804 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXVIII. No. 



not merely the direct prevention of such 

 losses. Chemistry impresses itself sooner 

 or later upon the manufacturer if he is 

 awake, even though he be not technically 

 trained, and he realizes that his manufac- 

 turing operations are not shrouded in mys- 

 tery. The question of yield comes under 

 the law of the conservation of matter. 

 Matter does not disappear without going 

 somewhere, and if it does disappear, it has 

 been stolen, or some mistake has been made 

 in accounting, or the matter has been 

 changed in form, or actually lost in some of 

 the refuse products. This is an exceedingly 

 important subject. Many un technical men 

 think that yield, as they would express it, 

 is "purely a practical question" and that 

 losses in manufacture, like taxes and death, 

 are something that we can not get away 

 from. The chemist valiantly attacks this 

 belief. He asserts that losses occur for 

 material reasons. This attitude of the 

 chemist is simply a rational attitude which 

 increases very materially the profitable- 

 ness of industry. In developing new uses 

 for regular products, waste products, and 

 by-products, the chemist has left his indeli- 

 ble mark upon industry. Here he is in the 

 lead, and his constructive mind is not satis- 

 fied with announcing his i m mediate dis- 

 coveries, but in pointing the way to the rich 

 fields of possible discovery that lie before 

 him. 



It is proper here to elaborate a little on 

 the value of chemical societies and their 

 journals. Chemical societies, seeking at all 

 times to bring out the most recent informa- 

 tion bearing on chemical problems, obtain 

 numerous papers, which, published in their 

 journals, are available, in most of our 

 large public libraries, to business men 

 whether technically educated or not. Fre- 

 quently, the information which they may 

 , want is obtained in complete form in these 

 journals. In other cases, the information 



has to be interpreted by chemists, and in 

 still other cases the information is so dis- 

 tantly connected with the problems in- 

 volved as to be available only to chemists 

 who open up vast possibilities of profit to 

 industry. It is hardly to be expected that 

 the chemist will be acquainted with all the 

 published facts relating to any problem, 

 but if he knows where these facts may be 

 obtained, and if he knows how to interpret 

 them, they soon become available, no 

 matter how long they may have remained 

 buried in the literature of the subject. 

 The application of such facts frequently 

 develops new ones, which in their turn may 

 have high potential value. So valuable are 

 these chemical records that I must not lose 

 this opportunity of pointing to the great 

 service chemists are doing and to urge them 

 to enlarge this service to the greatest prac- 

 ticable degree by further contributions. 

 The knowledge which we may possess is of 

 value to us individually, but in the general 

 service of mankind we can frequently im- 

 part some of this knowledge, without hurt- 

 ing ourselves, at the same time extending 

 a helping hand to others. 



Much has been written upon the influence 

 of the research chemical laboratory on the 

 profitableness of industry. Valuable infor- 

 mation is on record showing how, in numer- 

 ous cases, the research laboratory has been 

 a tremendous profit to industry. In some 

 cases the research laboratory is devoted 

 almost entirely to the development of new 

 processes and products, and it would ap- 

 pear that the Germans have most success- 

 fully applied this method, and that their 

 commercial high standing in chemical 

 manufacture has been more due to this 

 than to any superiority in methods or econ- 

 omies in manufacturing. While this is 

 true, it appears to the writer that the re- 

 search laboratory has another function not 

 usually recognized. If I were to try to 



