequence perhaps of the peculiarity of the German character. 

 Forced by the want of natural resources and unprovided with Amer- 

 ican abundance, the German in scientific exploration must proceed in 

 a cautious and economical manner, always bent on patient and minute 

 research. He is forced to live a simpler life and to be modest in his 

 demands, which is contrary to the American temperament. 



It is true you have already a very important industry in the inor- 

 ganic field of our science and produce large quantities of acids and 

 alkalies and, above all, of metals. In consequence of the immense 

 and cheap water power at your disposal, a very remarkable electro- 

 chemical industry has been developed. But these works manufacture 

 at present only inorganic products, and so far as I can see it is im- 

 possible up to date to manufacture organic products as economically 

 by electro-chemistry as it is possible with the older chemical methods. 

 You have also begun to isolate the products of tar distillation which 

 are formed during the coking of coal, and it is intended to convert the 

 hydrocarbons thus obtained into more intricate organic products. You 

 have also the beginning of a coal-tar color industry, due to the pro- 

 tective duty of thirty per cent, ad valorem. I have also noted that 

 in metallurgical and textile works, but above all in factories of heavy 

 chemicals and pharmaceutical specialties, chemists exercise analytical 

 control of the raw materials which enter into the process. At some 

 places we found wonderful laboratories in which many chemists were 

 employed. We saw above all how your universities and technical 



