CHEMISTRY IN THE UNITED STATES. 



BY F. W. CLARKE. 



[Frank W. Clarke, chemist; born Boston, March 19, 1847; graduated from the Law- 

 rence scientific school at Harvard in 1867; instructor at Cornell, 1869; professor of 

 chemistry, Howard university, Washington, 1873-74; professor of chemistry and 

 physics. University of Cincinnati, 1874-83; chief chemist United States geological 

 survey since 1883; author. Weights, Measures, and Money of All Nations; Elements 

 of Chemistry ; Constants of Nature ; Report on the Teaching of Chemistry and Physics 

 in the United States; Laboratory Manual; Elementary Chemistiy, etc.] 



If we consider the subject of applied chemistry at all 

 broadly, we shall at once see that it has several distinct aims 

 — such as the discovery of new products, the improvement 

 of processes, and the utiHzation of waste materials. It seeks 

 also to increase the accuracy of methods, to make industrial 

 enterprises more precise, and therefore more certainly fruitful; 

 in short to replace empiricism by science. 



It is, perhaps, in this direction that applied chemistry 

 has made its most notable advances in America, and that 

 within comparatively recent years. Three decades ago even 

 our greatest manufacturing establishments employed chemists 

 only in a sporadic fashion, sending occasional jobs to private 

 laboratories, and then only after counting the cost most 

 parsimoniously. Except in a few dyehouses and cahco print- 

 eries, the chemist was not fully appreciated; great losses 

 were often sustained for lack of the services which he could 

 have rendered, and the cost of goods was, therefore, higher 

 than necessary. By degrees, however, a change was brought 

 about. One effect of industrial competition was to narrow 

 margins and to render greater accuracy of manipulation im- 

 perative, and so the chemist was brought upon the scene. 

 To-day it is almost the universal custom among manufac- 

 turers to maintain chemical laboratories in connection with 

 their works, and this is especially true with regard to metallur- 

 gical estabhshments, oil refineries, soap, candle, and glass 

 works, in the making of paints, varnishes, and chemicals, and 

 so on in many directions. Even the great firms whose indus- 

 tries are connected with the Chicago stock yards, with their 



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