October 22, 1915] 



SCIENCE 



551 



industry, electrolytic copper refining, etc. 

 These and many newer industries all re- 

 quired large amounts of sulphuric acid and 

 gave this country an opportunity of devel- 

 oping sulphuric-acid manufacturing to its 

 present magnitude. In fact, the same rea- 

 soning holds good for all of our industries. 

 I doubt very much whether the talented 

 foreigners, who have now become famous in 

 chemical manufacturing, would have tied 

 their initiative and enterprise by specializ- 

 ing in coal-tar-dyes manufacturing, if they 

 had had the limitless opportunities of an 

 immense undeveloped country like ours, to 

 which to give other outlets to their spirit of 

 pioneership, mining, transportation, agri- 

 culture and similar subjects, all beckoning 

 for more urgent attention, and offering at 

 the same time more immediate rewards. 



In the meantime some of our other chem- 

 ical industries, better suited to our local 

 conditions, have taken such an enormous 

 development here as to make the United 

 States an undisputed leader in at least some 

 of them. Such products as the various acids 

 and salts, aluminum, artificial abrasives, 

 calcium-carbide, soda and caustic alkalies, 

 bleaching powder, chlorine products, elec- 

 trolytic copper, are decidedly more impos- 

 ing in value and in economic importance 

 than the few million imported coal-tar- 

 dyes. 



Mr. F. A. Lidbury, of Niagara Falls,* 

 pointed out rightly that if there had been 

 a shortage in some of the products of our 

 electrochemical industries in which the 

 United States has been a pioneer, the eon- 

 sequences to our national economics would 

 have been so serious that the present com- 

 plaint of our aniline-dye-users would have 

 sounded like a timid whisper, compared with 

 the bellowing lamentations of so many more 

 important industries which would have be- 



* See Metallurgical and Chemical Engineering, 

 Vol. XIII., No. 5, 1915, p. 277. 



come absolutely paralyzed. The fact is that 

 few men realize how many industries are 

 directly dependent on the work of Amer- 

 ican chemists. If the aniline-dye industry 

 has been neglected in this country, there 

 are many good reasons for it; not only 

 was the possibility of reasonable profits 

 too scant to offer special inducement to 

 clever-headed business men for risking their 

 capital in this branch of manufacturing 

 when they had so much better choice in 

 other channels of enterprise, but the first 

 raw material, suitable coal-tar, was not 

 abundantly available here as it is in Europe, 

 for the simple reason that this country long 

 ago discarded the older and more expensive 

 methods of gas manufacturing still gen- 

 erally used in Europe, and which give coal- 

 tar as a by-product. The less expensive 

 and simpler water-gas process, adopted in 

 the United States, gives no suitable gas-tar ; 

 it is only of late, by the introduction of the 

 by-product coke-ovens, that we can look 

 forward to an almost illimited supply of 

 coal-tar. 



In the meantime, the German manufac- 

 turers, while possessing every opportunity 

 and inducement for specializing in these 

 coal-tar industries, could afford to concen- 

 trate their efforts so as to supply not only 

 their home consumption and that of the 

 United States, but that of the whole world, 

 in about the same way as the United States 

 sends to the remotest corners of the globe 

 its sewing machines, its typewriters and its 

 Ford cars. 



Judging from the past history of the 

 chemical industry in America, I have little 

 doubt that the day it will be found profita- 

 ble to manufacture all kinds of synthetic 

 dyes here in the United States, instead of 

 a few as is the case now, there will be little 

 further delay in supplying the demand by 

 a hustling and bustling home production. 



