552 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLII. No. 1086 



In fact, it is quite possible that under the 

 present conditions tliis branch of manu- 

 facturing may be stimulated to the point as 

 to result in over-production after the war 

 is over. 



If hitherto our chemists have been defi- 

 cient in this special line, we can, with some 

 satisfaction, point to better efforts in other 

 chemical industries. For instance, it is not 

 sufficiently known how many research chem- 

 ists in our different American manufactur- 

 ing establishments are busily occupied in 

 studying and improving manufacturing 

 processes, nor what large sums of money 

 are devoted every year to industrial chem- 

 ical research. If we hear it constantly re- 

 peated that some of the largest German 

 chemical companies have hundreds of 

 chemists and engineers, it is less known that 

 right here in the United States the num- 

 ber of chemists employed in some of our 

 better organized chemical enterprises is 

 scarcely less ; but nobody finds it necessary 

 to boast about it. In fact, the most strik- 

 ing symptom is that so many engineering 

 enterprises, for instance, some of our large 

 electrical companies — although their field 

 of action seems rather remote from chemical 

 subjects — have now elaborate chemical re- 

 search organizations with an excellent 

 record. 



Conditions were quite different some fif- 

 teen or twenty years ago ; but this country 

 has grown, and as the requirements and 

 opportunities grew up new chemical prob- 

 lems arose thereby. 



The urgent nature as well as the magni- 

 tude of some of these new chemical prob- 

 lems is shaking our chemists awake — is 

 making new men of them. 



Professor Whitaker is probably right 

 when he says that from the standpoint of 

 efficiency the chemists are thirty years be- 

 hind the engineers as far as method and 

 attitude of mind are concerned, but this same 



criticism holds good for chemists all over 

 the world. The fact is that the engineer 

 was called first, and he was born centuries 

 before the chemist, but the latter is now 

 making up for lost time. 



New conditions, new problems, are com- 

 pelling the chemist to learn to tackle a 

 proposition in a true engineering spirit and 

 — to hitch some business sense to it. He is 

 learning to forget thinking or acting on the 

 test-tube plan ; he is thrown more and more 

 in contact with business men; he begins to 

 realize that too one-sided theoretical con- 

 siderations are sometimes more dangerous 

 than complete ignorance and that a sense of 

 proportion and relative values is the first 

 requirement for good practical effort. 



Here, indeed, is one of the weakest spots 

 of the chemist. Aside from the fact that 

 the chemical profession seems one of those 

 vocations which have fascinated a large 

 number of intellectual freaks, it has gen- 

 erally attracted men of an analytical rather 

 than a constructive turn of mind. Success- 

 ful engineering is essentially constructive. 

 The most urgent work for the chemist of 

 to-day must be constructive — he must learn 

 how to cement together the vast amount of 

 data which already lie at his disposal, even 

 if he himself has to provide some of this 

 very cement by further research. 



The chemist of to-day is no longer con- 

 fined to purely chemical enterprises; even 

 the most stubbornly conservative manufac- 

 turers have learned, through competition, 

 that every industry, however mechanical be 

 its nature, has its chemical problems. 

 Things have changed rapidly since the day 

 Andrew Carnegie listened with a sly 

 twinkle in his eyes to the fun his compet- 

 itors were poking at him when he first en- 

 gaged a spectacled professor to investigate 

 the chemical problems in his iron-works. 

 Conditions have now become reversed; to- 

 day, a steel or iron works without a com- 



