SULPHUR: AN EXAMPLE OF INDUSTRIAL INDE- 
PENDENCE. 
By Joseph E. Pogue, 
Of the Division of Mineral Technology, United States National Museum. 
INTRODUCTION. 
Sulphur is a chemical element of major importance to man. In 
addition to its utilization in practically every form of industry, it 
enters into the make-up of both vegetable and animal tissue and 
is consequently essential to life itself. The small portion required 
for the maintenance of life is supplied in sufficient quantity by the 
soil, but the needs of industry can be met only by recourse to the 
mining of those parts of the earth’s crust in which concentrated 
deposits of sulphur minerals exist. While the amount of sulphur 
consumed by a modern nation is small in comparison with the enor- 
mous tonnages of iron or coal demanded, its application is neverthe- 
less so varied and fundamental that control of an adequate supply 
is essential to industrial independence . 1 
Without sulphur the manufacture of commercial rubber would 
cease and in turn the countless activities dependent upon the use of 
rubber. Without it a great number of chemical industries would be 
crippled, involving the loss of hundreds of products catering to the 
needs of the individual as well as to the machinery of state, such as 
paper, gunpowder, medicinal preparations, bleaches, dyes, insecti- 
cides, and matches. And with no sulphuric acid, the manufacture of 
commercial fertilizers and of many explosives, not to mention an 
interminable list of other important products, would be impossible. 
The provision of an adequate source of sulphur properly admin- 
istered thus assumes the significance of a national responsibility, in 
which the individual has the concern of direct personal welfare as 
well as that dictated by his share in the obligations of state. To con- 
tribute to an understanding of how adequately this responsibility for 
1 The importance of industrial independence in respect to mineral products 
has been clearly demonstrated during the course of the World War when this 
country was cut off from foreign supplies of such substances as pyrite, man- 
ganese, potash, mica, graphite, and others, which were not produced in the 
United States in sufficient quantities to meet domestic needs. 
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