540 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



schools are endeavoring to promote our science. Excellent representa- 

 tives of scientific chemistry are employed as teachers. Scientific re- 

 search is carried on more and more. But, notwithstanding all that, 

 I think that we Germans need not be alarmed in the near future. The 

 time for the development of the organic chemical industries on a large 

 scale has not yet arrived. As I have shown before, the Germans are 

 masters in manufacture where numberless products are employed in 

 a series of reactions which finally lead to the finished product, and 

 require manual labor, which can not possibly be replaced by machinery, 

 while Americans may claim to be masters where manufactures on a large 

 scale are concerned, which can be done by machinery. Yet we must not 

 leave out of consideration the very important facts that in America 

 wages are extraordinarily high, that the conditions of life are here 

 much more elaborate, and last, but not least, that the employees, and 

 more particularly the workmen, manifest a spirit of independence, 

 which has become especially noticeable during the last few years. By 

 their labor unions the workmen attempt not only to raise wages to a 

 height which will make manufacturing difficult and less profitable, but 

 they are also endeavoring to take the control of the works out of the 

 hands of the educated managers and put it into the hands of irre- 

 sponsible labor leaders. This movement, as I have above shown, is 

 especially fatal for the chemical industry in which our glorious science 

 should be supreme. But nobody can deny that times will change in 

 all these respects. Then you will be obliged to husband more econom- 

 ically your natural treasures, and you will experience changes which 

 with us, in the course of historical development, are already things 

 of the past. But this accomplished, the organic chemical industry 

 of this country will commence to flourish. It will be found that 

 the only way that leads to success in chemical manufactures is a com- 

 bination of science and technics, the two branches of which eminent 

 representatives are to-day assembled here, men who in their spheres 

 have done so much already for the advancement of industries. It 

 will be found that technical progress in this industry can only be 

 secured on the basis of purely scientific research, and to the man who 

 first recognized this fact and taught it to the world, to our great fellow 

 countryman, Justus von Liebig, not only the German, but also the 

 great American, nation, nay the whole world, owes eternal gratitude. 



