196 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XL. No. 1023 



ble quarters than a damp, poorly lighted 

 basement, in whicli he was compelled to 

 carry on his research; and this was, then, 

 the condition of affairs of no less a place 

 than Paris, the same Paris that was spend- 

 ing, just at that time, endless millions for 

 the building of her new Opera-Palace. 



Such facts should not be overlooked by 

 those who might think that America has 

 been too slow in fostering chemical research. 



If the United States has not participated 

 as early as some European countries in the 

 development of industrial chemistry, this 

 was chiefly because conditions here were so 

 totally different from those of nations like 

 Germany, England and Prance, that they 

 did not warrant any such premature efforts. 



In a country so fuU of primary re- 

 sources, agriculture, forests, mines and the 

 more elementary industries directly con- 

 nected therewith, as well as the problems 

 of transportation, appealed more urgently 

 to American intellectual men of enterprise. 



Why should anybody here have tried to 

 introduce new, difficult or risky chemical 

 industries, when on every side, more 

 urgently important fields of enterprise were 

 inviting all men of initiative? 



Chemical industries develop along the 

 lines furnished by the most immediate 

 needs of a country. Our sulphuric acid 

 industry, which can boast to-day of a 

 yearly production of about three million 

 tons, had to begin in an exceedingly humble 

 way, and the first small amounts of sul- 

 phuric acid manufactured here found a 

 very scant outlet. 



It required the growth of such fields of 

 application as petroleum refining, super- 

 phosphates, explosives and others, before 

 the sulphuric acid industry could grow to 

 what it is to-day. 



At present, similar influences are still 

 dominating our chemical industries; they 

 are generally directed to the mass produc- 



tion of partly manufactured articles. This 

 allows us to export, at present, to Germany, 

 chemicals in crude form, but in greater 

 value than the total sum of all the chemical 

 products we are importing from her; al- 

 though it can not be denied that a consid- 

 erable part of our imports are products 

 like alizarine, indigo, aniline dyes and 

 similar synthetic products which require 

 higher chemical manufacturing skill. 



In this connection, it may be pointed out 

 that our exports of oleomargarine, to Ger- 

 many alone, are about equivalent to our 

 imports of aniline dyes. 



But all this does not alter the fact that 

 in several important chemical industries, 

 the United States has been a pioneer. Such 

 flourishing enterprises as that of the arti- 

 ficial abrasives, carborundum and alundum, 

 calcium carbide, aluminum and many 

 others, testify how soon we have learned 

 to avail ourselves of some of our water- 

 power. 



One of the most important chemical in- 

 dustries of the world, the sulphite cellulose 

 industry, of which the total annual produc- 

 tion amounts to three and a half million 

 tons, was originated and developed by a 

 chemist in Philadelphia, B. C. Tilgman. 

 But its further development was stopped 

 for awhile on account of the same old 

 trouble, lack of funds, after $40,000 were 

 spent, until some years later, it was taken 

 up again in Europe and reintroduced in 

 the United States, where it has developed 

 to an annual production of over a million 

 tons. 



What has been accomplished in America 

 in chemical enterprises, and what is going 

 on now in industrial research, has been 

 brilliantly set forth by Mr. Arthur D. 

 Little.^ 



Nor at any time in the history of the 



2 Jmmial of Ind. and Eng. Chem., Vol. 5, No. 10, 

 October, 1913. 



