Marcu 12, 1914] 
NAT ORE 
47 
triumphs of American industrial research is that by 
means of which Frasch gave to the United States 
potential control of the sulphur industry of the world. 
There is in Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana, a great deposit 
of sulphur rooo ft. below the surface under a layer 
of quicksand 500 ft. in thickness. An Austrian com- 
pany, a French company, and numerous American 
companies had tried in many ingenious ways to work 
this deposit, but had invariably failed. Misfortune and 
disaster to all connected with it had been the record 
of the deposit to the time when Frasch approached its 
problem in 1890. He conceived the idea of melting 
the sulphur in place by superheated water forced down 
a boring, and pumping the sulphur up through an 
inner tube. In his first trial he made use of twenty 
150-h.p. boilers grouped around the well, and the 
titanic experiment was successful. The pumps are 
now discarded, and the sulphur brought to the surface 
by compressed air. A single well produces about 450 
tons a day, and their combined capacity exceeds the 
sulphur consumption of the world. 
An equally notable solution of a technical problem 
which had long baffled other investigators is the 
Frasch process for refining the crude, sulphur-bearing 
Canadian and Ohio oils. The essence of the invention 
consists in distilling the different products of the frac- 
tional distillation of the crude oil with metallic oxides, 
especially oxide of copper, by which the sulphur is 
completely removed, while the oils distill over as odour- 
less and sweet as from the best Pennsylvania oii. The 
copper sulphide is roasted to regenerate the copper. 
The invention had immense pecuniary value. It sent 
the production of the Ohio fields to 90,000 barrels a 
day, and the price of crude Ohio oil from 14 cents a 
barrel to one dollar. 
Turning from these examples of individual achieve- 
ment so strongly characteristic of the genius of our 
people in one aspect, let us again consider for a 
moment that other and even more significant phase 
of our industrial research, namely, that which involves 
the coordinated and long-continued effort of many 
chemists along related lines. 
Chemistry in America is essentially republican and 
pragmatic. Most of us believe that the doctrine science 
for science’s sake is as meaningless and mischievous 
as that of art for art’s sake or literature for literature’s 
sake. These things were made for man, not for them- 
selves, nor was man made for them. Most of us are 
beginning to realise that the major problems of applied 
chemistry are incomparably harder of solution than 
the problems of pure chemistry, and the attack, more- 
over, must often be carried to conclusion at close 
quarters under the stress and strain induced by time 
and money factors. In these circumstances it should 
not excite surprise that a constantly rising proportion 
of our best research is carried on in the laboratories 
of our great industrial corporations, and nowhere more 
effectively than in the research laboratory of the 
General Electric Company, under the guidance of your 
past president, Dr. Whitney. 
Any attempt to present adequately the enormous 
volume of research work, much of which is of the 
highest grade, constantly in progress in the many 
scientific bureaus and special laboratories of the 
general government, or even to indicate its actual 
extent and range, is utterly beyond the limits of my 
attainments or of your patience. The generous policy 
of the Government toward research is unique in this, 
that the results are immediately made available to the 
whole people. 
The United States is still essentially an agricultural 
country, and agriculture is, in its ultimate terms, 
applied photochemistry. The value of our farm pro- 
perty is already more than 42,000,000,000 dollars, and 
each sunrise sees an added increment of millions. 
NOW 227s.) VOL, 93 | 
Even small advances in agricultural practice bring 
enormous monetary returns. 
Chief, therefore, among the government depart- 
ments, in the volume of industrial research is the 
Department of Agriculture, which includes within its 
organisation ten great scientific bureaus, each inspired 
by an intense pragmatism and aggressively prosecut- 
ing research in its allotted field. 
The research work of the Department of Agriculture 
is greatly augmented and given local application 
through the agency of sixty-four State agricultural 
experiment stations, established for the scientific in- 
vestigation of problems relating to agriculture. These 
stations are supported in part by federal grants, as 
from the Hatch and Adams funds, and for the rest by 
State appropriations. Their present income exceeds 
3,000,000 dollars. All are well equipped; one of them, 
California, includes within its plant a superb estate 
of 5400 acres, with buildings worth 1,000,000 dollars. 
It may be said without fear of contradiction that 
through the combined efforts of the Department of 
Agriculture, the experiment stations, the agricultural 
colleges, and our manufacturers of agricultural 
machinery, there is devoted to American agriculture 
a far greater amount of scientific research and effort 
than is at the service of any other business in the 
world. 
In the United States Patent Office Dr. Hall has 
developed a remarkably comprehensive index to chem- 
ical literature, which now contains 1,250,000 cards, 
and is open to every worker. The Bureau of 
Fisheries devotes 40,000 dollars to a single study, and 
the Geological Survey 100,000 dollars to the investiga- 
tion of the mineral resources of Alaska. 
The Bureau of Mines of the Department of the 
Interior was established to conduct on behalf of the 
public welfare fundamental inquiries and investiga- 
tions into the mining, metallurgical, and mineral in- 
dustries. Its appropriation for the current fiscal year 
is 662,000 dollars, of which 347,000 dollars is to be 
devoted to technical research pertinent to the mining 
industry. 
Perhaps no better evidence could be adduced of the 
present range and volume of industrial research in 
America than the necessity, imposed upon the author 
of such a general survey as I am attempting, of con- 
densing within a paragraph his reference to the 
Bureau of Standards of the Department of Commerce. 
Its purpose is the investigation and testing of 
standards and measuring instruments, and the deter- 
mination of physical constants and the properties of 
materials. To these objects it devotes about 700,000 
dollars a year to such good effect that in equipment 
and in the high quality and output of its work it has 
in ten years taken rani with the foremost scientific 
institutions in the world for the promotion of indus- 
trial research and the development and standardisation 
of the instruments, materials, and methods therein 
employed. Its influence upon American research and 
industry is already profound and rapidly extending. 
I cannot better conclude this cursory and frag- 
mentary reference to governmental work in applied 
science than with the words of the distinguished direc- 
tor of the Bureau of Standards :— 
“Tf there is one thing above all others for which 
the activities of our Government during the past two 
or three decades will be marked, it is its original work 
along scientific lines, and I venture to state that this 
work is just in its infancy.” ; 
The present vitality and rate of progress in American 
industrial research is strikingly illustrated by its very 
recent development in special industries. It has been 
said that our best research is carried on in those labo- 
ratories which have one client, and that one them- 
selves. 
