August 19, 1921] 



SCIENCE 



141 



the terms chemist and drug-clerk -were synony- 

 mous. The educated non-technical man how- 

 ever was better informed. Asked for a defi- 

 nition of a chemist, he would reply. Oh! 

 he is a curious fellow who can look at a rock 

 and tell you what it is made up of! When 

 one considers the fundamental importance of 

 the work of the chemist to the everyday life 

 of every individual in the community, that his 

 work enters into everything he wears, eats, 

 drinks, reads, works with and plays with, it 

 is really astonishing that the public at large 

 has had so little appreciation of him. It must 

 be remembered, however, that in the past few 

 opportunities were afforded to the average citi- 

 zen, and no encouragement, to learn what the 

 chemist meant to him. It was not so very 

 long ago that the most widely disseminated 

 chemical information was that furnished by 

 the Sunday supplements of certain news- 

 papers. And it will be recalled that they ap- 

 peared to be particularly fond of describing 

 such experiments as the extraction of gold 

 from sea water, and others of a similar type, 

 generally giving a more or less grotesque idea 

 of the chemist and his work. 



The education of the public as to the im- 

 portance of chemistry to the community be- 

 gan in the fall of 1914 when it suddenly dis- 

 covered that it was dependent upon other 

 countries for many things chemical which 

 were necessary to its daily comfort and con- 

 venience. And the temporary lack of things 

 to which all were accustomed, and for which 

 they were told to wait upon the chemist, did 

 much to raise the latter in the public esti- 

 mation. And when the promised articles be- 

 gan gradually to appear, in increasing quan- 

 tity and with steadily improving quality, the 

 chemist was still further raised in public 

 esteem. 



The second lesson came with the war. The 

 ordinary citizen came to realize, as he had 

 never done before, that in modern warfare the 

 most powerful weapons of ofEense and the most 

 eiieetive means of defense are literally the 

 products of the laboratories of scientists. 

 Thanks to the introduction of what came to be 

 known as chemical warfare, the late war be- 



came to a very large degree a contest between 

 the chemists of the opposing countries. And 

 a vivid knowledge of this fact was brought 

 home to the people in a variety of ways. 



Recoginzing the fact that, under a republi- 

 can form of government, the widest possible 

 dissemination of popular but exact informa- 

 tion concerning a particular science is a mat- 

 ter of fundamental importance to that sci- 

 ence, the American Chemical Society several 

 years ago authorized and provided for the 

 establishment and maintenance of an official 

 news service, known as the American Chem- 

 ical Society Ifews Service. The chief func- 

 tion of this service is to furnish, at frequent 

 intervals, to all the important newspapers 

 throughout the country for publication, short 

 popular articles on chemical subjects. The 

 space given by the newspapers to these ar- 

 ticles, while not all that might be desired, is 

 gratifying in that it evidences an interest, 

 and let us hope it will prove an increasing in- 

 terest, on the part of the people generally in a 

 subject which is of such great importance to 

 the general welfare. 



2. A second and very much more important 

 change which has been taking place during 

 the past five years is a growing appreciation 

 of the value of research on the part of those 

 concerned with chemical industry. Some of 

 the larger and more progressive concerns, 

 whose policies are dominated by men of sci- 

 entific training, have long followed a liberal 

 policy in regard to research. They have been 

 sufficiently far sighted to recognize the possi- 

 bilities of research in the utilization of by- 

 products, the development of new processes 

 and the improvement of old ones. Their ex- 

 perience has amply justified the financial wis- 

 dom of such a policy. A larger number of 

 concerns have maintained research departments 

 of a more limited scope, their activities be- 

 ing confined to the more immediate and ob- 

 vious problems of plant operation. Then we 

 have had a very considerable number of chem- 

 ical plants in which no research chemists at 

 all were employed. There has been in the 

 past a surprising number of plants which 

 were operated, in effect, upon the idea that 



