56 SCIENCE REMAKING THE WORLD 



The familiar phrase for anything particularly expen- 

 sive or extravagant, "It costs like smoke," implies 

 doubtless an unconscious realization of the fact that 

 oxidation is the reversal of the synthetic reaction, the un- 

 doing of the constructive activity of animate nature. 

 The plant builds. Man utilizes. Fire destroys. Now 

 one of the most wasteful forms of smoke was that which 

 poured uninterruptedly during the great part of the last 

 century from the open tops of the beehive coke ovens. 

 In fact one can yet see these prodigal flares on the Penn- 

 sylvania mountains as he looks out of his Pullman win- 

 dow in the night. This is not merely a waste of fossil 

 fuel, which we already begin to realize will not last for 

 ever, but there is also a loss of a variety of compounds 

 that can be made very useful if properly worked up. 

 If a ton of bituminous coal is heated in a closed retort 

 instead of the open beehive, we may get besides the gas 

 and the coke, a dozen pounds of ammonium sulfate and 

 a dozen gallons of tar. The ammonium sulfate is valu- 

 able as a fertilizer, since it will feed nitrogen to the 

 crops, and the tar on redistillation will yield a dozen 

 products out of which some 200,000 distinct organic com- 

 pounds may be made, some of which are extremely useful 

 to mankind. 



There is no use crying over lost coal-tar, but the time 

 is coming when we must be more economical. I do not 

 want to use language instigating violence, because that 

 is against the law, so I will merely quote Admiral 

 Dumas, Secretary of the British Royal Commission 

 on Oil Fuel, who said not long ago: 



"I would like to see a government official hanged on 



