INDUSTRIAL CHEMISTRY—BAEKELAND. AIA 
become so important, at first counted its output not in tons, but in 
pounds—not in size nor in quantity, but in variety and quality. 
Now let us see how Germany won her spurs in chemical engineer- 
ing as well. 
At the beginning, the manufacturing problems in organic chemistry 
involved few if any serious engineering difficulties, but required most 
of all a sound theoretical knowledge of the subject; this put a premi- 
um on the scientist and could afford, for a while at least, to ignore the 
engineer. But when growmg developments began to claim the help 
of good engineers there was no difficulty whatsoever in supplying 
them, nor in making them cooperate with the scientists. In fact, 
since then Germany has solved just as successfully some of the most 
extraordinary chemical engineering problems ever undertaken, al- 
though the development of such processes was entered upon at first 
from the purely scientific side. 
In almost every case it was only after the underlying scientific 
facts had been well established that any attempt was made to develop 
them commercially. 
Healthy commercial development of new scientific processes does 
not build its hope of success upon the cooperation of that class of 
“promoters” which are always eager to find any available pretext 
for making “‘ quick money,’ and whose scientific ignorance contributes 
conveniently to their comfort by not interfering too much with their 
self-assurance and their voluble assertions. The history of most 
of the successful recent chemical processes abounds in examples 
where, even after the underlying principles were well established, 
long and costly preparatory team work had to be undertaken; where 
foremost scientists, as well as engineers of great ability, had to com- 
bine their knowledge, their skill, their perseverance, with the sup- 
port of large chemical companies, who, in their turn, could rely on 
the financial backing of strong oe concerns, wall advised by 
tried expert specialists. 
History does not record how many processes thus submitted to 
careful study were rejected because, on close examination, they were 
found to possess some hopeless shortcomings. In this way numerous 
fruitless efforts and financial losses were averted, where less carefully 
accumulated knowledge might have induced less scrupulous pro- 
moters to secure money for plausible but ill-advised enterprises. 
In the history of the manufacture of artificial dyes no chapter 
gives a more striking instance of long, assiduous, and expensive pre- 
liminary work of the highest order than the development of the 
industrial synthesis of indigo. Here was a substance of enormous 
consumption which, until then, had been obtained from the tropics 
as a natural product of agriculture. 
Prof. von Baeyer and his pupils, by long and marvelously 
clever laboratory work, had succeeded in unraveling the chemical 
