680 TECHNICAL CHEMISTRY 



needed for the blowing-engines, pumps, hoists, etc., an amount 

 equal on an average to 2500 horse-power for a furnace making 500 

 tons of iron per day. If the gas thus used was used in gas-engines 

 there would be an average surplus power, over and above all require- 

 ments of the furnace itself, of 10,000 horse-power. The gas-engine 

 plant needed to produce this power does not cost over $50 per 

 horse-power investment. This compares favorably with the cost 

 of developing water-powers, which varies from $25 to $100 per 

 horse-power. It is thus deducible that there are scattered over the 

 United States, in some of our most flourishing industrial centres, 

 undeveloped powers which aggregate over 1,000,000 horse-power, 

 which can be developed at no more cost than the average water-power 

 can be generated just at the spots where they can be most favorably 

 utilized, and without any more drain on our natural resources 

 than the harnessing of a new water-power, for not a pound of coal 

 more would have to be burnt than is used at present. 



"Other possible sources of power are the waste surplus gases 

 from by-product coking-ovens and the utilization of gas-producers, 

 using cheap, almost waste, coal in connection with gas-engines. 

 Power therefore is available in immense quantities in places and 

 in countries not blessed with Niagaras in their midst, and the in- 

 dustrial development of such sources will be one of the most marked 

 industrial movements of the next ten years." 



While recognizing these many obligations to physics, as a quid pro 

 quo, technical chemistry supplies her devotees with all the "manu- 

 factured" materials which are the subject of their experiments and 

 observations, or used in the construction of their instruments, or 

 as sources of energy such as coal-gas, acetylene, alcohol, and-others, 

 and the substances used for primary and secondary batteries. Many 

 physical topics have originated with or been extended by the tech- 

 nical chemist. 



The technical chemist looks to the forester, the farmer, and the 

 miner for his raw materials, but he returns to the former alkaloids, 

 wood alcohol, acetic acid and acetates, acetone, formaldehyde, 

 paints, rubber articles, and a multitude of other products of manu- 

 facture; he returns to the farmer starch, sugar, artificial manures 

 with which to reinvigorate his soil, fibers bleached or dyed, the suint 

 from his sheep, the pepsin, pancreatin, and antitoxines from his 

 swine and cattle, and through the agricultural chemist specific 

 directions as to methods for the treatment of his soil and his crops. 

 Since Liebig began the investigations which resulted, in 1840, in his 

 book on Chemistry in its Application to Agriculture and Physiology ,~ 

 no one science has probably benefited more from the labors of the 

 technical chemist than agricultural science; for well-equipped re- 

 search laboratories with well-organized forces of chemists have been 



