Miscellaneous Notes

THE CHEMIST IN AMERICAN INDUSTRY.

AN ADDRESS BY THE AUTHOR IN BOSTON.

We ought to have more chemistry in our industries. We have been working a great many years empirically and practically and without a knowledge of why. Our practical men know how but not why, and it is the technical man that knows how and why, and he is the man we want in our factories and mills.

I am not going to take a personal view of this at all, because I am a textile manufacturer as well as a chemical man or a dyestuff man. I happen to have a mill in Massachusetts. I am sorry it is in Massachusetts since one of your laws went into effect here; but I am not going to move it. I am going to come occasionally and look after it.

Nevertheless, the textile industry is the industry that has fostered chemistry. I am not speaking of inorganic chemistry. I am not speaking of the manufacture of acids in a large way, but I am speaking of the highly developed and organized chemistry-the manufacture of dyestuffs in particular, which interests us all and about which we hear a great deal with reference to fostering the industry. The Germans have got that industry. It is fifty years ago-fifty-two or fifty-three years ago, to be exact-that the first aniline colors were discovered in England. England had a monopoly at first: England has lost it. France came along, France lost it and Germany has got it. We claim to manufacture on this side. I have a factory; it is a

joke, but it is a factory just the same. It is not a joke in the fact that it doesn't pay, you know, that is serious, but I mean as compared to a factory in the sense of an industry.

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There are some things we make here and make them well. But let us take this matter of dyestuffs. We are importing these things from Germany. Germany has given time and attention. The German is a plodder. He is a natural-born investigator. We get a chemist into a mill and if he does not discover something in six months we fire him. He has got to discover something. We don't give a man a chance to go in and spend his life practically in charge of scientific work. do not have any chemical industry in this country. pirates; we have stolen some things and they are getting around, but we have not developed anything in the chemical line. As a matter of fact, let me say to you, there has not been one factory anywhere in the world, not even in Germany, started within twenty years making these compounds. It has developed gradually in the hands of a few concerns that have become enormous. And when we talk about building up an industry we do it, we claim, as a protection for labor. The chemical industry requires less labor than any other industry in the world. And if it will not bore you, I am going to give you a few figures.

We talk about controlling manufacture on this side of the ocean. It is a grand thing. We grant patents to foreigners and they do not have to operate under them in this country. Formerly we did not have to operate in Germany. We had a perfect right to hold patents in Germany without operating, and so it became a matter of policy to make us manufacture in Germany, and they were going to enforce the law. Then we found there were hundreds and thousands of American patents held in Germany that were not being worked, and then the conditions changed. Most of the patents on mechanical toys, musical toys, and phonographs are held by Americans. Those people have now got to manufacture in Germany, and so it is said that the Germans should come here to manufacture. Who says so? A

few theorists. And if they did so, let us see what it would amount to in the dyestuff industry. There are three large plants about on a level and I don't believe any one of them employs, all told, over 8000 or 9000 hands. There are probably thirty smaller plants, but I will guarantee there are not 50,000 workmen employed in the entire industry in Germany that manufactures for the entire world.

Now, what would it amount to if we made all our dyestuffs in this country? There would not be 10,000 people employed in the United States to make all our stuff if we made it all ourselves. And who would pay for it? There would be more people employed on the commercial side, the merchandizing, and distributing, and that is our great expense here. And who would pay for it? The manufacturer, the consumer on this side, the man who is using these things and puts them in his finished material and then tries to export.

Now, what is the use? We need the chemist, we ought to have the chemist to reduce our processes and to teach us to use every scientific means we can. But when we talk about undertaking to make the things here that we get from Germany, I say, let us alone; we are doing well enough. We are paying no more than they are in Germany and every dollar's worth of tariff put on is just so much added to the cost. The duty does not reduce the price here; on the contrary, it gives the American manufacturer a chance to bolster his prices. You have got to pay duty on the foreign price, no matter what it is, and you save nothing that way. I mention this because it was touched on in the last tariff bill. I took a stand against it and I believe the manufacturers ought to realize that situation.

The dyestuff interest is dependent mostly upon the textile industry for the demand for its product. We used to use a few colors outside in food products before Wiley got on the job and stopped it. But it is the textiles that take the dyestuff, and I believe that the manufacturer ought to realize, and Mr. Bennett has known for twenty-five years that he has been in

touch with it, what a change has taken place. The natural products have been driven out one by one. To-day the only one left that is not made in the laboratory is logwood, and it is only a question now when that will be going. It is largely replaced by wool, and it will soon disappear altogether. Indigo is gone, madder is gone, all the old natural dyestuffs have been replaced one by one. Conditions are improving and prices coming down gradually and faster colors being developed until, today, we have got a full and complete line. They cannot be made here. And then this knowledge which is gained in the laboratory is an invaluable factor. The young chemist coming out of the school is very good, but he needs experience. They have got it over there; they have had it. Within fifty years a concern that I have in mind has grown from three employees to 7000.

I am going to give you those figures. It will only take a moment and these are the figures of one of the three plants.

In this plant there are 7210 employees at work, 360 foremen and 282 chemists. Now, imagine an American plant with over half a dozen chemists anywhere. There is not one, excepting chemical works, with half a dozen chemists. Sixty-three technical men are employed, including engineers, etc., and the commercial department, excluding the selling staff, employs 585.

Of real estate, there are 470 acres, of which 78 acres are under roof, with 35 miles of railroad track in the plant, with 77 houses for officials, and 800 houses for workmen. There are 151 boilers with a heating surface of 208,250 square feet; 238 steam engines with 16,240 horsepower; 78 electric motors of 8750 horsepower. The daily consumption of coal is 750 tons; water 21,250,000 gallons; gas 516,500 cubic feet; ice 1,000,000 pounds a day and that is not all for highballs either. They use ice for cooling various things, I suppose.

incoming, 173,600

The yearly shipments by railroad are: tons; outgoing, 124,500 tons; by water: incoming, 268,000 tons; outgoing, 61,700 tons.