90 



calorimeter and the town was not willing to bear the cost alone. At this 

 point the instructor of chemistry at the college proposed that if the city 

 and the company would together pay the cost of an inexpensive calori- 

 meter, he would install it in his laboratory and make regular tests without 

 charge. This proposition was accepted. An inexpensive instrument was 

 secured and tested and standardized by an official calorimeter from the 

 Bureau of Standards of Washington. Gas tests have been made quite reg- 

 ularly for many months and the quality of the gas has been maintained 

 of a quality satisfactory to all parties concerned. 



These illustrations indicate some of the various ways in which a chemist, 

 even a teacher of chemistry, may be of practical service to his community. 

 This brings us to the main point of this brief paper. Chemistry has come 

 to be recognized as a distinct profession. The American Chemical Society 

 is the largest organization of men of a single science in the world, its 

 membership now running beyond the fourteen thousand mark. The large 

 majority of these men is employed as research men or for routine work 

 in chemical industries all over the country. Many others are professional 

 consulting chemists who maintain professional laboratories where all kinds 

 of chemical analyses are made and where various industrial problems are 

 taken in for investigation and solution. Still others are teachers of chem- 

 istry and directors of research in our colleges and universities. 



The value of chemistry to the nation, the state, and to every community 

 is recognized. A professional chemist in any community would be of great 

 service to the people at large in that community but the actual amount of 

 work to be done in the town of average size wovild not warrant his em- 

 ployment for this purpose alone. Why not combine two functions? Why 

 may we not have in every high school that is in a position to maintain a 

 chemical laboratory a man of sufficient training and provided with an 

 equipment of sufficient size and variety, not only to meet the requirements 

 of a high school teacher but also to meet the more urgent chemical needs 

 of the community? A little work of the latter kind would not only be 

 valuable service to the public but would also stimulate interest in the 

 subject of chemistry on the part of the students and very likely would lead 

 to the discovery of many an embryonic scientist. 



Where the city is of sufficient size to support a professional chemist, this 

 work can be left to him. There is no thought of any competition on the 

 part of the teacher of chemistry, whose chief business is to teach, with 

 the professional chemist who has chosen this occupation as a source of live- 

 lihood. It is felt, however, that herein lies the possibility of a cooperation 

 between our state laboratory and the chemical laboratories of our high 

 schools and colleges to which some consideration might be given with re- 

 sulting benefit to both schools and state. The competent high school teach- 

 er of chemistry might function as a kind of outpost of the state laboratory, 

 the community providing the necessary material and equipment and the 

 state laboratory such assistance as might be needed. Such cooperation 

 would undoubtedly prove stimulating to the high school teacher, an 

 assistance to the state laboratory, and of real benefit to the local com- 

 munity. 



