198 
CLARKE. 
is evident. We still import heavily, and depend upon Europe 
for many chemical products which ought to be manufactured 
here. In some special lines our goods are among the best; 
in others we are wofully backward. To some extent our 
tariff and revenue legislation has had a bad effect upon our 
chemical manufactures (as, for example, in increasing the 
cost of alcohol), and certain defects in our methods of scien¬ 
tific teaching have also been to blame. To this subject I 
shall recur presently. In metallurgical processes the United 
States can hold its own, however, and especially in those 
which involve the application of electricity. The electrical 
furnace, for instance, as it is used in the manufacture of 
aluminum, is distinctly an American invention, and the 
electrolytic refining of copper is carried out in this country 
on a scale unknown elsewhere. 
If we consider the subject of applied chemistry at all 
broadly, we shall at once see that it has several distinct 
aims—such as the discovery of new products, the improve¬ 
ment of processes, and the utilization of waste materials. It 
seeks also to increase the accuracy of methods, to make in¬ 
dustrial enterprises more precise, and therefore more certainly 
fruitful; in short, to replace empiricism by science. It is, 
perhaps, in this direction that applied chemistry has made its 
most notable advances in America, and that within compara¬ 
tively recent years. Three decades ago even our greatest 
manufacturing establishments employed chemists only in a 
sporadic fashion, sending occasional jobs to private laborator¬ 
ies, and then only after counting the cost most parsimoniously. 
Except in a few dye-houses and calico printeries, the chemist 
was not fully appreciated; great losses were often sustained 
for lack of the services which he could have rendered, and 
the cost of goods was therefore higher than was necessary. 
By degrees, however, a change was brought about. One 
effect of industrial competition was to narrow margins and 
to render greater accuracy of manipulation imperative, and 
so the chemist was brought upon the scene. Today it is 
almost the universal custom among manufacturers to main- 
