The Gifts of Science 123 



constitution of English iron ore, and the difference be- 

 tween iron and steel. Bessemer accepted the conclusions 

 of the chemist and between 1856 and 1858 spent some 

 fifty thousand dollars in accord with the behests of sci- 

 ence in an effort to convert the English ores into steel. 

 I need not tell you the result. Out of that bit of history 

 comes the circumstance that this is the age of steel. In 

 the year 1901 the production of Bessemer steel in the 

 United States alone amounted to seven millions of tons, 

 worth, say, two hundred millions of dollars. 



We might in this way approach a hundred sources of 

 human wealth. In the laboratory of the chemist every 

 terrestrial problem is assailed. Investigation goes on 

 forever. No problem, perhaps, has ever been worked out ; 

 but many a one, as the problem of iron and steel, has 

 been brought to an absolutely practical solution. The 

 State of South Dakota is a gold-producing State of no 

 secondary importance, but the greatest mining company 

 in the Black Hills owes its whole success to a practical 

 application of a chemical problem, first wrought out in 

 the laboratories of Europe, by which low-grade ores may 

 be handled with profit, as in the famous Homestake 

 mines. 



The investment which the world has made in chemical 

 laboratories, and in chemists, too, has been more re- 

 munerative in dollars and cents than anyone of us can 

 possibly realize. If the alchemist did not find the philos- 

 opher's stone, modern chemistry has at least filled the 

 world with wealth. The plain fact remains that every 

 art and every industry now in vogue among men will at 

 some point, if not at every point, gladly acknowledge its 



