418 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLIX. No. 1270 



tional welfare requires that the manufacturer 

 of scientific apparatus in this country should 

 be sufficiently protected so as to be enabled to 

 compete with foreign production. But, on the 

 other hand, it is evident that if we make the 

 duty on such supplies so rigid as to exclude 

 foreign articles entirely, a decided handicap 

 on knowledge must result, for it is well under- 

 stood by those who have been in touch with 

 scientific production that certain things, such 

 as fine instrimaents and rare chemicals, can 

 only be profitably made by one concern, per- 

 haps, in the whole world. It does not pay any 

 one else to compete with such a manufacturer 

 as the sales are too small. If, for instance, 

 there is need of some rare organic chemical 

 that is only made by one man in the world 

 and, while of very great scientific value, is not 

 sufficiently used to warrant any two concerns 

 to study the details of manufacture, it is ob- 

 viously unwise to handicap any scientist in 

 any country from obtaining this article. 

 Many of the chemicals in Kahlbaum's list, so 

 familiar to all in pre-war days, come in this 

 category, and it can not be disputed that a 

 prohibitive duty on such items will restrict 

 research work to a considerable estent and 

 serve no good purpose, because the amount of 

 revenue received by the government is too 

 small. In addition, the encouragement given 

 to manufacturers to produce rare chemicals 

 is almost nil and no American firm could be 

 induced to undertake the task. Perhaps in 

 the past the duty-free privilege to institutions 

 was abused, not directly by the institutions, 

 but because of the wording of the original law, 

 for some articles which had acquired a com- 

 mercial rather than a scientific standing could 

 be imported duty-free by all institutions re- 

 gardless of the fact whether the article was 

 also produced in this country or not. The 

 patriotic element played no part in the de- 

 cision, even though the home-made article cost 

 but little more than the imported one. 



One great drawback to the importation of 

 scientific apparatus has always been the great 

 amount of time which elapses between placing 

 the order and its delivery. In order to over- 

 come this drawback many people, and this 



ingeniously, have sought to induce the im- 

 porter to deliver the goods from the shelves 

 and replace the article when the import ship- 

 ment arrives. However, this was a distinct 

 evasion of the law and it has been reported 

 that certain firms have been threatened with 

 fines for committing tliis evasion of the gov- 

 ernment regulations. In some cases these 

 firms did this unknowingly for the accommoda- 

 tion of the institution. Again, in inany cases 

 the interest in the research had almost van- 

 ished before the article was delivered. There- 

 fore, to meet the demand, firms that imported 

 materials were compelled to carry immense 

 stocks of imported articles in order that they 

 might have on hand the kind of apparatus or 

 the chemical required. This necessitated an 

 enormous increase in the cost of apparatus to 

 institutions. Furthermore, any improvements 

 to apparatus which might occur to the scien- 

 tist after having placed the order were im- 

 possible of execution, owing to the distance 

 between the manufacturer and the user. It 

 might be said that the distance between manu- 

 facturer and consmner has almost always pre- 

 vented the habit of suggesting improvements 

 from making itself felt. This difficulty could 

 be avoided by having the apparatus manufac- 

 tured nearer at hand. 



The law proposed by the Council of the 

 American Chemical Society, namely, that the 

 duty-free law be entirely abolished, will un- 

 doubtedly prove satisfactory to a limited ex- 

 tent.^ Apparently there is no great opposition 

 to the law on the part of institutions that 

 have been accustomed to duty-free importa- 

 tion and naturally no commercial firm that 

 has made use of duty-paid materials before 

 will oppose it. 



As a matter of fact, many American firms 

 make materials that are equal if not superior 

 in many ways to the imported goods. Coors 

 porcelain, made by the Herold Glass & Por- 

 celain Company of Golden, Colorado, Pyrex 

 Glass of the Coming Glass Company of Com- 



1 See Journal of the American Chemical Society, 

 January, 1919, Council Proceedings and Journal 

 of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry, January 

 1919. 



