REPORT ON CHEMICAL LABORATORY 87 



who works up his by-products into some useful, and, there- 

 fore, valuable substances, who economizes energy, whether 

 k this energy comes from coal or water power, or human labor. 

 The field is too large and chemical laws too complex to have 

 the results come accidentally. They can be accomplished only 

 by a systematic investigation of the whole field of chemistry. 

 Only upon the study of pure chemistry and the laws which 

 underlie it, can be built the practice of chemical technology, 

 just as our whole modern technique of electricity was built 

 upon the purely scientific experiments of Faraday, or the 

 modern system of wireless telegraphy was built upon the cal- 

 culations of Clerk Maxwell, and the scientific experiments of 

 Hertz. An improvement of a chemical process which betters 

 the yield by five per cent may mean $10,000,000 a year to a 

 single large corporation in a time not far distant, if not even 

 to-day. 1 Colossal fortunes have already been made in this 

 way. It is slowly creeping into the minds of business men 

 and manufacturers, that a trained chemist can improve an 

 output or effect economies, and that something more than 

 a mere analyst is necessary in a manufacturing concern. But 

 how many persons understand that chemistry is essential 

 in most plans for the social uplifting of the people? 



In Europe it is a truism that well-endowed and active 

 laboratories of pure chemistry are a source of wealth to the 

 community, and nothing is more striking than the close co- 

 operation between the German chemical professors and the 

 "works-chemists" of the great German chemical industries. 

 This cooperation it is which has put the German chemical 

 industry at the head, with no other country a respectable 

 second. England is fast losing her supremacy in manufac- 

 turing where chemistry plays a part, and the success of the 



1 The gross income of the Steel Corporation in 1907 was $757,000,000; its net 

 income available for sinking funds, interest, dividends, etc., was $160,000,000. 



