SOAP AND GLYCERINE 7 



This, however, is but a short chapter in the tale. 

 Cheap and plentiful heavy chemicals are the staple 

 nutriment of every chemical industry; the low 

 price of soap in this country is due to cheap caustic 

 soda and to a plentiful supply of vegetable oils 

 from the Colonies. Unless a powerful stream of 

 sulphuric and nitric acids can be pumped through- 

 out the arterial system of the chemical industries 

 distributed throughout the more solid flesh and 

 brain which constitutes a nation, cardiac failure 

 will result. An interesting point arises in this 

 connexion. 



Soap is manufactured by boiling vegetable or 

 animal oils and fats with caustic soda ; this yields, 

 not only soap, but glycerine. Glycerine, when 

 treated with a mixture of nitric and sulphuric 

 acids, yields nitroglycerine which constitutes about 

 one-half of the British service propellent explosive, 

 cordite. This propellent was invented by the 

 Jacksonian Professor, Sir James Dewar, in colla- 

 boration with the late Sir Frederick Abel. Every 

 rifle bullet and every big gun shell used by the 

 Allies or the Central Powers receives its impetus 

 from the explosion of a charge of cordite or some 

 modification of that explosive. The importance 

 of a free supply of animal and vegetable fats for 

 the manufacture of glycerine, to be turned into 

 nitroglycerine, to be made into the standard pro- 

 pellent cordite, is thus apparent; it is not uncon- 

 nected with the reported shortage of animal fats 



