CUKMICAL INDUSTRY. 233 



Uue chemical works, which makes a specialty of the manufacture of potassium 

 :iitie and its products, has according to official data a yearly turnover of 524,000 

 roubles, and employs 55 workmen. Formerly, when tlie preparation of gunpowder 

 was chiefly carried on with local nitre, there were as many as fifty small nitre 

 works, which since 1878 have gradually ceased working. The conversion of sodium 

 nitre into potassium nitre is done either with the Stassfurt potassium salts, of which 

 95.000 ponds were imported in 1S90, or witli Russian potash, chiefly prepared from 

 the ash of grasses in the east of Russia. In former times, even in the beginning 

 of the seventies, there were as many as 195 potash works in Russia producing ma- 

 terial to the value of one million roubles, and potash used to be exported from Russia 

 in considerable quantities; for instance, in 1870, 597,000 ponds were exported. Since 

 the appearance of the Stassfurt potassium salts, however, the export has greatly 

 fallen; in 1890, 45,000 ponds, value 137,000 roubles, were exported, and not more 

 than 60 woVks with 300 workmen are occupied in the production of potash. These 

 works turn out from 200,000 to 250,000 roubles worth of potash. 



This decrease in the production of potash may be partly ascribed to the fact 

 that now soda is generally employed in the place of potash. Potassium salts are 

 only still required for the preparation of potash alums and of bichromate of potas- 

 sium, and potash is now partly prepared for this purpose in Russia. But the de- 

 mand for potassium salts for the manufacture of gunpowder, and for other purposes, 

 becomes smaller and smaller. Thus nitre does not enter at all into the composition 

 of smokeless powder, and sulphate of alumina is more and more employed in the 

 place of potash alum ; while either chromic anhydrite itself, or the sodium salt, is 

 used instead of the potassium salt. 



The last of the above named chemical products was established in Russia 

 comparatively earlier than many other of the branches of the chemical industry; 

 and this was because they were required for manufactures whose development pre- 

 cedes that of the chemical industry. In the fifties, alum began to be prepared 

 from clays, by first treating them with sulphuric acid and then with potash, while 

 in the Caucasus alum was prepared from the local native alumite and other alum 

 minerals. In the seventies, and especially in the eighties, several works in Russia 

 followed the example of the Tentelevsk works in St. Petersburg, and began to pre- 

 pare both alum and sulphate of alumina from boxite brought from abroad. Thus 

 the above mentioned works of Messrs. Oushkov and Co. produce annually up to 

 200,000 pouds of sulphate of alumina, and 100,000 pouds of alum. Both these sub- 

 stances are also prepared at many other Russian works. 



There are vast deposits of chrome iron ore in the Urals, and formerly consid- 

 erable quantities of this ore used to be exported from Russia, but now the Ameri- 

 can ore has supplanted the Russian in the markets of Western Europe. At the pre- 

 sent time about 200,000 pouds of chrome iron ore are annually extracted in the 

 Urals, and, thanks to a timely protective customs tariff, the conversion of the ore 

 into bichromate of potassium has been established in Russia since the beginning of 

 the fifties at the above mentioned works of Oushkov and Co., and is now carried on at 

 other works, for instance at those of Mrs. Polovtsev in the Urals, so that the home 

 production, amounting to about 70,000 pouds per year, almost satisfies the demand. 

 The same may also be said with respect to the alumina products. In 1890, 6,250 



