October 5, 1917] 



SCIENCE 



327 



courteously asked for, and received, the co- 

 operation of this society in the choice of 

 an unprejudiced expert on the chemical 

 schedules. 



Wise patent legislation is another fun- 

 damental consideration in a declaration of 

 chemical independence. The public — that 

 is, their representatives in Washington — 

 should understand what is obvious to any 

 professional student of the problem, 

 namely, that independence is altogether a 

 question of capital, not of science — of dol- 

 lars, not of chemists. Our unqualified suc- 

 cess in every line of applied chemistry in 

 which investment of capital has been an 

 attractive proposition is positive evidence 

 that we have the chemists and the knowl- 

 edge to achieve this independence, if wise 

 legislation by tariff and patent laws will 

 insure to capital a return sufficiently at- 

 tractive and stable to have it enter these 

 needed fields. 



To illustrate concretely what this policy 

 would mean for the nation let us consider 

 the following: Much more than a question 

 of coloring materials is concerned in a con- 

 scious policy to have our dye industries 

 established on a permanent basis. It has 

 often been emphasized that the manufac- 

 ture of dyes is so closely related to the 

 preparation of explosives that a flourishing 

 dye industry in times of peace means ample 

 facilities for explosives in times of war. 

 No American would care to contemplate 

 what our position would be in the matter 

 of large scale production of explosives if 

 we had become engaged in a struggle with 

 a first class power without the benefit of 

 the great expansion in our dye and ex- 

 plosives factories which our commerce with 

 England and France brought about after 

 1914 ! When peace comes, let no American 

 forget this lesson! One way of insuring ' 

 ourselves against a lack of facilities for 

 a sudden expansion in the production of ex- 



plosives is to keep capital invested in dye 

 factories. 



Independence in the preparation of me- 

 dicinal remedies, especially also of the 

 finer modern products which we call syn- 

 thetic drugs, should be as conscious an aim 

 of the United States as independence in the 

 manufacture of dyes. It is worth noting 

 that the two aims support each other, for 

 nearly all of the basic products needed for 

 the large scale preparation of synthetic 

 remedies are either prepared in aniline dye 

 factories as intermediate steps toward the 

 dyes or are so closely related to such com- 

 pounds that it would be a mere detail to in- 

 clude these products in the normal output 

 of a dye factory. As an instance pointing 

 in this direction, recent correspondence 

 with a prominent American firm, which has 

 invented and is manufacturing what prom- 

 ises to be a valuable substitute for cocaine 

 in producing local anesthesia, brought out 

 the fact that the chief difficulty in the way 

 of the production of the drug on the large 

 scale which the situation demands, lies in 

 the securing of sufficient quantities of the 

 chemicals diethylaniline and cinnamic acid. 

 Now, the former could and should be manu- 

 factured in dye factories with the greatest 

 of ease, side by side with dimethylaniline, 

 which is a common intermediate in the 

 manufacture of many dyes, and cinnamic 

 acid could be prepared from benzaldehyde, 

 another intermediate. Furthermore, large 

 research departments in well-organized dye 

 factories will be centers of research in ap- 

 plied organic chemistry and practically all 

 of our valuable synthetic drugs are such 

 organic compounds. Indeed, it will be a 

 matter of time only — and I should like to 

 see that time shortened as much as possible 

 — when some of our best equipped and most 

 progressive dye factories will turn to the 

 problem of these remedies as a question of 

 the economic utilization of their equipment. 



