652 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXV. No. 643 



—such things as these are things for the 

 profession as a whole to fight if the com- 

 munity is to have the benefit of its best 

 service. 



The number of chemical problems -with 

 which manufacturers, large and small, 

 throughout the country are grappling, con- 

 sciously or unconsciously, must be very 

 great indeed, and their inability to solve 

 them readily constitutes a heavy drag upon 

 production. There is little doubt that a 

 large proportion of these problems have 

 either been solved already without their 

 knowledge or are of such a nature that they 

 require little more than their statement to 

 a chemist of experience to permit of their 

 immediate solution. They still remain 

 problems either because the manufacturer 

 has no proper conception of what chem- 

 istry can do for him, or because the chemist 

 to whom they may have been submitted is 

 ignorant of the conditions injected into the 

 problem by the requirements of practise. 

 Were both parties to the matter properly 

 informed I have no doubt whatsoever that 

 ten times the number of chemists now at 

 work in the United States could be em- 

 ployed to the great benefit of our industries 

 and the advancement of the position of our 

 country in the world. One obvious step 

 towards a remedy for the situation is a 

 closer touch and cooperation between so- 

 cieties of chemists and associations of man- 

 ufacturers. Manufacturers might well ap- 

 pear from time to time before the one and 

 chemists before the other to the good of 

 both. As James P. Munroe has said in a 

 paper on applied science and the univer- 

 sity, "Not, broadly speaking, what the 

 bachelor or doctor knows, but how he 

 knows it, and to what use he can put this 

 knowledge measure his real education." 



As a technical chemist I speak with some 

 diffidence to those engaged in pure science, 

 but I believe the question may be fairly 

 put, whether both science and the com- 



munity might not be benefited by some re- 

 adjustment of our ideas as to what consti- 

 tutes pure science and the extent to which 

 the exponent of pure chemistry may prop- 

 erly allow himself to be led into industrial 

 work. Scientific research in Germany is 

 'the greatest financial asset of the father- 

 land' because there the greatest minds in 

 chemistry come into close touch and con- 

 tact with the problems of commercial enter- 

 prise. The synthesis of indigo is no less a 

 triumph of pure chemistry because of its 

 industrial importance, and a synthesis of 

 the resins in the juice of the milk weed can 

 hardly be regarded as more commendable 

 from any point of view than a synthesis 

 of India rubber would be. Where, then, 

 there is so much to do is it not possible to 

 pick the problems with more direct refer- 

 ence to the immediate needs of the com- 

 munity? By far the larger part of our 

 best research is carried on now in the labo- 

 ratories of our great industrial plants, and 

 if the teacher and the individual investi- 

 gator are to match it they must in case of 

 most of them have the broadening influence 

 of personal contact with the conditions and 

 needs of industry. Through them their 

 influence will be transmitted to their pupils 

 whose grasp upon the science will be there- 

 by strengthened at the same time that their 

 possible usefulness to the community is in- 

 creased. 



Under such conditions the relation in 

 which the chemist stands to the community 

 in respect of its affairs can not fail as time 

 goes on to become one of increasing dignity 

 and power for good unless chemists them- 

 selves forget that the surest path to influ- 

 ence and position is through altruistic 

 service. 



As we look back upon the great achieve- 

 ments of the past and view the monumental 

 figures from whose trained brains and 

 hands they came, as we study the vast ac- 

 cumulations of fact and the broad general- 



