28 president's address. 



fuels — every one of these would be impossible without chemical 

 aid. 



There are a few facts regarding the chemist which I want 

 every South African, and particularly those in high positions, to 

 realise. First of all, get rid of the idea that he is a druggist 

 or pharmacist, any more than he is a baker of plumber, or 

 belongs to any other avocation in which chemistry takes a share. 

 And then, grasp the fact that there is scarcely an avocation on the 

 face of this earth intO' which chemi.stry does not enter, or wherein 

 the chemist would not be of some use. One does not need to 

 tell Johannesburg that it has to thank the chemist for its pros- 

 perity, for without him many of the mines would long have 

 ceased to work. The other great industry of South Africa, 

 agriculture, is at the mercy of the chemist in respect of the manu- 

 facture of fertilisers, and many agricultural products owe to him 

 the processes employed in their preparati(m ; chemical operations 

 are fundamental to every branch of the dairy industry, the 

 making of jam, the drying of fruit; the tinned vessels in which 

 many of these articles are preserved are all subservient to the 

 chemist. Without him the economical production of metals of 

 any kind could not take place, there would be no locomotive 

 engines, no assurance that the water which these engines need 

 w\\\ not corrode their boiler tubes, no testing of the coal which 

 converts that water into steam, no orovision of steel rails to run 

 the locomotives on, or. to go further, no steel armour for our 

 battleships and no alloys for shrapnel, aeroplanes, or submarines. 

 It is also the chemist's work to control the driving power of ships 

 of war and merchandise alike, whether that driving power be 

 coal, oil, or electricity, for the materials employed by the elec- 

 trician must all in the first place be scrutinised by the chemist. 

 All explosives are essentially chemical in their make-up, and, in 

 fact, the whole army, as well as the navy, is dependent on the 

 chemist all along the line, inasmuch as he has to vouch for the 

 purity of all their supplies of food and drink, even well- 

 water ; and not only their natural purity, but also their 

 freedom from fraudulent adulteration or deliberate poison- 

 ing. The various gases so much used in the present 

 war are all the productions of the chemist, and so are 

 the means adopted to secure immunity from those gases. It is 

 the chemist who controls the army's drugs, disinfectants and 

 anaesthetics. The colouring of the material used for clothing 

 not only the military and naval services, but the whole civil 

 population as well, is subject to the careful scrutiny of the 

 chemist. His functions also include the manufacture of the 

 leather which provides an army with boots : without him that 

 leather cannot be tanned, as the entire wattle and other tanning 

 industries are conducted under his advice. The finished leather, 

 too, is investigated by him, lest fraudulent practices should have 

 participated in its manufacture Without the chemist there 

 could be no books, for chemical processes are fundamental to the 



