A October  1915™'}  Contributions  to  Industrial  Chemistry.  465 
SOME  AMERICAN  CONTRIBUTIONS  TO  INDUSTRIAL 
CHEMISTRY.1 
By  Samuel  P.  Sadtler.,  Ph.D. 
You  will  notice  that  I  have  limited  the  subject  matter  of  my 
brief  address  to  what  I  call  American  Contributions  to  the  Field 
of  Industrial  Chemistry.  And  even  this  field  I  will  restrict  by 
leaving  to  one  side  the  discussion  of  what  we  have  contributed  to 
well-established  industries  of  European  origin,  or  how  we  have 
worked  on  lines  already  clearly  mapped  out  for  us  by  the  prior 
establishment  and  successful  operation  of  those  industries  abroad. 
I  do  not  wish  to  say  that  such  contributions  of  American  Chem- 
ists to  some  of  the  older  and  long-established  industries  have  been  of 
so  slight  a  value  as  to  be  unworthy  of  mention.  On  the  contrary, 
the  part  that  American  chemists  and  engineers  have  taken  in  the 
development  of  some  of  the  older  industries,  such  as  the  manu- 
facture of  acids,  alkalies,  and  of  heavy  chemicals,  of  pigments  of 
soaps  and  glycerin,  paper-making,  leather  manufacture,  and  cer- 
tain metallurgical  lines,  has  been  quite  important.  Most  of  this 
has  received  deserved  recognition  in  the  series  of  reports  prepared 
within  the  last  year  for  the  Industrial  Division  of  the  American 
Chemical  Society  and  published  in  its  Journal  of  Industrial  and 
Engine  ering  Chet  nistry . 
However,  there  are  some  very  important  chemical  industries  that 
took  their  start  with  us  in  this  country  and  have  been  developed, 
too.  in  most  cases,  to  nourishing  condition  without  borrowing  any 
notable  help  from  abroad.  These  we  should  point  out  to  those  of  the 
public  who  have  not  learned  that  we  have  anything  distinctively 
our  own  as  yet.  and  who  think  that  because  we  cannot  command 
our  ante-bellum  supplies  of  potash  and  organic  dye-colors  at  pre- 
sent we  must  start  in  and  establish  the  manufacture  of  chemicals  as 
a  new  venture  for  this  country. 
With  the  wonderful  richness  of  this  country  in  the  raw  ma- 
terials which  lie  at  the  basis  of  chemical  industries,  and  with  the 
well-known  inventive  and  mechanical  turn  of  our  people,  we  would 
be  greatly  disappointed  if  we  did  not  find  some  results  in  the  way 
of  the  establishment  of  new  and  distinctive  lines  of  manufacture 
1  Address  before  the  National  Exposition  of  Chemical  Industries,  held  at 
New  York,  September  24,  191 5. 
