SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY. 
vat-dyes now manufactured are so inert towards the agencies which 
promote decay that they persist unchanged in shade even after the fabric 
carrying them has rotted away. 
Fewer industries than that of coal-tar colour manufacture reveal 
more clearly the necessity for continual chemical investigation of a 
highly original order for the purpose of securing such developments as 
will best serve the incessant demand for improvement; like all chemical 
industries it depends for progress upon the intimate association of ad- 
vance both in the science of chemistry and in the art of engineering, 
but this association of very diverse factors is less evident in most other 
large industries. |The national importance of the synthetic dye indus- 
try has at length been brought home to our administrators, and Govern- 
ment support is now being extended to attempts, strenuous but tardy, 
to establish manufacture and invention on a scale commensurate with 
the needs of the Empire. The facility with which we have allowed 
German enterprise and industry to develop the artificial colour industry 
is.surprising when we reflect that our colonies were at one time pro- 
ducers of the main bulk of the world’s indigo supply; we allowed syn- 
thetic German indigo to oust British-grown natural indigo from the 
market absolutely without any attempt at competition from our colonial 
growers. Natural indigo has qualities as a dyestuff, due to its con- 
tent of other and allied colouring matters, which render it in many ways 
superior to the pure synthetic material; it is in the highest degree pro- 
bable that the scientific cultivation of the indigo plant, the scientific 
improvement of the archaic methods still in use for extracting the dye 
from the plant, and the scientific standardization of the natural pro- 
duct, would have effectually prevented synthetic indigo from gaining a 
remunerative market. Much valuable work has been done recently by 
Armstrong and Davis on the improvement of the cultivation and extrac- 
tion of natural indigo. A very similar problem arose when economic rea- 
sons led to the need for extending the beet-sugar industry in competition 
with cane-sugar; seventy years ago the German manufacturers separated 
from the beet about 5 per cent. by weight of sugar; by scientific cultiva- 
tion and scientific extraction they succeeded in separating from the beet 
more than 20 per cent. of its weight of sugar. If the yield of indigo 
from the plant could be similarly increased fourfold synthetic indigo 
would disippear from the market. 
Innumerable other instances might be quoted to show that neglect 
of the Imperial aspects of certain great branches of chemical science 
has led us to the brink of disaster. For high-class pharmaceutical 
products, for glass apparatus such as chemical Fn and optical appli- 
ances, for many essential metallic elements and alloys, and for other 
raw materials and final merchantable articles, all needing in their ~ 
manufacture the application of perfected chemical methods, we have 
been content to rely on continental industry and foresight; very often, 
indeed, we have neglected natural sources which occur solely in certain 
- parts of the British Empire and have allowed the German manufacturer 
to acquire the monopoly of their exploitation. 
The dangers which result from complacency such as this may, per- 
haps, not be immediately obvious in times of peace, but the establish- 
ment of a state of war renders them imminent. Previous to the war 
ATA 
