Mat 22, 1908] 



SCIENCE 



805 



been made is the fact that aceuraey, and 

 certainty in application, have increased to 

 as great an extent as rapidity of discovery. 



I would like to think of chemistry as an 

 essentially practical science— one which 

 can be directly applied to supplying the 

 wants of mankind. Let us not forget, in 

 our admiration of the brilliant researches 

 of an Ostwald, a Van't Hoff, or a Ramsay, 

 that in the judgment of time even the 

 greatest and most brilliant feats of the 

 mind must be accorded a mediocre place if 

 they are not ultimately practical. 



As I have said, there are two classes of 

 manufacture — the mechanical and the 

 chemical. This means that two classes of 

 men have been mainly instrumental in 

 developing manufacture — the mechanical 

 engineer and the chemist. I should not 

 give either class preeminence in industry. 

 I should not say that either one was more 

 necessary to the proper conduct of a manu- 

 facturing business than the other; ioth are 

 essential to the highest development of 

 industry. Once in a long time it happens 

 that a man is born with a sufficiently broad 

 conception of science and art, with suffi- 

 cient industry, and with a sufficiently tire- 

 less mind and body that he can pursue 

 both callings. Need I say that such a man 

 is unusual, that he is possessed of wnusual 

 talents? Indeed, I might say, if the term 

 genius were ordinarily applied to those 

 who devote their lives not to the fine arts 

 and literature, but to the more lowly call- 

 ing of fashioning material things with 

 their hands, that he is a genius. Ordi- 

 narily we must be content to have the 

 chemical engineer embodied in two indi- 

 viduals — one of them an engineer and the 

 other a chemist, and these men by coopera- 

 tion and by combination of their separate 

 talents, must develop the manufacture of 

 the future. I can not refrain at this junc- 

 ture from indulging in just a word of 

 caution to those institutions of learning 



which offer the degree C.E.— chemical engi- 

 neer—at the end of a four years' course, 

 possibly with the proviso of one or two 

 years' successful work, after leaving school, 

 in some industrial laboratory. Let me say 

 that a degree in itself means nothing, and 

 the degree of chemical engineer should by 

 all means be a post-graduate degree 

 equivalent to the doctor's degree and 

 should be reserved for exceptional, and not 

 given to ordinary, students. A degree in 

 itself means nothing and may be no more 

 appropriate to the individual than the 

 degree given by some sophomores to the 

 boastful freshman. They painted the 

 letters on his back— A.S.S., which they said 

 stood for astonishing smart scholar. 



Let us understand clearly that progress 

 in the manufacturing industries which 

 make use of chemical processes will be un- 

 certain and slow, or altogether impossible, 

 without a well-developed chemical science 

 to furnish new ideas. Let us remember 

 that chemical manufacture has developed 

 more in the period from 1850 to the pres- 

 ent time than in all the previous centuries 

 and millenniums of mankind's eaxth. 

 And while we may well be astonished at 

 the chemical industries which developed 

 when there was no science of chemistry, 

 they were as nothing compared with the 

 chemical industries which have been and 

 are developing in our own time. 



To come down to details : As I see it, the 

 chemist may be useful in the manufactur- 

 ing industries in four different ways: 



1. In the buying and selling of materials 

 according to analysis. 



2. In the chemical control of manu- 

 facturing operations by analyzing raw, in- 

 termediate and final products. 



3. In a consulting capacity, interpreting 

 chemical process, terms, and operations to 

 the administrative heads of the business. 



4. In the improvement of plant and 

 processes, including the working up of by- 



