28 



National Resources Planning Board 



1 percent of phosphorus the companies deducted 25 cents 

 per ton from tlie price tliey would pay.^' Also at a 

 critical period in the financial history of Kloman, Car- 

 negie & Company, the Lucy furnace suffered a "chill" 

 upon the substitution of high-grade Lake Superior ores 

 for the low grade ores on which it had been running 

 well. As a result the company hired Dr. Fricke, a 

 German chemist, and in the words of Andrew Carnegie: 



. . . great secrets did the doctor open up to us. Iron stone 

 from mines that had a high reputation was now found to contain 

 ten, fifteen, and even twenty per cent less iron than it had been 

 credited with. Mines that hitlierto had a poor reputation we 

 found to be yielding superior ore. The good was bad and the 

 bad was good, and everything was topsy-turvy. Nine-tenths of 

 all the uncertainties of pig-iron making were dispelled under the 

 burning sun of chemical knowledge.'' 



'\Miile competitors described the exiKMiditure for a 

 chemist as an extravagance, Carnegie and his partners 

 reaped substantial benefits from their knowledge of the 

 composition of ores. They bought ore at low prices 

 from mines which other furnace owners held in disre- 

 pute; they bought for 50 cents a ton the flue cinder 

 from the heating furnaces and the roll scale from the 

 mills, bj'products that competitors were piling on the 

 river banks as waste, mixed them with smaller quan- 

 tities of high-grade Lake Superior ore than had pre- 

 viously been necessary, and yet they produced a better 

 pig iron at a lower cost. To complete the game, they 

 sold, through brokers, their own inferior puddle cinder 

 with high phosphorus content to these same competitors 

 for $1 and $1.50 a ton.'' The secret was in knowing 

 how to flux the ore that was used. " Wliat fools we had 

 been!" said Carnegie. "But then there was this con- 

 solation," he continued, "We were not as great fools as 

 our competitors." 



Very early in its history the petroleum industry 

 likewise sought the services of the scientist. Before 

 Colonel Drake drilled his w^ell near Titusville, Pa., in 

 1859, samples of petroleum had been sent to Professor 

 Silliman, the younger, at Yale for his examination. He 

 distilled the oil, separated the various fractions accord- 

 ing to their boiling points, and reported that portions 

 of these distillates were suitable for illuminating pur- 

 poses. Men in the oil business, knowing that if a 

 substitute for the expensive animal and vegetable oils 

 that were then being used in lamps could be found it 

 would have a ready market, acted upon Professor 

 Silliman's advice and began the refining of petroleum 

 in this country.** 



" The inside history of the Camcgio Steel Company. See footnote 36. 



■■ Carnc!!ie, Andrew. Autobiography. Boston, New York, Houghton Mifflin Co., 

 1920, p. 182. 



'• The inside history of the Carnegie Steel Company, p. 64. See footnote 36. Auto- 

 biography, p. 183. See footnote 38. 



'•Burton, William M. Chemistry In the petroleum Industry. Induttrial and 

 Enjfiwerfnj ChemUtrv. 10, 484 (June 1918). 



Li spite of this instance of the practical application 

 of chemistry, it did not play much of a part in the 

 methods of refining that were then used. They were 

 crude and wasteful, utilizing only a little over 5 percent 

 of the total mass of the crude oil. Not until 1870, 

 when M. L. Hull of Cleveland devised the "vapor 

 stove," were the naphtiia fractions utilized; and then 

 millions of gallons of naphtha, for want of a demand, 

 were allowed to fiow into the creeks and rivers, there to 

 evaporate. Little change took place in the industry 

 until 1885 or 1886, when a new source of petroleum was 

 found in northwestern Ohio near the town of Lima. 

 When the customary refining methods of distillation 

 and treatment with sulfuric acid and alkali were applied 

 to this Lima oil, they were found to be inadequate. 

 Illuminating oils of suitable quality were not secured 

 because the crude oil contained from ji to 1 percent of 

 sulfur. The industry was forced to turn to the chemist 

 for a solution, but because of a long-existing prejudice 

 against the "chemical fraternity," there was scarcely 

 one trained petroleum chemist in the United States in 

 ISSS.*' Out of this situation, however, came a much 

 better understanding. Both the itidustry and the 

 chemist came to realize that if practical solutions for 

 refining problems were to be found, industrj' must be 

 patient until the chemist had learned something about 

 the refining industry. Since 1890, and particularly 

 since the introduction of the internal combustion engine, 

 research has played an increasingly important part in 

 the petroleum industry. 



Although some of the concerns to which the meat 

 packers sold their by-products in a crude state had 

 employed chemists, and the packers themselves had 

 occasionally consulted commercial chemists, it was 

 not until 1886 that a chemist (H. B. Schmidt) came to 

 be regularly employed by a meat packer in the Union 

 Stock Yards in Chicago." Other packers soon fol- 

 lowed suit in an effort to improve their products and to 

 find use for various byproducts. "There was so much 

 for the chemist to do in the packing industry in those 

 days that it was simply a question of what pleased him 

 best to work on." " 



Li the copper industry previous to 1SS4 the use of 

 chemistry had been confined almost wholly to a few 

 routine analyses by commercial chemists. In one 

 instance Calumet and Hecla had employed an expert 

 chemist to help them out of a chemical difficulty. 

 "About 1884, a few chemists were employed in the 

 earlier work of developing deposits in Montana and 

 Arizona," but not until 1890 was the real value of 



" Chemistry in the petroleum Industry, pp. 484-485. See footnote 40. 



" Lowenstein, Arthur. Contributions of the chemist to the packing house prod- 

 ucts Industry. Industrial and B>n(iineering Ckemittry, 7, 943 (November 1915). 



" Contributions of the chemist to the packing house products industry. See 

 footnote 42. 



