Mat 22, 1908] 



SCIENCE 



809 



answer with as great facility as the lay- 

 man can ask them. 



The fourth sphere of usefulness which I 

 suggested referred to the improvement of 

 plant and processes, including the working 

 up of by-products and cheapening of 

 operations, and turning low-gi-ade products 

 into high-grade ones. Work of this na- 

 ture is to be viewed in a different light 

 from the other kinds of work which I have 

 described. I should say that while all 

 plants require analytical and control work 

 and ako consulting work, there are many 

 plants which can operate, and operate suc- 

 cessfully, without any of the research work 

 implied in the present category. This fact 

 is not to be taken as a criticism against 

 the plant, but is to be accepted as a natural 

 feature of industrial operations. Not all 

 plants can lead. There must always be a 

 considerable number which work along the 

 accepted lines of their particular branch 

 with no great desire to take the initiative 

 in developing plant and process. The man 

 who can invent, describe, work out in de- 

 tail, instal and operate a new industrial 

 process or an improvement on an old one, 

 is an extremely rare person. He must 

 have inventive ability, profound knoAvl- 

 edge, keen insight, imagination, initiative, 

 tireless energy and that wonderful faculty 

 of elimination of the non-essential. One 

 of the great mistakes of the present tend- 

 ency in chemical education is, in my 

 opinion, that every young student of 

 ehemistiy is taught to believe, or at lea.st 

 is not taught to disbelieve, that on a modest 

 or even a considerable foundation of 

 chemical information he can become a 

 research man in an industrial laboratory 

 and an improver of processes in manu- 

 facture. This is_ a serious mistake. No 

 amount of chemical training can change 

 the nature or the talents of a man, and yet 

 almost every young man who enters an in- 

 dustrial laboratory seems to have the idea 



that any work but research, or work of an 

 executive nature, is not to be considered 

 worthy. The simple result of this is that 

 the men are failures as research or execu- 

 tive men if given an opportunity, and, 

 further, because they do not regard as 

 sufficiently important for their considera- 

 tion that foundation of our science, an- 

 alytical chemisti-y, they are bad analysts. 

 It is an astonishing thing that the great 

 rarity in an industrial laboratory is a first- 

 class analyst. Most men, instead of look- 

 ing upon skill in analysis as a desirable 

 thing to attain, consider it as of secondary 

 importance. To them, apparently, the 

 work of Berzelius, of Stas, of Fresenius 

 and of Hillebrand does not appeal, or does 

 not influence them greatly. I believe that 

 every chemist, no matter what line he 

 may be working along, whether a teacher 

 in a high school, a university professor, a 

 consulting chemist or a chemical engineer, 

 should be first of all a capable analyst. 



These remarks are somewhat aside from 

 tile immediate topic. The chemical engi- 

 neer—for by this much-abused name I pre- 

 fer to call those chemists who are able to 

 improve plant and process— has a high call- 

 ing. Fortunate indeed is the establish- 

 ment which possesses such a man. In my 

 own limited experience, not more than one 

 chemist in one hundred (and possibly the 

 ratio is lower yet) is entitled to be called 

 by that name. And the greatest of these, 

 the Bessemers, the Solvays, the LeBlancs, 

 the Chances, the Lunges, the Knietsches, 

 stand out as notable landmarks in the 

 course of the history of chemistry. Notice, 

 I have given the names of the men who 

 have s-uccessfully worked upon new proc- 

 esses. To indicate the difference implied 

 in this statement between the unsuccessful 

 and the successful workers, I shall say that 

 in 1837 Gossage proposed reactions for 

 the recovery of tank waste in the LeBlanc 

 soda process. He worked on the process 



