SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLVI. No. 1175 



his family reports that his wife was com- 

 miserating her charwoman on the suffer- 

 ing of the war, when the latter replied: 

 "It's not so bad — a pun' a week and the 

 man away from home — it's too good to 

 last." 



In America, too, we are learning some 

 lessons — among others that our industrial 

 independence, at least in the matter of dyes 

 for our textiles, is of some importance. 



If we try to find a single word which ex- 

 presses that for which all of the warring 

 nations are striving it is efficiency. It 

 seems very dreadful that the desire to 

 slaughter our fellow men should be the in- 

 centive, and if .we did not believe that the 

 lessons learned under the stress of war will 

 remain during the long years of peace that 

 are to follow, we might well wish for the 

 good old times before scientific efficienej^ 

 was thought of. But whether we will or 

 not a new sort of efficiency has come to 

 stay and it is worth our while, here in 

 America, to grasp its meaning and to look 

 for the foundation on which it has been 

 built. 



I see with the eyes of a chemist, of course, 

 and shall draw my illustrations from the 

 science which I know best, but much that I 

 have to say applies to other sciences as well. 



A little less than one hundred years ago, 

 shortly after Europe had settled down 

 from the tumult of the Napoleonic wars a 

 young German doctor of philosophy, not 

 yet out of his teens, went to Paris to study 

 chemistry and succeeded in gaining admis- 

 sion to the private laboratory of Gay Lus- 

 sae. Liebig was a born chemist, if ever 

 there was one, and had worked with things 

 chemical from early boyhood. But even 

 Liebig needed the inspiration of contact 

 with one of the master chemists of his time, 

 and this Gay Lussac gave him. After a few 

 months he returned to Giessen and there in 

 a laboratory which was new of its kind in 

 university life he gathered about him an 



enthusiastic group of young men who came 

 to him for the study of chemistry. The lab- 

 oratory was very crude and primitive in 

 comparison with the palaces of science 

 which we build to-day, but out of that lab- 

 oratory went influences which have spread 

 over the whole world — Liebig 's idea of a 

 laboratory was not that it is chiefly a place 

 for teaching what is already known, but 

 rather that it is a workshop where teacher 

 and pupil are striving together to learn 

 something new from the great book of na- 

 ture. Very soon many similar laboratories 

 sprang up and within a few years Germany 

 became the country to which young men re- 

 sorted from all over the world for the study 

 of chemistry. 



A. W. Hofmann, one of the talented 

 yoivng men of the Giessen group, was called 

 to London by Prince Albert in 1845. There 

 he taught in the college of chemistry. He 

 employed as an honorary assistant, some 

 years later, a young man by the name of 

 William H. Perkin. Young Perkin became 

 so interested in the subject that he was not 

 content merely to work with Hofmann dur- 

 ing the day, but he fitted up a private lab- 

 oratory at home where he could work at 

 night. Here he tried to do some experi- 

 ments in the hope of obtaining a synthesis 

 of quinine. His first experiments gave an 

 unattractive reddish brown precipitate of 

 the sort that most chemists would pass by 

 as hopeless. He became interested, how- 

 ever, and tried similar experiments with a 

 simpler substance, aniline. The product 

 was at first still more unpromising, but on 

 further examination he found that it con- 

 tained a beautiful purple coloring-matter 

 which was capable of dyeing silk and other 

 textiles. It was in fact the substance we 

 now know as the "Mauve dye." Perkin, 

 then a lad of only eighteen years, con- 

 ceived the daring idea that this color might 

 be put to practical use. Fortunately his 

 father had faith enough in his ability to 



