NOVEMBEB 19, 1909] 



SCIENCE 



699 



industry is making slow progress compared 

 with Germany. 



The United States is practically an agri- 

 cultural country, for its wheat, cotton, 

 flaxseed, corn, cereals and lumber are 

 larger than its manufactures, yet it soon 

 will lead in metals, and it is fast coming to 

 the front in its chemical industries. 



The engineer may brag of his skill, but 

 he has done nothing greater than the pyra- 

 mids, nor finer than the temples of Greece 

 and Egypt. The monuments he has 

 wrought in steel were given to him by the 

 ability of the chemist to control carbon in 

 iron, and the economic principle involved 

 in the production of steel supplies work, 

 puts money into circulation, and keeps the 

 wheels turning. 



If it were not for chemistry and the 

 knowledge that has been gained in the 

 fertilization of soils, we would have often 

 exhausted the miles of ground which have 

 made this country what it is, and even 

 now the very work which is going to main- 

 tain the entire civilization is the produc- 

 tion of nitrogen from the air, a purely 

 chemical investigation which may be the 

 greatest civilizing factor of the age. 



Twenty-five years ago the chemist was a 

 man who made analyses, and whose knowl- 

 edge was confined to inorganic materials, 

 and a few organic substances. To-day 

 there are very few analytical chemists in 

 ratio to the population, for nearly all works 

 maintain laboratories where chemists ai"e 

 employed and researches are continued, so 

 that by-products which formerly were 

 waste, to-day are converted into commer- 

 cial products. 



The brewing industry years ago looked 

 upon the chemist with considerable doubt, 

 for the first influence the chemist had upon 

 the brewing industry resulted in the manu- 

 facture and use of bicarbonate of soda to 

 produce froth, and salicylic acid to pre- 

 vent fermentation. It took the chemist 



many years to convince the brewer that he 

 could do without these materials, and to- 

 day the modern brewmaster has a chemical 

 training and conducts the process of brew- 

 ing upon scientific principles. 



It is only a few years ago that some of 

 our members assembled at the grave of 

 Priestley and marked the centennial of the 

 discoverer of oxygen. 



For a science so young, its civilizing 

 influence is enormous, and there is no doubt 

 that the rapid progress which it made in 

 the nineteenth century will be outstripped 

 in the twentieth, for the control of our 

 foodstufi's, the application of the raw ma- 

 terials in the earth, and the refining of 

 metals, create positions, give progress to a 

 country, and help largely in the establish- 

 ment of that profession in which we are all 

 factors. 



Maximilian Toch 



New Yokk City 



A PROBLEM IN LABORATORY ADMIN- 

 ISTRATION—ITS SOLUTION 



A READING of the excellent article by Pro- 

 fessor Baskerville on " Laboratory Organiza- 

 tion " which appeared recently in Science, 

 has prompted the writer to speak of one of the 

 difficult phases of laboratory administration 

 and an attempt at a suitable and efficient solu- 

 tion of the same. This note is written in the 

 hope that it may offer some suggestion to 

 those working on the same general question, 

 modified, of necessity, by local conditions. 



For a number of years there has been a 

 steadily increasing growth in the number of 

 students taking general elementary chemistry 

 in this laboratory, until the gross registration 

 for the present academic year shows an enrol- 

 ment of Y25. Por lecture purposes this num- 

 ber is divided into four sections of 220, 220, 

 180 and 105 each; for quiz into groups of 25 

 to 30 each. For laboratory purposes, the 

 classes are divided into eight sections, which 

 are acconunodated in two large laboratories, 

 each containing 126 desks of three lockers 

 each, or a total of 756 lockers. The general 



