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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLV. No. 1172 



the market and its peculiarities, and plac- 

 ing all their business in the hands of 

 "American citizens" of German name. 

 Then when the U. S. Bureau of Foreign 

 and Domestic Commerce attempted last 

 September to publish the amounts of each 

 dye consumed in this country they vigor- 

 ously protested that their rights as Ameri- 

 can citizens were being infringed by en- 

 couraging competition. The uncovering 

 of this octopus to public gaze should be set 

 down to the war's credit. It has long been 

 a familiar animal to many industrial chem- 

 ists. 



Another evil effect of war, a common one 

 now greatly intensified, is the discourage- 

 ment of capital by failure of hasty and ill- 

 advised manufacturing projects. Success- 

 ful speculators and others have been influ- 

 enced bj' the potential earning capacity of 

 industrial chemistry and have jumped into 

 projects with little study and no experi- 

 ence. Often such capital has not known 

 enough to employ chemical engineers, but 

 has put growing works into the hands of 

 electrical and mechanical engineers whose 

 general engineering sense has not always 

 saved them from physical disasters that 

 chemical experience would have avoided. 

 Such engineers and capital and, sad to say, 

 many chemists, who either lacking entirely 

 in manufacturing experience or having had 

 manufacturing experience, though they ac- 

 quired no sense of responsibility to protect 

 capital against hazard from decisions with- 

 out basis in experience, have been the easy 

 victims of the machinery and equipment 

 company who needs but to see a plant, or a 

 picture in a book, and they will design you 

 one while you wait. There not being the 

 proper engineering check such plants fail 

 at times with regretable loss of life, as well 

 as capital and confidence in things chem- 

 ical, or if they succeed (because the proc- 

 ess is simple and well known) the plant can 



be counted upon to cost from 50 to 100 or 

 more per cent, higher than it should. 



The equipment companies and their 

 engineers are not necessarily dishonest. 

 They sell equipment, and who but they are 

 responsible if they do not sell you enough 

 equipment when you consult them for ad- 

 vice in designing our plant? They, there- 

 fore, sell you enough. Experienced engi- 

 neers will often cut the estimates of such 

 equipment manufacturers in half. 



Another illustration of how this situation 

 works out in practise might be given in the 

 case of benzol refining. This is an impor- 

 tant matter in modern high explosive man- 

 ufacture. Some little time ago the best 

 text ever written in English on industrial 

 chemistry contained a chapter by a chem- 

 ical engineer who had ample opportunity 

 of observing the best American practise 

 (which happens to be second to none in the 

 world). His chapter on this subject, there- 

 fore, is a classic, but in illustrating the 

 text he did not reproduce details of stills, 

 for instance, with engineering exactness, 

 but allowed the artist who made the draw- 

 ings considerable leeway to his imagination. 

 In fact, he left out entirely a vital feature 

 in the construction of such stills. Were it 

 not for the loss of efSciency and the expense 

 involved, you would be greatly amused if 

 you could go with me to a number of the 

 refineries built in this country in the last 

 two years under war pressure by machinery 

 companies, for good engineers who were 

 not themselves experienced in this industry 

 but who needed the industry as one of the 

 links in their larger operations. In every 

 case the stills were built exactly patterned 

 after the pictures in this text and in no case 

 were they efficient or as nearly efiicient as 

 was possible, if a little thought regarding 

 the use to which they would be put had 

 been given them. They were built to sell, 

 not to operate. 



The same capital newly invested in 



