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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Creative Chemistry, by Edwin E. Slosson
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Creative Chemistry
+       Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries
+
+
+Author: Edwin E. Slosson
+
+
+
+Release Date: November 24, 2005  [eBook #17149]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CREATIVE CHEMISTRY***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Kevin Handy, John Hagerson, Josephine Paolucci, and the
+Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+(https://www.pgdp.net/)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 17149-h.htm or 17149-h.zip:
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/7/1/4/17149/17149-h/17149-h.htm)
+      or
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/7/1/4/17149/17149-h.zip)
+
+
+Transcriber's notes:
+
+   Underscores before and after words denote italics.
+
+   Underscore and {} denote subscripts.
+
+   Footnotes moved to end of book.
+
+   The book starts using the word "CHAPTER" only after its chapter
+   number XI. I have left it the same in this text.
+
+
+
+
+
+The Century Books of Useful Science
+
+CREATIVE CHEMISTRY
+
+Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries
+
+by
+
+EDWIN E. SLOSSON, M.S., PH.D.
+
+Literary Editor of _The Independent_, Associate in Columbia School of
+Journalism
+
+Author of "Great American Universities," "Major Prophets of Today," "Six
+Major Prophets," "On Acylhalogenamine Derivatives and the Beckmann
+Rearrangement," "Composition of Wyoming Petroleum," etc.
+
+With Many Illustrations
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration (Decorative)]
+
+
+
+New York
+The Century Co.
+Copyright, 1919, by
+The Century Co.
+Copyright, 1917, 1918, 1919, by
+The Independent Corporation
+Published, October, 1919
+
+
+
+[Illustration: From "America's Munitions"
+
+
+
+THE PRODUCTION OF NEW AND STRONGER FORMS OF STEEL IS ONE OF THE GREATEST
+TRIUMPHS OF MODERN CHEMISTRY
+
+The photograph shows the manufacture of a 12-inch gun at the plant of
+the Midvale Steel Company during the late war. The gun tube, 41 feet
+long, has just been drawn from the furnace where it was tempered at
+white heat and is now ready for quenching.]
+
+
+
+
+TO MY FIRST TEACHER
+
+PROFESSOR E.H.S. BAILEY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS
+
+AND MY LAST TEACHER
+
+PROFESSOR JULIUS STIEGLITZ OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
+
+THIS VOLUME IS GRATEFULLY DEDICATED
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+I THREE PERIODS OF PROGRESS                    3
+
+II NITROGEN                                   14
+
+III FEEDING THE SOIL                          37
+
+IV COAL-TAR COLORS                            60
+
+V SYNTHETIC PERFUMES AND FLAVORS              93
+
+VI CELLULOSE                                 110
+
+VII SYNTHETIC PLASTICS                       128
+
+VIII THE RACE FOR RUBBER                     145
+
+IX THE RIVAL SUGARS                          164
+
+X WHAT COMES FROM CORN                       181
+
+XI SOLIDIFIED SUNSHINE                       196
+
+XII FIGHTING WITH FUMES                      218
+
+XIII PRODUCTS OF THE ELECTRIC FURNACE        236
+
+XIV METALS, OLD AND NEW                      263
+
+READING REFERENCES                           297
+
+INDEX                                        309
+
+
+
+
+A CARD OF THANKS
+
+
+This book originated in a series of articles prepared for _The
+Independent_ in 1917-18 for the purpose of interesting the general
+reader in the recent achievements of industrial chemistry and providing
+supplementary reading for students of chemistry in colleges and high
+schools. I am indebted to Hamilton Holt, editor of _The Independent_,
+and to Karl V.S. Howland, its publisher, for stimulus and opportunity to
+undertake the writing of these pages and for the privilege of reprinting
+them in this form.
+
+In gathering the material for this volume I have received the kindly aid
+of so many companies and individuals that it is impossible to thank them
+all but I must at least mention as those to whom I am especially
+grateful for information, advice and criticism: Thomas H. Norton of the
+Department of Commerce; Dr. Bernhard C. Hesse; H.S. Bailey of the
+Department of Agriculture; Professor Julius Stieglitz of the University
+of Chicago; L.E. Edgar of the Du Pont de Nemours Company; Milton Whitney
+of the U.S. Bureau of Soils; Dr. H.N. McCoy; K.F. Kellerman of the
+Bureau of Plant Industry.
+
+E.E.S.
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+The production of new and stronger forms of steel is one
+of the greatest triumphs of modern chemistry      _Frontispiece_
+
+                                                    FACING PAGE
+
+The hand grenades contain potential chemical energy
+capable of causing a vast amount of destruction
+when released                                             16
+
+Women in a munition plant engaged in the manufacture
+of tri-nitro-toluol                                       17
+
+A chemical reaction on a large scale                      32
+
+Burning air in a Birkeland-Eyde furnace at the DuPont
+plant                                                     33
+
+A battery of Birkeland-Eyde furnaces for the fixation of
+nitrogen at the DuPont plant                              33
+
+Fixing nitrogen by calcium carbide                        40
+
+A barrow full of potash salts extracted from six tons of
+green kelp by the government chemists                     41
+
+Nature's silent method of nitrogen fixation               41
+
+In order to secure a new supply of potash salts the United
+States Government set up an experimental plant at
+Sutherland, California, for utilization of kelp           52
+
+Overhead suction at the San Diego wharf pumping kelp
+from the barge to the digestion tanks                     53
+
+The kelp harvester gathering the seaweed from the Pacific
+Ocean                                                     53
+
+A battery of Koppers by-product coke-ovens at the plant
+of the Bethlehem Steel Company, Sparrows Point,
+Maryland                                                  60
+
+In these mixing vats at the Buffalo Works, aniline dyes
+are prepared                                              61
+
+A paper mill in action                                   120
+
+Cellulose from wood pulp is now made into a large variety
+of useful articles of which a few examples are here
+pictured                                                 121
+
+Plantation rubber                                        160
+
+Forest rubber                                            160
+
+In making garden hose the rubber is formed into a tube
+by the machine on the right and coiled on the table
+to the left                                              161
+
+The rival sugars                                         176
+
+Interior of a sugar mill showing the machinery for crushing
+cane to extract the juice                                177
+
+Vacuum pans of the American Sugar Refinery Company       177
+
+Cotton seed oil as it is squeezed from the seed
+by the presses                                           200
+
+Cotton seed oil as it comes from the compressors flowing
+out of the faucets                                       201
+
+Splitting coconuts on the island of Tahiti               216
+
+The electric current passing through salt water in these
+cells decomposes the salt into caustic soda and
+chlorine gas                                             217
+
+Germans starting a gas attack on the Russian lines       224
+
+Filling the cannisters of gas masks with charcoal made
+from fruit pits--Long Island City                        225
+
+The chlorpicrin plant at the Bdgewood Arsenal            234
+
+Repairing the broken stern post of the _U.S.S. Northern
+Pacific_, the biggest marine weld in the world           235
+
+Making aloxite in the electric furnaces by fusing coke
+and bauxite                                              240
+
+A block of carborundum crystals                          241
+
+Making carborundum in the electric furnace               241
+
+Types of gas mask used by America, the Allies and Germany
+during the war                                           256
+
+Pumping melted white phosphorus into hand grenades
+filled with water--Edgewood Arsenal                      257
+
+Filling shell with "mustard gas"                         257
+
+Photomicrographs showing the structure of steel made by
+Professor E.G. Mahin of Purdue University                272
+
+The microscopic structure of metals                      273
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+BY JULIUS STIEGLITZ
+
+Formerly President of the American Chemical Society, Professor of
+Chemistry in The University of Chicago
+
+
+The recent war as never before in the history of the world brought to
+the nations of the earth a realization of the vital place which the
+science of chemistry holds in the development of the resources of a
+nation. Some of the most picturesque features of this awakening reached
+the great public through the press. Thus, the adventurous trips of the
+_Deutschland_ with its cargoes of concentrated aniline dyes, valued at
+millions of dollars, emphasized as no other incident our former
+dependence upon Germany for these products of her chemical industries.
+
+The public read, too, that her chemists saved Germany from an early
+disastrous defeat, both in the field of military operations and in the
+matter of economic supplies: unquestionably, without the tremendous
+expansion of her plants for the production of nitrates and ammonia from
+the air by the processes of Haber, Ostwald and others of her great
+chemists, the war would have ended in 1915, or early in 1916, from
+exhaustion of Germany's supplies of nitrate explosives, if not indeed
+from exhaustion of her food supplies as a consequence of the lack of
+nitrate and ammonia fertilizer for her fields. Inventions of substitutes
+for cotton, copper, rubber, wool and many other basic needs have been
+reported.
+
+These feats of chemistry, performed under the stress of dire necessity,
+have, no doubt, excited the wonder and interest of our public. It is far
+more important at this time, however, when both for war and for peace
+needs, the resources of our country are strained to the utmost, that the
+public should awaken to a clear realization of what this science of
+chemistry really means for mankind, to the realization that its wizardry
+permeates the whole life of the nation as a vitalizing, protective and
+constructive agent very much in the same way as our blood, coursing
+through our veins and arteries, carries the constructive, defensive and
+life-bringing materials to every organ in the body.
+
+If the layman will but understand that chemistry is the fundamental
+_science of the transformation of matter_, he will readily accept the
+validity of this sweeping assertion: he will realize, for instance, why
+exactly the same fundamental laws of the science apply to, and make
+possible scientific control of, such widely divergent national
+industries as agriculture and steel manufacturing. It governs the
+transformation of the salts, minerals and humus of our fields and the
+components of the air into corn, wheat, cotton and the innumerable other
+products of the soil; it governs no less the transformation of crude
+ores into steel and alloys, which, with the cunning born of chemical
+knowledge, may be given practically any conceivable quality of hardness,
+elasticity, toughness or strength. And exactly the same thing may be
+said of the hundreds of national activities that lie between the two
+extremes of agriculture and steel manufacture!
+
+Moreover, the domain of the science of the transformation of matter
+includes even life itself as its loftiest phase: from our birth to our
+return to dust the laws of chemistry are the controlling laws of life,
+health, disease and death, and the ever clearer recognition of this
+relation is the strongest force that is raising medicine from the
+uncertain realm of an art to the safer sphere of an exact science. To
+many scientific minds it has even become evident that those most
+wonderful facts of life, heredity and character, must find their final
+explanation in the chemical composition of the components of life
+producing, germinal protoplasm: mere form and shape are no longer
+supreme but are relegated to their proper place as the housing only of
+the living matter which functions chemically.
+
+It must be quite obvious now why thoughtful men are insisting that the
+public should be awakened to a broad realization of the significance of
+the science of chemistry for its national life.
+
+It is a difficult science in its details, because it has found that it
+can best interpret the visible phenomena of the material world on the
+basis of the conception of invisible minute material atoms and
+molecules, each a world in itself, whose properties may be nevertheless
+accurately deduced by a rigorous logic controlling the highest type of
+scientific imagination. But a layman is interested in the wonders of
+great bridges and of monumental buildings without feeling the need of
+inquiring into the painfully minute and extended calculations of the
+engineer and architect of the strains and stresses to which every pin
+and every bar of the great bridge and every bit of stone, every foot of
+arch in a monumental edifice, will be exposed. So the public may
+understand and appreciate with the keenest interest the results of
+chemical effort without the need of instruction in the intricacies of
+our logic, of our dealings with our minute, invisible particles.
+
+The whole nation's welfare demands, indeed, that our public be
+enlightened in the matter of the relation of chemistry to our national
+life. Thus, if our commerce and our industries are to survive the
+terrific competition that must follow the re�stablishment of peace, our
+public must insist that its representatives in Congress preserve that
+independence in chemical manufacturing which the war has forced upon us
+in the matter of dyes, of numberless invaluable remedies to cure and
+relieve suffering; in the matter, too, of hundreds of chemicals, which
+our industries need for their successful existence.
+
+Unless we are independent in these fields, how easily might an
+unscrupulous competing nation do us untold harm by the mere device, for
+instance, of delaying supplies, or by sending inferior materials to this
+country or by underselling our chemical manufacturers and, after the
+destruction of our chemical independence, handicapping our industries as
+they were in the first year or two of the great war! This is not a mere
+possibility created by the imagination, for our economic history
+contains instance after instance of the purposeful undermining and
+destruction of our industries in finer chemicals, dyes and drugs by
+foreign interests bent on preserving their monopoly. If one recalls that
+through control, for instance, of dyes by a competing nation, control is
+in fact also established over products, valued in the hundreds of
+millions of dollars, in which dyes enter as an essential factor, one
+may realize indeed the tremendous industrial and commercial power which
+is controlled by the single lever--chemical dyes. Of even more vital
+moment is chemistry in the domain of health: the pitiful calls of our
+hospitals for local anesthetics to alleviate suffering on the operating
+table, the frantic appeals for the hypnotic that soothes the epileptic
+and staves off his seizure, the almost furious demands for remedy after
+remedy, that came in the early years of the war, are still ringing in
+the hearts of many of us. No wonder that our small army of chemists is
+grimly determined not to give up the independence in chemistry which war
+has achieved for us! Only a widely enlightened public, however, can
+insure the permanence of what farseeing men have started to accomplish
+in developing the power of chemistry through research in every domain
+which chemistry touches.
+
+The general public should realize that in the support of great chemical
+research laboratories of universities and technical schools it will be
+sustaining important centers from which the science which improves
+products, abolishes waste, establishes new industries and preserves
+life, may reach out helpfully into all the activities of our great
+nation, that are dependent on the transformation of matter.
+
+The public is to be congratulated upon the fact that the writer of the
+present volume is better qualified than any other man in the country to
+bring home to his readers some of the great results of modern chemical
+activity as well as some of the big problems which must continue to
+engage the attention of our chemists. Dr. Slosson has indeed the unique
+quality of combining an exact and intimate knowledge of chemistry with
+the exquisite clarity and pointedness of expression of a born writer.
+
+We have here an exposition by a master mind, an exposition shorn of the
+terrifying and obscuring technicalities of the lecture room, that will
+be as absorbing reading as any thrilling romance. For the story of
+scientific achievement is the greatest epic the world has ever known,
+and like the great national epics of bygone ages, should quicken the
+life of the nation by a realization of its powers and a picture of its
+possibilities.
+
+
+
+
+CREATIVE CHEMISTRY
+
+     La Chimie poss�de cette facult� cr�atrice � un degr� plus
+     �minent que les autres sciences, parce qu'elle p�n�tre plus
+     profond�ment et atteint jusqu'aux �l�ments naturels des �tres.
+
+     --_Berthelot_.
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+THREE PERIODS OF PROGRESS
+
+
+The story of Robinson Crusoe is an allegory of human history. Man is a
+castaway upon a desert planet, isolated from other inhabited worlds--if
+there be any such--by millions of miles of untraversable space. He is
+absolutely dependent upon his own exertions, for this world of his, as
+Wells says, has no imports except meteorites and no exports of any kind.
+Man has no wrecked ship from a former civilization to draw upon for
+tools and weapons, but must utilize as best he may such raw materials as
+he can find. In this conquest of nature by man there are three stages
+distinguishable:
+
+  1. The Appropriative Period
+  2. The Adaptive Period
+  3. The Creative Period
+
+These eras overlap, and the human race, or rather its vanguard,
+civilized man, may be passing into the third stage in one field of human
+endeavor while still lingering in the second or first in some other
+respect. But in any particular line this sequence is followed. The
+primitive man picks up whatever he can find available for his use. His
+successor in the next stage of culture shapes and develops this crude
+instrument until it becomes more suitable for his purpose. But in the
+course of time man often finds that he can make something new which is
+better than anything in nature or naturally produced. The savage
+discovers. The barbarian improves. The civilized man invents. The first
+finds. The second fashions. The third fabricates.
+
+The primitive man was a troglodyte. He sought shelter in any cave or
+crevice that he could find. Later he dug it out to make it more roomy
+and piled up stones at the entrance to keep out the wild beasts. This
+artificial barricade, this false fa�ade, was gradually extended and
+solidified until finally man could build a cave for himself anywhere in
+the open field from stones he quarried out of the hill. But man was not
+content with such materials and now puts up a building which may be
+composed of steel, brick, terra cotta, glass, concrete and plaster, none
+of which materials are to be found in nature.
+
+The untutored savage might cross a stream astride a floating tree trunk.
+By and by it occurred to him to sit inside the log instead of on it, so
+he hollowed it out with fire or flint. Later, much later, he constructed
+an ocean liner.
+
+Cain, or whoever it was first slew his brother man, made use of a stone
+or stick. Afterward it was found a better weapon could be made by tying
+the stone to the end of the stick, and as murder developed into a fine
+art the stick was converted into the bow and this into the catapult and
+finally into the cannon, while the stone was developed into the high
+explosive projectile. The first music to soothe the savage breast was
+the soughing of the wind through the trees. Then strings were stretched
+across a crevice for the wind to play upon and there was the �olian
+harp. The second stage was entered when Hermes strung the tortoise shell
+and plucked it with his fingers and when Athena, raising the wind from
+her own lungs, forced it through a hollow reed. From these beginnings we
+have the organ and the orchestra, producing such sounds as nothing in
+nature can equal.
+
+The first idol was doubtless a meteorite fallen from heaven or a
+fulgurite or concretion picked up from the sand, bearing some slight
+resemblance to a human being. Later man made gods in his own image, and
+so sculpture and painting grew until now the creations of futuristic art
+could be worshiped--if one wanted to--without violation of the second
+commandment, for they are not the likeness of anything that is in heaven
+above or that is in the earth beneath or that is in the water under the
+earth.
+
+In the textile industry the same development is observable. The
+primitive man used the skins of animals he had slain to protect his own
+skin. In the course of time he--or more probably his wife, for it is to
+the women rather than to the men that we owe the early steps in the arts
+and sciences--fastened leaves together or pounded out bark to make
+garments. Later fibers were plucked from the sheepskin, the cocoon and
+the cotton-ball, twisted together and woven into cloth. Nowadays it is
+possible to make a complete suit of clothes, from hat to shoes, of any
+desirable texture, form and color, and not include any substance to be
+found in nature. The first metals available were those found free in
+nature such as gold and copper. In a later age it was found possible to
+extract iron from its ores and today we have artificial alloys made of
+multifarious combinations of rare metals. The medicine man dosed his
+patients with decoctions of such roots and herbs as had a bad taste or
+queer look. The pharmacist discovered how to extract from these their
+medicinal principle such as morphine, quinine and cocaine, and the
+creative chemist has discovered how to make innumerable drugs adapted to
+specific diseases and individual idiosyncrasies.
+
+In the later or creative stages we enter the domain of chemistry, for it
+is the chemist alone who possesses the power of reducing a substance to
+its constituent atoms and from them producing substances entirely new.
+But the chemist has been slow to realize his unique power and the world
+has been still slower to utilize his invaluable services. Until recently
+indeed the leaders of chemical science expressly disclaimed what should
+have been their proudest boast. The French chemist Lavoisier in 1793
+defined chemistry as "the science of analysis." The German chemist
+Gerhardt in 1844 said: "I have demonstrated that the chemist works in
+opposition to living nature, that he burns, destroys, analyzes, that the
+vital force alone operates by synthesis, that it reconstructs the
+edifice torn down by the chemical forces."
+
+It is quite true that chemists up to the middle of the last century were
+so absorbed in the destructive side of their science that they were
+blind to the constructive side of it. In this respect they were less
+prescient than their contemned predecessors, the alchemists, who,
+foolish and pretentious as they were, aspired at least to the formation
+of something new.
+
+It was, I think, the French chemist Berthelot who first clearly
+perceived the double aspect of chemistry, for he defined it as "the
+science of analysis _and synthesis_," of taking apart and of putting
+together. The motto of chemistry, as of all the empirical sciences, is
+_savoir c'est pouvoir_, to know in order to do. This is the pragmatic
+test of all useful knowledge. Berthelot goes on to say:
+
+     Chemistry creates its object. This creative faculty, comparable
+     to that of art itself, distinguishes it essentially from the
+     natural and historical sciences.... These sciences do not
+     control their object. Thus they are too often condemned to an
+     eternal impotence in the search for truth of which they must
+     content themselves with possessing some few and often uncertain
+     fragments. On the contrary, the experimental sciences have the
+     power to realize their conjectures.... What they dream of that
+     they can manifest in actuality....
+
+     Chemistry possesses this creative faculty to a more eminent
+     degree than the other sciences because it penetrates more
+     profoundly and attains even to the natural elements of
+     existences.
+
+Since Berthelot's time, that is, within the last fifty years, chemistry
+has won its chief triumphs in the field of synthesis. Organic chemistry,
+that is, the chemistry of the carbon compounds, so called because it was
+formerly assumed, as Gerhardt says, that they could only be formed by
+"vital force" of organized plants and animals, has taken a development
+far overshadowing inorganic chemistry, or the chemistry of mineral
+substances. Chemists have prepared or know how to prepare hundreds of
+thousands of such "organic compounds," few of which occur in the natural
+world.
+
+But this conception of chemistry is yet far from having been accepted by
+the world at large. This was brought forcibly to my attention during the
+publication of these chapters in "The Independent" by various letters,
+raising such objections as the following:
+
+     When you say in your article on "What Comes from Coal Tar" that
+     "Art can go ahead of nature in the dyestuff business" you have
+     doubtless for the moment allowed your enthusiasm to sweep you
+     away from the moorings of reason. Shakespeare, anticipating you
+     and your "Creative Chemistry," has shown the utter
+     untenableness of your position:
+
+            Nature is made better by no mean,
+            But nature makes that mean: so o'er that art,
+            Which, you say, adds to nature, is an art
+            That nature makes.
+
+     How can you say that art surpasses nature when you know very
+     well that nothing man is able to make can in any way equal the
+     perfection of all nature's products?
+
+     It is blasphemous of you to claim that man can improve the
+     works of God as they appear in nature. Only the Creator can
+     create. Man only imitates, destroys or defiles God's handiwork.
+
+No, it was not in momentary absence of mind that I claimed that man
+could improve upon nature in the making of dyes. I not only said it, but
+I proved it. I not only proved it, but I can back it up. I will give a
+million dollars to anybody finding in nature dyestuffs as numerous,
+varied, brilliant, pure and cheap as those that are manufactured in the
+laboratory. I haven't that amount of money with me at the moment, but
+the dyers would be glad to put it up for the discovery of a satisfactory
+natural source for their tinctorial materials. This is not an opinion of
+mine but a matter of fact, not to be decided by Shakespeare, who was not
+acquainted with the aniline products.
+
+Shakespeare in the passage quoted is indulging in his favorite amusement
+of a play upon words. There is a possible and a proper sense of the word
+"nature" that makes it include everything except the supernatural.
+Therefore man and all his works belong to the realm of nature. A
+tenement house in this sense is as "natural" as a bird's nest, a peapod
+or a crystal.
+
+But such a wide extension of the term destroys its distinctive value. It
+is more convenient and quite as correct to use "nature" as I have used
+it, in contradistinction to "art," meaning by the former the products of
+the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms, excluding the designs,
+inventions and constructions of man which we call "art."
+
+We cannot, in a general and abstract fashion, say which is superior, art
+or nature, because it all depends on the point of view. The worm loves a
+rotten log into which he can bore. Man prefers a steel cabinet into
+which the worm cannot bore. If man cannot improve Upon nature he has no
+motive for making anything. Artificial products are therefore superior
+to natural products as measured by man's convenience, otherwise they
+would have no reason for existence.
+
+Science and Christianity are at one in abhorring the natural man and
+calling upon the civilized man to fight and subdue him. The conquest of
+nature, not the imitation of nature, is the whole duty of man.
+Metchnikoff and St. Paul unite in criticizing the body we were born
+with. St. Augustine and Huxley are in agreement as to the eternal
+conflict between man and nature. In his Romanes lecture on "Evolution
+and Ethics" Huxley said: "The ethical progress of society depends, not
+on imitating the cosmic process, still less on running away from it, but
+on combating it," and again: "The history of civilization details the
+steps by which man has succeeded in building up an artificial world
+within the cosmos."
+
+There speaks the true evolutionist, whose one desire is to get away from
+nature as fast and far as possible. Imitate Nature? Yes, when we cannot
+improve upon her. Admire Nature? Possibly, but be not blinded to her
+defects. Learn from Nature? We should sit humbly at her feet until we
+can stand erect and go our own way. Love Nature? Never! She is our
+treacherous and unsleeping foe, ever to be feared and watched and
+circumvented, for at any moment and in spite of all our vigilance she
+may wipe out the human race by famine, pestilence or earthquake and
+within a few centuries obliterate every trace of its achievement. The
+wild beasts that man has kept at bay for a few centuries will in the end
+invade his palaces: the moss will envelop his walls and the lichen
+disrupt them. The clam may survive man by as many millennia as it
+preceded him. In the ultimate devolution of the world animal life will
+disappear before vegetable, the higher plants will be killed off before
+the lower, and finally the three kingdoms of nature will be reduced to
+one, the mineral. Civilized man, enthroned in his citadel and defended
+by all the forces of nature that he has brought under his control, is
+after all in the same situation as a savage, shivering in the darkness
+beside his fire, listening to the pad of predatory feet, the rustle of
+serpents and the cry of birds of prey, knowing that only the fire keeps
+his enemies off, but knowing too that every stick he lays on the fire
+lessens his fuel supply and hastens the inevitable time when the beasts
+of the jungle will make their fatal rush.
+
+Chaos is the "natural" state of the universe. Cosmos is the rare and
+temporary exception. Of all the million spheres this is apparently the
+only one habitable and of this only a small part--the reader may draw
+the boundaries to suit himself--can be called civilized. Anarchy is the
+natural state of the human race. It prevailed exclusively all over the
+world up to some five thousand years ago, since which a few peoples have
+for a time succeeded in establishing a certain degree of peace and
+order. This, however, can be maintained only by strenuous and persistent
+efforts, for society tends naturally to sink into the chaos out of which
+it has arisen.
+
+It is only by overcoming nature that man can rise. The sole salvation
+for the human race lies in the removal of the primal curse, the sentence
+of hard labor for life that was imposed on man as he left Paradise. Some
+folks are trying to elevate the laboring classes; some are trying to
+keep them down. The scientist has a more radical remedy; he wants to
+annihilate the laboring classes by abolishing labor. There is no longer
+any need for human labor in the sense of personal toil, for the physical
+energy necessary to accomplish all kinds of work may be obtained from
+external sources and it can be directed and controlled without extreme
+exertion. Man's first effort in this direction was to throw part of his
+burden upon the horse and ox or upon other men. But within the last
+century it has been discovered that neither human nor animal servitude
+is necessary to give man leisure for the higher life, for by means of
+the machine he can do the work of giants without exhaustion. But the
+introduction of machines, like every other step of human progress, met
+with the most violent opposition from those it was to benefit. "Smash
+'em!" cried the workingman. "Smash 'em!" cried the poet. "Smash 'em!"
+cried the artist. "Smash 'em!" cried the theologian. "Smash 'em!" cried
+the magistrate. This opposition yet lingers and every new invention,
+especially in chemistry, is greeted with general distrust and often with
+legislative prohibition.
+
+Man is the tool-using animal, and the machine, that is, the power-driven
+tool, is his peculiar achievement. It is purely a creation of the human
+mind. The wheel, its essential feature, does not exist in nature. The
+lever, with its to-and-fro motion, we find in the limbs of all animals,
+but the continuous and revolving lever, the wheel, cannot be formed of
+bone and flesh. Man as a motive power is a poor thing. He can only
+convert three or four thousand calories of energy a day and he does that
+very inefficiently. But he can make an engine that will handle a hundred
+thousand times that, twice as efficiently and three times as long. In
+this way only can he get rid of pain and toil and gain the wealth he
+wants.
+
+Gradually then he will substitute for the natural world an artificial
+world, molded nearer to his heart's desire. Man the Artifex will
+ultimately master Nature and reign supreme over his own creation until
+chaos shall come again. In the ancient drama it was _deus ex machina_
+that came in at the end to solve the problems of the play. It is to the
+same supernatural agency, the divinity in machinery, that we must look
+for the salvation of society. It is by means of applied science that the
+earth can be made habitable and a decent human life made possible.
+Creative evolution is at last becoming conscious.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+NITROGEN
+
+PRESERVER AND DESTROYER OF LIFE
+
+
+In the eyes of the chemist the Great War was essentially a series of
+explosive reactions resulting in the liberation of nitrogen. Nothing
+like it has been seen in any previous wars. The first battles were
+fought with cellulose, mostly in the form of clubs. The next were fought
+with silica, mostly in the form of flint arrowheads and spear-points.
+Then came the metals, bronze to begin with and later iron. The
+nitrogenous era in warfare began when Friar Roger Bacon or Friar
+Schwartz--whichever it was--ground together in his mortar saltpeter,
+charcoal and sulfur. The Chinese, to be sure, had invented gunpowder
+long before, but they--poor innocents--did not know of anything worse to
+do with it than to make it into fire-crackers. With the introduction of
+"villainous saltpeter" war ceased to be the vocation of the nobleman and
+since the nobleman had no other vocation he began to become extinct. A
+bullet fired from a mile away is no respecter of persons. It is just as
+likely to kill a knight as a peasant, and a brave man as a coward. You
+cannot fence with a cannon ball nor overawe it with a plumed hat. The
+only thing you can do is to hide and shoot back. Now you cannot hide if
+you send up a column of smoke by day and a pillar of fire by night--the
+most conspicuous of signals--every time you shoot. So the next step was
+the invention of a smokeless powder. In this the oxygen necessary for
+the combustion is already in such close combination with its fuel, the
+carbon and hydrogen, that no black particles of carbon can get away
+unburnt. In the old-fashioned gunpowder the oxygen necessary for the
+combustion of the carbon and sulfur was in a separate package, in the
+molecule of potassium nitrate, and however finely the mixture was
+ground, some of the atoms, in the excitement of the explosion, failed to
+find their proper partners at the moment of dispersal. The new gunpowder
+besides being smokeless is ashless. There is no black sticky mass of
+potassium salts left to foul the gun barrel.
+
+The gunpowder period of warfare was actively initiated at the battle of
+Cressy, in which, as a contemporary historian says, "The English guns
+made noise like thunder and caused much loss in men and horses."
+Smokeless powder as invented by Paul Vieille was adopted by the French
+Government in 1887. This, then, might be called the beginning of the
+guncotton or nitrocellulose period--or, perhaps in deference to the
+caveman's club, the second cellulose period of human warfare. Better,
+doubtless, to call it the "high explosive period," for various other
+nitro-compounds besides guncotton are being used.
+
+The important thing to note is that all the explosives from gunpowder
+down contain nitrogen as the essential element. It is customary to call
+nitrogen "an inert element" because it was hard to get it into
+combination with other elements. It might, on the other hand, be looked
+upon as an active element because it acts so energetically in getting
+out of its compounds. We can dodge the question by saying that nitrogen
+is a most unreliable and unsociable element. Like Kipling's cat it walks
+by its wild lone.
+
+It is not so bad as Argon the Lazy and the other celibate gases of that
+family, where each individual atom goes off by itself and absolutely
+refuses to unite even temporarily with any other atom. The nitrogen
+atoms will pair off with each other and stick together, but they are
+reluctant to associate with other elements and when they do the
+combination is likely to break up any moment. You all know people like
+that, good enough when by themselves but sure to break up any club,
+church or society they get into. Now, the value of nitrogen in warfare
+is due to the fact that all the atoms desert in a body on the field of
+battle. Millions of them may be lying packed in a gun cartridge, as
+quiet as you please, but let a little disturbance start in the
+neighborhood--say a grain of mercury fulminate flares up--and all the
+nitrogen atoms get to trembling so violently that they cannot be
+restrained. The shock spreads rapidly through the whole mass. The
+hydrogen and carbon atoms catch up the oxygen and in an instant they are
+off on a stampede, crowding in every direction to find an exit, and
+getting more heated up all the time. The only movable side is the cannon
+ball in front, so they all pound against that and give it such a shove
+that it goes ten miles before it stops. The external bombardment by the
+cannon ball is, therefore, preceded by an internal bombardment on the
+cannon ball by the molecules of the hot gases, whose speed is about as
+great as the speed of the projectile that they propel.
+
+[Illustration: � Underwood & Underwood
+
+THE HAND GRENADES WHICH THESE WOMEN ARE BORING will contain potential
+chemical energy capable of causing a vast amount of destruction when
+released. During the war the American Government placed orders for
+68,000,000 such grenades as are here shown.]
+
+[Illustration: � International Film Service, Inc.
+
+WOMEN IN A MUNITION PLANT ENGAGED IN THE MANUFACTURE OF
+TRI-NITRO-TOLUOL, THE MOST IMPORTANT OF MODERN HIGH EXPLOSIVES]
+
+The active agent in all these explosives is the nitrogen atom in
+combination with two oxygen atoms, which the chemist calls the "nitro
+group" and which he represents by NO_{2}. This group was, as I have
+said, originally used in the form of saltpeter or potassium nitrate, but
+since the chemist did not want the potassium part of it--for it fouled
+his guns--he took the nitro group out of the nitrate by means of
+sulfuric acid and by the same means hooked it on to some compound of
+carbon and hydrogen that would burn without leaving any residue, and
+give nothing but gases. One of the simplest of these hydrocarbon
+derivatives is glycerin, the same as you use for sunburn. This mixed
+with nitric and sulfuric acids gives nitroglycerin, an easy thing to
+make, though I should not advise anybody to try making it unless he has
+his life insured. But nitroglycerin is uncertain stuff to keep and being
+a liquid is awkward to handle. So it was mixed with sawdust or porous
+earth or something else that would soak it up. This molded into sticks
+is our ordinary dynamite.
+
+If instead of glycerin we take cellulose in the form of wood pulp or
+cotton and treat this with nitric acid in the presence of sulfuric we
+get nitrocellulose or guncotton, which is the chief ingredient of
+smokeless powder.
+
+Now guncotton looks like common cotton. It is too light and loose to
+pack well into a gun. So it is dissolved with ether and alcohol or
+acetone to make a plastic mass that can be molded into rods and cut into
+grains of suitable shape and size to burn at the proper speed.
+
+Here, then, we have a liquid explosive, nitroglycerin, that has to be
+soaked up in some porous solid, and a porous solid, guncotton, that has
+to soak up some liquid. Why not solve both difficulties together by
+dissolving the guncotton in the nitroglycerin and so get a double
+explosive? This is a simple idea. Any of us can see the sense of
+it--once it is suggested to us. But Alfred Nobel, the Swedish chemist,
+who thought it out first in 1878, made millions out of it. Then,
+apparently alarmed at the possible consequences of his invention, he
+bequeathed the fortune he had made by it to found international prizes
+for medical, chemical and physical discoveries, idealistic literature
+and the promotion of peace. But his posthumous efforts for the
+advancement of civilization and the abolition of war did not amount to
+much and his high explosives were later employed to blow into pieces the
+doctors, chemists, authors and pacifists he wished to reward.
+
+Nobel's invention, "cordite," is composed of nitroglycerin and
+nitrocellulose with a little mineral jelly or vaseline. Besides cordite
+and similar mixtures of nitroglycerin and nitrocellulose there are two
+other classes of high explosives in common use.
+
+One is made from carbolic acid, which is familiar to us all by its use
+as a disinfectant. If this is treated with nitric and sulfuric acids we
+get from it picric acid, a yellow crystalline solid. Every government
+has its own secret formula for this type of explosive. The British call
+theirs "lyddite," the French "melinite" and the Japanese "shimose."
+
+The third kind of high explosives uses as its base toluol. This is not
+so familiar to us as glycerin, cotton or carbolic acid. It is one of the
+coal tar products, an inflammable liquid, resembling benzene. When
+treated with nitric acid in the usual way it takes up like the others
+three nitro groups and so becomes tri-nitro-toluol. Realizing that
+people could not be expected to use such a mouthful of a word, the
+chemists have suggested various pretty nicknames, trotyl, tritol,
+trinol, tolite and trilit, but the public, with the wilfulness it always
+shows in the matter of names, persists in calling it TNT, as though it
+were an author like G.B.S., or G.K.C, or F.P.A. TNT is the latest of
+these high explosives and in some ways the best of them. Picric acid has
+the bad habit of attacking the metals with which it rests in contact
+forming sensitive picrates that are easily set off, but TNT is inert
+toward metals and keeps well. TNT melts far below the boiling point of
+water so can be readily liquefied and poured into shells. It is
+insensitive to ordinary shocks. A rifle bullet can be fired through a
+case of it without setting it off, and if lighted with a match it burns
+quietly. The amazing thing about these modern explosives, the organic
+nitrates, is the way they will stand banging about and burning, yet the
+terrific violence with which they blow up when shaken by an explosive
+wave of a particular velocity like that of a fulminating cap. Like
+picric acid, TNT stains the skin yellow and causes soreness and
+sometimes serious cases of poisoning among the employees, mostly girls,
+in the munition factories. On the other hand, the girls working with
+cordite get to using it as chewing gum; a harmful habit, not because of
+any danger of being blown up by it, but because nitroglycerin is a heart
+stimulant and they do not need that.
+
+[Illustration: The Genealogical Tree of Nitric Acid From W.Q. Whitman's
+"The Story of Nitrates in the War," _General Science Quarterly_]
+
+TNT is by no means smokeless. The German shells that exploded with a
+cloud of black smoke and which British soldiers called "Black Marias,"
+"coal-boxes" or "Jack Johnsons" were loaded with it. But it is an
+advantage to have a shell show where it strikes, although a disadvantage
+to have it show where it starts.
+
+It is these high explosives that have revolutionized warfare. As soon as
+the first German shell packed with these new nitrates burst inside the
+Gruson cupola at Li�ge and tore out its steel and concrete by the roots
+the world knew that the day of the fixed fortress was gone. The armies
+deserted their expensively prepared fortifications and took to the
+trenches. The British troops in France found their weapons futile and
+sent across the Channel the cry of "Send us high explosives or we
+perish!" The home Government was slow to heed the appeal, but no
+progress was made against the Germans until the Allies had the means to
+blast them out of their entrenchments by shells loaded with five hundred
+pounds of TNT.
+
+All these explosives are made from nitric acid and this used to be made
+from nitrates such as potassium nitrate or saltpeter. But nitrates are
+rarely found in large quantities. Napoleon and Lee had a hard time to
+scrape up enough saltpeter from the compost heaps, cellars and caves for
+their gunpowder, and they did not use as much nitrogen in a whole
+campaign as was freed in a few days' cannonading on the Somme. Now there
+is one place in the world--and so far as we know one only--where
+nitrates are to be found abundantly. This is in a desert on the western
+slope of the Andes where ancient guano deposits have decomposed and
+there was not enough rain to wash away their salts. Here is a bed two
+miles wide, two hundred miles long and five feet deep yielding some
+twenty to fifty per cent. of sodium nitrate. The deposit originally
+belonged to Peru, but Chile fought her for it and got it in 1881. Here
+all countries came to get their nitrates for agriculture and powder
+making. Germany was the largest customer and imported 750,000 tons of
+Chilean nitrate in 1913, besides using 100,000 tons of other nitrogen
+salts. By this means her old, wornout fields were made to yield greater
+harvests than our fresh land. Germany and England were like two duelists
+buying powder at the same shop. The Chilean Government, pocketing an
+export duty that aggregated half a billion dollars, permitted the
+saltpeter to be shoveled impartially into British and German ships, and
+so two nitrogen atoms, torn from their Pacific home and parted, like
+Evangeline and Gabriel, by transportation oversea, may have found
+themselves flung into each other's arms from the mouths of opposing
+howitzers in the air of Flanders. Goethe could write a romance on such a
+theme.
+
+Now the moment war broke out this source of supply was shut off to both
+parties, for they blockaded each other. The British fleet closed up the
+German ports while the German cruisers in the Pacific took up a position
+off the coast of Chile in order to intercept the ships carrying nitrates
+to England and France. The Panama Canal, designed to afford relief in
+such an emergency, caved in most inopportunely. The British sent a fleet
+to the Pacific to clear the nitrate route, but it was outranged and
+defeated on November 1, 1914. Then a stronger British fleet was sent
+out and smashed the Germans off the Falkland Islands on December 8. But
+for seven weeks the nitrate route had been closed while the chemical
+reactions on the Marne and Yser were decomposing nitrogen-compounds at
+an unheard of rate.
+
+England was now free to get nitrates for her munition factories, but
+Germany was still bottled up. She had stored up Chilean nitrates in
+anticipation of the war and as soon as it was seen to be coming she
+bought all she could get in Europe. But this supply was altogether
+inadequate and the war would have come to an end in the first winter if
+German chemists had not provided for such a contingency in advance by
+working out methods of getting nitrogen from the air. Long ago it was
+said that the British ruled the sea and the French the land so that left
+nothing to the German but the air. The Germans seem to have taken this
+jibe seriously and to have set themselves to make the most of the aerial
+realm in order to challenge the British and French in the fields they
+had appropriated. They had succeeded so far that the Kaiser when he
+declared war might well have considered himself the Prince of the Power
+of the Air. He had a fleet of Zeppelins and he had means for the
+fixation of nitrogen such as no other nation possessed. The Zeppelins
+burst like wind bags, but the nitrogen plants worked and made Germany
+independent of Chile not only during the war, but in the time of peace.
+
+Germany during the war used 200,000 tons of nitric acid a year in
+explosives, yet her supply of nitrogen is exhaustless.
+
+[Illustration: World production and consumption of fixed inorganic
+nitrogen expressed in tons nitrogen
+
+From _The Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry_, March,
+1919.]
+
+
+Nitrogen is free as air. That is the trouble; it is too free. It is
+fixed nitrogen that we want and that we are willing to pay for; nitrogen
+in combination with some other elements in the form of food or
+fertilizer so we can make use of it as we set it free. Fixed nitrogen in
+its cheapest form, Chile saltpeter, rose to $250 during the war. Free
+nitrogen costs nothing and is good for nothing. If a land-owner has a
+right to an expanding pyramid of air above him to the limits of the
+atmosphere--as, I believe, the courts have decided in the eaves-dropping
+cases--then for every square foot of his ground he owns as much
+nitrogen as he could buy for $2500. The air is four-fifths free nitrogen
+and if we could absorb it in our lungs as we do the oxygen of the other
+fifth a few minutes breathing would give us a full meal. But we let this
+free nitrogen all out again through our noses and then go and pay 35
+cents a pound for steak or 60 cents a dozen for eggs in order to get
+enough combined nitrogen to live on. Though man is immersed in an ocean
+of nitrogen, yet he cannot make use of it. He is like Coleridge's
+"Ancient Mariner" with "water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to
+drink."
+
+Nitrogen is, as Hood said not so truly about gold, "hard to get and hard
+to hold." The bacteria that form the nodules on the roots of peas and
+beans have the power that man has not of utilizing free nitrogen.
+Instead of this quiet inconspicuous process man has to call upon the
+lightning when he wants to fix nitrogen. The air contains the oxygen and
+nitrogen which it is desired to combine to form nitrates but the atoms
+are paired, like to like. Passing an electric spark through the air
+breaks up some of these pairs and in the confusion of the shock the
+lonely atoms seize on their nearest neighbor and so may get partners of
+the other sort. I have seen this same thing happen in a square dance
+where somebody made a blunder. It is easy to understand the reaction if
+we represent the atoms of oxygen and nitrogen by the initials of their
+names in this fashion:
+
+      NN  +  OO   -->   NO + NO
+  nitrogen  oxygen    nitric oxide
+
+The --> represents Jove's thunderbolt, a stroke of artificial
+lightning. We see on the left the molecules of oxygen and nitrogen,
+before taking the electric treatment, as separate elemental pairs, and
+then to the right of the arrow we find them as compound molecules of
+nitric oxide. This takes up another atom of oxygen from the air and
+becomes NOO, or using a subscript figure to indicate the number of atoms
+and so avoid repeating the letter, NO_{2} which is the familiar nitro
+group of nitric acid (HO--NO_{2}) and of its salts, the nitrates, and of
+its organic compounds, the high explosives. The NO_{2} is a brown and
+evil-smelling gas which when dissolved in water (HOH) and further
+oxidized is completely converted into nitric acid.
+
+The apparatus which effects this transformation is essentially a
+gigantic arc light in a chimney through which a current of hot air is
+blown. The more thoroughly the air comes under the action of the
+electric arc the more molecules of nitrogen and oxygen will be broken up
+and rearranged, but on the other hand if the mixture of gases remains in
+the path of the discharge the NO molecules are also broken up and go
+back into their original form of NN and OO. So the object is to spread
+out the electric arc as widely as possible and then run the air through
+it rapidly. In the Sch�nherr process the electric arc is a spiral flame
+twenty-three feet long through which the air streams with a vortex
+motion. In the Birkeland-Eyde furnace there is a series of semi-circular
+arcs spread out by the repellent force of a powerful electric magnet in
+a flaming disc seven feet in diameter with a temperature of 6300� F. In
+the Pauling furnace the electrodes between which the current strikes
+are two cast iron tubes curving upward and outward like the horns of a
+Texas steer and cooled by a stream of water passing through them. These
+electric furnaces produce two or three ounces of nitric acid for each
+kilowatt-hour of current consumed. Whether they can compete with the
+natural nitrates and the products of other processes depends upon how
+cheaply they can get their electricity. Before the war there were
+several large installations in Norway and elsewhere where abundant water
+power was available and now the Norwegians are using half a million
+horse power continuously in the fixation of nitrogen and the rest of the
+world as much again. The Germans had invested largely in these foreign
+oxidation plants, but shortly before the war they had sold out and
+turned their attention to other processes not requiring so much
+electrical energy, for their country is poorly provided with water
+power. The Haber process, that they made most of, is based upon as
+simple a reaction as that we have been considering, for it consists in
+uniting two elemental gases to make a compound, but the elements in this
+case are not nitrogen and oxygen, but nitrogen and hydrogen. This gives
+ammonia instead of nitric acid, but ammonia is useful for its own
+purposes and it can be converted into nitric acid if this is desired.
+The reaction is:
+
+  NN   +   HH + HH + HH --> NHHH + NHHH
+  Nitrogen  hydrogen         ammonia
+
+The animals go in two by two, but they come out four by four. Four
+molecules of the mixed elements are turned into two molecules and so the
+gas shrinks to half its volume. At the same time it acquires an
+odor--familiar to us when we are curing a cold--that neither of the
+original gases had. The agent that effects the transformation in this
+case is not the electric spark--for this would tend to work the reaction
+backwards--but uranium, a rare metal, which has the peculiar property of
+helping along a reaction while seeming to take no part in it. Such a
+substance is called a catalyst. The action of a catalyst is rather
+mysterious and whenever we have a mystery we need an analogy. We may,
+then, compare the catalyst to what is known as "a good mixer" in
+society. You know the sort of man I mean. He may not be brilliant or
+especially talkative, but somehow there is always "something doing" at a
+picnic or house-party when he is along. The tactful hostess, the salon
+leader, is a social catalyst. The trouble with catalysts, either human
+or metallic, is that they are rare and that sometimes they get sulky and
+won't work if the ingredients they are supposed to mix are unsuitable.
+
+But the uranium, osmium, platinum or whatever metal is used as a
+catalyzing agent is expensive and although it is not used up it is
+easily "poisoned," as the chemists say, by impurities in the gases. The
+nitrogen and the hydrogen for the Haber process must then be prepared
+and purified before trying to combine them into ammonia. The nitrogen is
+obtained by liquefying air by cold and pressure and then boiling off the
+nitrogen at 194� C. The oxygen left is useful for other purposes. The
+hydrogen needed is extracted by a similar process of fractional
+distillation from "water-gas," the blue-flame burning gas used for
+heating. Then the nitrogen and hydrogen, mixed in the proportion of one
+to three, as shown in the reaction given above, are compressed to two
+hundred atmospheres, heated to 1300� F. and passed over the finely
+divided uranium. The stream of gas that comes out contains about four
+per cent. of ammonia, which is condensed to a liquid by cooling and the
+uncombined hydrogen and nitrogen passed again through the apparatus.
+
+The ammonia can be employed in refrigeration and other ways but if it is
+desired to get the nitrogen into the form of nitric acid it has to be
+oxidized by the so-called Ostwald process. This is the reaction:
+
+  NH_{3}  +  4O   -->   HNO_{3} + H_{2}O
+  ammonia  oxygen    nitric acid  water
+
+The catalyst used to effect this combination is the metal platinum in
+the form of fine wire gauze, since the action takes place only on the
+surface. The ammonia gas is mixed with air which supplies the oxygen and
+the heated mixture run through the platinum gauze at the rate of several
+yards a second. Although the gases come in contact with the platinum
+only a five-hundredth part of a second yet eighty-five per cent. is
+converted into nitric acid.
+
+The Haber process for the making of ammonia by direct synthesis from its
+constituent elements and the supplemental Ostwald process for the
+conversion of the ammonia into nitric acid were the salvation of
+Germany. As soon as the Germans saw that their dash toward Paris had
+been stopped at the Marne they knew that they were in for a long war and
+at once made plans for a supply of fixed nitrogen. The chief German dye
+factories, the Badische Anilin and Soda-Fabrik, promptly put
+$100,000,000 into enlarging its plant and raised its production of
+ammonium sulfate from 30,000 to 300,000 tons. One German electrical firm
+with aid from the city of Berlin contracted to provide 66,000,000 pounds
+of fixed nitrogen a year at a cost of three cents a pound for the next
+twenty-five years. The 750,000 tons of Chilean nitrate imported annually
+by Germany contained about 116,000 tons of the essential element
+nitrogen. The fourteen large plants erected during the war can fix in
+the form of nitrates 500,000 tons of nitrogen a year, which is more than
+twice the amount needed for internal consumption. So Germany is now not
+only independent of the outside world but will have a surplus of
+nitrogen products which could be sold even in America at about half what
+the farmer has been paying for South American saltpeter.
+
+Besides the Haber or direct process there are other methods of making
+ammonia which are, at least outside of Germany, of more importance. Most
+prominent of these is the cyanamid process. This requires electrical
+power since it starts with a product of the electrical furnace, calcium
+carbide, familiar to us all as a source of acetylene gas.
+
+If a stream of nitrogen is passed over hot calcium carbide it is taken
+up by the carbide according to the following equation:
+
+       CaC_{2}  +  N_{2}    -->    CaCN_{2}  +  C
+  calcium carbide nitrogen   calcium cyanamid  carbon
+
+Calcium cyanamid was discovered in 1895 by Caro and Franke when they
+were trying to work out a new process for making cyanide to use in
+extracting gold. It looks like stone and, under the name of
+lime-nitrogen, or Kalkstickstoff, or nitrolim, is sold as a fertilizer.
+If it is desired to get ammonia, it is treated with superheated steam.
+The reaction produces heat and pressure, so it is necessary to carry it
+on in stout autoclaves or enclosed kettles. The cyanamid is completely
+and quickly converted into pure ammonia and calcium carbonate, which is
+the same as the limestone from which carbide was made. The reaction is:
+
+      CaCN_{2}  +  3H_{2}O   -->   CaCO_{3}  +  2NH_{3}
+  calcium cyanamid  water   calcium carbonate  ammonia
+
+Another electrical furnace method, the Serpek process, uses aluminum
+instead of calcium for the fixation of nitrogen. Bauxite, or impure
+aluminum oxide, the ordinary mineral used in the manufacture of metallic
+aluminum, is mixed with coal and heated in a revolving electrical
+furnace through which nitrogen is passing. The equation is:
+
+  Al_{2}O_{3} + 3C + N_{2}   -->   2AlN  +  3CO
+  aluminum   carbon nitrogen    aluminum  carbon
+   oxide                         nitride   monoxide
+
+Then the aluminum nitride is treated with steam under pressure, which
+produces ammonia and gives back the original aluminum oxide, but in a
+purer form than the mineral from which was made
+
+  2AlN  +  3H_{2}O --> 2NH_{3} + Al_{2}O_{3}
+  Aluminum  water     ammonia   aluminum oxide
+   nitride
+
+The Serpek process is employed to some extent in France in connection
+with the aluminum industry. These are the principal processes for the
+fixation of nitrogen now in use, but they by no means exhaust the
+possibilities. For instance, Professor John C. Bucher, of Brown
+University, created a sensation in 1917 by announcing a new process
+which he had worked out with admirable completeness and which has some
+very attractive features. It needs no electric power or high pressure
+retorts or liquid air apparatus. He simply fills a twenty-foot tube with
+briquets made out of soda ash, iron and coke and passes producer gas
+through the heated tube. Producer gas contains nitrogen since it is made
+by passing air over hot coal. The reaction is:
+
+  2Na_{2}CO_{3} + 4C + N_{2}   =   2NaCN + 3CO
+  sodium       carbon  nitrogen    sodium   carbon
+   carbonate                        cyanide   monoxide
+
+The iron here acts as the catalyst and converts two harmless substances,
+sodium carbonate, which is common washing soda, and carbon, into two of
+the most deadly compounds known to man, cyanide and carbon monoxide,
+which is what kills you when you blow out the gas. Sodium cyanide is a
+salt of hydrocyanic acid, which for, some curious reason is called
+"Prussic acid." It is so violent a poison that, as the freshman said in
+a chemistry recitation, "a single drop of it placed on the tongue of a
+dog will kill a man."
+
+But sodium cyanide is not only useful in itself, for the extraction of
+gold and cleaning of silver, but can be converted into ammonia, and a
+variety of other compounds such as urea and oxamid, which are good
+fertilizers; sodium ferrocyanide, that makes Prussian blue; and oxalic
+acid used in dyeing. Professor Bucher claimed that his furnace could be
+set up in a day at a cost of less than $100 and could turn out 150
+pounds of sodium cyanide in twenty-four hours. This process was placed
+freely at the disposal of the United States Government for the war and a
+10-ton plant was built at Saltville, Va., by the Ordnance Department.
+But the armistice put a stop to its operations and left the future of
+the process undetermined.
+
+[Illustration: A CHEMICAL REACTION ON A LARGE SCALE
+
+From the chemist's standpoint modern warfare consists in the rapid
+liberation of nitrogen from its compounds]
+
+[Illustration: Courtesy of E.I. du Pont de Nemours Co.
+
+BURNING AIR IN A BIRKELAND-EYDE FURNACE AT THE DU PONT PLANT
+
+An electric arc consuming about 4000 horse-power of energy is passing
+between the U-shaped electrodes which are made of copper tube cooled by
+an internal current of water. On the sides of the chamber are seen the
+openings through which the air passes impinging directly on both sides
+of the surface of the disk of flame. This flame is approximately seven
+feet in diameter and appears to be continuous although an alternating
+current of fifty cycles a second is used. The electric arc is spread
+into this disk flame by the repellent power of an electro-magnet the
+pointed pole of which is seen at bottom of the picture. Under this
+intense heat a part of the nitrogen and oxygen of the air combine to
+form oxides of nitrogen which when dissolved in water form the nitric
+acid used in explosives.]
+
+[Illustration: Courtesy of E.I. du Pont de Nemours Co.
+
+A BATTERY OF BIRKELAND-EYDE FURNACES FOR THE FIXATION OF NITROGEN AT THE
+DU PONT PLANT]
+
+We might have expected that the fixation of nitrogen by passing an
+electrical spark through hot air would have been an American invention,
+since it was Franklin who snatched the lightning from the heavens as
+well as the scepter from the tyrant and since our output of hot air is
+unequaled by any other nation. But little attention was paid to the
+nitrogen problem until 1916 when it became evident that we should soon
+be drawn into a war "with a first class power." On June 3, 1916,
+Congress placed $20,000,000 at the disposal of the president for
+investigation of "the best, cheapest and most available means for the
+production of nitrate and other products for munitions of war and useful
+in the manufacture of fertilizers and other useful products by water
+power or any other power." But by the time war was declared on April 6,
+1917, no definite program had been approved and by the time the
+armistice was signed on November 11, 1918, no plants were in active
+operation. But five plants had been started and two of them were nearly
+ready to begin work when they were closed by the ending of the war.
+United States Nitrate Plant No. 1 was located at Sheffield, Alabama, and
+was designed for the production of ammonia by "direct action" from
+nitrogen and hydrogen according to the plans of the American Chemical
+Company. Its capacity was calculated at 60,000 pounds of anhydrous
+ammonia a day, half of which was to be oxidized to nitric acid. Plant
+No. 2 was erected at Muscle Shoals, Alabama, to use the process of the
+American Cyanamid Company. This was contracted to produce 110,000 tons
+of ammonium nitrate a year and later two other cyanamid plants of half
+that capacity were started at Toledo and Ancor, Ohio.
+
+At Muscle Shoals a mushroom city of 20,000 sprang up on an Alabama
+cotton field in six months. The raw material, air, was as abundant there
+as anywhere and the power, water, could be obtained from the Government
+hydro-electric plant on the Tennessee River, but this was not available
+during the war, so steam was employed instead. The heat of the coal was
+used to cool the air down to the liquefying point. The principle of this
+process is simple. Everybody knows that heat expands and cold contracts,
+but not everybody has realized the converse of this rule, that expansion
+cools and compression heats. If air is forced into smaller space, as in
+a tire pump, it heats up and if allowed to expand to ordinary pressure
+it cools off again. But if the air while compressed is cooled and then
+allowed to expand it must get still colder and the process can go on
+till it becomes cold enough to congeal. That is, by expanding a great
+deal of air, a little of it can be reduced to the liquefying point. At
+Muscle Shoals the plant for liquefying air, in order to get the nitrogen
+out of it, consisted of two dozen towers each capable of producing 1765
+cubic feet of pure nitrogen per hour. The air was drawn in through two
+pipes, a yard across, and passed through scrubbing towers to remove
+impurities. The air was then compressed to 600 pounds per square inch.
+Nine tenths of the air was permitted to expand to 50 pounds and this
+expansion cooled down the other tenth, still under high pressure, to the
+liquefying point. Rectifying towers 24 feet high were stacked with trays
+of liquid air from which the nitrogen was continually bubbling off since
+its boiling point is twelve degrees centigrade lower than that of
+oxygen. Pure nitrogen gas collected at the top of the tower and the
+residual liquid air, now about half oxygen, was allowed to escape at the
+bottom.
+
+The nitrogen was then run through pipes into the lime-nitrogen ovens.
+There were 1536 of these about four feet square and each holding 1600
+pounds of pulverized calcium carbide. This is at first heated by an
+electrical current to start the reaction which afterwards produces
+enough heat to keep it going. As the stream of nitrogen gas passes over
+the finely divided carbide it is absorbed to form calcium cyanamid as
+described on a previous page. This product is cooled, powdered and wet
+to destroy any quicklime or carbide left unchanged. Then it is charged
+into autoclaves and steam at high temperature and pressure is admitted.
+The steam acting on the cyanamid sets free ammonia gas which is carried
+to towers down which cold water is sprayed, giving the ammonia water,
+familiar to the kitchen and the bathroom.
+
+But since nitric acid rather than ammonia was needed for munitions, the
+oxygen of the air had to be called into play. This process, as already
+explained, is carried on by aid of a catalyzer, in this case platinum
+wire. At Muscle Shoals there were 696 of these catalyzer boxes. The
+ammonia gas, mixed with air to provide the necessary oxygen, was
+admitted at the top and passed down through a sheet of platinum gauze of
+80 mesh to the inch, heated to incandescence by electricity. In contact
+with this the ammonia is converted into gaseous oxides of nitrogen (the
+familiar red fumes of the laboratory) which, carried off in pipes,
+cooled and dissolved in water, form nitric acid.
+
+But since none of the national plants could be got into action during
+the war, the United States was compelled to draw upon South America for
+its supply. The imports of Chilean saltpeter rose from half a million
+tons in 1914 to a million and a half in 1917. After peace was made the
+Department of War turned over to the Department of Agriculture its
+surplus of saltpeter, 150,000 tons, and it was sold to American farmers
+at cost, $81 a ton.
+
+For nitrogen plays a double r�le in human economy. It appears like
+Brahma in two aspects, Vishnu the Preserver and Siva the Destroyer. Here
+I have been considering nitrogen in its maleficent aspect, its use in
+war. We now turn to its beneficent aspect, its use in peace.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+FEEDING THE SOIL
+
+
+The Great War not only starved people: it starved the land. Enough
+nitrogen was thrown away in some indecisive battle on the Aisne to save
+India from a famine. The population of Europe as a whole has not been
+lessened by the war, but the soil has been robbed of its power to
+support the population. A plant requires certain chemical elements for
+its growth and all of these must be within reach of its rootlets, for it
+will accept no substitutes. A wheat stalk in France before the war had
+placed at its feet nitrates from Chile, phosphates from Florida and
+potash from Germany. All these were shut off by the firing line and the
+shortage of shipping.
+
+Out of the eighty elements only thirteen are necessary for crops. Four
+of these are gases: hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and chlorine. Five are
+metals: potassium, magnesium, calcium, iron and sodium. Four are
+non-metallic solids: carbon, sulfur, phosphorus and silicon. Three of
+these, hydrogen, oxygen and carbon, making up the bulk of the plant, are
+obtainable _ad libitum_ from the air and water. The other ten in the
+form of salts are dissolved in the water that is sucked up from the
+soil. The quantity needed by the plant is so small and the quantity
+contained in the soil is so great that ordinarily we need not bother
+about the supply except in case of three of them. They are nitrogen,
+potassium and phosphorus. These would be useless or fatal to plant life
+in the elemental form, but fixed in neutral salt they are essential
+plant foods. A ton of wheat takes away from the soil about 47 pounds of
+nitrogen, 18 pounds of phosphoric acid and 12 pounds of potash. If then
+the farmer does not restore this much to his field every year he is
+drawing upon his capital and this must lead to bankruptcy in the long
+run.
+
+So much is easy to see, but actually the question is extremely
+complicated. When the German chemist, Justus von Liebig, pointed out in
+1840 the possibility of maintaining soil fertility by the application of
+chemicals it seemed at first as though the question were practically
+solved. Chemists assumed that all they had to do was to analyze the soil
+and analyze the crop and from this figure out, as easily as balancing a
+bank book, just how much of each ingredient would have to be restored to
+the soil every year. But somehow it did not work out that way and the
+practical agriculturist, finding that the formulas did not fit his farm,
+sneered at the professors and whenever they cited Liebig to him he
+irreverently transposed the syllables of the name. The chemist when he
+went deeper into the subject saw that he had to deal with the colloids,
+damp, unpleasant, gummy bodies that he had hitherto fought shy of
+because they would not crystallize or filter. So the chemist called to
+his aid the physicist on the one hand and the biologist on the other and
+then they both had their hands full. The physicist found that he had to
+deal with a polyvariant system of solids, liquids and gases mutually
+miscible in phases too numerous to be handled by Gibbs's Rule. The
+biologist found that he had to deal with the invisible flora and fauna
+of a new world.
+
+Plants obey the injunction of Tennyson and rise on the stepping stones
+of their dead selves to higher things. Each successive generation lives
+on what is left of the last in the soil plus what it adds from the air
+and sunshine. As soon as a leaf or tree trunk falls to the ground it is
+taken in charge by a wrecking crew composed of a myriad of microscopic
+organisms who proceed to break it up into its component parts so these
+can be used for building a new edifice. The process is called "rotting"
+and the product, the black, gummy stuff of a fertile soil, is called
+"humus." The plants, that is, the higher plants, are not able to live on
+their own proteids as the animals are. But there are lower plants,
+certain kinds of bacteria, that can break up the big complicated proteid
+molecules into their component parts and reduce the nitrogen in them to
+ammonia or ammonia-like compounds. Having done this they stop and turn
+over the job to another set of bacteria to be carried through the next
+step. For you must know that soil society is as complex and specialized
+as that above ground and the tiniest bacterium would die rather than
+violate the union rules. The second set of bacteria change the ammonia
+over to nitrites and then a third set, the Amalgamated Union of Nitrate
+Workers, steps in and completes the process of oxidation with an
+efficiency that Ostwald might envy, for ninety-six per cent. of the
+ammonia of the soil is converted into nitrates. But if the conditions
+are not just right, if the food is insufficient or unwholesome or if
+the air that circulates through the soil is contaminated with poison
+gases, the bacteria go on a strike. The farmer, not seeing the thing
+from the standpoint of the bacteria, says the soil is "sick" and he
+proceeds to doctor it according to his own notion of what ails it. First
+perhaps he tries running in strike breakers. He goes to one of the firms
+that makes a business of supplying nitrogen-fixing bacteria from the
+scabs or nodules of the clover roots and scatters these colonies over
+the field. But if the living conditions remain bad the newcomers will
+soon quit work too and the farmer loses his money. If he is wise, then,
+he will remedy the conditions, putting a better ventilation system in
+his soil perhaps or neutralizing the sourness by means of lime or
+killing off the ameboid banditti that prey upon the peaceful bacteria
+engaged in the nitrogen industry. It is not an easy job that the farmer
+has in keeping billions of billions of subterranean servants contented
+and working together, but if he does not succeed at this he wastes his
+seed and labor.
+
+The layman regards the soil as a platform or anchoring place on which to
+set plants. He measures its value by its superficial area without
+considering its contents, which is as absurd as to estimate a man's
+wealth by the size of his safe. The difference in point of view is well
+illustrated by the old story of the city chap who was showing his farmer
+uncle the sights of New York. When he took him to Central Park he tried
+to astonish him by saying "This land is worth $500,000 an acre." The old
+farmer dug his toe into the ground, kicked out a clod, broke it open,
+looked at it, spit on it and squeezed it in his hand and then said,
+"Don't you believe it; 'tain't worth ten dollars an acre. Mighty poor
+soil I call it." Both were right.
+
+[Illustration: Courtesy of American Cyanamid Co.
+
+FIXING NITROGEN BY CALCIUM CARBIDE
+
+A view of the oven room in the plant of the American Cyanamid Company.
+The steel cylinders standing in the background are packed with the
+carbide and then put into the ovens sunk in the floor. When these are
+heated internally by electricity to 2000 degrees Fahrenheit pure
+nitrogen is let in and absorbed by the carbide, making cyanamid, which
+may be used as a fertilizer or for ammonia.]
+
+[Illustration: Photo by International Film Service
+
+A BARROW FULL OF POTASH SALTS EXTRACTED FROM SIX TONS OF GREEN KELP BY
+THE GOVERNMENT CHEMISTS]
+
+[Illustration: NATURE'S SILENT METHOD OF NITROGEN FIXATION
+
+The nodules on the vetch roots contain colonies of bacteria which have
+the power of taking the free nitrogen out of the air and putting it in
+compounds suitable for plant food.]
+
+The modern agriculturist realizes that the soil is a laboratory for the
+production of plant food and he ordinarily takes more pains to provide a
+balanced ration for it than he does for his family. Of course the
+necessity of feeding the soil has been known ever since man began to
+settle down and the ancient methods of maintaining its fertility, though
+discovered accidentally and followed blindly, were sound and
+efficacious. Virgil, who like Liberty Hyde Bailey was fond of publishing
+agricultural bulletins in poetry, wrote two thousand years ago:
+
+  But sweet vicissitudes of rest and toil
+  Make easy labor and renew the soil
+  Yet sprinkle sordid ashes all around
+  And load with fatt'ning dung thy fallow soil.
+
+The ashes supplied the potash and the dung the nitrate and phosphate.
+Long before the discovery of the nitrogen-fixing bacteria, the custom
+prevailed of sowing pea-like plants every third year and then plowing
+them under to enrich the soil. But such local supplies were always
+inadequate and as soon as deposits of fertilizers were discovered
+anywhere in the world they were drawn upon. The richest of these was the
+Chincha Islands off the coast of Peru, where millions of penguins and
+pelicans had lived in a most untidy manner for untold centuries. The
+guano composed of the excrement of the birds mixed with the remains of
+dead birds and the fishes they fed upon was piled up to a depth of 120
+feet. From this Isle of Penguins--which is not that described by Anatole
+France--a billion dollars' worth of guano was taken and the deposit was
+soon exhausted.
+
+Then the attention of the world was directed to the mainland of Peru and
+Chile, where similar guano deposits had been accumulated and, not being
+washed away on account of the lack of rain, had been deposited as sodium
+nitrate, or "saltpeter." These beds were discovered by a German, Taddeo
+Haenke, in 1809, but it was not until the last quarter of the century
+that the nitrates came into common use as a fertilizer. Since then more
+than 53,000,000 tons have been taken out of these beds and the
+exportation has risen to a rate of 2,500,000 to 3,000,000 tons a year.
+How much longer they will last is a matter of opinion and opinion is
+largely influenced by whether you have your money invested in Chilean
+nitrate stock or in one of the new synthetic processes for making
+nitrates. The United States Department of Agriculture says the nitrate
+beds will be exhausted in a few years. On the other hand the Chilean
+Inspector General of Nitrate Deposits in his latest official report says
+that they will last for two hundred years at the present rate and that
+then there are incalculable areas of low grade deposits, containing less
+than eleven per cent., to be drawn upon.
+
+Anyhow, the South American beds cannot long supply the world's need of
+nitrates and we shall some time be starving unless creative chemistry
+comes to the rescue. In 1898 Sir William Crookes--the discoverer of the
+"Crookes tubes," the radiometer and radiant matter--startled the British
+Association for the Advancement of Science by declaring that the world
+was nearing the limit of wheat production and that by 1931 the
+bread-eaters, the Caucasians, would have to turn to other grains or
+restrict their population while the rice and millet eaters of Asia would
+continue to increase. Sir William was laughed at then as a
+sensationalist. He was, but his sensations were apt to prove true and it
+is already evident that he was too near right for comfort. Before we
+were half way to the date he set we had two wheatless days a week,
+though that was because we persisted in shooting nitrates into the air.
+The area producing wheat was by decades:[1]
+
+THE WHEAT FIELDS OF THE WORLD
+
+                      Acres
+
+1881-90             192,000,000
+1890-1900           211,000,000
+1900-10             242,000,000
+Probable limit      300,000,000
+
+If 300,000,000 acres can be brought under cultivation for wheat and the
+average yield raised to twenty bushels to the acre, that will give
+enough to feed a billion people if they eat six bushels a year as do the
+English. Whether this maximum is correct or not there is evidently some
+limit to the area which has suitable soil and climate for growing wheat,
+so we are ultimately thrown back upon Crookes's solution of the problem;
+that is, we must increase the yield per acre and this can only be done
+by the use of fertilizers and especially by the fixation of atmospheric
+nitrogen. Crookes estimated the average yield of wheat at 12.7 bushels
+to the acre, which is more than it is in the new lands of the United
+States, Australia and Russia, but less than in Europe, where the soil is
+well fed. What can be done to increase the yield may be seen from these
+figures:
+
+  GAIN IN THE YIELD OF WHEAT IN BUSHELS PER ACRE
+
+                     1889-90  1913
+
+  Germany              19      35
+  Belgium              30      35
+  France               17      20
+  United Kingdom       28      32
+  United States        12      15
+
+The greatest gain was made in Germany and we see a reason for it in the
+fact that the German importation of Chilean saltpeter was 55,000 tons in
+1880 and 747,000 tons in 1913. In potatoes, too, Germany gets twice as
+big a crop from the same ground as we do, 223 bushels per acre instead
+of our 113 bushels. But the United States uses on the average only 28
+pounds of fertilizer per acre, while Europe uses 200.
+
+It is clear that we cannot rely upon Chile, but make nitrates for
+ourselves as Germany had to in war time. In the first chapter we
+considered the new methods of fixing the free nitrogen from the air. But
+the fixation of nitrogen is a new business in this country and our chief
+reliance so far has been the coke ovens. When coal is heated in retorts
+or ovens for making coke or gas a lot of ammonia comes off with the
+other products of decomposition and is caught in the sulfuric acid used
+to wash the gas as ammonium sulfate. Our American coke-makers have been
+in the habit of letting this escape into the air and consequently we
+have been losing some 700,000 tons of ammonium salts every year, enough
+to keep our land rich and give us all the explosives we should need. But
+now they are reforming and putting in ovens that save the by-products
+such as ammonia and coal tar, so in 1916 we got from this source 325,000
+tons a year.
+
+[Illustration: Courtesy of _Scientific American_.
+
+Consumption of potash for agricultural purposes in different countries]
+
+Germany had a natural monopoly of potash as Chile had a natural monopoly
+of nitrates. The agriculture of Europe and America has been virtually
+dependent upon these two sources of plant foods. Now when the world was
+cleft in twain by the shock of August, 1914, the Allied Powers had the
+nitrates and the Central Powers had the potash. If Germany had not had
+up her sleeve a new process for making nitrates she could not long have
+carried on a war and doubtless would not have ventured upon it. But the
+outside world had no such substitute for the German potash salts and
+has not yet discovered one. Consequently the price of potash in the
+United States jumped from $40 to $400 and the cost of food went up with
+it. Even under the stimulus of prices ten times the normal and with
+chemists searching furnace crannies and bad lands the United States was
+able to scrape up less than 10,000 tons of potash in 1916, and this was
+barely enough to satisfy our needs for two weeks!
+
+[Illustration: What happened to potash when the war broke out. This
+diagram from the _Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry_ of
+July, 1917, shows how the supply of potassium muriate from Germany was
+shut off in 1914 and how its price rose.]
+
+Yet potash compounds are as cheap as dirt. Pick up a handful of gravel
+and you will be able to find much of it feldspar or other mineral
+containing some ten per cent. of potash. Unfortunately it is in
+combination with silica, which is harder to break up than a trust.
+
+But "constant washing wears away stones" and the potash that the
+metallurgist finds too hard to extract in his hottest furnace is washed
+out in the course of time through the dropping of the gentle rain from
+heaven. "All rivers run to the sea" and so the sea gets salt, all sorts
+of salts, principally sodium chloride (our table salt) and next
+magnesium, calcium and potassium chlorides or sulfates in this order of
+abundance. But if we evaporate sea-water down to dryness all these are
+left in a mix together and it is hard to sort them out. Only patient
+Nature has time for it and she only did on a large scale in one place,
+that is at Stassfurt, Germany. It seems that in the days when
+northwestern Prussia was undetermined whether it should be sea or land
+it was flooded annually by sea-water. As this slowly evaporated the
+dissolved salts crystallized out at the critical points, leaving beds of
+various combinations. Each year there would be deposited three to five
+inches of salts with a thin layer of calcium sulfate or gypsum on top.
+Counting these annual layers, like the rings on a stump, we find that
+the Stassfurt beds were ten thousand years in the making. They were
+first worked for their salt, common salt, alone, but in 1837 the
+Prussian Government began prospecting for new and deeper deposits and
+found, not the clean rock salt that they wanted, but bittern, largely
+magnesium sulfate or Epsom salt, which is not at all nice for table use.
+This stuff was first thrown away until it was realized that it was much
+more valuable for the potash it contains than was the rock salt they
+were after. Then the Germans began to purify the Stassfurt salts and
+market them throughout the world. They contain from fifteen to
+twenty-five per cent. of magnesium chloride mixed with magnesium
+chloride in "carnallite," with magnesium sulfate in "kainite" and sodium
+chloride in "sylvinite." More than thirty thousand miners and workmen
+are employed in the Stassfurt works. There are some seventy distinct
+establishments engaged in the business, but they are in combination. In
+fact they are compelled to be, for the German Government is as anxious
+to promote trusts as the American Government is to prevent them. Once
+the Stassfurt firms had a falling out and began a cutthroat competition.
+But the German Government objects to its people cutting each other's
+throats. American dealers were getting unheard of bargains when the
+German Government stepped in and compelled the competing corporations to
+recombine under threat of putting on an export duty that would eat up
+their profits.
+
+The advantages of such business co�peration are specially shown in
+opening up a new market for an unknown product as in the case of the
+introduction of the Stassfurt salts into American agriculture. The
+farmer in any country is apt to be set in his ways and when it comes to
+inducing him to spend his hard-earned money for chemicals that he never
+heard of and could not pronounce he--quite rightly--has to be shown.
+Well, he was shown. It was, if I remember right, early in the nineties
+that the German Kali Syndikat began operations in America and the United
+States Government became its chief advertising agent. In every state
+there was an agricultural experiment station and these were provided
+liberally with illustrated literature on Stassfurt salts with colored
+wall charts and sets of samples and free sacks of salts for field
+experiments. The station men, finding that they could rely upon the
+scientific accuracy of the information supplied by Kali and that the
+experiments worked out well, became enthusiastic advocates of potash
+fertilizers. The station bulletins--which Uncle Sam was kind enough to
+carry free to all the farmers of the state--sometimes were worded so
+like the Kali Company advertising that the company might have raised a
+complaint of plagiarizing, but they never did. The Chilean nitrates,
+which are under British control, were later introduced by similar
+methods through the agency of the state agricultural experiment
+stations.
+
+As a result of all this missionary work, which cost the Kali Company
+$50,000 a year, the attention of a large proportion of American farmers
+was turned toward intensive farming and they began to realize the
+necessity of feeding the soil that was feeding them. They grew dependent
+upon these two foreign and widely separated sources of supply. In the
+year before the war the United States imported a million tons of
+Stassfurt salts, for which the farmers paid more than $20,000,000. Then
+a declaration of American independence--the German embargo of 1915--cut
+us off from Stassfurt and for five years we had to rely upon our own
+resources. We have seen how Germany--shut off from Chile--solved the
+nitrogen problem for her fields and munition plants. It was not so easy
+for us--shut off from Germany--to solve the potash problem.
+
+There is no more lack of potash in the rocks than there is of nitrogen
+in the air, but the nitrogen is free and has only to be caught and
+combined, while the potash is shut up in a granite prison from which it
+is hard to get it free. It is not the percentage in the soil but the
+percentage in the soil water that counts. A farmer with his potash
+locked up in silicates is like the merchant who has left the key of his
+safe at home in his other trousers. He may be solvent, but he cannot
+meet a sight draft. It is only solvent potash that passes current.
+
+In the days of our grandfathers we had not only national independence
+but household independence. Every homestead had its own potash plant and
+soap factory. The frugal housewife dumped the maple wood ashes of the
+fireplace into a hollow log set up on end in the backyard. Water poured
+over the ashes leached out the lye, which drained into a bucket beneath.
+This gave her a solution of pearl ash or potassium carbonate whose
+concentration she tested with an egg as a hydrometer. In the meantime
+she had been saving up all the waste grease from the frying pan and pork
+rinds from the plate and by trying out these she got her soap fat. Then
+on a day set apart for this disagreeable process in chemical technology
+she boiled the fat and the lye together and got "soft soap," or as the
+chemist would call it, potassium stearate. If she wanted hard soap she
+"salted it out" with brine. The sodium stearate being less soluble was
+precipitated to the top and cooled into a solid cake that could be cut
+into bars by pack thread. But the frugal housewife threw away in the
+waste water what we now consider the most valuable ingredients, the
+potash and the glycerin.
+
+But the old lye-leach is only to be found in ruins on an abandoned farm
+and we no longer burn wood at the rate of a log a night. In 1916 even
+under the stimulus of tenfold prices the amount of potash produced as
+pearl ash was only 412 tons--and we need 300,000 tons in some form. It
+would, of course, be very desirable as a conservation measure if all the
+sawdust and waste wood were utilized by charring it in retorts. The gas
+makes a handy fuel. The tar washed from the gas contains a lot of
+valuable products. And potash can be leached out of the charcoal or from
+its ashes whenever it is burned. But this at best would not go far
+toward solving the problem of our national supply.
+
+There are other potash-bearing wastes that might be utilized. The cement
+mills which use feldspar in combination with limestone give off a potash
+dust, very much to the annoyance of their neighbors. This can be
+collected by running the furnace clouds into large settling chambers or
+long flues, where the dust may be caught in bags, or washed out by water
+sprays or thrown down by electricity. The blast furnaces for iron also
+throw off potash-bearing fumes.
+
+Our six-million-ton crop of sugar beets contains some 12,000 tons of
+nitrogen, 4000 tons of phosphoric acid and 18,000 tons of potash, all of
+which is lost except where the waste liquors from the sugar factory are
+used in irrigating the beet land. The beet molasses, after extracting
+all the sugar possible by means of lime, leaves a waste liquor from
+which the potash can be recovered by evaporation and charring and
+leaching the residue. The Germans get 5000 tons of potassium cyanide and
+as much ammonium sulfate annually from the waste liquor of their beet
+sugar factories and if it pays them to save this it ought to pay us
+where potash is dearer. Various other industries can put in a bit when
+Uncle Sam passes around the contribution basket marked "Potash for the
+Poor." Wool wastes and fish refuse make valuable fertilizers, although
+they will not go far toward solving the problem. If we saved all our
+potash by-products they would not supply more than fifteen per cent. of
+our needs.
+
+Though no potash beds comparable to those of Stassfurt have yet been
+discovered in the United States, yet in Nebraska, Utah, California and
+other western states there are a number of alkali lakes, wet or dry,
+containing a considerable amount of potash mixed with soda salts. Of
+these deposits the largest is Searles Lake, California. Here there are
+some twelve square miles of salt crust some seventy feet deep and the
+brine as pumped out contains about four per cent. of potassium chloride.
+The quantity is sufficient to supply the country for over twenty years,
+but it is not an easy or cheap job to separate the potassium from the
+sodium salts which are five times more abundant. These being less
+soluble than the potassium salts crystallize out first when the brine is
+evaporated. The final crystallization is done in vacuum pans as in
+getting sugar from the cane juice. In this way the American Trona
+Corporation is producing some 4500 tons of potash salts a month besides
+a thousand tons of borax. The borax which is contained in the brine to
+the extent of 1-1/2 per cent. is removed from the fertilizer for a
+double reason. It is salable by itself and it is detrimental to plant
+life.
+
+Another mineral source of potash is alunite, which is a sort of natural
+alum, or double sulfate of potassium and aluminum, with about ten per
+cent. of potash. It contains a lot of extra alumina, but after roasting
+in a kiln the potassium sulfate can be leached out. The alunite beds
+near Marysville, Utah, were worked for all they were worth during the
+war, but the process does not give potash cheap enough for our needs in
+ordinary times.
+
+[Illustration: Photo by International Film Service
+
+IN ORDER TO SECURE A NEW SUPPLY OF POTASH SALTS
+
+The United States Government set up an experimental plant at Sutherland,
+California, for the utilization of kelp. The harvester cuts 40 tons of
+kelp at a load]
+
+[Illustration: THE KELP HARVESTER GATHERING THE SEAWEED FROM THE
+PACIFIC OCEAN]
+
+[Illustration: Courtesy of Hercules Powder Co.
+
+OVERHEAD SUCTION AT THE SAN DIEGO WHARF PUMPING KELP FROM THE BARGE TO
+THE DIGESTION TANKS]
+
+The tourist going through Wyoming on the Union Pacific will have to the
+north of him what is marked on the map as the "Leucite Hills." If he
+looks up the word in the Unabridged that he carries in his satchel he
+will find that leucite is a kind of lava and that it contains potash.
+But he will also observe that the potash is combined with alumina and
+silica, which are hard to get out and useless when you get them out. One
+of the lavas of the Leucite Hills, that named from its native state
+"Wyomingite," gives fifty-seven per cent. of its potash in a soluble
+form on roasting with alunite--but this costs too much. The same may be
+said of all the potash feldspars and mica. They are abundant enough, but
+until we find a way of utilizing the by-products, say the silica in
+cement and the aluminum as a metal, they cannot solve our problem.
+
+Since it is so hard to get potash from the land it has been suggested
+that we harvest the sea. The experts of the United States Department of
+Agriculture have placed high hopes in the kelp or giant seaweed which
+floats in great masses in the Pacific Ocean not far off from the
+California coast. This is harvested with ocean reapers run by gasoline
+engines and brought in barges to the shore, where it may be dried and
+used locally as a fertilizer or burned and the potassium chloride
+leached out of the charcoal ashes. But it is hard to handle the bulky,
+slimy seaweed cheaply enough to get out of it the small amount of potash
+it contains. So efforts are now being made to get more out of the kelp
+than the potash. Instead of burning the seaweed it is fermented in vats
+producing acetic acid (vinegar). From the resulting liquid can be
+obtained lime acetate, potassium chloride, potassium iodide, acetone,
+ethyl acetate (used as a solvent for guncotton) and algin, a
+gelatin-like gum.
+
+
+PRODUCTION OF POTASH IN THE UNITED STATES
+
+__________________________________________________________________________
+                    |                          |
+                    |           1916           |           1917
+       Source       | Tons K_{2}O | Per cent.  | Tons K_{2}O | Per cent.
+                    |             |  of total  |             |  of total
+                    |             | production |             | production
+____________________|_____________|____________|_____________|____________
+                    |             |            |             |
+Mineral sources:    |             |            |             |
+  Natural brines    |    3,994    |    41.1    |   20,652    |    63.4
+  Altmite           |    1,850    |    19.0    |    2,402    |     7.3
+  Dust from cement  |             |            |             |
+    mills           |             |            |    1,621    |     5.0
+  Dust from blast   |             |            |             |
+    furnaces        |             |            |      185    |     0.6
+Organic Sources:    |             |            |             |
+  Kelp              |    1,556    |    16.0    |    3,752    |    10.9
+  Molasses residue  |             |            |             |
+    from distillers |    1,845    |    19.0    |    2,846    |     8.8
+  Wood ashes        |      412    |     4.2    |      621    |     1.9
+  Waste liquors     |             |            |             |
+    from beet-sugar |             |            |             |
+    refineries      |             |            |      369    |     1.1
+  Miscellaneous     |             |            |             |
+    industrial      |             |            |             |
+    wastes          |       63    |       .7   |      305    |     1.0
+                    | ___________ | __________ | ___________ | __________
+                    |             |            |             |
+Total               |    9,720    |    100.0   |   32,573    |   100.0
+
+    --From U S. Bureau of Mines Report, 1918.
+
+
+This table shows how inadequate was the reaction of the United States to
+the war demand for potassium salts. The minimum yearly requirements of
+the United States are estimated to be 250,000 tons of potash.
+
+This completes our survey of the visible sources of potash in America.
+In 1917 under the pressure of the embargo and unprecedented prices the
+output of potash (K_{2}O) in various forms was raised to 32,573 tons,
+but this is only about a tenth as much as we needed. In 1918 potash
+production was further raised to 52,135 tons, chiefly through the
+increase of the output from natural brines to 39,255 tons, nearly twice
+what it was the year before. The rust in cotton and the resulting
+decrease in yield during the war are laid to lack of potash. Truck crops
+grown in soils deficient in potash do not stand transportation well. The
+Bureau of Animal Industry has shown in experiments in Aroostook County,
+Maine, that the addition of moderate amounts of potash doubled the yield
+of potatoes.
+
+Professor Ostwald, the great Leipzig chemist, boasted in the war:
+
+     America went into the war like a man with a rope round his neck
+     which is in his enemy's hands and is pretty tightly drawn. With
+     its tremendous deposits Germany has a world monopoly in potash,
+     a point of immense value which cannot be reckoned too highly
+     when once this war is going to be settled. It is in Germany's
+     power to dictate which of the nations shall have plenty of food
+     and which shall starve.
+
+If, indeed, some mineralogist or metallurgist will cut that rope by
+showing us a supply of cheap potash we will erect him a monument as big
+as Washington's. But Ostwald is wrong in supposing that America is as
+dependent as Germany upon potash. The bulk of our food crops are at
+present raised without the use of any fertilizers whatever.
+
+As the cession of Lorraine in 1871 gave Germany the phosphates she
+needed for fertilizers so the retrocession of Alsace in 1919 gives
+France the potash she needed for fertilizers. Ten years before the war a
+bed of potash was discovered in the Forest of Monnebruck, near
+Hartmannsweilerkopf, the peak for which French and Germans contested so
+fiercely and so long. The layer of potassium salts is 16-1/2 feet thick
+and the total deposit is estimated to be 275,000,000 tons of potash. At
+any rate it is a formidable rival of Stassfurt and its acquisition by
+France breaks the German monopoly.
+
+When we turn to the consideration of the third plant food we feel
+better. While the United States has no such monopoly of phosphates as
+Germany had of potash and Chile had of nitrates we have an abundance and
+to spare. Whereas we formerly _imported_ about $17,000,000 worth of
+potash from Germany and $20,000,000 worth of nitrates from Chile a year
+we _exported_ $7,000,000 worth of phosphates.
+
+Whoever it was who first noticed that the grass grew thicker around a
+buried bone he lived so long ago that we cannot do honor to his powers
+of observation, but ever since then--whenever it was--old bones have
+been used as a fertilizer. But we long ago used up all the buffalo bones
+we could find on the prairies and our packing houses could not give us
+enough bone-meal to go around, so we have had to draw upon the old
+bone-yards of prehistoric animals. Deposits of lime phosphate of such
+origin were found in South Carolina in 1870 and in Florida in 1888.
+Since then the industry has developed with amazing rapidity until in
+1913 the United States produced over three million tons of phosphates,
+nearly half of which was sent abroad. The chief source at present is the
+Florida pebbles, which are dredged up from the bottoms of lakes and
+rivers or washed out from the banks of streams by a hydraulic jet. The
+gravel is washed free from the sand and clay, screened and dried, and
+then is ready for shipment. The rock deposits of Florida and South
+Carolina are more limited than the pebble beds and may be exhausted in
+twenty-five or thirty years, but Tennessee and Kentucky have a lot in
+reserve and behind them are Idaho, Wyoming and other western states with
+millions of acres of phosphate land, so in this respect we are
+independent.
+
+But even here the war hit us hard. For the calcium phosphate as it comes
+from the ground is not altogether available because it is not very
+soluble and the plants can only use what they can get in the water that
+they suck up from the soil. But if the phosphate is treated with
+sulfuric acid it becomes more soluble and this product is sold as
+"superphosphate." The sulfuric acid is made mostly from iron pyrite and
+this we have been content to import, over 800,000 tons of it a year,
+largely from Spain, although we have an abundance at home. Since the
+shortage of shipping shut off the foreign supply we are using more of
+our own pyrite and also our deposits of native sulfur along the Gulf
+coast. But as a consequence of this sulfuric acid during the war went up
+from $5 to $25 a ton and acidulated phosphates rose correspondingly.
+
+Germany is short on natural phosphates as she is long on natural potash.
+But she has made up for it by utilizing a by-product of her steelworks.
+When phosphorus occurs in iron ore, even in minute amounts, it makes the
+steel brittle. Much of the iron ores of Alsace-Lorraine were formerly
+considered unworkable because of this impurity, but shortly after
+Germany took these provinces from France in 1871 a method was discovered
+by two British metallurgists, Thomas and Gilchrist, by which the
+phosphorus is removed from the iron in the process of converting it into
+steel. This consists in lining the crucible or converter with lime and
+magnesia, which takes up the phosphorus from the melted iron. This slag
+lining, now rich in phosphates, can be taken out and ground up for
+fertilizer. So the phosphorus which used to be a detriment is now an
+additional source of profit and this British invention has enabled
+Germany to make use of the territory she stole from France to outstrip
+England in the steel business. In 1910 Germany produced 2,000,000 tons
+of Thomas slag while only 160,000 tons were produced in the United
+Kingdom. The open hearth process now chiefly used in the United States
+gives an acid instead of a basic phosphate slag, not suitable as a
+fertilizer. The iron ore of America, with the exception of some of the
+southern ores, carries so small a percentage of phosphorus as to make a
+basic process inadvisable.
+
+Recently the Germans have been experimenting with a combined fertilizer,
+Schr�der's potassium phosphate, which is said to be as good as Thomas
+slag for phosphates and as good as Stassfurt salts for potash. The
+American Cyanamid Company is just putting out a similar product,
+"Ammo-Phos," in which the ammonia can be varied from thirteen to twenty
+per cent. and the phosphoric acid from twenty to forty-seven per cent.
+so as to give the proportions desired for any crop. We have then the
+possibility of getting the three essential plant foods altogether in
+one compound with the elimination of most of the extraneous elements
+such as lime and magnesia, chlorids and sulfates.
+
+For the last three hundred years the American people have been living on
+the unearned increment of the unoccupied land. But now that all our land
+has been staked out in homesteads and we cannot turn to new soil when we
+have used up the old, we must learn, as the older races have learned,
+how to keep up the supply of plant food. Only in this way can our
+population increase and prosper. As we have seen, the phosphate question
+need not bother us and we can see our way clear toward solving the
+nitrate question. We gave the Government $20,000,000 to experiment on
+the production of nitrates from the air and the results will serve for
+fields as well as firearms. But the question of an independent supply of
+cheap potash is still unsolved.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+COAL-TAR COLORS
+
+
+If you put a bit of soft coal into a test tube (or, if you haven't a
+test tube, into a clay tobacco pipe and lute it over with clay) and heat
+it you will find a gas coming out of the end of the tube that will burn
+with a yellow smoky flame. After all the gas comes off you will find in
+the bottom of the test tube a chunk of dry, porous coke. These, then,
+are the two main products of the destructive distillation of coal. But
+if you are an unusually observant person, that is, if you are a born
+chemist with an eye to by-products, you will notice along in the middle
+of the tube where it is neither too hot nor too cold some dirty drops of
+water and some black sticky stuff. If you are just an ordinary person,
+you won't pay any attention to this because there is only a little of it
+and because what you are after is the coke and gas. You regard the
+nasty, smelly mess that comes in between as merely a nuisance because it
+clogs up and spoils your nice, clean tube.
+
+Now that is the way the gas-makers and coke-makers--being for the most
+part ordinary persons and not born chemists--used to regard the water
+and tar that got into their pipes. They washed it out so as to have the
+gas clean and then ran it into the creek. But the neighbors--especially
+those who fished in the stream below the gas-works--made a fuss about
+spoiling the water, so the gas-men gave away the tar to the boys for use
+in celebrating the Fourth of July and election night or sold it for
+roofing.
+
+[Illustration: THE PRODUCTION OF COAL TAR
+
+A battery of Koppers by-product coke-ovens at the plant of the Bethlehem
+Steel Company, Sparrows Point, Maryland. The coke is being pushed out of
+one of the ovens into the waiting car. The vapors given off from the
+coal contain ammonia and the benzene compound used to make dyes and
+explosives]
+
+[Illustration: IN THESE MIXING VATS AT THE BUFFALO WORKS, ANILINE DYES
+ARE PREPARED]
+
+But this same tar, which for a hundred years was thrown away and nearly
+half of which is thrown away yet in the United States, turns out to be
+one of the most useful things in the world. It is one of the strategic
+points in war and commerce. It wounds and heals. It supplies munitions
+and medicines. It is like the magic purse of Fortunatus from which
+anything wished for could be drawn. The chemist puts his hand into the
+black mass and draws out all the colors of the rainbow. This
+evil-smelling substance beats the rose in the production of perfume and
+surpasses the honey-comb in sweetness.
+
+Bishop Berkeley, after having proved that all matter was in your mind,
+wrote a book to prove that wood tar would cure all diseases. Nobody
+reads it now. The name is enough to frighten them off: "Siris: A Chain
+of Philosophical Reflections and Inquiries Concerning the Virtues of Tar
+Water." He had a sort of mystical idea that tar contained the
+quintessence of the forest, the purified spirit of the trees, which
+could somehow revive the spirit of man. People said he was crazy on the
+subject, and doubtless he was, but the interesting thing about it is
+that not even his active and ingenious imagination could begin to
+suggest all of the strange things that can be got out of tar, whether
+wood or coal.
+
+The reason why tar supplies all sorts of useful material is because it
+is indeed the quintessence of the forest, of the forests of untold
+millenniums if it is coal tar. If you are acquainted with a village
+tinker, one of those all-round mechanics who still survive in this age
+of specialization and can mend anything from a baby-carriage to an
+automobile, you will know that he has on the floor of his back shop a
+heap of broken machinery from which he can get almost anything he wants,
+a copper wire, a zinc plate, a brass screw or a steel rod. Now coal tar
+is the scrap-heap of the vegetable kingdom. It contains a little of
+almost everything that makes up trees. But you must not imagine that all
+that comes out of coal tar is contained in it. There are only about a
+dozen primary products extracted from coal tar, but from these the
+chemist is able to build up hundreds of thousands of new substances.
+This is true creative chemistry, for most of these compounds are not to
+be found in plants and never existed before they were made in the
+laboratory. It used to be thought that organic compounds, the products
+of vegetable and animal life, could only be produced by organized
+beings, that they were created out of inorganic matter by the magic
+touch of some "vital principle." But since the chemist has learned how,
+he finds it easier to make organic than inorganic substances and he is
+confident that he can reproduce any compound that he can analyze. He
+cannot only imitate the manufacturing processes of the plants and
+animals, but he can often beat them at their own game.
+
+When coal is heated in the open air it is burned up and nothing but the
+ashes is left. But heat the coal in an enclosed vessel, say a big
+fireclay retort, and it cannot burn up because the oxygen of the air
+cannot get to it. So it breaks up. All parts of it that can be volatized
+at a high heat pass off through the outlet pipe and nothing is left in
+the retort but coke, that is carbon with the ash it contains. When the
+escaping vapors reach a cool part of the outlet pipe the oily and tarry
+matter condenses out. Then the gas is passed up through a tower down
+which water spray is falling and thus is washed free from ammonia and
+everything else that is soluble in water.
+
+This process is called "destructive distillation." What products come
+off depends not only upon the composition of the particular variety of
+coal used, but upon the heat, pressure and rapidity of distillation. The
+way you run it depends upon what you are most anxious to have. If you
+want illuminating gas you will leave in it the benzene. If you are after
+the greatest yield of tar products, you impoverish the gas by taking out
+the benzene and get a blue instead of a bright yellow flame. If all you
+are after is cheap coke, you do not bother about the by-products, but
+let them escape and burn as they please. The tourist passing across the
+coal region at night could see through his car window the flames of
+hundreds of old-fashioned bee-hive coke-ovens and if he were of
+economical mind he might reflect that this display of fireworks was
+costing the country $75,000,000 a year besides consuming the
+irreplaceable fuel supply of the future. But since the gas was not
+needed outside of the cities and since the coal tar, if it could be sold
+at all, brought only a cent or two a gallon, how could the coke-makers
+be expected to throw out their old bee-hive ovens and put in the
+expensive retorts and towers necessary to the recovery of the
+by-products? But within the last ten years the by-product ovens have
+come into use and now nearly half our coke is made in them.
+
+Although the products of destructive distillation vary within wide
+limits, yet the following table may serve to give an approximate idea of
+what may be got from a ton of soft coal:
+
+  1 ton of coal may give
+      Gas, 12,000 cubic feet
+      Liquor (Washings) ammonium sulfate (7-25 pounds)
+      Tar (120 pounds)  benzene (10-20 pounds)
+                        toluene (3 pounds)
+                        xylene  (1-1/2 pounds)
+                        phenol  (1/2 pound)
+                        naphthalene (3/8 pound)
+                        anthracene  (1/4 pound)
+                        pitch (80 pounds)
+      Coke (1200-1500 pounds)
+
+When the tar is redistilled we get, among other things, the ten "crudes"
+which are fundamental material for making dyes. Their names are:
+benzene, toluene, xylene, phenol, cresol, naphthalene, anthracene,
+methyl anthracene, phenanthrene and carbazol.
+
+There! I had to introduce you to the whole receiving line, but now that
+that ceremony is over we are at liberty to do as we do at a reception,
+meet our old friends, get acquainted with one or two more and turn our
+backs on the rest. Two of them, I am sure, you've met before, phenol,
+which is common carbolic acid, and naphthalene, which we use for
+mothballs. But notice one thing in passing, that not one of them is a
+dye. They are all colorless liquids or white solids. Also they all have
+an indescribable odor--all odors that you don't know are
+indescribable--which gives them and their progeny, even when odorless,
+the name of "aromatic compounds."
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 8. Diagram of the products obtained from coal and
+some of their uses.]
+
+The most important of the ten because he is the father of the family is
+benzene, otherwise called benzol, but must not be confused with
+"benzine" spelled with an _i_ which we used to burn and clean our
+clothes with. "Benzine" is a kind of gasoline, but benzene _alias_
+benzol has quite another constitution, although it looks and burns the
+same. Now the search for the constitution of benzene is one of the most
+exciting chapters in chemistry; also one of the most intricate chapters,
+but, in spite of that, I believe I can make the main point of it clear
+even to those who have never studied chemistry--provided they retain
+their childish liking for puzzles. It is really much like putting
+together the old six-block Chinese puzzle. The chemist can work better
+if he has a picture of what he is working with. Now his unit is the
+molecule, which is too small even to analyze with the microscope, no
+matter how high powered. So he makes up a sort of diagram of the
+molecule, and since he knows the number of atoms and that they are
+somehow attached to one another, he represents each atom by the first
+letter of its name and the points of attachment or bonds by straight
+lines connecting the atoms of the different elements. Now it is one of
+the rules of the game that all the bonds must be connected or hooked up
+with atoms at both ends, that there shall be no free hands reaching out
+into empty space. Carbon, for instance, has four bonds and hydrogen only
+one. They unite, therefore, in the proportion of one atom of carbon to
+four of hydrogen, or CH_{4}, which is methane or marsh gas and obviously
+the simplest of the hydrocarbons. But we have more complex hydrocarbons
+such as C_{6}H_{14}, known as hexane. Now if you try to draw the
+diagrams or structural formulas of these two compounds you will easily
+get
+
+    H        H H H H H H
+    |        | | | | | |
+  H-C-H    H-C-C-C-C-C-C-H
+    |        | | | | | |
+    H        H H H H H H
+  methane      hexane
+
+Each carbon atom, you see, has its four hands outstretched and duly
+grasped by one-handed hydrogen atoms or by neighboring carbon atoms in
+the chain. We can have such chains as long as you please, thirty or more
+in a chain; they are all contained in kerosene and paraffin.
+
+So far the chemist found it east to construct diagrams that would
+satisfy his sense of the fitness of things, but when he found that
+benzene had the compostion C_{6}H_{6} he was puzzled. If you try to draw
+the picture of C_{6}H_{6} you will get something like this:
+
+   | | | | | |
+  -C-C-C-C-C-C-
+   | | | | | |
+   H H H H H H
+
+which is an absurdity because more than half of the carbon hands are
+waving wildly around asking to be held by something. Benzene,
+C_{6}H_{6}, evidently is like hexane, C_{6}H_{14}, in having a chain of
+six carbon atoms, but it has dropped its H's like an Englishman. Eight
+of the H's are missing.
+
+Now one of the men who was worried over this benzene puzzle was the
+German chemist, Kekul�. One evening after working over the problem all
+day he was sitting by the fire trying to rest, but he could not throw
+it off his mind. The carbon and the hydrogen atoms danced like imps on
+the carpet and as he watched them through his half-closed eyes he
+suddenly saw that the chain of six carbon atoms had joined at the ends
+and formed a ring while the six hydrogen atoms were holding on to the
+outside hands, in this fashion:
+
+      H
+      |
+      C
+     / \\
+  H-C   C-H
+    ||  |
+  H-C   C-H
+     \ //
+      C
+      |
+      H
+
+Professor Kekul� saw at once that the demons of his subconscious self
+had furnished him with a clue to the labyrinth, and so it proved. We
+need not suppose that the benzene molecule if we could see it would look
+anything like this diagram of it, but the theory works and that is all
+the scientist asks of any theory. By its use thousands of new compounds
+have been constructed which have proved of inestimable value to man. The
+modern chemist is not a discoverer, he is an inventor. He sits down at
+his desk and draws a "Kekul� ring" or rather hexagon. Then he rubs out
+an H and hooks a nitro group (NO_{2}) on to the carbon in place of it;
+next he rubs out the O_{2} of the nitro group and puts in H_{2}; then he
+hitches on such other elements, or carbon chains and rings as he likes.
+He works like an architect designing a house and when he gets a picture
+of the proposed compounds to suit him he goes into the laboratory to
+make it. First he takes down the bottle of benzene and boils up some of
+this with nitric acid and sulfuric acid. This he puts in the nitro group
+and makes nitro-benzene, C_{6}H_{5}NO_{2}. He treats this with hydrogen,
+which displaces the oxygen and gives C_{6}H_{5}NH_{2} or aniline, which
+is the basis of so many of these compounds that they are all commonly
+called "the aniline dyes." But aniline itself is not a dye. It is a
+colorless or brownish oil.
+
+It is not necessary to follow our chemist any farther now that we have
+seen how he works, but before we pass on we will just look at one of his
+products, not one of the most complicated but still complicated enough.
+
+[Illustration: A molecule of a coal-tar dye]
+
+The name of this is sodium ditolyl-disazo-beta-naphthylamine-
+6-sulfonic-beta-naphthylamine-3.6-disulfonate.
+
+These chemical names of organic compounds are discouraging to the
+beginner and amusing to the layman, but that is because neither of them
+realizes that they are not really words but formulas. They are
+hyphenated because they come from Germany. The name given above is no
+more of a mouthful than "a-square-plus-two-a-b-plus-b-square" or "Third
+Assistant Secretary of War to the President of the United States of
+America." The trade name of this dye is Brilliant Congo, but while that
+is handier to say it does not mean anything. Nobody but an expert in
+dyes would know what it was, while from the formula name any chemist
+familiar with such compounds could draw its picture, tell how it would
+behave and what it was made from, or even make it. The old alchemist was
+a secretive and pretentious person and used to invent queer names for
+the purpose of mystifying and awing the ignorant. But the chemist in
+dropping the al- has dropped the idea of secrecy and his names, though
+equally appalling to the layman, are designed to reveal and not to
+conceal.
+
+From this brief explanation the reader who has not studied chemistry
+will, I think, be able to get some idea of how these very intricate
+compounds are built up step by step. A completed house is hard to
+understand, but when we see the mason laying one brick on top of another
+it does not seem so difficult, although if we tried to do it we should
+not find it so easy as we think. Anyhow, let me give you a hint. If you
+want to make a good impression on a chemist don't tell him that he
+seems to you a sort of magician, master of a black art, and all that
+nonsense. The chemist has been trying for three hundred years to live
+down the reputation of being inspired of the devil and it makes him mad
+to have his past thrown up at him in this fashion. If his tactless
+admirers would stop saying "it is all a mystery and a miracle to me,
+and I cannot understand it" and pay attention to what he is telling them
+they would understand it and would find that it is no more of a mystery
+or a miracle than anything else. You can make an electrician mad in the
+same way by interrupting his explanation of a dynamo by asking: "But you
+cannot tell me what electricity really is." The electrician does not
+care a rap what electricity "really is"--if there really is any meaning
+to that phrase. All he wants to know is what he can do with it.
+
+[Illustration: COMPARISON OF COAL AND ITS DISTILLATION PRODUCTS From
+Hesse's "The Industry of the Coal Tar Dyes," _Journal of Industrial and
+Engineering Chemistry_, December, 1914]
+
+The tar obtained from the gas plant or the coke plant has now to be
+redistilled, giving off the ten "crudes" already mentioned and leaving
+in the still sixty-five per cent. of pitch, which may be used for
+roofing, paving and the like. The ten primary products or crudes are
+then converted into secondary products or "intermediates" by processes
+like that for the conversion of benzene into aniline. There are some
+three hundred of these intermediates in use and from them are built up
+more than three times as many dyes. The year before the war the American
+custom house listed 5674 distinct brands of synthetic dyes imported,
+chiefly from Germany, but some of these were trade names for the same
+product made by different firms or represented by different degrees of
+purity or form of preparation. Although the number of possible products
+is unlimited and over five thousand dyes are known, yet only about nine
+hundred are in use. We can summarize the situation so:
+
+  Coal-tar --> 10 crudes --> 300 intermediates --> 900 dyes --> 5000 brands.
+
+Or, to borrow the neat simile used by Dr. Bernhard C. Hesse, it is like
+cloth-making where "ten fibers make 300 yarns which are woven into 900
+patterns."
+
+The advantage of the artificial dyestuffs over those found in nature
+lies in their variety and adaptability. Practically any desired tint or
+shade can be made for any particular fabric. If my lady wants a new kind
+of green for her stockings or her hair she can have it. Candies and
+jellies and drinks can be made more attractive and therefore more
+appetizing by varied colors. Easter eggs and Easter bonnets take on new
+and brighter hues.
+
+More and more the chemist is becoming the architect of his own fortunes.
+He does not make discoveries by picking up a beaker and pouring into it
+a little from each bottle on the shelf to see what happens. He generally
+knows what he is after, and he generally gets it, although he is still
+often baffled and occasionally happens on something quite unexpected and
+perhaps more valuable than what he was looking for. Columbus was looking
+for India when he ran into an obstacle that proved to be America.
+William Henry Perkin was looking for quinine when he blundered into that
+rich and undiscovered country, the aniline dyes. William Henry was a
+queer boy. He had rather listen to a chemistry lecture than eat. When he
+was attending the City of London School at the age of thirteen there was
+an extra course of lectures on chemistry given at the noon recess, so he
+skipped his lunch to take them in. Hearing that a German chemist named
+Hofmann had opened a laboratory in the Royal College of London he headed
+for that. Hofmann obviously had no fear of forcing the young intellect
+prematurely. He perhaps had never heard that "the tender petals of the
+adolescent mind must be allowed to open slowly." He admitted young
+Perkin at the age of fifteen and started him on research at the end of
+his second year. An American student nowadays thinks he is lucky if he
+gets started on his research five years older than Perkin. Now if
+Hofmann had studied pedagogical psychology he would have been informed
+that nothing chills the ardor of the adolescent mind like being set at
+tasks too great for its powers. If he had heard this and believed it, he
+would not have allowed Perkin to spend two years in fruitless endeavors
+to isolate phenanthrene from coal tar and to prepare artificial
+quinine--and in that case Perkin would never have discovered the aniline
+dyes. But Perkin, so far from being discouraged, set up a private
+laboratory so he could work over-time. While working here during the
+Easter vacation of 1856--the date is as well worth remembering as
+1066--he was oxidizing some aniline oil when he got what chemists most
+detest, a black, tarry mass instead of nice, clean crystals. When he
+went to wash this out with alcohol he was surprised to find that it gave
+a beautiful purple solution. This was "mauve," the first of the aniline
+dyes.
+
+The funny thing about it was that when Perkin tried to repeat the
+experiment with purer aniline he could not get his color. It was because
+he was working with impure chemicals, with aniline containing a little
+toluidine, that he discovered mauve. It was, as I said, a lucky
+accident. But it was not accidental that the accident happened to the
+young fellow who spent his noonings and vacations at the study of
+chemistry. A man may not find what he is looking for, but he never
+finds anything unless he is looking for something.
+
+Mauve was a product of creative chemistry, for it was a substance that
+had never existed before. Perkin's next great triumph, ten years later,
+was in rivaling Nature in the manufacture of one of her own choice
+products. This is alizarin, the coloring matter contained in the madder
+root. It was an ancient and oriental dyestuff, known as "Turkey red" or
+by its Arabic name of "alizari." When madder was introduced into France
+it became a profitable crop and at one time half a million tons a year
+were raised. A couple of French chemists, Robiquet and Colin, extracted
+from madder its active principle, alizarin, in 1828, but it was not
+until forty years later that it was discovered that alizarin had for its
+base one of the coal-tar products, anthracene. Then came a neck-and-neck
+race between Perkin and his German rivals to see which could discover a
+cheap process for making alizarin from anthracene. The German chemists
+beat him to the patent office by one day! Graebe and Liebermann filed
+their application for a patent on the sulfuric acid process as No. 1936
+on June 25, 1869. Perkin filed his for the same process as No. 1948 on
+June 26. It had required twenty years to determine the constitution of
+alizarin, but within six months from its first synthesis the commercial
+process was developed and within a few years the sale of artificial
+alizarin reached $8,000,000 annually. The madder fields of France were
+put to other uses and even the French soldiers became dependent on
+made-in-Germany dyes for their red trousers. The British soldiers were
+placed in a similar situation as regards their red coats when after
+1878 the azo scarlets put the cochineal bug out of business.
+
+The modern chemist has robbed royalty of its most distinctive insignia,
+Tyrian purple. In ancient times to be "porphyrogene," that is "born to
+the purple," was like admission to the Almanach de Gotha at the present
+time, for only princes or their wealthy rivals could afford to pay $600
+a pound for crimsoned linen. The precious dye is secreted by a
+snail-like shellfish of the eastern coast of the Mediterranean. From a
+tiny sac behind the head a drop of thick whitish liquid, smelling like
+garlic, can be extracted. If this is spread upon cloth of any kind and
+exposed to air and sunlight it turns first green, next blue and then
+purple. If the cloth is washed with soap--that is, set by alkali--it
+becomes a fast crimson, such as Catholic cardinals still wear as princes
+of the church. The Phoenician merchants made fortunes out of their
+monopoly, but after the fall of Tyre it became one of "the lost
+arts"--and accordingly considered by those whose faces are set toward
+the past as much more wonderful than any of the new arts. But in 1909
+Friedlander put an end to the superstition by analyzing Tyrian purple
+and finding that it was already known. It was the same as a dye that had
+been prepared five years before by Sachs but had not come into
+commercial use because of its inferiority to others in the market. It
+required 12,000 of the mollusks to supply the little material needed for
+analysis, but once the chemist had identified it he did not need to
+bother the Murex further, for he could make it by the ton if he had
+wanted to. The coloring principle turned out to be a di-brom indigo,
+that is the same as the substance extracted from the Indian plant, but
+with the addition of two atoms of bromine. Why a particular kind of a
+shellfish should have got the habit of extracting this rare element from
+sea water and stowing it away in this peculiar form is "one of those
+things no fellow can find out." But according to the chemist the Murex
+mollusk made a mistake in hitching the bromine to the wrong carbon
+atoms. He finds as he would word it that the 6:6' di-brom indigo
+secreted by the shellfish is not so good as the 5:5' di-brom indigo now
+manufactured at a cheap rate and in unlimited quantity. But we must not
+expect too much of a mollusk's mind. In their cheapness lies the offense
+of the aniline dyes in the minds of some people. Our modern aristocrats
+would delight to be entitled "porphyrogeniti" and to wear exclusive
+gowns of "purple and scarlet from the isles of Elishah" as was done in
+Ezekiel's time, but when any shopgirl or sailor can wear the royal color
+it spoils its beauty in their eyes. Applied science accomplishes a real
+democracy such as legislation has ever failed to establish.
+
+Any kind of dye found in nature can be made in the laboratory whenever
+its composition is understood and usually it can be made cheaper and
+purer than it can be extracted from the plant. But to work out a
+profitable process for making it synthetically is sometimes a task
+requiring high skill, persistent labor and heavy expenditure. One of the
+latest and most striking of these achievements of synthetic chemistry is
+the manufacture of indigo.
+
+Indigo is one of the oldest and fastest of the dyestuffs. To see that it
+is both ancient and lasting look at the unfaded blue cloths that enwrap
+an Egyptian mummy. When Caesar conquered our British ancestors he found
+them tattooed with woad, the native indigo. But the chief source of
+indigo was, as its name implies, India. In 1897 nearly a million acres
+in India were growing the indigo plant and the annual value of the crop
+was $20,000,000. Then the fall began and by 1914 India was producing
+only $300,000 worth! What had happened to destroy this profitable
+industry? Some blight or insect? No, it was simply that the Badische
+Anilin-und-Soda Fabrik had worked out a practical process for making
+artificial indigo.
+
+That indigo on breaking up gave off aniline was discovered as early as
+1840. In fact that was how aniline got its name, for when Fritzsche
+distilled indigo with caustic soda he called the colorless distillate
+"aniline," from the Arabic name for indigo, "anil" or "al-nil," that is,
+"the blue-stuff." But how to reverse the process and get indigo from
+aniline puzzled chemists for more than forty years until finally it was
+solved by Adolf von Baeyer of Munich, who died in 1917 at the age of
+eighty-four. He worked on the problem of the constitution of indigo for
+fifteen years and discovered several ways of making it. It is possible
+to start from benzene, toluene or naphthalene. The first process was the
+easiest, but if you will refer to the products of the distillation of
+tar you will find that the amount of toluene produced is less than the
+naphthalene, which is hard to dispose of. That is, if a dye factory had
+worked out a process for making indigo from toluene it would not be
+practicable because there was not enough toluene produced to supply the
+demand for indigo. So the more complicated napthalene process was
+chosen in preference to the others in order to utilize this by-product.
+
+The Badische Anilin-und-Soda Fabrik spent $5,000,000 and seventeen years
+in chemical research before they could make indigo, but they gained a
+monopoly (or, to be exact, ninety-six per cent.) of the world's
+production. A hundred years ago indigo cost as much as $4 a pound. In
+1914 we were paying fifteen cents a pound for it. Even the pauper labor
+of India could not compete with the German chemists at that price. At
+the beginning of the present century Germany was paying more than
+$3,000,000 a year for indigo. Fourteen years later Germany was _selling_
+indigo to the amount of $12,600,000. Besides its cheapness, artificial
+indigo is preferable because it is of uniform quality and greater
+purity. Vegetable indigo contains from forty to eighty per cent. of
+impurities, among them various other tinctorial substances. Artificial
+indigo is made pure and of any desired strength, so the dyers can depend
+on it.
+
+The value of the aniline colors lies in their infinite variety. Some are
+fast, some will fade, some will stand wear and weather as long as the
+fabric, some will wash out on the spot. Dyes can be made that will
+attach themselves to wool, to silk or to cotton, and give it any shade
+of any color. The period of discovery by accident has long gone by. The
+chemist nowadays decides first just what kind of a dye he wants, and
+then goes to work systematically to make it. He begins by drawing a
+diagram of the molecule, double-linking nitrogen or carbon and oxygen
+atoms to give the required intensity, putting in acid or basic radicals
+to fasten it to the fiber, shifting the color back and forth along the
+spectrum at will by introducing methyl groups, until he gets it just to
+his liking.
+
+Art can go ahead of nature in the dyestuff business. Before man found
+that he could make all the dyes he wanted from the tar he had been
+burning up at home he searched the wide world over to find colors by
+which he could make himself--or his wife--garments as beautiful as those
+that arrayed the flower, the bird and the butterfly. He sent divers down
+into the Mediterranean to rob the murex of his purple. He sent ships to
+the new world to get Brazil wood and to the oldest world for indigo. He
+robbed the lady cochineal of her scarlet coat. Why these peculiar
+substances were formed only by these particular plants, mussels and
+insects it is hard to understand. I don't know that Mrs. Cacti Coccus
+derived any benefit from her scarlet uniform when khaki would be safer,
+and I can't imagine that to a shellfish it was of advantage to turn red
+as it rots or to an indigo plant that its leaves in decomposing should
+turn blue. But anyhow, it was man that took advantage of them until he
+learned how to make his own dyestuffs.
+
+Our independent ancestors got along so far as possible with what grew in
+the neighborhood. Sweetapple bark gave a fine saffron yellow. Ribbons
+were given the hue of the rose by poke berry juice. The Confederates in
+their butternut-colored uniform were almost as invisible as if in khaki
+or _feldgrau_. Madder was cultivated in the kitchen garden. Only logwood
+from Jamaica and indigo from India had to be imported. That we are not
+so independent today is our own fault, for we waste enough coal tar to
+supply ourselves and other countries with all the new dyes needed. It is
+essentially a question of economy and organization. We have forgotten
+how to economize, but we have learned how to organize.
+
+The British Government gave the discoverer of mauve a title, but it did
+not give him any support in his endeavors to develop the industry,
+although England led the world in textiles and needed more dyes than any
+other country. So in 1874 Sir William Perkin relinquished the attempt to
+manufacture the dyes he had discovered because, as he said, Oxford and
+Cambridge refused to educate chemists or to carry on research. Their
+students, trained in the classics for the profession of being a
+gentleman, showed a decided repugnance to the laboratory on account of
+its bad smells. So when Hofmann went home he virtually took the infant
+industry along with him to Germany, where Ph.D.'s were cheap and
+plentiful and not afraid of bad smells. There the business throve
+amazingly, and by 1914 the Germans were manufacturing more than
+three-fourths of all the coal-tar products of the world and supplying
+material for most of the rest. The British cursed the universities for
+thus imperiling the nation through their narrowness and neglect; but
+this accusation, though natural, was not altogether fair, for at least
+half the blame should go to the British dyer, who did not care where his
+colors came from, so long as they were cheap. When finally the
+universities did turn over a new leaf and began to educate chemists, the
+manufacturers would not employ them. Before the war six English
+factories producing dyestuffs employed only 35 chemists altogether,
+while one German color works, the H�chster Farbwerke, employed 307
+expert chemists and 74 technologists.
+
+This firm united with the six other leading dye companies of Germany on
+January 1, 1916, to form a trust to last for fifty years. During this
+time they will maintain uniform prices and uniform wage scales and hours
+of labor, and exchange patents and secrets. They will divide the foreign
+business _pro rata_ and share the profits. The German chemical works
+made big profits during the war, mostly from munitions and medicines,
+and will be, through this new combination, in a stronger position than
+ever to push the export trade.
+
+As a consequence of letting the dye business get away from her, England
+found herself in a fix when war broke out. She did not have dyes for her
+uniforms and flags, and she did not have drugs for her wounded. She
+could not take advantage of the blockade to capture the German trade in
+Asia and South America, because she could not color her textiles. A blue
+cotton dyestuff that sold before the war at sixty cents a pound, brought
+$34 a pound. A bright pink rhodamine formerly quoted at a dollar a pound
+jumped to $48. When one keg of dye ordinarily worth $15 was put up at
+forced auction sale in 1915 it was knocked down at $1500. The
+Highlanders could not get the colors for their kilts until some German
+dyes were smuggled into England. The textile industries of Great
+Britain, that brought in a billion dollars a year and employed one and a
+half million workers, were crippled for lack of dyes. The demand for
+high explosives from the front could not be met because these also are
+largely coal-tar products. Picric acid is both a dye and an explosive.
+It is made from carbolic acid and the famous trinitrotoluene is made
+from toluene, both of which you will find in the list of the ten
+fundamental "crudes."
+
+Both Great Britain and the United States realized the danger of allowing
+Germany to recover her former monopoly, and both have shown a readiness
+to cast overboard their traditional policies to meet this emergency. The
+British Government has discovered that a country without a tariff is a
+land without walls. The American Government has discovered that an
+industry is not benefited by being cut up into small pieces. Both
+governments are now doing all they can to build up big concerns and to
+provide them with protection. The British Government assisted in the
+formation of a national company for the manufacture of synthetic dyes by
+taking one-sixth of the stock and providing $500,000 for a research
+laboratory. But this effort is now reported to be "a great failure"
+because the Government put it in charge of the politicians instead of
+the chemists.
+
+The United States, like England, had become dependent upon Germany for
+its dyestuffs. We imported nine-tenths of what we used and most of those
+that were produced here were made from imported intermediates. When the
+war broke out there were only seven firms and 528 persons employed in
+the manufacture of dyes in the United States. One of these, the
+Schoelkopf Aniline and Chemical Works, of Buffalo, deserves mention, for
+it had stuck it out ever since 1879, and in 1914 was making 106 dyes. In
+June, 1917, this firm, with the encouragement of the Government Bureau
+of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, joined with some of the other American
+producers to form a trade combination, the National Aniline and Chemical
+Company. The Du Pont Company also entered the field on an extensive
+scale and soon there were 118 concerns engaged in it with great profit.
+During the war $200,000,000 was invested in the domestic dyestuff
+industry. To protect this industry Congress put on a specific duty of
+five cents a pound and an ad valorem duty of 30 per cent. on imported
+dyestuffs; but if, after five years, American manufacturers are not
+producing 60 per cent. in value of the domestic consumption, the
+protection is to be removed. For some reason, not clearly understood and
+therefore hotly discussed, Congress at the last moment struck off the
+specific duty from two of the most important of the dyestuffs, indigo
+and alizarin, as well as from all medicinals and flavors.
+
+The manufacture of dyes is not a big business, but it is a strategic
+business. Heligoland is not a big island, but England would have been
+glad to buy it back during the war at a high price per square yard.
+American industries employing over two million men and women and
+producing over three billion dollars' worth of products a year are
+dependent upon dyes. Chief of these is of course textiles, using more
+than half the dyes; next come leather, paper, paint and ink. We have
+been importing more than $12,000,000 worth of coal-tar products a year,
+but the cottonseed oil we exported in 1912 would alone suffice to pay
+that bill twice over. But although the manufacture of dyes cannot be
+called a big business, in comparison with some others, it is a paying
+business when well managed. The German concerns paid on an average 22
+per cent. dividends on their capital and sometimes as high as 50 per
+cent. Most of the standard dyes have been so long in use that the
+patents are off and the processes are well enough known. We have the
+coal tar and we have the chemists, so there seems no good reason why we
+should not make our own dyes, at least enough of them so we will not be
+caught napping as we were in 1914. It was decidedly humiliating for our
+Government to have to beg Germany to sell us enough colors to print our
+stamps and greenbacks and then have to beg Great Britain for permission
+to bring them over by Dutch ships.
+
+The raw material for the production of coal-tar products we have in
+abundance if we will only take the trouble to save it. In 1914 the crude
+light oil collected from the coke-ovens would have produced only about
+4,500,000 gallons of benzol and 1,500,000 gallons of toluol, but in 1917
+this output was raised to 40,200,000 gallons of benzol and 10,200,000 of
+toluol. The toluol was used mostly in the manufacture of trinitrotoluol
+for use in Europe. When the war broke out in 1914 it shut off our supply
+of phenol (carbolic acid) for which we were dependent upon foreign
+sources. This threatened not only to afflict us with headaches by
+depriving us of aspirin but also to removed the consolation of music,
+for phenol is used in making phonographic records. Mr. Edison with his
+accustomed energy put up a factory within a few weeks for the
+manufacture of synthetic phenol. When we entered the war the need for
+phenol became yet more imperative, for it was needed to make picric
+acid for filling bombs. This demand was met, and in 1917 there were
+fifteen new plants turning out 64,146,499 pounds of phenol valued at
+$23,719,805.
+
+Some of the coal-tar products, as we see, serve many purposes. For
+instance, picric acid appears in three places in this book. It is a high
+explosive. It is a powerful and permanent yellow dye as any one who has
+touched it knows. Thirdly it is used as an antiseptic to cover burned
+skin. Other coal-tar dyes are used for the same purpose, "malachite
+green," "brilliant green," "crystal violet," "ethyl violet" and
+"Victoria blue," so a patient in a military hospital is decorated like
+an Easter egg. During the last five years surgeons have unfortunately
+had unprecedented opportunities for the study of wounds and fortunately
+they have been unprecedentedly successful in finding improved methods of
+treating them. In former wars a serious wound meant usually death or
+amputation. Now nearly ninety per cent. of the wounded are able to
+continue in the service. The reason for this improvement is that
+medicines are now being made to order instead of being gathered "from
+China to Peru." The old herb doctor picked up any strange plant that he
+could find and tried it on any sick man that would let him. This
+empirical method, though hard on the patients, resulted in the course of
+five thousand years in the discovery of a number of useful remedies. But
+the modern medicine man when he knows the cause of the disease is
+usually able to devise ways of counteracting it directly. For instance,
+he knows, thanks to Pasteur and Metchnikoff, that the cause of wound
+infection is the bacterial enemies of man which swarm by the million
+into any breach in his protective armor, the skin. Now when a breach is
+made in a line of intrenchments the defenders rush troops to the
+threatened spot for two purposes, constructive and destructive,
+engineers and warriors, the former to build up the rampart with
+sandbags, the latter to kill the enemy. So when the human body is
+invaded the blood brings to the breach two kinds of defenders. One is
+the serum which neutralizes the bacterial poison and by coagulating
+forms a new skin or scab over the exposed flesh. The other is the
+phagocytes or white corpuscles, the free lances of our corporeal
+militia, which attack and kill the invading bacteria. The aim of the
+physician then is to aid these defenders as much as possible without
+interfering with them. Therefore the antiseptic he is seeking is one
+that will assist the serum in protecting and repairing the broken
+tissues and will kill the hostile bacteria without killing the friendly
+phagocytes. Carbolic acid, the most familiar of the coal-tar
+antiseptics, will destroy the bacteria when it is diluted with 250 parts
+of water, but unfortunately it puts a stop to the fighting activities of
+the phagocytes when it is only half that strength, or one to 500, so it
+cannot destroy the infection without hindering the healing.
+
+In this search for substances that would attack a specific disease germ
+one of the leading investigators was Prof. Paul Ehrlich, a German
+physician of the Hebrew race. He found that the aniline dyes were useful
+for staining slides under the microscope, for they would pick out
+particular cells and leave others uncolored and from this starting point
+he worked out organic and metallic compounds which would destroy the
+bacteria and parasites that cause some of the most dreadful of diseases.
+A year after the war broke out Professor Ehrlich died while working in
+his laboratory on how to heal with coal-tar compounds the wounds
+inflicted by explosives from the same source.
+
+One of the most valuable of the aniline antiseptics employed by Ehrlich
+is flavine or, if the reader prefers to call it by its full name,
+diaminomethylacridinium chloride. Flavine, as its name implies, is a
+yellow dye and will kill the germs causing ordinary abscesses when in
+solution as dilute as one part of the dye to 200,000 parts of water, but
+it does not interfere with the bactericidal action of the white blood
+corpuscles unless the solution is 400 times as strong as this, that is
+one part in 500. Unlike carbolic acid and other antiseptics it is said
+to stimulate the serum instead of impairing its activity. Another
+antiseptic of the coal-tar family which has recently been brought into
+use by Dr. Dakin of the Rockefeller Institute is that called by European
+physicians chloramine-T and by American physicians chlorazene and by
+chemists para-toluene-sodium-sulfo-chloramide.
+
+This may serve to illustrate how a chemist is able to make such remedies
+as the doctor needs, instead of depending upon the accidental
+by-products of plants. On an earlier page I explained how by starting
+with the simplest of ring-compounds, the benzene of coal tar, we could
+get aniline. Suppose we go a step further and boil the aniline oil with
+acetic acid, which is the acid of vinegar minus its water. This easy
+process gives us acetanilid, which when introduced into the market some
+years ago under the name of "antifebrin" made a fortune for its makers.
+
+The making of medicines from coal tar began in 1874 when Kolbe made
+salicylic acid from carbolic acid. Salicylic acid is a rheumatism remedy
+and had previously been extracted from willow bark. If now we treat
+salicylic acid with concentrated acetic acid we get "aspirin." From
+aniline again are made "phenacetin," "antipyrin" and a lot of other
+drugs that have become altogether too popular as headache remedies--say
+rather "headache relievers."
+
+Another class of synthetics equally useful and likewise abused, are the
+soporifics, such as "sulphonal," "veronal" and "medinal." When it is not
+desired to put the patient to sleep but merely to render insensible a
+particular place, as when a tooth is to be pulled, cocain may be used.
+This, like alcohol and morphine, has proved a curse as well as a
+blessing and its sale has had to be restricted because of the many
+victims to the habit of using this drug. Cocain is obtained from the
+leaves of the South American coca tree, but can be made artificially
+from coal-tar products. The laboratory is superior to the forest because
+other forms of local anesthetics, such as eucain and novocain, can be
+made that are better than the natural alkaloid because more effective
+and less poisonous.
+
+I must not forget to mention another lot of coal-tar derivatives in
+which some of my readers will take a personal interest. That is the
+photographic developers. I am old enough to remember when we used to
+develop our plates in ferrous sulfate solution and you never saw nicer
+negatives than we got with it. But when pyrogallic acid came in we
+switched over to that even though it did stain our fingers and sometimes
+our plates. Later came a swarm of new organic reducing agents under
+various fancy names, such as metol, hydro (short for hydro-quinone) and
+eikongen ("the image-maker"). Every fellow fixed up his own formula and
+called his fellow-members of the camera club fools for not adopting it
+though he secretly hoped they would not.
+
+Under the double stimulus of patriotism and high prices the American
+drug and dyestuff industry developed rapidly. In 1917 about as many
+pounds of dyes were manufactured in America as were imported in 1913 and
+our _exports_ of American-made dyes exceeded in value our _imports_
+before the war. In 1914 the output of American dyes was valued at
+$2,500,000. In 1917 it amounted to over $57,000,000. This does not mean
+that the problem was solved, for the home products were not equal in
+variety and sometimes not in quality to those made in Germany. Many
+valuable dyes were lacking and the cost was of course much higher.
+Whether the American industry can compete with the foreign in an open
+market and on equal terms is impossible to say because such conditions
+did not prevail before the war and they are not going to prevail in the
+future. Formerly the large German cartels through their agents and
+branches in this country kept the business in their own hands and now
+the American manufacturers are determined to maintain the independence
+they have acquired. They will not depend hereafter upon the tariff to
+cut off competition but have adopted more effective measures. The 4500
+German chemical patents that had been seized by the Alien Property
+Custodian were sold by him for $250,000 to the Chemical Foundation, an
+association of American manufacturers organized "for the Americanization
+of such institutions as may be affected thereby, for the exclusion or
+elimination of alien interests hostile or detrimental to said industries
+and for the advancement of chemical and allied science and industry in
+the United States." The Foundation has a large fighting fund so that it
+"may be able to commence immediately and prosecute with the utmost vigor
+infringement proceedings whenever the first German attempt shall
+hereafter be made to import into this country."
+
+So much mystery has been made of the achievements of German chemists--as
+though the Teutonic brain had a special lobe for that faculty, lacking
+in other craniums--that I want to quote what Dr. Hesse says about his
+first impressions of a German laboratory of industrial research:
+
+     Directly after graduating from the University of Chicago in
+     1896, I entered the employ of the largest coal-tar dye works in
+     the world at its plant in Germany and indeed in one of its
+     research laboratories. This was my first trip outside the
+     United States and it was, of course, an event of the first
+     magnitude for me to be in Europe, and, as a chemist, to be in
+     Germany, in a German coal-tar dye plant, and to cap it all in
+     its research laboratory--a real _sanctum sanctorum_ for
+     chemists. In a short time the daily routine wore the novelty
+     off my experience and I then settled down to calm analysis and
+     dispassionate appraisal of my surroundings and to compare what
+     was actually before and around me with my expectations. I
+     found that the general laboratory equipment was no better than
+     what I had been accustomed to; that my colleagues had no better
+     fundamental training than I had enjoyed nor any better fact--or
+     manipulative--equipment than I; that those in charge of the
+     work had no better general intellectual equipment nor any more
+     native ability than had my instructors; in short, there was
+     nothing new about it all, nothing that we did not have back
+     home, nothing--except the specific problems that were engaging
+     their attention, and the special opportunities of attacking
+     them. Those problems were of no higher order of complexity than
+     those I had been accustomed to for years, in fact, most of them
+     were not very complex from a purely intellectual viewpoint.
+     There was nothing inherently uncanny, magical or wizardly about
+     their occupation whatever. It was nothing but plain hard work
+     and keeping everlastingly at it. Now, what was the actual thing
+     behind that chemical laboratory that we did not have at home?
+     It was money, willing to back such activity, convinced that in
+     the final outcome, a profit would be made; money, willing to
+     take university graduates expecting from them no special
+     knowledge other than a good and thorough grounding in
+     scientific research and provide them with opportunity to become
+     specialists suited to the factory's needs.
+
+It is evidently not impossible to make the United States self-sufficient
+in the matter of coal-tar products. We've got the tar; we've got the
+men; we've got the money, too. Whether such a policy would pay us in the
+long run or whether it is necessary as a measure of military or
+commercial self-defense is another question that cannot here be decided.
+But whatever share we may have in it the coal-tar industry has increased
+the economy of civilization and added to the wealth of the world by
+showing how a waste by-product could be utilized for making new dyes and
+valuable medicines, a better use for tar than as fuel for political
+bonfires and as clothing for the nakedness of social outcasts.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+SYNTHETIC PERFUMES AND FLAVORS
+
+
+The primitive man got his living out of such wild plants and animals as
+he could find. Next he, or more likely his wife, began to cultivate the
+plants and tame the animals so as to insure a constant supply. This was
+the first step toward civilization, for when men had to settle down in a
+community (_civitas_) they had to ameliorate their manners and make laws
+protecting land and property. In this settled and orderly life the
+plants and animals improved as well as man and returned a hundredfold
+for the pains that their master had taken in their training. But still
+man was dependent upon the chance bounties of nature. He could select,
+but he could not invent. He could cultivate, but he could not create. If
+he wanted sugar he had to send to the West Indies. If he wanted spices
+he had to send to the East Indies. If he wanted indigo he had to send to
+India. If he wanted a febrifuge he had to send to Peru. If he wanted a
+fertilizer he had to send to Chile. If he wanted rubber he had to send
+to the Congo. If he wanted rubies he had to send to Mandalay. If he
+wanted otto of roses he had to send to Turkey. Man was not yet master of
+his environment.
+
+This period of cultivation, the second stage of civilization, began
+before the dawn of history and lasted until recent times. We might
+almost say up to the twentieth century, for it was not until the
+fundamental laws of heredity were discovered that man could originate
+new species of plants and animals according to a predetermined plan by
+combining such characteristics as he desired to perpetuate. And it was
+not until the fundamental laws of chemistry were discovered that man
+could originate new compounds more suitable to his purpose than any to
+be found in nature. Since the progress of mankind is continuous it is
+impossible to draw a date line, unless a very jagged one, along the
+frontier of human culture, but it is evident that we are just entering
+upon the third era of evolution in which man will make what he needs
+instead of trying to find it somewhere. The new epoch has hardly dawned,
+yet already a man may stay at home in New York or London and make his
+own rubber and rubies, his own indigo and otto of roses. More than this,
+he can make gems and colors and perfumes that never existed since time
+began. The man of science has signed a declaration of independence of
+the lower world and we are now in the midst of the revolution.
+
+Our eyes are dazzled by the dawn of the new era. We know what the hunter
+and the horticulturist have already done for man, but we cannot imagine
+what the chemist can do. If we look ahead through the eyes of one of the
+greatest of French chemists, Berthelot, this is what we shall see:
+
+     The problem of food is a chemical problem. Whenever energy can
+     be obtained economically we can begin to make all kinds of
+     aliment, with carbon borrowed from carbonic acid, hydrogen
+     taken from the water and oxygen and nitrogen drawn from the
+     air.... The day will come when each person will carry for his
+     nourishment his little nitrogenous tablet, his pat of fatty
+     matter, his package of starch or sugar, his vial of aromatic
+     spices suited to his personal taste; all manufactured
+     economically and in unlimited quantities; all independent of
+     irregular seasons, drought and rain, of the heat that withers
+     the plant and of the frost that blights the fruit; all free
+     from pathogenic microbes, the origin of epidemics and the
+     enemies of human life. On that day chemistry will have
+     accomplished a world-wide revolution that cannot be estimated.
+     There will no longer be hills covered with vineyards and fields
+     filled with cattle. Man will gain in gentleness and morality
+     because he will cease to live by the carnage and destruction of
+     living creatures.... The earth will be covered with grass,
+     flowers and woods and in it the human race will dwell in the
+     abundance and joy of the legendary age of gold--provided that a
+     spiritual chemistry has been discovered that changes the nature
+     of man as profoundly as our chemistry transforms material
+     nature.
+
+But this is looking so far into the future that we can trust no man's
+eyesight, not even Berthelot's. There is apparently no impossibility
+about the manufacture of synthetic food, but at present there is no
+apparent probability of it. There is no likelihood that the laboratory
+will ever rival the wheat field. The cornstalk will always be able to
+work cheaper than the chemist in the manufacture of starch. But in rarer
+and choicer products of nature the chemist has proved his ability to
+compete and even to excel.
+
+What have been from the dawn of history to the rise of synthetic
+chemistry the most costly products of nature? What could tempt a
+merchant to brave the perils of a caravan journey over the deserts of
+Asia beset with Arab robbers? What induced the Portuguese and Spanish
+mariners to risk their frail barks on perilous waters of the Cape of
+Good Hope or the Horn? The chief prizes were perfumes, spices, drugs and
+gems. And why these rather than what now constitutes the bulk of oversea
+and overland commerce? Because they were precious, portable and
+imperishable. If the merchant got back safe after a year or two with a
+little flask of otto of roses, a package of camphor and a few pearls
+concealed in his garments his fortune was made. If a single ship of the
+argosy sent out from Lisbon came back with a load of sandalwood, indigo
+or nutmeg it was regarded as a successful venture. You know from reading
+the Bible, or if not that, from your reading of Arabian Nights, that a
+few grains of frankincense or a few drops of perfumed oil were regarded
+as gifts worthy the acceptance of a king or a god. These products of the
+Orient were equally in demand by the toilet and the temple. The
+unctorium was an adjunct of the Roman bathroom. Kings had to be greased
+and fumigated before they were thought fit to sit upon a throne. There
+was a theory, not yet altogether extinct, that medicines brought from a
+distance were most efficacious, especially if, besides being expensive,
+they tasted bad like myrrh or smelled bad like asafetida. And if these
+failed to save the princely patient he was embalmed in aromatics or, as
+we now call them, antiseptics of the benzene series.
+
+Today, as always, men are willing to pay high for the titillation of the
+senses of smell and taste. The African savage will trade off an ivory
+tusk for a piece of soap reeking with synthetic musk. The clubman will
+pay $10 for a bottle of wine which consists mostly of water with about
+ten per cent. of alcohol, worth a cent or two, but contains an
+unweighable amount of the "bouquet" that can only be produced on the
+sunny slopes of Champagne or in the valley of the Rhine. But very likely
+the reader is quite as extravagant, for when one buys the natural violet
+perfumery he is paying at the rate of more than $10,000 a pound for the
+odoriferous oil it contains; the rest is mere water and alcohol. But you
+would not want the pure undiluted oil if you could get it, for it is
+unendurable. A single whiff of it paralyzes your sense of smell for a
+time just as a loud noise deafens you.
+
+Of the five senses, three are physical and two chemical. By touch we
+discern pressures and surface textures. By hearing we receive
+impressions of certain air waves and by sight of certain ether waves.
+But smell and taste lead us to the heart of the molecule and enable us
+to tell how the atoms are put together. These twin senses stand like
+sentries at the portals of the body, where they closely scrutinize
+everything that enters. Sounds and sights may be disagreeable, but they
+are never fatal. A man can live in a boiler factory or in a cubist art
+gallery, but he cannot live in a room containing hydrogen sulfide. Since
+it is more important to be warned of danger than guided to delights our
+senses are made more sensitive to pain than pleasure. We can detect by
+the smell one two-millionth of a milligram of oil of roses or musk, but
+we can detect one two-billionth of a milligram of mercaptan, which is
+the vilest smelling compound that man has so far invented. If you do not
+know how much a milligram is consider a drop picked up by the point of
+a needle and imagine that divided into two billion parts. Also try to
+estimate the weight of the odorous particles that guide a dog to the fox
+or warn a deer of the presence of man. The unaided nostril can rival the
+spectroscope in the detection and analysis of unweighable amounts of
+matter.
+
+What we call flavor or savor is a joint effect of taste and odor in
+which the latter predominates. There are only four tastes of importance,
+acid, alkaline, bitter and sweet. The acid, or sour taste, is the
+perception of hydrogen atoms charged with positive electricity. The
+alkaline, or soapy taste, is the perception of hydroxyl radicles charged
+with negative electricity. The bitter and sweet tastes and all the odors
+depend upon the chemical constitution of the compound, but the laws of
+the relation have not yet been worked out. Since these sense organs, the
+taste and smell buds, are sunk in the moist mucous membrane they can
+only be touched by substances soluble in water, and to reach the sense
+of smell they must also be volatile so as to be diffused in the air
+inhaled by the nose. The "taste" of food is mostly due to the volatile
+odors of it that creep up the back-stairs into the olfactory chamber.
+
+A chemist given an unknown substance would have to make an elementary
+analysis and some tedious tests to determine whether it contained methyl
+or ethyl groups, whether it was an aldehyde or an ester, whether the
+carbon atoms were singly or doubly linked and whether it was an open
+chain or closed. But let him get a whiff of it and he can give instantly
+a pretty shrewd guess as to these points. His nose knows.
+
+Although the chemist does not yet know enough to tell for certain from
+looking at the structural formula what sort of odor the compound would
+have or whether it would have any, yet we can divide odoriferous
+substances into classes according to their constitution. What are
+commonly known as "fruity" odors belong mostly to what the chemist calls
+the fatty or aliphatic series. For instance, we may have in a ripe fruit
+an alcohol (say ethyl or common alcohol) and an acid (say acetic or
+vinegar) and a combination of these, the ester or organic salt (in this
+case ethyl acetate), which is more odorous than either of its
+components. These esters of the fatty acids give the characteristic
+savor to many of our favorite fruits, candies and beverages. The pear
+flavor, amyl acetate, is made from acetic acid and amyl alcohol--though
+amyl alcohol (fusel oil) has a detestable smell. Pineapple is ethyl
+butyrate--but the acid part of it (butyric acid) is what gives Limburger
+cheese its aroma. These essential oils are easily made in the
+laboratory, but cannot be extracted from the fruit for separate use.
+
+If the carbon chain contains one or more double linkages we get the
+"flowery" perfumes. For instance, here is the symbol of geraniol, the
+chief ingredient of otto of roses:
+
+  (CH_{3})_{2}C = CHCH_{2}CH_{2}C(CH_{3})_{2} = CHCH_{2}OH
+
+The rose would smell as sweet under another name, but it may be
+questioned whether it would stand being called by the name of
+dimethyl-2-6-octadiene-2-6-ol-8. Geraniol by oxidation goes into the
+aldehyde, citral, which occurs in lemons, oranges and verbena flowers.
+Another compound of this group, linalool, is found in lavender, bergamot
+and many flowers.
+
+Geraniol, as you would see if you drew up its structural formula in the
+way I described in the last chapter, contains a chain of six carbon
+atoms, that is, the same number as make a benzene ring. Now if we shake
+up geraniol and other compounds of this group (the diolefines) with
+diluted sulfuric acid the carbon chain hooks up to form a benzene ring,
+but with the other carbon atoms stretched across it; rather too
+complicated to depict here. These "bridged rings" of the formula
+C_{5}H_{8}, or some multiple of that, constitute the important group of
+the terpenes which occur in turpentine and such wild and woodsy things
+as sage, lavender, caraway, pine needles and eucalyptus. Going further
+in this direction we are led into the realm of the heavy oriental odors,
+patchouli, sandalwood, cedar, cubebs, ginger and camphor. Camphor can
+now be made directly from turpentine so we may be independent of Formosa
+and Borneo.
+
+When we have a six carbon ring without double linkings (cyclo-aliphatic)
+or with one or two such, we get soft and delicate perfumes like the
+violet (ionone and irone). But when these pass into the benzene ring
+with its three double linkages the odor becomes more powerful and so
+characteristic that the name "aromatic compound" has been extended to
+the entire class of benzene derivatives, although many of them are
+odorless. The essential oils of jasmine, orange blossoms, musk,
+heliotrope, tuberose, ylang ylang, etc., consist mostly of this class
+and can be made from the common source of aromatic compounds, coal tar.
+
+The synthetic flavors and perfumes are made in the same way as the dyes
+by starting with some coal-tar product or other crude material and
+building up the molecule to the desired complexity. For instance, let us
+start with phenol, the ill-smelling and poisonous carbolic acid of
+disagreeable associations and evil fame. Treat this to soda-water and it
+is transformed into salicylic acid, a white odorless powder, used as a
+preservative and as a rheumatism remedy. Add to this methyl alcohol
+which is obtained by the destructive distillation of wood and is much
+more poisonous than ordinary ethyl alcohol. The alcohol and the acid
+heated together will unite with the aid of a little sulfuric acid and we
+get what the chemist calls methyl salicylate and other people call oil
+of wintergreen, the same as is found in wintergreen berries and birch
+bark. We have inherited a taste for this from our pioneer ancestors and
+we use it extensively to flavor our soft drinks, gum, tooth paste and
+candy, but the Europeans have not yet found out how nice it is.
+
+But, starting with phenol again, let us heat it with caustic alkali and
+chloroform. This gives us two new compounds of the same composition, but
+differing a little in the order of the atoms. If you refer back to the
+diagram of the benzene ring which I gave in the last chapter, you will
+see that there are six hydrogen atoms attached to it. Now any or all
+these hydrogen atoms may be replaced by other elements or groups and
+what the product is depends not only on what the new elements are, but
+where they are put. It is like spelling words. The three letters _t_,
+_r_ and _a_ mean very different things according to whether they are put
+together as _art_, _tar_ or _rat_. Or, to take a more apposite
+illustration, every hostess knows that the success of her dinner depends
+upon how she seats her guests around the table. So in the case of
+aromatic compounds, a little difference in the seating arrangement
+around the benzene ring changes the character. The two derivatives of
+phenol, which we are now considering, have two substituting groups. One
+is--O-H (called the hydroxyl group). The other is--CHO (called the
+aldehyde group). If these are opposite (called the para position) we
+have an odorless white solid. If they are side by side (called the ortho
+position) we have an oil with the odor of meadowsweet. Treating the
+odorless solid with methyl alcohol we get audepine (or anisic aldehyde)
+which is the perfume of hawthorn blossoms. But treating the other of the
+twin products, the fragrant oil, with dry acetic acid ("Perkin's
+reaction") we get cumarin, which is the perfume part of the tonka or
+tonquin beans that our forefathers used to carry in their snuff boxes.
+One ounce of cumarin is equal to four pounds of tonka beans. It smells
+sufficiently like vanilla to be used as a substitute for it in cheap
+extracts. In perfumery it is known as "new mown hay."
+
+You may remember what I said on a former page about the career of
+William Henry Perkin, the boy who loved chemistry better than eating,
+and how he discovered the coal-tar dyes. Well, it is also to his
+ingenious mind that we owe the starting of the coal-tar perfume business
+which has had almost as important a development. Perkin made cumarin in
+1868, but this, like the dye industry, escaped from English hands and
+flew over the North Sea. Before the war Germany was exporting
+$1,500,000 worth of synthetic perfumes a year. Part of these went to
+France, where they were mixed and put up in fancy bottles with French
+names and sold to Americans at fancy prices.
+
+The real vanilla flavor, vanillin, was made by Tiemann in 1874. At first
+it sold for nearly $800 a pound, but now it may be had for $10. How
+extensively it is now used in chocolate, ice cream, soda water, cakes
+and the like we all know. It should be noted that cumarin and vanillin,
+however they may be made, are not imitations, but identical with the
+chief constituent of the tonka and vanilla beans and, of course, are
+equally wholesome or harmless. But the nice palate can distinguish a
+richer flavor in the natural extracts, for they contain small quantities
+of other savory ingredients.
+
+A true perfume consists of a large number of odoriferous chemical
+compounds mixed in such proportions as to produce a single harmonious
+effect upon the sense of smell in a fine brand of perfume may be
+compounded a dozen or twenty different ingredients and these, if they
+are natural essences, are complex mixtures of a dozen or so distinct
+substances. Perfumery is one of the fine arts. The perfumer, like the
+orchestra leader, must know how to combine and co�rdinate his
+instruments to produce a desired sensation. A Wagnerian opera requires
+103 musicians. A Strauss opera requires 112. Now if the concert manager
+wants to economize he will insist upon cutting down on the most
+expensive musicians and dropping out some of the others, say, the
+supernumerary violinists and the man who blows a single blast or tinkles
+a triangle once in the course of the evening. Only the trained ear will
+detect the difference and the manager can make more money.
+
+Suppose our mercenary impresario were unable to get into the concert
+hall of his famous rival. He would then listen outside the window and
+analyze the sound in this fashion: "Fifty per cent. of the sound is made
+by the tuba, 20 per cent. by the bass drum, 15 per cent. by the 'cello
+and 10 per cent. by the clarinet. There are some other instruments, but
+they are not loud and I guess if we can leave them out nobody will know
+the difference." So he makes up his orchestra out of these four alone
+and many people do not know the difference.
+
+The cheap perfumer goes about it in the same way. He analyzes, for
+instance, the otto or oil of roses which cost during the war $400 a
+pound--if you could get it at any price--and he finds that the chief
+ingredient is geraniol, costing only $5, and next is citronelol, costing
+$20; then comes nerol and others. So he makes up a cheap brand of
+perfumery out of three or four such compounds. But the genuine oil of
+roses, like other natural essences, contains a dozen or more
+constituents and to leave many of them out is like reducing an orchestra
+to a few loud-sounding instruments or a painting to a three-color print.
+A few years ago an attempt was made to make music electrically by
+producing separately each kind of sound vibration contained in the
+instruments imitated. Theoretically that seems easy, but practically the
+tone was not satisfactory because the tones and overtones of a full
+orchestra or even of a single violin are too numerous and complex to be
+reproduced individually. So the synthetic perfumes have not driven out
+the natural perfumes, but, on the contrary, have aided and stimulated
+the growth of flowers for essences. The otto or attar of roses, favorite
+of the Persian monarchs and romances, has in recent years come chiefly
+from Bulgaria. But wars are not made with rosewater and the Bulgars for
+the last five years have been engaged in other business than cultivating
+their own gardens. The alembic or still was invented by the Arabian
+alchemists for the purpose of obtaining the essential oil or attar of
+roses. But distillation, even with the aid of steam, is not altogether
+satisfactory. For instance, the distilled rose oil contains anywhere
+from 10 to 74 per cent. of a paraffin wax (stearopten) that is odorless
+and, on the other hand, phenyl-ethyl alcohol, which is an important
+constituent of the scent of roses, is broken up in the process of
+distillation. So the perfumer can improve on the natural or rather the
+distilled oil by leaving out part of the paraffin and adding the missing
+alcohol. Even the imported article taken direct from the still is not
+always genuine, for the wily Bulgar sometimes "increases the yield" by
+sprinkling his roses in the vat with synthetic geraniol just as the wily
+Italian pours a barrel of American cottonseed oil over his olives in the
+press.
+
+Another method of extracting the scent of flowers is by _enfleurage_,
+which takes advantage of the tendency of fats to absorb odors. You know
+how butter set beside fish in the ice box will get a fishy flavor. In
+_enfleurage_ moist air is carried up a tower passing alternately over
+trays of fresh flowers, say violets, and over glass plates covered with
+a thin layer of lard. The perfumed lard may then be used as a pomade or
+the perfume may be extracted by alcohol.
+
+But many sweet flowers do not readily yield an essential oil, so in such
+oases we have to rely altogether upon more or less successful
+substitutes. For instance, the perfumes sold under the names of
+"heliotrope," "lily of the valley," "lilac," "cyclamen," "honeysuckle,"
+"sweet pea," "arbutus," "mayflower" and "magnolia" are not produced from
+these flowers but are simply imitations made from other essences,
+synthetic or natural. Among the "thousand flowers" that contribute to
+the "Eau de Mille Fleurs" are the civet cat, the musk deer and the sperm
+whale. Some of the published formulas for "Jockey Club" call for civet
+or ambergris and those of "Lavender Water" for musk and civet. The less
+said about the origin of these three animal perfumes the better.
+Fortunately they are becoming too expensive to use and are being
+displaced by synthetic products more agreeable to a refined imagination.
+The musk deer may now be saved from extinction since we can make
+tri-nitro-butyl-xylene from coal tar. This synthetic musk passes muster
+to human nostrils, but a cat will turn up her nose at it. The synthetic
+musk is not only much cheaper than the natural, but a dozen times as
+strong, or let us say, goes a dozen times as far, for nobody wants it
+any stronger.
+
+Such powerful scents as these are only pleasant when highly diluted, yet
+they are, as we have seen, essential ingredients of the finest perfumes.
+For instance, the natural oil of jasmine and other flowers contain
+traces of indols and skatols which have most disgusting odors. Though
+our olfactory organs cannot detect their presence yet we perceive their
+absence so they have to be put into the artificial perfume. Just so a
+brief but violent discord in a piece of music or a glaring color
+contrast in a painting may be necessary to the harmony of the whole.
+
+It is absurd to object to "artificial" perfumes, for practically all
+perfumes now sold are artificial in the sense of being compounded by the
+art of the perfumer and whether the materials he uses are derived from
+the flowers of yesteryear or of Carboniferous Era is nobody's business
+but his. And he does not tell. The materials can be purchased in the
+open market. Various recipes can be found in the books. But every famous
+perfumer guards well the secret of his formulas and hands it as a legacy
+to his posterity. The ancient Roman family of Frangipani has been made
+immortal by one such hereditary recipe. The Farina family still claims
+to have the exclusive knowledge of how to make Eau de Cologne. This
+famous perfume was first compounded by an Italian, Giovanni Maria
+Farina, who came to Cologne in 1709. It soon became fashionable and was
+for a time the only scent allowed at some of the German courts. The
+various published recipes contain from six to a dozen ingredients,
+chiefly the oils of neroli, rosemary, bergamot, lemon and lavender
+dissolved in very pure alcohol and allowed to age like wine. The
+invention, in 1895, of artificial neroli (orange flowers) has improved
+the product.
+
+French perfumery, like the German, had its origin in Italy, when
+Catherine de' Medici came to Paris as the bride of Henri II. She
+brought with her, among other artists, her perfumer, Sieur Toubarelli,
+who established himself in the flowery land of Grasse. Here for four
+hundred years the industry has remained rooted and the family formulas
+have been handed down from generation to generation. In the city of
+Grasse there were at the outbreak of the war fifty establishments making
+perfumes. The French perfumer does not confine himself to a single
+sense. He appeals as well to sight and sound and association. He adds to
+the attractiveness of his creation by a quaintly shaped bottle, an
+artistic box and an enticing name such as "Dans les Nues," "Le Coeur de
+Jeannette," "Nuit de Chine," "Un Air Embaum�," "Le Vertige," "Bon Vieux
+Temps," "L'Heure Bleue," "Nuit d'Amour," "Quelques Fleurs," "Djer-Kiss."
+
+The requirements of a successful scent are very strict. A perfume must
+be lasting, but not strong. All its ingredients must continue to
+evaporate in the same proportion, otherwise it will change odor and
+deteriorate. Scents kill one another as colors do. The minutest trace of
+some impurity or foreign odor may spoil the whole effect. To mix the
+ingredients in a vessel of any metal but aluminum or even to filter
+through a tin funnel is likely to impair the perfume. The odoriferous
+compounds are very sensitive and unstable bodies, otherwise they would
+have no effect upon the olfactory organ. The combination that would be
+suitable for a toilet water would not be good for a talcum powder and
+might spoil in a soap. Perfumery is used even in the "scentless" powders
+and soaps. In fact it is now used more extensively, if less intensively,
+than ever before in the history of the world. During the Unwashed Ages,
+commonly called the Dark Ages, between the destruction of the Roman
+baths and the construction of the modern bathroom, the art of the
+perfumer, like all the fine arts, suffered an eclipse. "The odor of
+sanctity" was in highest esteem and what that odor was may be imagined
+from reading the lives of the saints. But in the course of centuries the
+refinements of life began to seep back into Europe from the East by
+means of the Arabs and Crusaders, and chemistry, then chiefly the art of
+cosmetics, began to revive. When science, the greatest democratizing
+agent on earth, got into action it elevated the poor to the ranks of
+kings and priests in the delights of the palate and the nose. We should
+not despise these delights, for the pleasure they confer is greater, in
+amount at least, than that of the so-called higher senses. We eat three
+times a day; some of us drink oftener; few of us visit the concert hall
+or the art gallery as often as we do the dining room. Then, too, these
+primitive senses have a stronger influence upon our emotional nature
+than those acquired later in the course of evolution. As Kipling puts
+it:
+
+  Smells are surer than sounds or sights
+  To make your heart-strings crack.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+CELLULOSE
+
+
+Organic compounds, on which our life and living depend, consist chiefly
+of four elements: carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen. These compounds
+are sometimes hard to analyze, but when once the chemist has ascertained
+their constitution he can usually make them out of their elements--if he
+wants to. He will not want to do it as a business unless it pays and it
+will not pay unless the manufacturing process is cheaper than the
+natural process. This depends primarily upon the cost of the crude
+materials. What, then, is the market price of these four elements?
+Oxygen and nitrogen are free as air, and as we have seen in the second
+chapter, their direct combination by the electric spark is possible.
+Hydrogen is free in the form of water but expensive to extricate by
+means of the electric current. But we need more carbon than anything
+else and where shall we get that? Bits of crystallized carbon can be
+picked up in South Africa and elsewhere, but those who can afford to buy
+them prefer to wear them rather than use them in making synthetic food.
+Graphite is rare and hard to melt. We must then have recourse to the
+compounds of carbon. The simplest of these, carbon dioxide, exists in
+the air but only four parts in ten thousand by volume. To extract the
+carbon and get it into combination with the other elements would be a
+difficult and expensive process. Here, then, we must call in cheap
+labor, the cheapest of all laborers, the plants. Pine trees on the
+highlands and cotton plants on the lowlands keep their green traps set
+all the day long and with the captured carbon dioxide build up
+cellulose. If, then, man wants free carbon he can best get it by
+charring wood in a kiln or digging up that which has been charred in
+nature's kiln during the Carboniferous Era. But there is no reason why
+he should want to go back to elemental carbon when he can have it
+already combined with hydrogen in the remains of modern or fossil
+vegetation. The synthetic products on which modern chemistry prides
+itself, such as vanillin, camphor and rubber, are not built up out of
+their elements, C, H and O, although they might be as a laboratory
+stunt. Instead of that the raw material of the organic chemist is
+chiefly cellulose, or the products of its recent or remote destructive
+distillation, tar and oil.
+
+It is unnecessary to tell the reader what cellulose is since he now
+holds a specimen of it in his hand, pretty pure cellulose except for the
+sizing and the specks of carbon that mar the whiteness of its surface.
+This utilization of cellulose is the chief cause of the difference
+between the modern world and the ancient, for what is called the
+invention of printing is essentially the inventing of paper. The Romans
+made type to stamp their coins and lead pipes with and if they had had
+paper to print upon the world might have escaped the Dark Ages. But the
+clay tablets of the Babylonians were cumbersome; the wax tablets of the
+Greeks were perishable; the papyrus of the Egyptians was fragile;
+parchment was expensive and penning was slow, so it was not until
+literature was put on a paper basis that democratic education became
+possible. At the present time sheepskin is only used for diplomas,
+treaties and other antiquated documents. And even if your diploma is
+written in Latin it is likely to be made of sulfated cellulose.
+
+The textile industry has followed the same law of development that I
+have indicated in the other industries. Here again we find the three
+stages of progress, (1) utilization of natural products, (2) cultivation
+of natural products, (3) manufacture of artificial products. The
+ancients were dependent upon plants, animals and insects for their
+fibers. China used silk, Greece and Rome used wool, Egypt used flax and
+India used cotton. In the course of cultivation for three thousand years
+the animal and vegetable fibers were lengthened and strengthened and
+cheapened. But at last man has risen to the level of the worm and can
+spin threads to suit himself. He can now rival the wasp in the making of
+paper. He is no longer dependent upon the flax and the cotton plant, but
+grinds up trees to get his cellulose. A New York newspaper uses up
+nearly 2000 acres of forest a year. The United States grinds up about
+five million cords of wood a year in the manufacture of pulp for paper
+and other purposes.
+
+In making "mechanical pulp" the blocks of wood, mostly spruce and
+hemlock, are simply pressed sidewise of the grain against wet
+grindstones. But in wood fiber the cellulose is in part combined with
+lignin, which is worse than useless. To break up the ligno-cellulose
+combine chemicals are used. The logs for this are not ground fine, but
+cut up by disk chippers. The chips are digested for several hours under
+heat and pressure with acid or alkali. There are three processes in
+vogue. In the most common process the reagent is calcium sulfite, made
+by passing sulfur fumes (SO_{2}) into lime water. In another process a
+solution of caustic of soda is used to disintegrate the wood. The third,
+known as the "sulfate" process, should rather be called the sulfide
+process since the active agent is an alkaline solution of sodium sulfide
+made by roasting sodium sulfate with the carbonaceous matter extracted
+from the wood. This sulfate process, though the most recent of the
+three, is being increasingly employed in this country, for by means of
+it the resinous pine wood of the South can be worked up and the final
+product, known as kraft paper because it is strong, is used for
+wrapping.
+
+But whatever the process we get nearly pure cellulose which, as you can
+see by examining this page under a microscope, consists of a tangled web
+of thin white fibers, the remains of the original cell walls. Owing to
+the severe treatment it has undergone wood pulp paper does not last so
+long as the linen rag paper used by our ancestors. The pages of the
+newspapers, magazines and books printed nowadays are likely to become
+brown and brittle in a few years, no great loss for the most part since
+they have served their purpose, though it is a pity that a few copies of
+the worst of them could not be printed on permanent paper for
+preservation in libraries so that future generations could congratulate
+themselves on their progress in civilization.
+
+But in our absorption in the printed page we must not forget the other
+uses of paper. The paper clothing, so often prophesied, has not yet
+arrived. Even paper collars have gone out of fashion--if they ever were
+in. In Germany during the war paper was used for socks, shirts and shoes
+as well as handkerchiefs and napkins but it could not stand wear and
+washing. Our sanitary engineers have set us to drinking out of
+sharp-edged paper cups and we blot our faces instead of wiping them.
+Twine is spun of paper and furniture made of the twine, a rival of
+rattan. Cloth and matting woven of paper yarn are being used for burlap
+and grass in the making of bags and suitcases.
+
+Here, however, we are not so much interested in manufactures of
+cellulose itself, that is, wood, paper and cotton, as we are in its
+chemical derivatives. Cellulose, as we can see from the symbol,
+C_{6}H_{10}O_{5}, is composed of the three elements of carbon, hydrogen
+and oxygen. These are present in the same proportion as in starch
+(C_{6}H_{10}O_{5}), while glucose or grape sugar (C_{6}H_{12}O_{6}) has
+one molecule of water more. But glucose is soluble in cold water and
+starch is soluble in hot, while cellulose is soluble in neither.
+Consequently cellulose cannot serve us for food, although some of the
+vegetarian animals, notably the goat, have a digestive apparatus that
+can handle it. In Finland and Germany birch wood pulp and straw were
+used not only as an ingredient of cattle food but also put into war
+bread. It is not likely, however, that the human stomach even under the
+pressure of famine is able to get much nutriment out of sawdust. But by
+digesting with dilute acid sawdust can be transformed into sugars and
+these by fermentation into alcohol, so it would be possible for a man
+after he has read his morning paper to get drunk on it.
+
+If the cellulose, instead of being digested a long time in dilute acid,
+is dipped into a solution of sulfuric acid (50 to 80 per cent.) and then
+washed and dried it acquires a hard, tough and translucent coating that
+makes it water-proof and grease-proof. This is the "parchment paper"
+that has largely replaced sheepskin. Strong alkali has a similar effect
+to strong acid. In 1844 John Mercer, a Lancashire calico printer,
+discovered that by passing cotton cloth or yarn through a cold 30 per
+cent. solution of caustic soda the fiber is shortened and strengthened.
+For over forty years little attention was paid to this discovery, but
+when it was found that if the material was stretched so that it could
+not shrink on drying the twisted ribbons of the cotton fiber were
+changed into smooth-walled cylinders like silk, the process came into
+general use and nowadays much that passes for silk is "mercerized"
+cotton.
+
+Another step was taken when Cross of London discovered that when the
+mercerized cotton was treated with carbon disulfide it was dissolved to
+a yellow liquid. This liquid contains the cellulose in solution as a
+cellulose xanthate and on acidifying or heating the cellulose is
+recovered in a hydrated form. If this yellow solution of cellulose is
+squirted out of tubes through extremely minute holes into acidulated
+water, each tiny stream becomes instantly solidified into a silky thread
+which may be spun and woven like that ejected from the spinneret of the
+silkworm. The origin of natural silk, if we think about it, rather
+detracts from the pleasure of wearing it, and if "he who needlessly
+sets foot upon a worm" is to be avoided as a friend we must hope that
+the advance of the artificial silk industry will be rapid enough to
+relieve us of the necessity of boiling thousands of baby worms in their
+cradles whenever we want silk stockings.
+
+  On a plain rush hurdle a silkworm lay
+  When a proud young princess came that way.
+  The haughty daughter of a lordly king
+  Threw a sidelong glance at the humble thing,
+  Little thinking she walked in pride
+  In the winding sheet where the silkworm died.
+
+But so far we have not reached a stage where we can altogether dispense
+with the services of the silkworm. The viscose threads made by the
+process look as well as silk, but they are not so strong, especially
+when wet.
+
+Besides the viscose method there are several other methods of getting
+cellulose into solution so that artificial fibers may be made from it. A
+strong solution of zinc chloride will serve and this process used to be
+employed for making the threads to be charred into carbon filaments for
+incandescent bulbs. Cellulose is also soluble in an ammoniacal solution
+of copper hydroxide. The liquid thus formed is squirted through a fine
+nozzle into a precipitating solution of caustic soda and glucose, which
+brings back the cellulose to its original form.
+
+In the chapter on explosives I explained how cellulose treated with
+nitric acid in the presence of sulfuric acid was nitrated. The cellulose
+molecule having three hydroxyl (--OH) groups, can take up one, two or
+three nitrate groups (--ONO_{2}). The higher nitrates are known as
+guncotton and form the basis of modern dynamite and smokeless powder.
+The lower nitrates, known as pyroxylin, are less explosive, although
+still very inflammable. All these nitrates are, like the original
+cellulose, insoluble in water, but unlike the original cellulose,
+soluble in a mixture of ether and alcohol. The solution is called
+collodion and is now in common use to spread a new skin over a wound.
+The great war might be traced back to Nobel's cut finger. Alfred Nobel
+was a Swedish chemist--and a pacifist. One day while working in the
+laboratory he cut his finger, as chemists are apt to do, and, again as
+chemists are apt to do, he dissolved some guncotton in ether-alcohol and
+swabbed it on the wound. At this point, however, his conduct diverges
+from the ordinary, for instead of standing idle, impatiently waving his
+hand in the air to dry the film as most people, including chemists, are
+apt to do, he put his mind on it and it occurred to him that this sticky
+stuff, slowly hardening to an elastic mass, might be just the thing he
+was hunting as an absorbent and solidifier of nitroglycerin. So instead
+of throwing away the extra collodion that he had made he mixed it with
+nitroglycerin and found that it set to a jelly. The "blasting gelatin"
+thus discovered proved to be so insensitive to shock that it could be
+safely transported or fired from a cannon. This was the first of the
+high explosives that have been the chief factor in modern warfare.
+
+But on the whole, collodion has healed more wounds than it has caused
+besides being of infinite service to mankind otherwise. It has made
+modern photography possible, for the film we use in the camera and
+moving picture projector consists of a gelatin coating on a pyroxylin
+backing. If collodion is forced through fine glass tubes instead of
+through a slit, it comes out a thread instead of a film. If the
+collodion jet is run into a vat of cold water the ether and alcohol
+dissolve; if it is run into a chamber of warm air they evaporate. The
+thread of nitrated cellulose may be rendered less inflammable by taking
+out the nitrate groups by treatment with ammonium or calcium sulfide.
+This restores the original cellulose, but now it is an endless thread of
+any desired thickness, whereas the native fiber was in size and length
+adapted to the needs of the cottonseed instead of the needs of man. The
+old motto, "If you want a thing done the way you want it you must do it
+yourself," explains why the chemist has been called in to supplement the
+work of nature in catering to human wants.
+
+Instead of nitric acid we may use strong acetic acid to dissolve the
+cotton. The resulting cellulose acetates are less inflammable than the
+nitrates, but they are more brittle and more expensive. Motion picture
+films made from them can be used in any hall without the necessity of
+imprisoning the operator in a fire-proof box where if anything happens
+he can burn up all by himself without disturbing the audience. The
+cellulose acetates are being used for auto goggles and gas masks as well
+as for windows in leather curtains and transparent coverings for index
+cards. A new use that has lately become important is the varnishing of
+aeroplane wings, as it does not readily absorb water or catch fire and
+makes the cloth taut and air-tight. Aeroplane wings can be made of
+cellulose acetate sheets as transparent as those of a dragon-fly and not
+easy to see against the sky.
+
+The nitrates, sulfates and acetates are the salts or esters of the
+respective acids, but recently true ethers or oxides of cellulose have
+been prepared that may prove still better since they contain no acid
+radicle and are neutral and stable.
+
+These are in brief the chief processes for making what is commonly but
+quite improperly called "artificial silk." They are not the same
+substance as silkworm silk and ought not to be--though they sometimes
+are--sold as such. They are none of them as strong as the silk fiber
+when wet, although if I should venture to say which of the various makes
+weakens the most on wetting I should get myself into trouble. I will
+only say that if you have a grudge against some fisherman give him a fly
+line of artificial silk, 'most any kind.
+
+The nitrate process was discovered by Count Hilaire de Chardonnet while
+he was at the Polytechnic School of Paris, and he devoted his life and
+his fortune trying to perfect it. Samples of the artificial silk were
+exhibited at the Paris Exposition in 1889 and two years later he started
+a factory at Basan�on. In 1892, Cross and Bevan, English chemists,
+discovered the viscose or xanthate process, and later the acetate
+process. But although all four of these processes were invented
+in France and England, Germany reaped most benefit from the new
+industry, which was bringing into that country $6,000,000 a year
+before the war. The largest producer in the world was the Vereinigte
+Glanzstoff-Fabriken of Elberfeld, which was paying annual dividends of
+34 per cent. in 1914.
+
+The raw materials, as may be seen, are cheap and abundant, merely
+cellulose, salt, sulfur, carbon, air and water. Any kind of cellulose
+can be used, cotton waste, rags, paper, or even wood pulp. The processes
+are various, the names of the products are numerous and the uses are
+innumerable. Even the most inattentive must have noticed the widespread
+employment of these new forms of cellulose. We can buy from a street
+barrow for fifteen cents near-silk neckties that look as well as those
+sold for seventy-five. As for wear--well, they all of them wear till
+after we get tired of wearing them. Paper "vulcanized" by being run
+through a 30 per cent. solution of zinc chloride and subjected to
+hydraulic pressure comes out hard and horny and may be used for trunks
+and suit cases. Viscose tubes for sausage containers are more sanitary
+and appetizing than the customary casings. Viscose replaces ramie or
+cotton in the Welsbach gas mantles. Viscose film, transparent and a
+thousandth of an inch thick (cellophane), serves for candy wrappers.
+Cellulose acetate cylinders spun out of larger orifices than silk are
+trying--not very successfully as yet--to compete with hog's bristles and
+horsehair. Stir powdered metals into the cellulose solution and you have
+the Bayko yarn. Bayko (from the manufacturers, Farbenfabriken vorm.
+Friedr. Bayer and Company) is one of those telescoped names like Socony,
+Nylic, Fominco, Alco, Ropeco, Ripans, Penn-Yan, Anzac, Dagor, Dora and
+Cadets, which will be the despair of future philologers.
+
+[Illustration: A PAPER MILL IN ACTION
+
+This photograph was taken in the barking room of the big pulp mill of
+the Great Northern Paper Company at Millinocket, Maine]
+
+[Illustration: CELLULOSE FROM WOOD PULP
+
+This is now made into a large variety of useful articles of which a few
+examples are here pictured]
+
+Soluble cellulose may enable us in time to dispense with the weaver as
+well as the silkworm. It may by one operation give us fabrics instead of
+threads. A machine has been invented for manufacturing net and lace, the
+liquid material being poured on one side of a roller and the fabric
+being reeled off on the other side. The process seems capable of
+indefinite extension and application to various sorts of woven, knit and
+reticulated goods. The raw material is cotton waste and the finished
+fabric is a good substitute for silk. As in the process of making
+artificial silk the cellulose is dissolved in a cupro-ammoniacal
+solution, but instead of being forced out through minute openings to
+form threads, as in that process, the paste is allowed to flow upon a
+revolving cylinder which is engraved with the pattern of the desired
+textile. A scraper removes the excess and the turning of the cylinder
+brings the paste in the engraved lines down into a bath which solidifies
+it.
+
+Tulle or net is now what is chiefly being turned out, but the engraved
+design may be as elaborate and artistic as desired, and various
+materials can be used. Since the threads wherever they cross are united,
+the fabric is naturally stronger than the ordinary. It is all of a piece
+and not composed of parts. In short, we seem to be on the eve of a
+revolution in textiles that is the same as that taking place in building
+materials. Our concrete structures, however great, are all one stone.
+They are not built up out of blocks, but cast as a whole.
+
+Lace has always been the aristocrat among textiles. It has maintained
+its exclusiveness hitherto by being based upon hand labor. In no other
+way could one get so much painful, patient toil put into such a light
+and portable form. A filmy thing twined about a neck or dropping from a
+wrist represented years of work by poor peasant girls or pallid, unpaid
+nuns. A visit to a lace factory, even to the public rooms where the
+wornout women were not to be seen, is enough to make one resolve never
+to purchase any such thing made by hand again. But our good resolutions
+do not last long and in time we forget the strained eyes and bowed
+backs, or, what is worse, value our bit of lace all the more because it
+means that some poor woman has put her life and health into it, netting
+and weaving, purling and knotting, twining and twisting, throwing and
+drawing, thread by thread, day after day, until her eyes can no longer
+see and her fingers have become stiffened.
+
+But man is not naturally cruel. He does not really enjoy being a slave
+driver, either of human or animal slaves, although he can be hardened to
+it with shocking ease if there seems no other way of getting what he
+wants. So he usually welcomes that Great Liberator, the Machine. He
+prefers to drive the tireless engine than to whip the straining horses.
+He had rather see the farmer riding at ease in a mowing machine than
+bending his back over a scythe.
+
+The Machine is not only the Great Liberator, it is the Great Leveler
+also. It is the most powerful of the forces for democracy. An
+aristocracy can hardly be maintained except by distinction in dress, and
+distinction in dress can only be maintained by sumptuary laws or
+costliness. Sumptuary laws are unconstitutional in this country, hence
+the stress laid upon costliness. But machinery tends to bring styles
+and fabrics within the reach of all. The shopgirl is almost as well
+dressed on the street as her rich customer. The man who buys ready-made
+clothing is only a few weeks behind the vanguard of the fashion. There
+is often no difference perceptible to the ordinary eye between cheap and
+high-priced clothing once the price tag is off. Jewels as a portable
+form of concentrated costliness have been in favor from the earliest
+ages, but now they are losing their factitious value through the advance
+of invention. Rubies of unprecedented size, not imitation, but genuine
+rubies, can now be manufactured at reasonable rates. And now we may hope
+that lace may soon be within the reach of all, not merely lace of the
+established forms, but new and more varied and intricate and beautiful
+designs, such as the imagination has been able to conceive, but the hand
+cannot execute.
+
+Dissolving nitrocellulose in ether and alcohol we get the collodion
+varnish that we are all familiar with since we have used it on our cut
+fingers. Spread it on cloth instead of your skin and it makes a very
+good leather substitute. As we all know to our cost the number of
+animals to be skinned has not increased so rapidly in recent years as
+the number of feet to be shod. After having gone barefoot for a million
+years or so the majority of mankind have decided to wear shoes and this
+change in fashion comes at a time, roughly speaking, when pasture land
+is getting scarce. Also there are books to be bound and other new things
+to be done for which leather is needed. The war has intensified the
+stringency; so has feminine fashion. The conventions require that the
+shoe-tops extend nearly to skirt-bottom and this means that an inch or
+so must be added to the shoe-top every year. Consequent to this rise in
+leather we have to pay as much for one shoe as we used to pay for a
+pair.
+
+Here, then, is a chance for Necessity to exercise her maternal function.
+And she has responded nobly. A progeny of new substances have been
+brought forth and, what is most encouraging to see, they are no longer
+trying to worm their way into favor as surreptitious surrogates under
+the names of "leatheret," "leatherine," "leatheroid" and
+"leather-this-or-that" but come out boldly under names of their own
+coinage and declare themselves not an imitation, not even a substitute,
+but "better than leather." This policy has had the curious result of
+compelling the cowhide men to take full pages in the magazines to call
+attention to the forgotten virtues of good old-fashioned sole-leather!
+There are now upon the market synthetic shoes that a vegetarian could
+wear with a clear conscience. The soles are made of some rubber
+composition; the uppers of cellulose fabric (canvas) coated with a
+cellulose solution such as I have described.
+
+Each firm keeps its own process for such substance a dead secret, but
+without prying into these we can learn enough to satisfy our legitimate
+curiosity. The first of the artificial fabrics was the old-fashioned and
+still indispensable oil-cloth, that is canvas painted or printed with
+linseed oil carrying the desired pigments. Linseed oil belongs to the
+class of compounds that the chemist calls "unsaturated" and the
+psychologist would call "unsatisfied." They take up oxygen from the air
+and become solid, hence are called the "drying oils," although this
+does not mean that they lose water, for they have not any to lose.
+Later, ground cork was mixed with the linseed oil and then it went by
+its Latin name, "linoleum."
+
+The next step was to cut loose altogether from the natural oils and use
+for the varnish a solution of some of the cellulose esters, usually the
+nitrate (pyroxylin or guncotton), more rarely the acetate. As a solvent
+the ether-alcohol mixture forming collodion was, as we have seen, the
+first to be employed, but now various other solvents are in use, among
+them castor oil, methyl alcohol, acetone, and the acetates of amyl or
+ethyl. Some of these will be recognized as belonging to the fruit
+essences that we considered in Chapter V, and doubtless most of us have
+perceived an odor as of over-ripe pears, bananas or apples mysteriously
+emanating from a newly lacquered radiator. With powdered bronze,
+imitation gold, aluminum or something of the kind a metallic finish can
+be put on any surface.
+
+Canvas coated or impregnated with such soluble cellulose gives us new
+flexible and durable fabrics that have other advantages over leather
+besides being cheaper and more abundant. Without such material for
+curtains and cushions the automobile business would have been sorely
+hampered. It promises to provide us with a book binding that will not
+crumble to powder in the course of twenty years. Linen collars may be
+water-proofed and possibly Dame Fashion--being a fickle lady--may some
+day relent and let us wear such sanitary and economical neckwear. For
+shoes, purses, belts and the like the cellulose varnish or veneer is
+usually colored and stamped to resemble the grain of any kind of
+leather desired, even snake or alligator.
+
+If instead of dissolving the cellulose nitrate and spreading it on
+fabric we combine it with camphor we get celluloid, a plastic solid
+capable of innumerable applications. But that is another story and must
+be reserved for the next chapter.
+
+But before leaving the subject of cellulose proper I must refer back
+again to its chief source, wood. We inherited from the Indians a
+well-wooded continent. But the pioneer carried an ax on his shoulder and
+began using it immediately. For three hundred years the trees have been
+cut down faster than they could grow, first to clear the land, next for
+fuel, then for lumber and lastly for paper. Consequently we are within
+sight of a shortage of wood as we are of coal and oil. But the coal and
+oil are irrecoverable while the wood may be regrown, though it would
+require another three hundred years and more to grow some of the trees
+we have cut down. For fuel a pound of coal is about equal to two pounds
+of wood, and a pound of gasoline to three pounds of wood in heating
+value, so there would be a great loss in efficiency and economy if the
+world had to go back to a wood basis. But when that time shall come, as,
+of course, it must come some time, the wood will doubtless not be burned
+in its natural state but will be converted into hydrogen and carbon
+monoxide in a gas producer or will be distilled in closed ovens giving
+charcoal and gas and saving the by-products, the tar and acid liquors.
+As it is now the lumberman wastes two-thirds of every tree he cuts down.
+The rest is left in the forest as stump and tops or thrown out at the
+mill as sawdust and slabs. The slabs and other scraps may be used as
+fuel or worked up into small wood articles like laths and clothes-pins.
+The sawdust is burned or left to rot. But it is possible, although it
+may not be profitable, to save all this waste.
+
+In a former chapter I showed the advantages of the introduction of
+by-product coke-ovens. The same principle applies to wood as to coal. If
+a cord of wood (128 cubic feet) is subjected to a process of destructive
+distillation it yields about 50 bushels of charcoal, 11,500 cubic feet
+of gas, 25 gallons of tar, 10 gallons of crude wood alcohol and 200
+pounds of crude acetate of lime. Resinous woods such as pine and fir
+distilled with steam give turpentine and rosin. The acetate of lime
+gives acetic acid and acetone. The wood (methyl) alcohol is almost as
+useful as grain (ethyl) alcohol in arts and industry and has the
+advantage of killing off those who drink it promptly instead of slowly.
+
+The chemist is an economical soul. He is never content until he has
+converted every kind of waste product into some kind of profitable
+by-product. He now has his glittering eye fixed upon the mountains of
+sawdust that pile up about the lumber mills. He also has a notion that
+he can beat lumber for some purposes.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+SYNTHETIC PLASTICS
+
+
+In the last chapter I told how Alfred Nobel cut his finger and, daubing
+it over with collodion, was led to the discovery of high explosive,
+dynamite. I remarked that the first part of this process--the hurting
+and the healing of the finger--might happen to anybody but not everybody
+would be led to discovery thereby. That is true enough, but we must not
+think that the Swedish chemist was the only observant man in the world.
+About this same time a young man in Albany, named John Wesley Hyatt, got
+a sore finger and resorted to the same remedy and was led to as great a
+discovery. His father was a blacksmith and his education was confined to
+what he could get at the seminary of Eddytown, New York, before he was
+sixteen. At that age he set out for the West to make his fortune. He
+made it, but after a long, hard struggle. His trade of typesetter gave
+him a living in Illinois, New York or wherever he wanted to go, but he
+was not content with his wages or his hours. However, he did not strike
+to reduce his hours or increase his wages. On the contrary, he increased
+his working time and used it to increase his income. He spent his nights
+and Sundays in making billiard balls, not at all the sort of thing you
+would expect of a young man of his Christian name. But working with
+billiard balls is more profitable than playing with them--though that
+is not the sort of thing you would expect a man of my surname to say.
+Hyatt had seen in the papers an offer of a prize of $10,000 for the
+discovery of a satisfactory substitute for ivory in the making of
+billiard balls and he set out to get that prize. I don't know whether he
+ever got it or not, but I have in my hand a newly published circular
+announcing that Mr. Hyatt has now perfected a process for making
+billiard balls "better than ivory." Meantime he has turned out several
+hundred other inventions, many of them much more useful and profitable,
+but I imagine that he takes less satisfaction in any of them than he
+does in having solved the problem that he undertook fifty years ago.
+
+The reason for the prize was that the game on the billiard table was
+getting more popular and the game in the African jungle was getting
+scarcer, especially elephants having tusks more than 2-7/16 inches in
+diameter. The raising of elephants is not an industry that promises as
+quick returns as raising chickens or Belgian hares. To make a ball
+having exactly the weight, color and resiliency to which billiard
+players have become accustomed seemed an impossibility. Hyatt tried
+compressed wood, but while he did not succeed in making billiard balls
+he did build up a profitable business in stamped checkers and dominoes.
+
+Setting type in the way they did it in the sixties was hard on the
+hands. And if the skin got worn thin or broken the dirty lead type were
+liable to infect the fingers. One day in 1863 Hyatt, finding his fingers
+were getting raw, went to the cupboard where was kept the "liquid
+cuticle" used by the printers. But when he got there he found it was
+bare, for the vial had tipped over--you know how easily they tip
+over--and the collodion had run out and solidified on the shelf.
+Possibly Hyatt was annoyed, but if so he did not waste time raging
+around the office to find out who tipped over that bottle. Instead he
+pulled off from the wood a bit of the dried film as big as his thumb
+nail and examined it with that "'satiable curtiosity," as Kipling calls
+it, which is characteristic of the born inventor. He found it tough and
+elastic and it occurred to him that it might be worth $10,000. It turned
+out to be worth many times that.
+
+Collodion, as I have explained in previous chapters, is a solution in
+ether and alcohol of guncotton (otherwise known as pyroxylin or
+nitrocellulose), which is made by the action of nitric acid on cotton.
+Hyatt tried mixing the collodion with ivory powder, also using it to
+cover balls of the necessary weight and solidity, but they did not work
+very well and besides were explosive. A Colorado saloon keeper wrote in
+to complain that one of the billiard players had touched a ball with a
+lighted cigar, which set it off and every man in the room had drawn his
+gun.
+
+The trouble with the dissolved guncotton was that it could not be
+molded. It did not swell up and set; it merely dried up and shrunk. When
+the solvent evaporated it left a wrinkled, shriveled, horny film,
+satisfactory to the surgeon but not to the man who wanted to make balls
+and hairpins and knife handles out of it. In England Alexander Parkes
+began working on the problem in 1855 and stuck to it for ten years
+before he, or rather his backers, gave up. He tried mixing in various
+things to stiffen up the pyroxylin. Of these, camphor, which he tried in
+1865, worked the best, but since he used castor oil to soften the mass
+articles made of "parkesine" did not hold up in all weathers.
+
+Another Englishman, Daniel Spill, an associate of Parkes, took up the
+problem where he had dropped it and turned out a better product,
+"xylonite," though still sticking to the idea that castor oil was
+necessary to get the two solids, the guncotton and the camphor,
+together.
+
+But Hyatt, hearing that camphor could be used and not knowing enough
+about what others had done to follow their false trails, simply mixed
+his camphor and guncotton together without any solvent and put the
+mixture in a hot press. The two solids dissolved one another and when
+the press was opened there was a clear, solid, homogeneous block
+of--what he named--"celluloid." The problem was solved and in the
+simplest imaginable way. Tissue paper, that is, cellulose, is treated
+with nitric acid in the presence of sulfuric acid. The nitration is not
+carried so far as to produce the guncotton used in explosives but only
+far enough to make a soluble nitrocellulose or pyroxylin. This is pulped
+and mixed with half the quantity of camphor, pressed into cakes and
+dried. If this mixture is put into steam-heated molds and subjected to
+hydraulic pressure it takes any desired form. The process remains
+essentially the same as was worked out by the Hyatt brothers in the
+factory they set up in Newark in 1872 and some of their original
+machines are still in use. But this protean plastic takes innumerable
+forms and almost as many names. Each factory has its own secrets and
+lays claim to peculiar merits. The fundamental product itself is not
+patented, so trade names are copyrighted to protect the product. I have
+already mentioned three, "parkesine," "xylonite" and "celluloid," and I
+may add, without exhausting the list of species belonging to this genus,
+"viscoloid," "lithoxyl," "fiberloid," "coraline," "eburite,"
+"pulveroid," "ivorine," "pergamoid," "duroid," "ivortus," "crystalloid,"
+"transparene," "litnoid," "petroid," "pasbosene," "cellonite" and
+"pyralin."
+
+Celluloid can be given any color or colors by mixing in aniline dyes or
+metallic pigments. The color may be confined to the surface or to the
+interior or pervade the whole. If the nitrated tissue paper is bleached
+the celluloid is transparent or colorless. In that case it is necessary
+to add an antacid such as urea to prevent its getting yellow or opaque.
+To make it opaque and less inflammable oxides or chlorides of zinc,
+aluminum, magnesium, etc., are mixed in.
+
+Without going into the question of their variations and relative merits
+we may consider the advantages of the pyroxylin plastics in general.
+Here we have a new substance, the product of the creative genius of man,
+and therefore adaptable to his needs. It is hard but light, tough but
+elastic, easily made and tolerably cheap. Heated to the boiling point of
+water it becomes soft and flexible. It can be turned, carved, ground,
+polished, bent, pressed, stamped, molded or blown. To make a block of
+any desired size simply pile up the sheets and put them in a hot press.
+To get sheets of any desired thickness, simply shave them off the block.
+To make a tube of any desired size, shape or thickness squirt out the
+mixture through a ring-shaped hole or roll the sheets around a hot bar.
+Cut the tube into sections and you have rings to be shaped and stamped
+into box bodies or napkin rings. Print words or pictures on a celluloid
+sheet, put a thin transparent sheet over it and weld them together, then
+you have something like the horn book of our ancestors, but better.
+
+Nowadays such things as celluloid and pyralin can be sold under their
+own name, but in the early days the artificial plastics, like every new
+thing, had to resort to _camouflage_, a very humiliating expedient since
+in some cases they were better than the material they were forced to
+imitate. Tortoise shell, for instance, cracks, splits and twists, but a
+"tortoise shell" comb of celluloid looks as well and lasts better. Horn
+articles are limited to size of the ceratinous appendages that can be
+borne on the animal's head, but an imitation of horn can be made of any
+thickness by wrapping celluloid sheets about a cone. Ivory, which also
+has a laminated structure, may be imitated by rolling together alternate
+white opaque and colorless translucent sheets. Some of the sheets are
+wrinkled in order to produce the knots and irregularities of the grain
+of natural ivory. Man's chief difficulty in all such work is to imitate
+the imperfections of nature. His whites are too white, his surfaces are
+too smooth, his shapes are too regular, his products are too pure.
+
+The precious red coral of the Mediterranean can be perfectly imitated by
+taking a cast of a coral branch and filling in the mold with celluloid
+of the same color and hardness. The clear luster of amber, the dead
+black of ebony, the cloudiness of onyx, the opalescence of alabaster,
+the glow of carnelian--once confined to the selfish enjoyment of the
+rich--are now within the reach of every one, thanks to this chameleon
+material. Mosaics may be multiplied indefinitely by laying together
+sheets and sticks of celluloid, suitably cut and colored to make up the
+picture, fusing the mass, and then shaving off thin layers from the end.
+That _chef d'oeuvre_ of the Venetian glass makers, the Battle of Isus,
+from the House of the Faun in Pompeii, can be reproduced as fast as the
+machine can shave them off the block. And the tesserae do not fall out
+like those you bought on the Rialto.
+
+The process thus does for mosaics, ivory and coral what printing does
+for pictures. It is a mechanical multiplier and only by such means can
+we ever attain to a state of democratic luxury. The product, in cases
+where the imitation is accurate, is equally valuable except to those who
+delight in thinking that coral insects, Italian craftsmen and elephants
+have been laboring for years to put a trinket into their hands. The Lord
+may be trusted to deal with such selfish souls according to their
+deserts.
+
+But it is very low praise for a synthetic product that it can pass
+itself off, more or less acceptably, as a natural product. If that is
+all we could do without it. It must be an improvement in some respects
+on anything to be found in nature or it does not represent a real
+advance. So celluloid and its congeners are not confined to the shapes
+of shell and coral and crystal, or to the grain of ivory and wood and
+horn, the colors of amber and amethyst and lapis lazuli, but can be
+given forms and textures and tints that were never known before 1869.
+
+Let me see now, have I mentioned all the uses of celluloid? Oh, no,
+there are handles for canes, umbrellas, mirrors and brushes, knives,
+whistles, toys, blown animals, card cases, chains, charms, brooches,
+badges, bracelets, rings, book bindings, hairpins, campaign buttons,
+cuff and collar buttons, cuffs, collars and dickies, tags, cups, knobs,
+paper cutters, picture frames, chessmen, pool balls, ping pong balls,
+piano keys, dental plates, masks for disfigured faces, penholders,
+eyeglass frames, goggles, playing cards--and you can carry on the list
+as far as you like.
+
+Celluloid has its disadvantages. You may mold, you may color the stuff
+as you will, the scent of the camphor will cling around it still. This
+is not usually objectionable except where the celluloid is trying to
+pass itself off for something else, in which case it deserves no
+sympathy. It is attacked and dissolved by hot acids and alkalies. It
+softens up when heated, which is handy in shaping it though not so
+desirable afterward. But the worst of its failings is its
+combustibility. It is not explosive, but it takes fire from a flame and
+burns furiously with clouds of black smoke.
+
+But celluloid is only one of many plastic substances that have been
+introduced to the present generation. A new and important group of them
+is now being opened up, the so-called "condensation products." If you
+will take down any old volume of chemical research you will find
+occasionally words to this effect: "The reaction resulted in nothing but
+an insoluble resin which was not further investigated." Such a passage
+would be marked with a tear if chemists were given to crying over their
+failures. For it is the epitaph of a buried hope. It likely meant the
+loss of months of labor. The reason the chemist did not do anything
+further with the gummy stuff that stuck up his test tube was because he
+did not know what to do with it. It could not be dissolved, it could not
+be crystallized, it could not be distilled, therefore it could not be
+purified, analyzed and identified.
+
+What had happened was in most cases this. The molecule of the compound
+that the chemist was trying to make had combined with others of its kind
+to form a molecule too big to be managed by such means. Financiers call
+the process a "merger." Chemists call it "polymerization." The resin was
+a molecular trust, indissoluble, uncontrollable and contaminating
+everything it touched.
+
+But chemists--like governments--have learned wisdom in recent years.
+They have not yet discovered in all cases how to undo the process of
+polymerization, or, if you prefer the financial phrase, how to
+unscramble the eggs. But they have found that these molecular mergers
+are very useful things in their way. For instance there is a liquid
+known as isoprene (C_{5}H_{8}). This on heating or standing turns into a
+gum, that is nothing less than rubber, which is some multiple of
+C_{5}H_{8}.
+
+For another instance there is formaldehyde, an acrid smelling gas, used
+as a disinfectant. This has the simplest possible formula for a
+carbohydrate, CH_{2}O. But in the leaf of a plant this molecule
+multiplies itself by six and turns into a sweet solid glucose
+(C_{6}H_{12}O_{6}), or with the loss of water into starch
+(C_{6}H_{10}O_{5}) or cellulose (C_{6}H_{10}O_{5}).
+
+But formaldehyde is so insatiate that it not only combines with itself
+but seizes upon other substances, particularly those having an
+acquisitive nature like its own. Such a substance is carbolic acid
+(phenol) which, as we all know, is used as a disinfectant like
+formaldehyde because it, too, has the power of attacking decomposable
+organic matter. Now Prof. Adolf von Baeyer discovered in 1872 that when
+phenol and formaldehyde were brought into contact they seized upon one
+another and formed a combine of unusual tenacity, that is, a resin. But
+as I have said, chemists in those days were shy of resins. Kleeberg in
+1891 tried to make something out of it and W.H. Story in 1895 went so
+far as to name the product "resinite," but nothing came of it until 1909
+when L.H. Baekeland undertook a serious and systematic study of this
+reaction in New York. Baekeland was a Belgian chemist, born at Ghent in
+1863 and professor at Bruges. While a student at Ghent he took up
+photography as a hobby and began to work on the problem of doing away
+with the dark-room by producing a printing paper that could be developed
+under ordinary light. When he came over to America in 1889 he brought
+his idea with him and four years later turned out "Velox," with which
+doubtless the reader is familiar. Velox was never patented because, as
+Dr. Baekeland explained in his speech of acceptance of the Perkin medal
+from the chemists of America, lawsuits are too expensive. Manufacturers
+seem to be coming generally to the opinion that a synthetic name
+copyrighted as a trademark affords better protection than a patent.
+
+Later Dr. Baekeland turned his attention to the phenol condensation
+products, working gradually up from test tubes to ton vats according to
+his motto: "Make your mistakes on a small scale and your profits on a
+large scale." He found that when equal weights of phenol and
+formaldehyde were mixed and warmed in the presence of an alkaline
+catalytic agent the solution separated into two layers, the upper
+aqueous and the lower a resinous precipitate. This resin was soft,
+viscous and soluble in alcohol or acetone. But if it was heated under
+pressure it changed into another and a new kind of resin that was hard,
+inelastic, unplastic, infusible and insoluble. The chemical name of this
+product is "polymerized oxybenzyl methylene glycol anhydride," but
+nobody calls it that, not even chemists. It is called "Bakelite" after
+its inventor.
+
+The two stages in its preparation are convenient in many ways. For
+instance, porous wood may be soaked in the soft resin and then by heat
+and pressure it is changed to the bakelite form and the wood comes out
+with a hard finish that may be given the brilliant polish of Japanese
+lacquer. Paper, cardboard, cloth, wood pulp, sawdust, asbestos and the
+like may be impregnated with the resin, producing tough and hard
+material suitable for various purposes. Brass work painted with it and
+then baked at 300� F. acquires a lacquered surface that is unaffected by
+soap. Forced in powder or sheet form into molds under a pressure of 1200
+to 2000 pounds to the square inch it takes the most delicate
+impressions. Billiard balls of bakelite are claimed to be better than
+ivory because, having no grain, they do not swell unequally with heat
+and humidity and so lose their sphericity. Pipestems and beads of
+bakelite have the clear brilliancy of amber and greater strength.
+Fountain pens made of it are transparent so you can see how much ink you
+have left. A new and enlarging field for bakelite and allied products is
+the making of noiseless gears for automobiles and other machinery, also
+of air-plane propellers.
+
+Celluloid is more plastic and elastic than bakelite. It is therefore
+more easily worked in sheets and small objects. Celluloid can be made
+perfectly transparent and colorless while bakelite is confined to the
+range between a clear amber and an opaque brown or black. On the other
+hand bakelite has the advantage in being tasteless, odorless, inert,
+insoluble and non-inflammable. This last quality and its high electrical
+resistance give bakelite its chief field of usefulness. Electricity was
+discovered by the Greeks, who found that amber (_electron_) when rubbed
+would pick up straws. This means simply that amber, like all such
+resinous substances, natural or artificial, is a non-conductor or
+di-electric and does not carry off and scatter the electricity collected
+on the surface by the friction. Bakelite is used in its liquid form for
+impregnating coils to keep the wires from shortcircuiting and in its
+solid form for commutators, magnetos, switch blocks, distributors, and
+all sorts of electrical apparatus for automobiles, telephones, wireless
+telegraphy, electric lighting, etc.
+
+Bakelite, however, is only one of an indefinite number of such
+condensation products. As Baeyer said long ago: "It seems that all the
+aldehydes will, under suitable circumstances, unite with the aromatic
+hydrocarbons to form resins." So instead of phenol, other coal tar
+products such as cresol, naphthol or benzene itself may be used. The
+carbon links (-CH_{2}-, methylene) necessary to hook these carbon rings
+together may be obtained from other substances than the aldehydes,
+for instance from the amines, or ammonia derivatives. Three chemists,
+L.V. Kedman, A.J. Weith and F.P. Broek, working in 1910 on the
+Industrial Fellowships of the late Robert Kennedy Duncan at the
+University of Kansas, developed a process using formin instead
+of formaldehyde. Formin--or, if you insist upon its full name,
+hexa-methylene-tetramine--is a sugar-like substance with a fish-like
+smell. This mixed with crystallized carbolic acid and slightly warmed
+melts to a golden liquid that sets on pouring into molds. It is still
+plastic and can be bent into any desired shape, but on further heating
+it becomes hard without the need of pressure. Ammonia is given off in
+this process instead of water which is the by-product in the case of
+formaldehyde. The product is similar to bakelite, exactly how similar is
+a question that the courts will have to decide. The inventors threatened
+to call it Phenyl-endeka-saligeno-saligenin, but, rightly fearing that
+this would interfere with its salability, they have named it "redmanol."
+
+A phenolic condensation product closely related to bakelite and redmanol
+is condensite, the invention of Jonas Walter Aylesworth. Aylesworth was
+trained in what he referred to as "the greatest university of the world,
+the Edison laboratory." He entered this university at the age of
+nineteen at a salary of $3 a week, but Edison soon found that he had in
+his new boy an assistant who could stand being shut up in the laboratory
+working day and night as long as he could. After nine years of close
+association with Edison he set up a little laboratory in his own back
+yard to work out new plastics. He found that by acting on
+naphthalene--the moth-ball stuff--with chlorine he got a series of
+useful products called "halowaxes." The lower chlorinated products are
+oils, which may be used for impregnating paper or soft wood, making it
+non-inflammable and impregnable to water. If four atoms of chlorine
+enter the naphthalene molecule the product is a hard wax that rings like
+a metal.
+
+Condensite is anhydrous and infusible, and like its rivals finds its
+chief employment in the insulation parts of electrical apparatus. The
+records of the Edison phonograph are made of it. So are the buttons of
+our blue-jackets. The Government at the outbreak of the war ordered
+40,000 goggles in condensite frames to protect the eyes of our gunners
+from the glare and acid fumes.
+
+The various synthetics played an important part in the war. According to
+an ancient military pun the endurance of soldiers depends upon the
+strength of their soles. The new compound rubber soles were found useful
+in our army and the Germans attribute their success in making a little
+leather go a long way during the late war to the use of a new synthetic
+tanning material known as "neradol." There are various forms of this.
+Some are phenolic condensation products of formaldehyde like those we
+have been considering, but some use coal-tar compounds having no phenol
+groups, such as naphthalene sulfonic acid. These are now being made in
+England under such names as "paradol," "cresyntan" and "syntan." They
+have the advantage of the natural tannins such as bark in that they are
+of known strength and can be varied to suit.
+
+This very grasping compound, formaldehyde, will attack almost anything,
+even molecules many times its size. Gelatinous and albuminous substances
+of all sorts are solidified by it. Glue, skimmed milk, blood, eggs,
+yeast, brewer's slops, may by this magic agent be rescued from waste and
+reappear in our buttons, hairpins, roofing, phonographs, shoes or
+shoe-polish. The French have made great use of casein hardened by
+formaldehyde into what is known as "galalith" (i.e., milkstone). This is
+harder than celluloid and non-inflammable, but has the disadvantages of
+being more brittle and of absorbing moisture. A mixture of casein and
+celluloid has something of the merits of both.
+
+The Japanese, as we should expect, are using the juice of the soy bean,
+familiar as a condiment to all who patronize chop-sueys or use
+Worcestershire sauce. The soy glucine coagulated by formalin gives a
+plastic said to be better and cheaper than celluloid. Its inventor, S.
+Sato, of Sendai University, has named it, according to American
+precedent, "Satolite," and has organized a million-dollar Satolite
+Company at Mukojima.
+
+The algin extracted from the Pacific kelp can be used as a rubber
+surrogate for water-proofing cloth. When combined with heavier alkaline
+bases it forms a tough and elastic substance that can be rolled into
+transparent sheets like celluloid or turned into buttons and knife
+handles.
+
+In Australia when the war shut off the supply of tin the Government
+commission appointed to devise means of preserving fruits recommended
+the use of cardboard containers varnished with "magramite." This is a
+name the Australians coined for synthetic resin made from phenol and
+formaldehyde like bakelite. Magramite dissolved in alcohol is painted on
+the cardboard cans and when these are stoved the coating becomes
+insoluble.
+
+Tarasoff has made a series of condensation products from phenol and
+formaldehyde with the addition of sulfonated oils. These are formed by
+the action of sulfuric acid on coconut, castor, cottonseed or mineral
+oils. The products of this combination are white plastics, opaque,
+insoluble and infusible.
+
+Since I am here chiefly concerned with "Creative Chemistry," that is,
+with the art of making substances not found in nature, I have not spoken
+of shellac, asphaltum, rosin, ozocerite and the innumerable gums, resins
+and waxes, animal, mineral and vegetable, that are used either by
+themselves or in combination with the synthetics. What particular "dope"
+or "mud" is used to coat a canvas or form a telephone receiver is often
+hard to find out. The manufacturer finds secrecy safer than the patent
+office and the chemist of a rival establishment is apt to be baffled in
+his attempt to analyze and imitate. But we of the outside world are not
+concerned with this, though we are interested in the manifold
+applications of these new materials.
+
+There seems to be no limit to these compounds and every week the
+journals report new processes and patents. But we must not allow the new
+ones to crowd out the remembrance of the oldest and most famous of the
+synthetic plasters, hard rubber, to which a separate chapter must be
+devoted.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+THE RACE FOR RUBBER
+
+
+There is one law that regulates all animate and inanimate things. It is
+formulated in various ways, for instance:
+
+Running down a hill is easy. In Latin it reads, _facilis descensus
+Averni._ Herbert Spencer calls it the dissolution of definite coherent
+heterogeneity into indefinite incoherent homogeneity. Mother Goose
+expresses it in the fable of Humpty Dumpty, and the business man
+extracts the moral as, "You can't unscramble an egg." The theologian
+calls it the dogma of natural depravity. The physicist calls it the
+second law of thermodynamics. Clausius formulates it as "The entropy of
+the world tends toward a maximum." It is easier to smash up than to
+build up. Children find that this is true of their toys; the Bolsheviki
+have found that it is true of a civilization. So, too, the chemist knows
+analysis is easier than synthesis and that creative chemistry is the
+highest branch of his art.
+
+This explains why chemists discovered how to take rubber apart over
+sixty years before they could find out how to put it together. The first
+is easy. Just put some raw rubber into a retort and heat it. If you can
+stand the odor you will observe the caoutchouc decomposing and a
+benzine-like liquid distilling over. This is called "isoprene." Any
+Freshman chemist could write the reaction for this operation. It is
+simply
+
+  C_{10}H_{16}   -->  2C_{5}H_{8}
+  caoutchouc           isoprene
+
+That is, one molecule of the gum splits up into two molecules of the
+liquid. It is just as easy to write the reaction in the reverse
+directions, as 2 isoprene--> 1 caoutchouc, but nobody could make it go
+in that direction. Yet it could be done. It had been done. But the man
+who did it did not know how he did it and could not do it again.
+Professor Tilden in May, 1892, read a paper before the Birmingham
+Philosophical Society in which he said:
+
+     I was surprised a few weeks ago at finding the contents of the
+     bottles containing isoprene from turpentine entirely changed in
+     appearance. In place of a limpid, colorless liquid the bottles
+     contained a dense syrup in which were floating several large
+     masses of a yellowish color. Upon examination this turned out
+     to be India rubber.
+
+But neither Professor Tilden nor any one else could repeat this
+accidental metamorphosis. It was tantalizing, for the world was willing
+to pay $2,000,000,000 a year for rubber and the forests of the Amazon
+and Congo were failing to meet the demand. A large share of these
+millions would have gone to any chemist who could find out how to make
+synthetic rubber and make it cheaply enough. With such a reward of fame
+and fortune the competition among chemists was intense. It took the form
+of an international contest in which England and Germany were neck and
+neck.
+
+[Illustration: Courtesy of the "India Rubber World."
+
+What goes into rubber and what is made out of it]
+
+The English, who had been beaten by the Germans in the dye business
+where they had the start, were determined not to lose in this. Prof.
+W.H. Perkin, of Manchester University, was one of the most eager, for he
+was inspired by a personal grudge against the Germans as well as by
+patriotism and scientific zeal. It was his father who had, fifty years
+before, discovered mauve, the first of the anilin dyes, but England
+could not hold the business and its rich rewards went over to Germany.
+So in 1909 a corps of chemists set to work under Professor Perkin in the
+Manchester laboratories to solve the problem of synthetic rubber. What
+reagent could be found that would reverse the reaction and convert the
+liquid isoprene into the solid rubber? It was discovered, by accident,
+we may say, but it should be understood that such advantageous accidents
+happen only to those who are working for them and know how to utilize
+them. In July, 1910, Dr. Matthews, who had charge of the research, set
+some isoprene to drying over metallic sodium, a common laboratory method
+of freeing a liquid from the last traces of water. In September he found
+that the flask was filled with a solid mass of real rubber instead of
+the volatile colorless liquid he had put into it.
+
+Twenty years before the discovery would have been useless, for sodium
+was then a rare and costly metal, a little of it in a sealed glass tube
+being passed around the chemistry class once a year as a curiosity, or a
+tiny bit cut off and dropped in water to see what a fuss it made. But
+nowadays metallic sodium is cheaply produced by the aid of electricity.
+The difficulty lay rather in the cost of the raw material, isoprene. In
+industrial chemistry it is not sufficient that a thing can be made; it
+must be made to pay. Isoprene could be obtained from turpentine, but
+this was too expensive and limited in supply. It would merely mean the
+destruction of pine forests instead of rubber forests. Starch was
+finally decided upon as the best material, since this can be obtained
+for about a cent a pound from potatoes, corn and many other sources.
+Here, however, the chemist came to the end of his rope and had to call
+the bacteriologist to his aid. The splitting of the starch molecule is
+too big a job for man; only the lower organisms, the yeast plant, for
+example, know enough to do that. Owing perhaps to the _entente cordiale_
+a French biologist was called into the combination, Professor Fernbach,
+of the Pasteur Institute, and after eighteen months' hard work he
+discovered a process of fermentation by which a large amount of fusel
+oil can be obtained from any starchy stuff. Hitherto the aim in
+fermentation and distillation had been to obtain as small a proportion
+of fusel as possible, for fusel oil is a mixture of the heavier
+alcohols, all of them more poisonous and malodorous than common alcohol.
+But here, as has often happened in the history of industrial chemistry,
+the by-product turned out to be more valuable than the product. From
+fusel oil by the use of chlorine isoprene can be prepared, so the chain
+was complete.
+
+But meanwhile the Germans had been making equal progress. In 1905 Prof.
+Karl Harries, of Berlin, found out the name of the caoutchouc molecule.
+This discovery was to the chemists what the architect's plan of a house
+is to the builder. They knew then what they were trying to construct
+and could go about their task intelligently.
+
+Mark Twain said that he could understand something about how astronomers
+could measure the distance of the planets, calculate their weights and
+so forth, but he never could see how they could find out their names
+even with the largest telescopes. This is a joke in astronomy but it
+is not in chemistry. For when the chemist finds out the structure
+of a compound he gives it a name which means that. The stuff came
+to be called "caoutchouc," because that was the way the Spaniards
+of Columbus's time caught the Indian word "cahuchu." When
+Dr. Priestley called it "India rubber" he told merely where it
+came from and what it was good for. But when Harries named it
+"1-5-dimethyl-cyclo-octadien-1-5" any chemist could draw a picture of it
+and give a guess as to how it could be made. Even a person without any
+knowledge of chemistry can get the main point of it by merely looking at
+this diagram:
+
+     C    C              C---C
+     ||   ||             ||  |
+  C--C    C           C--C   C
+     |    |     -->      |   |
+     C    C--C           C   C--C
+     ||   ||             |   ||
+     C    C              C---C
+
+[Illustration: isoprene _turns into_ caoutchouc]
+
+I have dropped the 16 H's or hydrogen atoms of the formula for
+simplicity's sake. They simply hook on wherever they can. You will see
+that the isoprene consists of a chain of four carbon atoms (represented
+by the C's) with an extra carbon on the side. In the transformation of
+this colorless liquid into soft rubber two of the double linkages break
+and so permit the two chains of 4 C's to unite to form one ring of
+eight. If you have ever played ring-around-a-rosy you will get the idea.
+In Chapter IV I explained that the anilin dyes are built up upon the
+benzene ring of six carbon atoms. The rubber ring consists of eight at
+least and probably more. Any substance containing that peculiar carbon
+chain with two double links C=C-C=C can double up--polymerize, the
+chemist calls it--into a rubber-like substance. So we may have many
+kinds of rubber, some of which may prove to be more useful than that
+which happens to be found in nature.
+
+With the structural formula of Harries as a clue chemists all over the
+world plunged into the problem with renewed hope. The famous Bayer dye
+works at Elberfeld took it up and there in August, 1909, Dr. Fritz
+Hofmann worked out a process for the converting of pure isoprene into
+rubber by heat. Then in 1910 Harries happened upon the same sodium
+reaction as Matthews, but when he came to get it patented he found that
+the Englishman had beaten him to the patent office by a few weeks.
+
+This Anglo-German rivalry came to a dramatic climax in 1912 at the great
+hall of the College of the City of New York when Dr. Carl Duisberg, of
+the Elberfeld factory, delivered an address on the latest achievements
+of the chemical industry before the Eighth--and the last for a long
+time--International Congress of Applied Chemistry. Duisberg insisted
+upon talking in German, although more of his auditors would have
+understood him in English. He laid full emphasis upon German
+achievements and cast doubt upon the claim of "the Englishman Tilden" to
+have prepared artificial rubber in the eighties. Perkin, of Manchester,
+confronted him with his new process for making rubber from potatoes, but
+Duisberg countered by proudly displaying two automobile tires made of
+synthetic rubber with which he had made a thousand-mile run.
+
+The intense antagonism between the British and German chemists at this
+congress was felt by all present, but we did not foresee that in two
+years from that date they would be engaged in manufacturing poison gas
+to fire at one another. It was, however, realized that more was at stake
+than personal reputation and national prestige. Under pressure of the
+new demand for automobiles the price of rubber jumped from $1.25 to $3 a
+pound in 1910, and millions had been invested in plantations. If
+Professor Perkin was right when he told the congress that by his process
+rubber could be made for less than 25 cents a pound it meant that these
+plantations would go the way of the indigo plantations when the Germans
+succeeded in making artificial indigo. If Dr. Duisberg was right when he
+told the congress that synthetic rubber would "certainly appear on the
+market in a very short time," it meant that Germany in war or peace
+would become independent of Brazil in the matter of rubber as she had
+become independent of Chile in the matter of nitrates.
+
+As it turned out both scientists were too sanguine. Synthetic rubber has
+not proved capable of displacing natural rubber by underbidding it nor
+even of replacing natural rubber when this is shut out. When Germany
+was blockaded and the success of her armies depended on rubber, price
+was no object. Three Danish sailors who were caught by United States
+officials trying to smuggle dental rubber into Germany confessed that
+they had been selling it there for gas masks at $73 a pound. The German
+gas masks in the latter part of the war were made without rubber and
+were frail and leaky. They could not have withstood the new gases which
+American chemists were preparing on an unprecedented scale. Every scrap
+of old rubber in Germany was saved and worked over and over and diluted
+with fillers and surrogates to the limit of elasticity. Spring tires
+were substituted for pneumatics. So it is evident that the supply of
+synthetic rubber could not have been adequate or satisfactory. Neither,
+on the other hand, have the British made a success of the Perkin
+process, although they spent $200,000 on it in the first two years. But,
+of course, there was not the same necessity for it as in the case of
+Germany, for England had practically a monopoly of the world's supply of
+natural rubber either through owning plantations or controlling
+shipping. If rubber could not be manufactured profitably in Germany when
+the demand was imperative and price no consideration it can hardly be
+expected to compete with the natural under peace conditions.
+
+The problem of synthetic rubber has then been solved scientifically but
+not industrially. It can be made but cannot be made to pay. The
+difficulty is to find a cheap enough material to start with. We can make
+rubber out of potatoes--but potatoes have other uses. It would require
+more land and more valuable land to raise the potatoes than to raise the
+rubber. We can get isoprene by the distillation of turpentine--but why
+not bleed a rubber tree as well as a pine tree? Turpentine is neither
+cheap nor abundant enough. Any kind of wood, sawdust for instance, can
+be utilized by converting the cellulose over into sugar and fermenting
+this to alcohol, but the process is not likely to prove profitable.
+Petroleum when cracked up to make gasoline gives isoprene or other
+double-bond compounds that go over into some form of rubber.
+
+But the most interesting and most promising of all is the complete
+inorganic synthesis that dispenses with the aid of vegetation and starts
+with coal and lime. These heated together in the electric furnace form
+calcium carbide and this, as every automobilist knows, gives acetylene
+by contact with water. From this gas isoprene can be made and the
+isoprene converted into rubber by sodium, or acid or alkali or simple
+heating. Acetone, which is also made from acetylene, can be converted
+directly into rubber by fuming sulfuric acid. This seems to have been
+the process chiefly used by the Germans during the war. Several carbide
+factories were devoted to it. But the intermediate and by-products of
+the process, such as alcohol, acetic acid and acetone, were in as much
+demand for war purposes as rubber. The Germans made some rubber from
+pitch imported from Sweden. They also found a useful substitute in
+aluminum naphthenate made from Baku petroleum, for it is elastic and
+plastic and can be vulcanized.
+
+So although rubber can be made in many different ways it is not
+profitable to make it in any of them. We have to rely still upon the
+natural product, but we can greatly improve upon the way nature produces
+it. When the call came for more rubber for the electrical and automobile
+industries the first attempt to increase the supply was to put pressure
+upon the natives to bring in more of the latex. As a consequence the
+trees were bled to death and sometimes also the natives. The Belgian
+atrocities in the Congo shocked the civilized world and at Putumayo on
+the upper Amazon the same cause produced the same horrible effects. But
+no matter what cruelty was practiced the tropical forests could not be
+made to yield a sufficient increase, so the cultivation of the rubber
+was begun by far-sighted men in Dutch Java, Sumatra and Borneo and in
+British Malaya and Ceylon.
+
+Brazil, feeling secure in the possession of a natural monopoly, made no
+effort to compete with these parvenus. It cost about as much to gather
+rubber from the Amazon forests as it did to raise it on a Malay
+plantation, that is, 25 cents a pound. The Brazilian Government clapped
+on another 25 cents export duty and spent the money lavishly. In 1911
+the treasury of Para took in $2,000,000 from the rubber tax and a good
+share of the money was spent on a magnificent new theater at Manaos--not
+on setting out rubber trees. The result of this rivalry between the
+collector and the cultivator is shown by the fact that in the decade
+1907-1917 the world's output of plantation rubber increased from 1000 to
+204,000 tons, while the output of wild rubber decreased from 68,000 to
+53,000. Besides this the plantation rubber is a cleaner and more even
+product, carefully coagulated by acetic acid instead of being smoked
+over a forest fire. It comes in pale yellow sheets instead of big black
+balls loaded with the dirt or sticks and stones that the honest Indian
+sometimes adds to make a bigger lump. What's better, the man who milks
+the rubber trees on a plantation may live at home where he can be
+decently looked after. The agriculturist and the chemist may do what the
+philanthropist and statesman could not accomplish: put an end to the
+cruelties involved in the international struggle for "black gold."
+
+The United States uses three-fourths of the world's rubber output and
+grows none of it. What is the use of tropical possessions if we do not
+make use of them? The Philippines could grow all our rubber and keep a
+$300,000,000 business under our flag. Santo Domingo, where rubber was
+first discovered, is now under our supervision and could be enriched by
+the industry. The Guianas, where the rubber tree was first studied,
+might be purchased. It is chiefly for lack of a definite colonial policy
+that our rubber industry, by far the largest in the world, has to be
+dependent upon foreign sources for all its raw materials. Because the
+Philippines are likely to be cast off at any moment, American
+manufacturers are placing their plantations in the Dutch or British
+possessions. The Goodyear Company has secured a concession of 20,000
+acres near Medan in Dutch Sumatra.
+
+While the United States is planning to relinquish its Pacific
+possessions the British have more than doubled their holdings in New
+Guinea by the acquisition of Kaiser Wilhelm's Land, good rubber
+country. The British Malay States in 1917 exported over $118,000,000
+worth of plantation-grown rubber and could have sold more if shipping
+had not been short and production restricted. Fully 90 per cent. of the
+cultivated rubber is now grown in British colonies or on British
+plantations in the Dutch East Indies. To protect this monopoly an act
+has been passed preventing foreigners from buying more land in the Malay
+Peninsula. The Japanese have acquired there 50,000 acres, on which they
+are growing more than a million dollars' worth of rubber a year. The
+British _Tropical Life_ says of the American invasion: "As America is so
+extremely wealthy Uncle Sam can well afford to continue to buy our
+rubber as he has been doing instead of coming in to produce rubber to
+reduce his competition as a buyer in the world's market." The Malaya
+estates calculate to pay a dividend of 20 per cent. on the investment
+with rubber selling at 30 cents a pound and every two cents additional
+on the price brings a further 3-1/2 per cent. dividend. The output is
+restricted by the Rubber Growers' Association so as to keep the price up
+to 50-70 cents. When the plantations first came into bearing in 1910
+rubber was bringing nearly $3 a pound, and since it can be produced at
+less than 30 cents a pound we can imagine the profits of the early
+birds.
+
+The fact that the world's rubber trade was in the control of Great
+Britain caused America great anxiety and financial loss in the early
+part of the war when the British Government, suspecting--not without
+reason--that some American rubber goods were getting into Germany
+through neutral nations, suddenly shut off our supply. This threatened
+to kill the fourth largest of our industries and it was only by the
+submission of American rubber dealers to the closest supervision and
+restriction by the British authorities that they were allowed to
+continue their business. Sir Francis Hopwood, in laying down these
+regulations, gave emphatic warning "that in case any manufacturer,
+importer or dealer came under suspicion his permits should be
+immediately revoked. Reinstatement will be slow and difficult. The
+British Government will cancel first and investigate afterward." Of
+course the British had a right to say under what conditions they should
+sell their rubber and we cannot blame them for taking such precautions
+to prevent its getting to their enemies, but it placed the United States
+in a humiliating position and if we had not been in sympathy with their
+side it would have aroused more resentment than it did. But it made
+evident the desirability of having at least part of our supply under our
+own control and, if possible, within our own country. Rubber is not rare
+in nature, for it is contained in almost every milky juice. Every
+country boy knows that he can get a self-feeding mucilage brush by
+cutting off a milkweed stalk. The only native source so far utilized is
+the guayule, which grows wild on the deserts of the Mexican and the
+American border. The plant was discovered in 1852 by Dr. J.M. Bigelow
+near Escondido Creek, Texas. Professor Asa Gray described it and named
+it Parthenium argentatum, or the silver Pallas. When chopped up and
+macerated guayule gives a satisfactory quality of caoutchouc in
+profitable amounts. In 1911 seven thousand tons of guayule were
+imported from Mexico; in 1917 only seventeen hundred tons. Why this
+falling off? Because the eager exploiters had killed the goose that laid
+the golden egg, or in plain language, pulled up the plant by the roots.
+Now guayule is being cultivated and is reaped instead of being uprooted.
+Experiments at the Tucson laboratory have recently removed the
+difficulty of getting the seed to germinate under cultivation. This
+seems the most promising of the home-grown plants and, until artificial
+rubber can be made profitable, gives us the only chance of being in part
+independent of oversea supply.
+
+There are various other gums found in nature that can for some purposes
+be substituted for caoutchouc. Gutta percha, for instance, is pliable
+and tough though not very elastic. It becomes plastic by heat so it can
+be molded, but unlike rubber it cannot be hardened by heating with
+sulfur. A lump of gutta percha was brought from Java in 1766 and placed
+in a British museum, where it lay for nearly a hundred years before it
+occurred to anybody to do anything with it except to look at it. But a
+German electrician, Siemens, discovered in 1847 that gutta percha was
+valuable for insulating telegraph lines and it found extensive
+employment in submarine cables as well as for golf balls, and the like.
+
+Balata, which is found in the forests of the Guianas, is between gutta
+percha and rubber, not so good for insulation but useful for shoe soles
+and machine belts. The bark of the tree is so thick that the latex does
+not run off like caoutchouc when the bark is cut. So the bark has to be
+cut off and squeezed in hand presses. Formerly this meant cutting down
+the tree, but now alternate strips of the bark are cut off and squeezed
+so the tree continues to live.
+
+When Columbus discovered Santo Domingo he found the natives playing with
+balls made from the gum of the caoutchouc tree. The soldiers of Pizarro,
+when they conquered Inca-Land, adopted the Peruvian custom of smearing
+caoutchouc over their coats to keep out the rain. A French scientist, M.
+de la Condamine, who went to South America to measure the earth, came
+back in 1745 with some specimens of caoutchouc from Para as well as
+quinine from Peru. The vessel on which he returned, the brig _Minerva_,
+had a narrow escape from capture by an English cruiser, for Great
+Britain was jealous of any trespassing on her American sphere of
+influence. The Old World need not have waited for the discovery of the
+New, for the rubber tree grows wild in Annam as well as Brazil, but none
+of the Asiatics seems to have discovered any of the many uses of the
+juice that exudes from breaks in the bark.
+
+The first practical use that was made of it gave it the name that has
+stuck to it in English ever since. Magellan announced in 1772 that it
+was good to remove pencil marks. A lump of it was sent over from France
+to Priestley, the clergyman chemist who discovered oxygen and was mobbed
+out of Manchester for being a republican and took refuge in
+Pennsylvania. He cut the lump into little cubes and gave them to his
+friends to eradicate their mistakes in writing or figuring. Then they
+asked him what the queer things were and he said that they were "India
+rubbers."
+
+[Illustration: FOREST RUBBER
+
+Compare this tropical tangle and gnarled trunk with the straight tree
+and cleared ground of the plantation. At the foot of the trunk are cups
+collecting rubber juice.]
+
+[Illustration: PLANTATION RUBBER
+
+This spiral cut draws off the milk as completely and quickly as possible
+without harming the tree. The man is pulling off a strip of coagulated
+rubber that clogs it.]
+
+[Illustration: IN MAKING GARDEN HOSE THE RUBBER IS FORMED INTO A TUBE
+BY THE MACHINE ON THE RIGHT AND COILED ON THE TABLE TO THE LEFT]
+
+The Peruvian natives had used caoutchouc for water-proof clothing,
+shoes, bottles and syringes, but Europe was slow to take it up, for the
+stuff was too sticky and smelled too bad in hot weather to become
+fashionable in fastidious circles. In 1825 Mackintosh made his name
+immortal by putting a layer of rubber between two cloths.
+
+A German chemist, Ludersdorf, discovered in 1832 that the gum could be
+hardened by treating it with sulfur dissolved in turpentine. But it was
+left to a Yankee inventor, Charles Goodyear, of Connecticut, to work out
+a practical solution of the problem. A friend of his, Hayward, told him
+that it had been revealed to him in a dream that sulfur would harden
+rubber, but unfortunately the angel or defunct chemist who inspired the
+vision failed to reveal the details of the process. So Hayward sold out
+his dream to Goodyear, who spent all his own money and all he could
+borrow from his friends trying to convert it into a reality. He worked
+for ten years on the problem before the "lucky accident" came to him.
+One day in 1839 he happened to drop on the hot stove of the kitchen that
+he used as a laboratory a mixture of caoutchouc and sulfur. To his
+surprise he saw the two substances fuse together into something new.
+Instead of the soft, tacky gum and the yellow, brittle brimstone he had
+the tough, stable, elastic solid that has done so much since to make our
+footing and wheeling safe, swift and noiseless. The gumshoes or galoshes
+that he was then enabled to make still go by the name of "rubbers" in
+this country, although we do not use them for pencil erasers.
+
+Goodyear found that he could vary this "vulcanized rubber" at will. By
+adding a little more sulfur he got a hard substance which, however,
+could be softened by heat so as to be molded into any form wanted. Out
+of this "hard rubber" "vulcanite" or "ebonite" were made combs,
+hairpins, penholders and the like, and it has not yet been superseded
+for some purposes by any of its recent rivals, the synthetic resins.
+
+The new form of rubber made by the Germans, methyl rubber, is said to be
+a superior substitute for the hard variety but not satisfactory for the
+soft. The electrical resistance of the synthetic product is 20 per cent,
+higher than the natural, so it is excellent for insulation, but it is
+inferior in elasticity. In the latter part of the war the methyl rubber
+was manufactured at the rate of 165 tons a month.
+
+The first pneumatic tires, known then as "patent aerial wheels," were
+invented by Robert William Thomson of London in 1846. On the following
+year a carriage equipped with them was seen in the streets of New York
+City. But the pneumatic tire did not come into use until after 1888,
+when an Irish horse-doctor, John Boyd Dunlop, of Belfast, tied a rubber
+tube around the wheels of his little son's velocipede. Within seven
+years after that a $25,000,000 corporation was manufacturing Dunlop
+tires. Later America took the lead in this business. In 1913 the United
+States exported $3,000,000 worth of tires and tubes. In 1917 the
+American exports rose to $13,000,000, not counting what went to the
+Allies. The number of pneumatic tires sold in 1917 is estimated at
+18,000,000, which at an average cost of $25 would amount to
+$450,000,000.
+
+No matter how much synthetic rubber may be manufactured or how many
+rubber trees are set out there is no danger of glutting the market, for
+as the price falls the uses of rubber become more numerous. One can
+think of a thousand ways in which rubber could be used if it were only
+cheap enough. In the form of pads and springs and tires it would do much
+to render traffic noiseless. Even the elevated railroad and the subway
+might be opened to conversation, and the city made habitable for mild
+voiced and gentle folk. It would make one's step sure, noiseless and
+springy, whether it was used individualistically as rubber heels or
+collectivistically as carpeting and paving. In roofing and siding and
+paint it would make our buildings warmer and more durable. It would
+reduce the cost and permit the extension of electrical appliances of
+almost all kinds. In short, there is hardly any other material whose
+abundance would contribute more to our comfort and convenience. Noise is
+an automatic alarm indicating lost motion and wasted energy. Silence is
+economy and resiliency is superior to resistance. A gumshoe outlasts a
+hobnailed sole and a rubber tube full of air is better than a steel
+tire.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+THE RIVAL SUGARS
+
+
+The ancient Greeks, being an inquisitive and acquisitive people, were
+fond of collecting tales of strange lands. They did not care much
+whether the stories were true or not so long as they were interesting.
+Among the marvels that the Greeks heard from the Far East two of the
+strangest were that in India there were plants that bore wool without
+sheep and reeds that bore honey without bees. These incredible tales
+turned out to be true and in the course of time Europe began to get a
+little calico from Calicut and a kind of edible gravel that the Arabs
+who brought it called "sukkar." But of course only kings and queens
+could afford to dress in calico and have sugar prescribed for them when
+they were sick.
+
+Fortunately, however, in the course of time the Arabs invaded Spain and
+forced upon the unwilling inhabitants of Europe such instrumentalities
+of higher civilization as arithmetic and algebra, soap and sugar. Later
+the Spaniards by an act of equally unwarranted and beneficent aggression
+carried the sugar cane to the Caribbean, where it thrived amazingly. The
+West Indies then became a rival of the East Indies as a treasure-house
+of tropical wealth and for several centuries the Spanish, Portuguese,
+Dutch, English, Danes and French fought like wildcats to gain possession
+of this little nest of islands and the routes leading thereunto.
+
+The English finally overcame all these enemies, whether they fought her
+singly or combined. Great Britain became mistress of the seas and took
+such Caribbean lands as she wanted. But in the end her continental foes
+came out ahead, for they rendered her victory valueless. They were
+defeated in geography but they won in chemistry. Canning boasted that
+"the New World had been called into existence to redress the balance of
+the Old." Napoleon might have boasted that he had called in the sugar
+beet to balance the sugar cane. France was then, as Germany was a
+century later, threatening to dominate the world. England, then as in
+the Great War, shut off from the seas the shipping of the aggressive
+power. France then, like Germany later, felt most keenly the lack of
+tropical products, chief among which, then but not in the recent crisis,
+was sugar. The cause of this vital change is that in 1747 Marggraf, a
+Berlin chemist, discovered that it was possible to extract sugar from
+beets. There was only a little sugar in the beet root then, some six per
+cent., and what he got out was dirty and bitter. One of his pupils in
+1801 set up a beet sugar factory near Breslau under the patronage of the
+King of Prussia, but the industry was not a success until Napoleon took
+it up and in 1810 offered a prize of a million francs for a practical
+process. How the French did make fun of him for this crazy notion! In a
+comic paper of that day you will find a cartoon of Napoleon in the
+nursery beside the cradle of his son and heir, the King of Rome--known
+to the readers of Rostand as l'Aiglon. The Emperor is squeezing the
+juice of a beet into his coffee and the nurse has put a beet into the
+mouth of the infant King, saying: "Suck, dear, suck. Your father says
+it's sugar."
+
+In like manner did the wits ridicule Franklin for fooling with
+electricity, Rumford for trying to improve chimneys, Parmentier for
+thinking potatoes were fit to eat, and Jefferson for believing that
+something might be made of the country west of the Mississippi. In all
+ages ridicule has been the chief weapon of conservatism. If you want to
+know what line human progress will take in the future read the funny
+papers of today and see what they are fighting. The satire of every
+century from Aristophanes to the latest vaudeville has been directed
+against those who are trying to make the world wiser or better, against
+the teacher and the preacher, the scientist and the reformer.
+
+In spite of the ridicule showered upon it the despised beet year by year
+gained in sweetness of heart. The percentage of sugar rose from six to
+eighteen and by improved methods of extraction became finally as pure
+and palatable as the sugar of the cane. An acre of German beets produces
+more sugar than an acre of Louisiana cane. Continental Europe waxed
+wealthy while the British West Indies sank into decay. As the beets of
+Europe became sweeter the population of the islands became blacker.
+Before the war England was paying out $125,000,000 for sugar, and more
+than two-thirds of this money was going to Germany and Austria-Hungary.
+Fostered by scientific study, protected by tariff duties, and stimulated
+by export bounties, the beet sugar industry became one of the financial
+forces of the world. The English at home, especially the
+marmalade-makers, at first rejoiced at the idea of getting sugar for
+less than cost at the expense of her continental rivals. But the
+suffering colonies took another view of the situation. In 1888 a
+conference of the powers called at London agreed to stop competing by
+the pernicious practice of export bounties, but France and the United
+States refused to enter, so the agreement fell through. Another
+conference ten years later likewise failed, but when the parvenu beet
+sugar ventured to invade the historic home of the cane the limit of
+toleration had been reached. The Council of India put on countervailing
+duties to protect their homegrown cane from the bounty-fed beet. This
+forced the calling of a convention at Brussels in 1903 "to equalize the
+conditions of competition between beet sugar and cane sugar of the
+various countries," at which the powers agreed to a mutual suppression
+of bounties. Beet sugar then divided the world's market equally with
+cane sugar and the two rivals stayed substantially neck and neck until
+the Great War came. This shut out from England the product of Germany,
+Austria-Hungary, Belgium, northern France and Russia and took the
+farmers from their fields. The battle lines of the Central Powers
+enclosed the land which used to grow a third of the world's supply of
+sugar. In 1913 the beet and the cane each supplied about nine million
+tons of sugar. In 1917 the output of cane sugar was 11,200,000 and of
+beet sugar 5,300,000 tons. Consequently the Old World had to draw upon
+the New. Cuba, on which the United States used to depend for half its
+sugar supply, sent over 700,000 tons of raw sugar to England in 1916.
+The United States sent as much more refined sugar. The lack of shipping
+interfered with our getting sugar from our tropical dependencies,
+Hawaii, Porto Rico and the Philippines. The homegrown beets give us only
+a fifth and the cane of Louisiana and Texas only a fifteenth of the
+sugar we need. As a result we were obliged to file a claim in advance to
+get a pound of sugar from the corner grocery and then we were apt to be
+put off with rock candy, muscovado or honey. Lemon drops proved useful
+for Russian tea and the "long sweetening" of our forefathers came again
+into vogue in the form of various syrups. The United States was
+accustomed to consume almost a fifth of all the sugar produced in the
+world--and then we could not get it.
+
+[Illustration: MAP SHOWING LOCATION OF EUROPEAN BEET SUGAR
+FACTORIES--ALSO BATTLE LINES AT CLOSE OF 1918 ESTIMATED THAT ONE-THIRD
+OF WORLDS PRODUCTION BEFORE THE WAR WAS PRODUCED WITHIN BATTLE LINES
+Courtesy American Sugar Refining Co.]
+
+The shortage made us realize how dependent we have become upon sugar.
+Yet it was, as we have seen, practically unknown to the ancients and
+only within the present generation has it become an essential factor in
+our diet. As soon as the chemist made it possible to produce sugar at a
+reasonable price all nations began to buy it in proportion to their
+means. Americans, as the wealthiest people in the world, ate the most,
+ninety pounds a year on the average for every man, woman and child. In
+other words we ate our weight of sugar every year. The English consumed
+nearly as much as the Americans; the French and Germans about half as
+much; the Balkan peoples less than ten pounds per annum; and the African
+savages none.
+
+[Illustration: How the sugar beet has gained enormously in sugar content
+under chemical control]
+
+Pure white sugar is the first and greatest contribution of chemistry to
+the world's dietary. It is unique in being a single definite chemical
+compound, sucrose, C_{12}H_{22}O_{11}. All natural nutriments are more
+or less complex mixtures. Many of them, like wheat or milk or fruit,
+contain in various proportions all of the three factors of foods, the
+fats, the proteids and the carbohydrates, as well as water and the
+minerals and other ingredients necessary to life. But sugar is a simple
+substance, like water or salt, and like them is incapable of sustaining
+life alone, although unlike them it is nutritious. In fact, except the
+fats there is no more nutritious food than sugar, pound for pound, for
+it contains no water and no waste. It is therefore the quickest and
+usually the cheapest means of supplying bodily energy. But as may be
+seen from its formula as given above it contains only three elements,
+carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, and omits nitrogen and other elements
+necessary to the body. An engine requires not only coal but also
+lubricating oil, water and bits of steel and brass to keep it in repair.
+But as a source of the energy needed in our strenuous life sugar has no
+equal and only one rival, alcohol. Alcohol is the offspring of sugar, a
+degenerate descendant that retains but few of the good qualities of its
+sire and has acquired some evil traits of its own. Alcohol, like sugar,
+may serve to furnish the energy of a steam engine or a human body. Used
+as a fuel alcohol has certain advantages, but used as a food it has the
+disqualification of deranging the bodily mechanism. Even a little
+alcohol will impair the accuracy and speed of thought and action, while
+a large quantity, as we all know from observation if not experience,
+will produce temporary incapacitation.
+
+When man feeds on sugar he splits it up by the aid of air into water and
+carbon dioxide in this fashion:
+
+  C_{12}H_{22}O_{11} +  12O_{2}   -->   11H_{2}O  + 12CO_{2}
+        cane sugar     oxygen           water      carbon dioxide
+
+When sugar is burned the reaction is just the same.
+
+But when the yeast plant feeds on sugar it carries the process only part
+way and instead of water the product is alcohol, a very different thing,
+so they say who have tried both as beverages. The yeast or fermentation
+reaction is this:
+
+  C_{12}H_{22}O_{11} +  H_{2}O   -->  4C_{2}H_{6}O   +  4CO_{2}
+        cane sugar      water         alcohol       carbon dioxide
+
+Alcohol then is the first product of the decomposition of sugar, a
+dangerous half-way house. The twin product, carbon dioxide or carbonic
+acid, is a gas of slightly sour taste which gives an attractive tang and
+effervescence to the beer, wine, cider or champagne. That is to say, one
+of these twins is a pestilential fellow and the other is decidedly
+agreeable. Yet for several thousand years mankind took to the first and
+let the second for the most part escape into the air. But when the
+chemist appeared on the scene he discovered a way of separating the two
+and bottling the harmless one for those who prefer it. An increasing
+number of people were found to prefer it, so the American soda-water
+fountain is gradually driving Demon Rum out of the civilized world. The
+brewer nowadays caters to two classes of customers. He bottles up the
+beer with the alcohol and a little carbonic acid in it for the saloon
+and he catches the rest of the carbonic acid that he used to waste and
+sells it to the drug stores for soda-water or uses it to charge some
+non-alcoholic beer of his own.
+
+This catering to rival trades is not an uncommon thing with the chemist.
+As we have seen, the synthetic perfumes are used to improve the natural
+perfumes. Cottonseed is separated into oil and meal; the oil going to
+make margarin and the meal going to feed the cows that produce butter.
+Some people have been drinking coffee, although they do not like the
+taste of it, because they want the stimulating effect of its alkaloid,
+caffein. Other people liked the warmth and flavor of coffee but find
+that caffein does not agree with them. Formerly one had to take the
+coffee whole or let it alone. Now one can have his choice, for the
+caffein is extracted for use in certain popular cold drinks and the rest
+of the bean sold as caffein-free coffee.
+
+Most of the "soft drinks" that are now gradually displacing the hard
+ones consist of sugar, water and carbonic acid, with various flavors,
+chiefly the esters of the fatty and aromatic acids, such as I described
+in a previous chapter. These are still usually made from fruits and
+spices and in some cases the law or public opinion requires this, but
+eventually, I presume, the synthetic flavors will displace the natural
+and then we shall get rid of such extraneous and indigestible matter as
+seeds, skins and bark. Suppose the world had always been used to
+synthetic and hence seedless figs, strawberries and blackberries.
+Suppose then some manufacturer of fig paste or strawberry jam should put
+in ten per cent. of little round hard wooden nodules, just the sort to
+get stuck between the teeth or caught in the vermiform appendix. How
+long would it be before he was sent to jail for adulterating food? But
+neither jail nor boycott has any reformatory effect on Nature.
+
+Nature is quite human in that respect. But you can reform Nature as you
+can human beings by looking out for heredity and culture. In this way
+Mother Nature has been quite cured of her bad habit of putting seeds in
+bananas and oranges. Figs she still persists in adulterating with
+particles of cellulose as nutritious as sawdust. But we can circumvent
+the old lady at this. I got on Christmas a package of figs from
+California without a seed in them. Somebody had taken out all the
+seeds--it must have been a big job--and then put the figs together again
+as natural looking as life and very much better tasting.
+
+Sugar and alcohol are both found in Nature; sugar in the ripe fruit,
+alcohol when it begins to decay. But it was the chemist who discovered
+how to extract them. He first worked with alcohol and unfortunately
+succeeded.
+
+Previous to the invention of the still by the Arabian chemists man could
+not get drunk as quickly as he wanted to because his liquors were
+limited to what the yeast plant could stand without intoxication. When
+the alcoholic content of wine or beer rose to seventeen per cent. at the
+most the process of fermentation stopped because the yeast plants got
+drunk and quit "working." That meant that a man confined to ordinary
+wine or beer had to drink ten or twenty quarts of water to get one
+quart of the stuff he was after, and he had no liking for water.
+
+So the chemist helped him out of this difficulty and got him into worse
+trouble by distilling the wine. The more volatile part that came over
+first contained the flavor and most of the alcohol. In this way he could
+get liquors like brandy and whisky, rum and gin, containing from thirty
+to eighty per cent. of alcohol. This was the origin of the modern liquor
+problem. The wine of the ancients was strong enough to knock out Noah
+and put the companions of Socrates under the table, but it was not until
+distilled liquors came in that alcoholism became chronic, epidemic and
+ruinous to whole populations.
+
+But the chemist later tried to undo the ruin he had quite inadvertently
+wrought by introducing alcohol into the world. One of his most
+successful measures was the production of cheap and pure sugar which, as
+we have seen, has become a large factor in the dietary of civilized
+countries. As a country sobers up it takes to sugar as a "self-starter"
+to provide the energy needed for the strenuous life. A five o'clock
+candy is a better restorative than a five o'clock highball or even a
+five o'clock tea, for it is a true nutrient instead of a mere stimulant.
+It is a matter of common observation that those who like sweets usually
+do not like alcohol. Women, for instance, are apt to eat candy but do
+not commonly take to alcoholic beverages. Look around you at a banquet
+table and you will generally find that those who turn down their wine
+glasses generally take two lumps in their demi-tasses. We often hear it
+said that whenever a candy store opens up a saloon in the same block
+closes up. Our grandmothers used to warn their daughters: "Don't marry a
+man who does not want sugar in his tea. He is likely to take to drink."
+So, young man, when next you give a box of candy to your best girl and
+she offers you some, don't decline it. Eat it and pretend to like it, at
+least, for it is quite possible that she looked into a physiology and is
+trying you out. You never can tell what girls are up to.
+
+In the army and navy ration the same change has taken place as in the
+popular dietary. The ration of rum has been mostly replaced by an
+equivalent amount of candy or marmalade. Instead of the tippling trooper
+of former days we have "the chocolate soldier." No previous war in
+history has been fought so largely on sugar and so little on alcohol as
+the last one. When the war reduced the supply and increased the demand
+we all felt the sugar famine and it became a mark of patriotism to
+refuse candy and to drink coffee unsweetened. This, however, is not, as
+some think, the mere curtailment of a superfluous or harmful luxury, the
+sacrifice of a pleasant sensation. It is a real deprivation and a
+serious loss to national nutrition. For there is no reason to think the
+constantly rising curve of sugar consumption has yet reached its maximum
+or optimum. Individuals overeat, but not the population as a whole.
+According to experiments of the Department of Agriculture men doing
+heavy labor may add three-quarters of a pound of sugar to their daily
+diet without any deleterious effects. This is at the rate of 275 pounds
+a year, which is three times the average consumption of England and
+America. But the Department does not state how much a girl doing
+nothing ought to eat between meals.
+
+Of the 2500 to 3500 calories of energy required to keep a man going for
+a day the best source of supply is the carbohydrates, that is, the
+sugars and starches. The fats are more concentrated but are more
+expensive and less easily assimilable. The proteins are also more
+expensive and their decomposition products are more apt to clog up the
+system. Common sugar is almost an ideal food. Cheap, clean, white,
+portable, imperishable, unadulterated, pleasant-tasting, germ-free,
+highly nutritious, completely soluble, altogether digestible, easily
+assimilable, requires no cooking and leaves no residue. Its only fault
+is its perfection. It is so pure that a man cannot live on it. Four
+square lumps give one hundred calories of energy. But twenty-five or
+thirty-five times that amount would not constitute a day's ration, in
+fact one would ultimately starve on such fare. It would be like
+supplying an army with an abundance of powder but neglecting to provide
+any bullets, clothing or food. To make sugar the sole food is
+impossible. To make it the main food is unwise. It is quite proper for
+man to separate out the distinct ingredients of natural products--to
+extract the butter from the milk, the casein from the cheese, the sugar
+from the cane--but he must not forget to combine them again at each meal
+with the other essential foodstuffs in their proper proportion.
+
+[Illustration: THE RIVAL SUGARS The sugar beet of the north has become
+a close rival of the sugar cane of the south]
+
+[Illustration: INTERIOR OF A SUGAR MILL SHOWING THE MACHINERY FOR
+CRUSHING CANE TO EXTRACT THE JUICE]
+
+[Illustration: Courtesy of American Sugar Refinery Co.
+
+VACUUM PANS OF THE AMERICAN SUGAR REFINERY COMPANY
+
+In these air-tight vats the water is boiled off from the cane juice
+under diminished atmospheric pressure until the sugar crystallizes out]
+
+Sugar is not a synthetic product and the business of the chemist has
+been merely to extract and purify it. But this is not so simple as it
+seems and every sugar factory has had to have its chemist. He has
+analyzed every mother beet for a hundred years. He has watched every
+step of the process from the cane to the crystal lest the sucrose should
+invert to the less sweet and non-crystallizable glucose. He has tested
+with polarized light every shipment of sugar that has passed through the
+custom house, much to the mystification of congressmen who have often
+wondered at the money and argumentation expended in a tariff discussion
+over the question of the precise angle of rotation of the plane of
+vibration of infinitesimal waves in a hypothetical ether.
+
+The reason for this painstaking is that there are dozens of different
+sugars, so much alike that they are difficult to separate. They are all
+composed of the same three elements, C, H and O, and often in the same
+proportion. Sometimes two sugars differ only in that one has a
+right-handed and the other a left-handed twist to its molecule. They
+bear the same resemblance to one another as the two gloves of a pair.
+Cane sugar and beet sugar are when completely purified the same
+substance, that is, sucrose, C_{12}H_{22}O_{11}. The brown and
+straw-colored sugars, which our forefathers used and which we took to
+using during the war, are essentially the same but have not been so
+completely freed from moisture and the coloring and flavoring matter of
+the cane juice. Maple sugar is mostly sucrose. So partly is honey.
+Candies are made chiefly of sucrose with the addition of glucose, gums
+or starch, to give them the necessary consistency and of such colors and
+flavors, natural or synthetic, as may be desired. Practically all candy,
+even the cheapest, is nowadays free from deleterious ingredients in the
+manufacture, though it is liable to become contaminated in the handling.
+In fact sugar is about the only food that is never adulterated. It would
+be hard to find anything cheaper to add to it that would not be easily
+detected. "Sanding the sugar," the crime of which grocers are generally
+accused, is the one they are least likely to be guilty of.
+
+Besides the big family of sugars which are all more or less sweet,
+similar in structure and about equally nutritious, there are, very
+curiously, other chemical compounds of altogether different composition
+which taste like sugar but are not nutritious at all. One of these is
+a coal-tar derivative, discovered accidentally by an American student
+of chemistry, Ira Remsen, afterward president of Johns Hopkins
+University, and named by him "saccharin." This has the composition
+C_{6}H_{4}COSO_{2}NH, and as you may observe from the symbol it contains
+sulfur (S) and nitrogen (N) and the benzene ring (C_{6}H_{4}) that are
+not found in any of the sugars. It is several hundred times sweeter than
+sugar, though it has also a slightly bitter aftertaste. A minute
+quantity of it can therefore take the place of a large amount of sugar
+in syrups, candies and preserves, so because it lends itself readily to
+deception its use in food has been prohibited in the United States and
+other countries. But during the war, on account of the shortage of
+sugar, it came again into use. The European governments encouraged what
+they formerly tried to prevent, and it became customary in Germany or
+Italy to carry about a package of saccharin tablets in the pocket and
+drop one or two into the tea or coffee. Such reversals of administrative
+attitude are not uncommon. When the use of hops in beer was new it was
+prohibited by British law. But hops became customary nevertheless and
+now the law requires hops to be used in beer. When workingmen first
+wanted to form unions, laws were passed to prevent them. But now, in
+Australia for instance, the laws require workingmen to form unions.
+Governments naturally tend to a conservative reaction against anything
+new.
+
+It is amusing to turn back to the pure food agitation of ten years ago
+and read the sensational articles in the newspapers about the poisonous
+nature of this dangerous drug, saccharin, in view of the fact that it is
+being used by millions of people in Europe in amounts greater than once
+seemed to upset the tender stomachs of the Washington "poison squads."
+But saccharin does not appear to be responsible for any fatalities yet,
+though people are said to be heartily sick of it. And well they may be,
+for it is not a substitute for sugar except to the sense of taste.
+Glucose may correctly be called a substitute for sucrose as margarin for
+butter, since they not only taste much the same but have about the same
+food value. But to serve saccharin in the place of sugar is like giving
+a rubber bone to a dog. It is reported from Europe that the constant use
+of saccharin gives one eventually a distaste for all sweets. This is
+quite likely, although it means the reversal within a few years of
+prehistoric food habits. Mankind has always associated sweetness with
+food value, for there are few sweet things found in nature except the
+sugars. We think we eat sugar because it is sweet. But we do not. We eat
+it because it is good for us. The reason it tastes sweet to us is
+because it is good for us. So man makes a virtue out of necessity, a
+pleasure out of duty, which is the essence of ethics.
+
+In the ancient days of Ind the great Raja Trishanku possessed an earthly
+paradise that had been constructed for his delectation by a magician.
+Therein grew all manner of beautiful flowers, savory herbs and delicious
+fruits such as had never been known before outside heaven. Of them all
+the Raja and his harems liked none better than the reed from which they
+could suck honey. But Indra, being a jealous god, was wroth when he
+looked down and beheld mere mortals enjoying such delights. So he willed
+the destruction of the enchanted garden. With drought and tempest it was
+devastated, with fire and hail, until not a leaf was left of its
+luxuriant vegetation and the ground was bare as a threshing floor. But
+the roots of the sugar cane are not destroyed though the stalk be cut
+down; so when men ventured to enter the desert where once had been this
+garden of Eden, they found the cane had grown up again and they carried
+away cuttings of it and cultivated it in their gardens. Thus it happened
+that the nectar of the gods descended first to monarchs and their
+favorites, then was spread among the people and carried abroad to other
+lands until now any child with a penny in his hand may buy of the best
+of it. So it has been with many things. So may it be with all things.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+WHAT COMES FROM CORN
+
+
+The discovery of America dowered mankind with a world of new flora. The
+early explorers in their haste to gather up gold paid little attention
+to the more valuable products of field and forest, but in the course of
+centuries their usefulness has become universally recognized. The potato
+and tomato, which Europe at first considered as unfit for food or even
+as poisonous, have now become indispensable among all classes. New World
+drugs like quinine and cocaine have been adopted into every
+pharmacopeia. Cocoa is proving a rival of tea and coffee, and even the
+banana has made its appearance in European markets. Tobacco and chicle
+occupy the nostrils and jaws of a large part of the human race. Maize
+and rubber are become the common property of mankind, but still may be
+called American. The United States alone raises four-fifths of the corn
+and uses three-fourths of the caoutchouc of the world.
+
+All flesh is grass. This may be taken in a dietary as well as a
+metaphorical sense. The graminaceae provide the greater part of the
+sustenance of man and beast; hay and cereals, wheat, oats, rye, barley,
+rice, sugar cane, sorghum and corn. From an American viewpoint the
+greatest of these, physically and financially, is corn. The corn crop of
+the United States for 1917, amounting to 3,159,000,000 bushels, brought
+in more money than the wheat, cotton, potato and rye crops all
+together.
+
+When Columbus reached the West Indies he found the savages playing with
+rubber balls, smoking incense sticks of tobacco and eating cakes made of
+a new grain that they called _mahiz_. When Pizarro invaded Peru he found
+this same cereal used by the natives not only for food but also for
+making alcoholic liquor, in spite of the efforts of the Incas to enforce
+prohibition. When the Pilgrim Fathers penetrated into the woods back of
+Plymouth Harbor they discovered a cache of Indian corn. So throughout
+the three Americas, from Canada to Peru, corn was king and it has proved
+worthy to rank with the rival cereals of other continents, the wheat of
+Europe and the rice of Asia. But food habits are hard to change and for
+the most part the people of the Old World are still ignorant of the
+delights of hasty pudding and Indian pudding, of hoe-cake and hominy, of
+sweet corn and popcorn. I remember thirty years ago seeing on a London
+stand a heap of dejected popcorn balls labeled "Novel American
+Confection. Please Try One." But nobody complied with this pitiful
+appeal but me and I was sorry that I did. Americans used to respond with
+a shipload of corn whenever an appeal came from famine sufferers in
+Armenia, Russia, Ireland, India or Austria, but their generosity was
+chilled when they found that their gift was resented as an insult or as
+an attempt to poison the impoverished population, who declared that they
+would rather die than eat it--and some of them did. Our Department of
+Agriculture sent maize missionaries to Europe with farmers and millers
+as educators and expert cooks to serve free flapjacks and pones, but the
+propaganda made little impression and today Americans are urged to eat
+more of their own corn because the famished families of the war-stricken
+region will not touch it. Just so the beggars of Munich revolted at
+potato soup when the pioneer of American food chemists, Bumford,
+attempted to introduce this transatlantic dish.
+
+But here we are not so much concerned with corn foods as we are with its
+manufactured products. If you split a kernel in two you will find that
+it consists of three parts: a hard and horny hull on the outside, a
+small oily and nitrogenous germ at the point, and a white body
+consisting mostly of starch. Each of these is worked up into various
+products, as may be seen from the accompanying table. The hull forms
+bran and may be mixed with the gluten as a cattle food. The corn steeped
+for several days with sulfurous acid is disintegrated and on being
+ground the germs are floated off, the gluten or nitrogenous portion
+washed out, the starch grains settled down and the residue pressed
+together as oil cake fodder. The refined oil from the germ is marketed
+as a table or cooking oil under the name of "Mazola" and comes into
+competition with olive, peanut and cottonseed oil in the making of
+vegetable substitutes for lard and butter. Inferior grades may be used
+for soaps or for glycerin and perhaps nitroglycerin. A bushel of corn
+yields a pound or more of oil. From the corn germ also is extracted a
+gum called "paragol" that forms an acceptable substitute for rubber in
+certain uses. The "red rubber" sponges and the eraser tips to pencils
+may be made of it and it can contribute some twenty per cent. to the
+synthetic soles of shoes.
+
+[Illustration: CORN PRODUCTS]
+
+Starch, which constitutes fifty-five per cent. of the corn kernel, can
+be converted into a variety of products for dietary and industrial uses.
+As found in corn, potatoes or any other vegetables starch consists of
+small, round, white, hard grains, tasteless, and insoluble in cold
+water. But hot water converts it into a soluble, sticky form which may
+serve for starching clothes or making cornstarch pudding. Carrying the
+process further with the aid of a little acid or other catalyst it takes
+up water and goes over into a sugar, dextrose, commonly called
+"glucose." Expressed in chemical shorthand this reaction is
+
+  C_{6}H_{10}O_{5} + H_{2}O   -->  C_{6}H_{12}O_{6}
+         starch      water          dextrose
+
+This reaction is carried out on forty million bushels of corn a year in
+the United States. The "starch milk," that is, the starch grains washed
+out from the disintegrated corn kernel by water, is digested in large
+pressure tanks under fifty pounds of steam with a few tenths of one per
+cent. of hydrochloric acid until the required degree of conversion is
+reached. Then the remaining acid is neutralized by caustic soda, and
+thereby converted into common salt, which in this small amount does not
+interfere but rather enhances the taste. The product is the commercial
+glucose or corn syrup, which may if desired be evaporated to a white
+powder. It is a mixture of three derivatives of starch in about this
+proportion:
+
+  Maltose          45 per cent.
+  Dextrose         20 per cent.
+  Dextrin          35 per cent.
+
+There are also present three- or four-tenths of one per cent. salt and
+as much of the corn protein and a variable amount of water. It will be
+noticed that the glucose (dextrose), which gives name to the whole, is
+the least of the three ingredients.
+
+Maltose, or malt sugar, has the same composition as cane sugar
+(C_{12}H_{22}O_{11}), but is not nearly so sweet. Dextrin, or starch
+paste, is not sweet at all. Dextrose or glucose is otherwise known; as
+grape sugar, for it is commonly found in grapes and other ripe fruits.
+It forms half of honey and it is one of the two products into which
+cane sugar splits up when we take it into the mouth. It is not so sweet
+as cane sugar and cannot be so readily crystallized, which, however, is
+not altogether a disadvantage.
+
+The process of changing starch into dextrose that takes place in the
+great steam kettles of the glucose factory is essentially the same as
+that which takes place in the ripening of fruit and in the digestion of
+starch. A large part of our nutriment, therefore, consists of glucose
+either eaten as such in ripe fruits or produced in the mouth or stomach
+by the decomposition of the starch of unripe fruit, vegetables and
+cereals. Glucose may be regarded as a predigested food. In spite of this
+well-known fact we still sometimes read "poor food" articles in which
+glucose is denounced as a dangerous adulterant and even classed as a
+poison.
+
+The other ingredients of commercial glucose, the maltose and dextrin,
+have of course the same food value as the dextrose, since they are made
+over into dextrose in the process of digestion. Whether the glucose
+syrup is fit to eat depends, like anything else, on how it is made. If,
+as was formerly sometimes the case, sulfuric acid was used to effect the
+conversion of the starch or sulfurous acid to bleach the glucose and
+these acids were not altogether eliminated, the product might be
+unwholesome or worse. Some years ago in England there was a mysterious
+epidemic of arsenical poisoning among beer drinkers. On tracing it back
+it was found that the beer had been made from glucose which had been
+made from sulfuric acid which had been made from sulfur which had been
+made from a batch of iron pyrites which contained a little arsenic. The
+replacement of sulfuric acid by hydrochloric has done away with that
+danger and the glucose now produced is pure.
+
+The old recipe for home-made candy called for the addition of a little
+vinegar to the sugar syrup to prevent "graining." The purpose of the
+acid was of course to invert part of the cane sugar to glucose so as to
+keep it from crystallizing out again. The professional candy-maker now
+uses the corn glucose for that purpose, so if we accuse him of
+"adulteration" on that ground we must levy the same accusation against
+our grandmothers. The introduction of glucose into candy manufacture has
+not injured but greatly increased the sale of sugar for the same
+purpose. This is not an uncommon effect of scientific progress, for as
+we have observed, the introduction of synthetic perfumes has stimulated
+the production of odoriferous flowers and the price of butter has gone
+up with the introduction of margarin. So, too, there are more weavers
+employed and they get higher wages than in the days when they smashed up
+the first weaving machines, and the same is true of printers and
+typesetting machines. The popular animosity displayed toward any new
+achievement of applied science is never justified, for it benefits not
+only the world as a whole but usually even those interests with which it
+seems at first to conflict.
+
+The chemist is an economizer. It is his special business to hunt up
+waste products and make them useful. He was, for instance, worried over
+the waste of the cores and skins and scraps that were being thrown away
+when apples were put up. Apple pulp contains pectin, which is what makes
+jelly jell, and berries and fruits that are short of it will refuse to
+"jell." But using these for their flavor he adds apple pulp for pectin
+and glucose for smoothness and sugar for sweetness and, if necessary,
+synthetic dyes for color, he is able to put on the market a variety of
+jellies, jams and marmalades at very low price. The same principle
+applies here as in the case of all compounded food products. If they are
+made in cleanly fashion, contain no harmful ingredients and are
+truthfully labeled there is no reason for objecting to them. But if the
+manufacturer goes so far as to put strawberry seeds--or hayseed--into
+his artificial "strawberry jam" I think that might properly be called
+adulteration, for it is imitating the imperfections of nature, and man
+ought to be too proud to do that.
+
+The old-fashioned open kettle molasses consisted mostly of glucose and
+other invert sugars together with such cane sugar as could not be
+crystallized out. But when the vacuum pan was introduced the molasses
+was impoverished of its sweetness and beet sugar does not yield any
+molasses. So we now have in its place the corn syrups consisting of
+about 85 per cent. of glucose and 15 per cent. of sugar flavored with
+maple or vanillin or whatever we like. It is encouraging to see the bill
+boards proclaiming the virtues of "Karo" syrup and "Mazola" oil when
+only a few years ago the products of our national cereal were without
+honor in their own country.
+
+Many other products besides foods are made from corn starch. Dextrin
+serves in place of the old "gum arabic" for the mucilage of our
+envelopes and stamps. Another form of dextrin sold as "Kordex" is used
+to hold together the sand of the cores of castings. After the casting
+has been made the scorched core can be shaken out. Glucose is used in
+place of sugar as a filler for cheap soaps and for leather.
+
+Altogether more than a hundred different commercial products are now
+made from corn, not counting cob pipes. Every year the factories of the
+United States work up over 50,000,000 bushels of corn into 800,000,000
+pounds of corn syrup, 600,000,000 pounds of starch, 230,000,000 pounds
+of corn sugar, 625,000,000 pounds of gluten feed, 90,000,000 pounds of
+oil and 90,000,000 pounds of oil cake.
+
+Two million bushels of cobs are wasted every year in the United States.
+Can't something be made out of them? This is the question that is
+agitating the chemists of the Carbohydrate Laboratory of the Department
+of Agriculture at Washington. They have found it possible to work up the
+corn cobs into glucose and xylose by heating with acid. But glucose can
+be more cheaply obtained from other starchy or woody materials and they
+cannot find a market for the xylose. This is a sort of a sugar but only
+about half as sweet as that from cane. Who can invent a use for it! More
+promising is the discovery by this laboratory that by digesting the cobs
+with hot water there can be extracted about 30 per cent. of a gum
+suitable for bill posting and labeling.
+
+Since the starches and sugars belong to the same class of compounds as
+the celluloses they also can be acted upon by nitric acid with the
+production of explosives like guncotton. Nitro-sugar has not come into
+common use, but nitro-starch is found to be one of safest of the high
+explosives. On account of the danger of decomposition and spontaneous
+explosion from the presence of foreign substances the materials in
+explosives must be of the purest possible. It was formerly thought that
+tapioca must be imported from Java for making nitro-starch. But during
+the war when shipping was short, the War Department found that it could
+be made better and cheaper from our home-grown corn starch. When the war
+closed the United States was making 1,720,000 pounds of nitro-starch a
+month for loading hand grenades. So, too, the Post Office Department
+discovered that it could use mucilage made of corn dextrin as well as
+that which used to be made from tapioca. This is progress in the right
+direction. It would be well to divert some of the energetic efforts now
+devoted to the increase of commerce to the discovery of ways of reducing
+the need for commerce by the development of home products. There is no
+merit in simply hauling things around the world.
+
+In the last chapter we saw how dextrose or glucose could be converted by
+fermentation into alcohol. Since corn starch, as we have seen, can be
+converted into dextrose, it can serve as a source of alcohol. This was,
+in fact, one of the earliest misuses to which corn was put, and before
+the war put a stop to it 34,000,000 bushels went into the making of
+whiskey in the United States every year, not counting the moonshiners'
+output. But even though we left off drinking whiskey the distillers
+could still thrive. Mars is more thirsty than Bacchus. The output of
+whiskey, denatured for industrial purposes, is more than three times
+what is was before the war, and the price has risen from 30 cents a
+gallon to 67 cents. This may make it profitable to utilize sugars,
+starches and cellulose that formerly were out of the question. According
+to the calculations of the Forest Products Laboratory of Madison it
+costs from 37 to 44 cents a gallon to make alcohol from corn, but it may
+be made from sawdust at a cost of from 14 to 20 cents. This is not "wood
+alcohol" (that is, methyl alcohol, CH_{4}O) such as is made by the
+destructive distillation of wood, but genuine "grain alcohol" (ethyl
+alcohol, C_{2}H_{6}O), such as is made by the fermentation of glucose or
+other sugar. The first step in the process is to digest the sawdust or
+chips with dilute sulfuric acid under heat and pressure. This converts
+the cellulose (wood fiber) in large part into glucose ("corn sugar")
+which may be extracted by hot water in a diffusion battery as in
+extracting the sugar from beet chips. This glucose solution may then be
+fermented by yeast and the resulting alcohol distilled off. The process
+is perfectly practicable but has yet to be proved profitable. But the
+sulfite liquors of the paper mills are being worked up successfully into
+industrial alcohol.
+
+The rapidly approaching exhaustion of our oil fields which the war has
+accelerated leads us to look around to see what we can get to take the
+place of gasoline. One of the most promising of the suggested
+substitutes is alcohol. The United States is exceptionally rich in
+mineral oil, but some countries, for instance England, Germany, France
+and Australia, have little or none. The Australian Advisory Council of
+Science, called to consider the problem, recommends alcohol for
+stationary engines and motor cars. Alcohol has the disadvantage of
+being less volatile than gasoline so it is hard to start up the engine
+from the cold. But the lower volatility and ignition point of alcohol
+are an advantage in that it can be put under a pressure of 150 pounds to
+the square inch. A pound of gasoline contains fifty per cent. more
+potential energy than a pound of alcohol, but since the alcohol vapor
+can be put under twice the compression of the gasoline and requires only
+one-third the amount of air, the thermal efficiency of an alcohol engine
+may be fifty per cent. higher than that of a gasoline engine. Alcohol
+also has several other conveniences that can count in its favor. In the
+case of incomplete combustion the cylinders are less likely to be
+clogged with carbon and the escaping gases do not have the offensive
+odor of the gasoline smoke. Alcohol does not ignite so easily as
+gasoline and the fire is more readily put out, for water thrown upon
+blazing alcohol dilutes it and puts out the flame while gasoline floats
+on water and the fire is spread by it. It is possible to increase the
+inflammability of alcohol by mixing with it some hydrocarbon such as
+gasoline, benzene or acetylene. In the Taylor-White process the vapor
+from low-grade alcohol containing 17 per cent. water is passed over
+calcium carbide. This takes out the water and adds acetylene gas, making
+a suitable mixture for an internal combustion engine.
+
+Alcohol can be made from anything of a starchy, sugary or woody nature,
+that is, from the main substance of all vegetation. If we start with
+wood (cellulose) we convert it first into sugar (glucose) and, of
+course, we could stop here and use it for food instead of carrying it
+on into alcohol. This provides one factor of our food, the carbohydrate,
+but by growing the yeast plants on glucose and feeding them with
+nitrates made from the air we can get the protein and fat. So it is
+quite possible to live on sawdust, although it would be too expensive a
+diet for anybody but a millionaire, and he would not enjoy it. Glucose
+has been made from formaldehyde and this in turn made from carbon,
+hydrogen and oxygen, so the synthetic production of food from the
+elements is not such an absurdity as it was thought when Berthelot
+suggested it half a century ago.
+
+The first step in the making of alcohol is to change the starch over
+into sugar. This transformation is effected in the natural course of
+sprouting by which the insoluble starch stored up in the seed is
+converted into the soluble glucose for the sap of the growing plant.
+This malting process is that mainly made use of in the production of
+alcohol from grain. But there are other ways of effecting the change. It
+may be done by heating with acid as we have seen, or according to a
+method now being developed the final conversion may be accomplished by
+mold instead of malt. In applying this method, known as the amylo
+process, to corn, the meal is mixed with twice its weight of water,
+acidified with hydrochloric acid and steamed. The mash is then cooled
+down somewhat, diluted with sterilized water and innoculated with the
+mucor filaments. As the mash molds the starch is gradually changed over
+to glucose and if this is the product desired the process may be stopped
+at this point. But if alcohol is wanted yeast is added to ferment the
+sugar. By keeping it alkaline and treating with the proper bacteria a
+high yield of glycerin can be obtained.
+
+In the fermentation process for making alcoholic liquors a little
+glycerin is produced as a by-product. Glycerin, otherwise called
+glycerol, is intermediate between sugar and alcohol. Its molecule
+contains three carbon atoms, while glucose has six and alcohol two. It
+is possible to increase the yield of glycerin if desired by varying the
+form of fermentation. This was desired most earnestly in Germany during
+the war, for the British blockade shut off the importation of the fats
+and oils from which the Germans extracted the glycerin for their
+nitroglycerin. Under pressure of this necessity they worked out a
+process of getting glycerin in quantity from sugar and, news of this
+being brought to this country by Dr. Alonzo Taylor, the United States
+Treasury Department set up a special laboratory to work out this
+problem. John R. Eoff and other chemists working in this laboratory
+succeeded in getting a yield of twenty per cent. of glycerin by
+fermenting black strap molasses or other syrup with California wine
+yeast. During the fermentation it is necessary to neutralize the acetic
+acid formed with sodium or calcium carbonate. It was estimated that
+glycerin could be made from waste sugars at about a quarter of its
+war-time cost, but it is doubtful whether the process would be
+profitable at normal prices.
+
+We can, if we like, dispense with either yeast or bacteria in the
+production of glycerin. Glucose syrup suspended in oil under steam
+pressure with finely divided nickel as a catalyst and treated with
+nascent hydrogen will take up the hydrogen and be converted into
+glycerin. But the yield is poor and the process expensive.
+
+Food serves substantially the same purpose in the body as fuel in the
+engine. It provides the energy for work. The carbohydrates, that is the
+sugars, starches and celluloses, can all be used as fuels and can
+all--even, as we have seen, the cellulose--be used as foods. The final
+products, water and carbon dioxide, are in both cases the same and
+necessarily therefore the amount of energy produced is the same in the
+body as in the engine. Corn is a good example of the equivalence of the
+two sources of energy. There are few better foods and no better fuels. I
+can remember the good old days in Kansas when we had corn to burn. It
+was both an economy and a luxury, for--at ten cents a bushel--it was
+cheaper than coal or wood and preferable to either at any price. The
+long yellow ears, each wrapped in its own kindling, could be handled
+without crocking the fingers. Each kernel as it crackled sent out a
+blazing jet of oil and the cobs left a fine bed of coals for the corn
+popper to be shaken over. Driftwood and the pyrotechnic fuel they make
+now by soaking sticks in strontium and copper salts cannot compare with
+the old-fashioned corn-fed fire in beauty and the power of evoking
+visions. Doubtless such luxury would be condemned as wicked nowadays,
+but those who have known the calorific value of corn would find it hard
+to abandon it altogether, and I fancy that the Western farmer's wife,
+when she has an extra batch of baking to do, will still steal a few ears
+from the crib.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+SOLIDIFIED SUNSHINE
+
+
+All life and all that life accomplishes depend upon the supply of solar
+energy stored in the form of food. The chief sources of this vital
+energy are the fats and the sugars. The former contain two and a quarter
+times the potential energy of the latter. Both, when completely
+purified, consist of nothing but carbon, hydrogen and oxygen; elements
+that are to be found freely everywhere in air and water. So when the
+sunny southland exports fats and oils, starches and sugar, it is then
+sending away nothing material but what comes back to it in the next
+wind. What it is sending to the regions of more slanting sunshine is
+merely some of the surplus of the radiant energy it has received so
+abundantly, compacted for convenience into a portable and edible form.
+
+In previous chapters I have dealt with some of the uses of cotton, its
+employment for cloth, for paper, for artificial fibers, for explosives,
+and for plastics. But I have ignored the thing that cotton is attached
+to and for which, in the economy of nature, the fibers are formed; that
+is, the seed. It is as though I had described the aeroplane and ignored
+the aviator whom it was designed to carry. But in this neglect I am but
+following the example of the human race, which for three thousand years
+used the fiber but made no use of the seed except to plant the next
+crop.
+
+Just as mankind is now divided into the two great classes, the
+wheat-eaters and the rice-eaters, so the ancient world was divided into
+the wool-wearers and the cotton-wearers. The people of India wore
+cotton; the Europeans wore wool. When the Greeks under Alexander fought
+their way to the Far East they were surprised to find wool growing on
+trees. Later travelers returning from Cathay told of the same marvel and
+travelers who stayed at home and wrote about what they had not seen,
+like Sir John Maundeville, misunderstood these reports and elaborated a
+legend of a tree that bore live lambs as fruit. Here, for instance, is
+how a French poetical botanist, Delacroix, described it in 1791, as
+translated from his Latin verse:
+
+  Upon a stalk is fixed a living brute,
+  A rooted plant bears quadruped for fruit;
+  It has a fleece, nor does it want for eyes,
+  And from its brows two wooly horns arise.
+  The rude and simple country people say
+  It is an animal that sleeps by day
+  And wakes at night, though rooted to the ground,
+  To feed on grass within its reach around.
+
+But modern commerce broke down the barrier between East and West. A new
+cotton country, the best in the world, was discovered in America. Cotton
+invaded England and after a hard fight, with fists as well as finance,
+wool was beaten in its chief stronghold. Cotton became King and the
+wool-sack in the House of Lords lost its symbolic significance.
+
+Still two-thirds of the cotton crop, the seed, was wasted and it is only
+within the last fifty years that methods of using it have been
+developed to any extent.
+
+The cotton crop of the United States for 1917 amounted to about
+11,000,000 bales of 500 pounds each. When the Great War broke out and no
+cotton could be exported to Germany and little to England the South was
+in despair, for cotton went down to five or six cents a pound. The
+national Government, regardless of states' rights, was called upon for
+aid and everybody was besought to "buy a bale." Those who responded to
+this patriotic appeal were well rewarded, for cotton rose as the war
+went on and sold at twenty-nine cents a pound.
+
+[ILLUSTRATION: PRODUCTS AND USES OF COTTONSEED]
+
+But the chemist has added some $150,000,000 a year to the value of the
+crop by discovering ways of utilizing the cottonseed that used to be
+thrown away or burned as fuel. The genealogical table of the progeny of
+the cottonseed herewith printed will give some idea of their variety. If
+you will examine a cottonseed you will see first that there is a fine
+fuzz of cotton fiber sticking to it. These linters can be removed by
+machinery and used for any purpose where length of fiber is not
+essential. For instance, they may be nitrated as described in previous
+articles and used for making smokeless powder or celluloid.
+
+On cutting open the seed you will observe that it consists of an oily,
+mealy kernel encased in a thin brown hull. The hulls, amounting to 700
+or 900 pounds in a ton of seed, were formerly burned. Now, however, they
+bring from $4 to $10 a ton because they can be ground up into
+cattle-feed or paper stock or used as fertilizer.
+
+The kernel of the cottonseed on being pressed yields a yellow oil and
+leaves a mealy cake. This last, mixed with the hulls, makes a good
+fodder for fattening cattle. Also, adding twenty-five per cent. of the
+refined cottonseed meal to our war bread made it more nutritious and no
+less palatable. Cottonseed meal contains about forty per cent. of
+protein and is therefore a highly concentrated and very valuable feeding
+stuff. Before the war we were exporting nearly half a million tons of
+cottonseed meal to Europe, chiefly to Germany and Denmark, where it is
+used for dairy cows. The British yeoman, his country's pride, has not
+yet been won over to the use of any such newfangled fodder and
+consequently the British manufacturer could not compete with his
+continental rivals in the seed-crushing business, for he could not
+dispose of his meal-cake by-product as did they.
+
+[Illustration: Photo by Press Illustrating Service
+
+Cottonseed Oil As It Is Squeezed From The Seed By The Presses]
+
+[Illustration: Photo by Press Illustrating Service
+
+Cottonseed Oil As It Comes From The Compressors Flowing Out Of The
+Faucets
+
+When cold it is firm and white like lard]
+
+Let us now turn to the most valuable of the cottonseed products, the
+oil. The seed contains about twenty per cent. of oil, most of which can
+be squeezed out of the hot seeds by hydraulic pressure. It comes out as
+a red liquid of a disagreeable odor. This is decolorized, deodorized and
+otherwise purified in various ways: by treatment with alkalies or acids,
+by blowing air and steam through it, by shaking up with fuller's earth,
+by settling and filtering. The refined product is a yellow oil, suitable
+for table use. Formerly, on account of the popular prejudice against any
+novel food products, it used to masquerade as olive oil. Now, however,
+it boldly competes with its ancient rival in the lands of the olive tree
+and America ships some 700,000 barrels of cottonseed oil a year to the
+Mediterranean. The Turkish Government tried to check the spread of
+cottonseed oil by calling it an adulterant and prohibiting its mixture
+with olive oil. The result was that the sale of Turkish olive oil fell
+off because people found its flavor too strong when undiluted. Italy
+imports cottonseed oil and exports her olive oil. Denmark imports
+cottonseed meal and margarine and exports her butter.
+
+Northern nations are accustomed to hard fats and do not take to oils for
+cooking or table use as do the southerners. Butter and lard are
+preferred to olive oil and ghee. But this does not rule out cottonseed.
+It can be combined with the hard fats of animal or vegetable origin in
+margarine or it may itself be hardened by hydrogen.
+
+To understand this interesting reaction which is profoundly affecting
+international relations it will be necessary to dip into the chemistry
+of the subject. Here are the symbols of the chief ingredients of the
+fats and oils. Please look at them.
+
+  Linoleic acid       C_{18}H_{32}O_{2}
+  Oleic acid          C_{18}H_{34}O_{2}
+  Stearic acid        C_{18}H_{36}O_{2}
+
+Don't skip these because you have not studied chemistry. That's why I am
+giving them to you. If you had studied chemistry you would know them
+without my telling. Just examine them and you will discover the secret.
+You will see that all three are composed of the same elements, carbon,
+hydrogen, and oxygen. Notice next the number of atoms in each element as
+indicated by the little low figures on the right of each letter. You
+observe that all three contain the same number of atoms of carbon and
+oxygen but differ in the amount of hydrogen. This trifling difference in
+composition makes a great difference in behavior. The less the hydrogen
+the lower the melting point. Or to say the same thing in other words,
+fatty substances low in hydrogen are apt to be liquids and those with a
+full complement of hydrogen atoms are apt to be solids at the ordinary
+temperature of the air. It is common to call the former "oils" and the
+latter "fats," but that implies too great a dissimilarity, for the
+distinction depends on whether we are living in the tropics or the
+arctic. It is better, therefore, to lump them all together and call
+them "soft fats" and "hard fats," respectively.
+
+Fats of the third order, the stearic group, are called "saturated"
+because they have taken up all the hydrogen they can hold. Fats of the
+other two groups are called "unsaturated." The first, which have the
+least hydrogen, are the most eager for more. If hydrogen is not handy
+they will take up other things, for instance oxygen. Linseed oil, which
+consists largely, as the name implies, of linoleic acid, will absorb
+oxygen on exposure to the air and become hard. That is why it is used in
+painting. Such oils are called "drying" oils, although the hardening
+process is not really drying, since they contain no water, but is
+oxidation. The "semi-drying oils," those that will harden somewhat on
+exposure to the air, include the oils of cottonseed, corn, sesame, soy
+bean and castor bean. Olive oil and peanut oil are "non-drying" and
+contain oleic compounds (olein). The hard fats, such as stearin,
+palmitin and margarin, are mostly of animal origin, tallow and lard,
+though coconut and palm oil contain a large proportion of such saturated
+compounds.
+
+Though the chemist talks of the fatty "acids," nobody else would call
+them so because they are not sour. But they do behave like the acids in
+forming salts with bases. The alkali salts of the fatty acids are known
+to us as soaps. In the natural fats they exist not as free acids but as
+salts of an organic base, glycerin, as I explained in a previous
+chapter. The natural fats and oils consist of complex mixtures of the
+glycerin compounds of these acids (known as olein, stearin, etc.), as
+well as various others of a similar sort. If you will set a bottle of
+salad oil in the ice-box you will see it separate into two parts. The
+white, crystalline solid that separates out is largely stearin. The part
+that remains liquid is largely olein. You might separate them by
+filtering it cold and if then you tried to sell the two products you
+would find that the hard fat would bring a higher price than the oil,
+either for food or soap. If you tried to keep them you would find that
+the hard fat kept neutral and "sweet" longer than the other. You may
+remember that the perfumes (as well as their odorous opposites) were
+mostly unsaturated compounds. So we find that it is the free and
+unsaturated fatty acids that cause butter and oil to become rank and
+rancid.
+
+Obviously, then, we could make money if we could turn soft, unsaturated
+fats like olein into hard, saturated fats like stearin. Referring to the
+symbols we see that all that is needed to effect the change is to get
+the former to unite with hydrogen. This requires a little coaxing. The
+coaxer is called a catalyst. A catalyst, as I have previously explained,
+is a substance that by its mere presence causes the union of two other
+substances that might otherwise remain separate. For that reason the
+catalyst is referred to as "a chemical parson." Finely divided metals
+have a strong catalytic action. Platinum sponge is excellent but too
+expensive. So in this case nickel is used. A nickel salt mixed with
+charcoal or pumice is reduced to the metallic state by heating in a
+current of hydrogen. Then it is dropped into the tank of oil and
+hydrogen gas is blown through. The hydrogen may be obtained by splitting
+water into its two components, hydrogen and oxygen, by means of the
+electrical current, or by passing steam over spongy iron which takes out
+the oxygen. The stream of hydrogen blown through the hot oil converts
+the linoleic acid to oleic and then the oleic into stearic. If you
+figured up the weights from the symbols given above you would find that
+it takes about one pound of hydrogen to convert a hundred pounds of
+olein to stearin and the cost is only about one cent a pound. The nickel
+is unchanged and is easily separated. A trace of nickel may remain in
+the product, but as it is very much less than the amount dissolved when
+food is cooked in nickel-plated vessels it cannot be regarded as
+harmful.
+
+Even more unsaturated fats may be hydrogenated. Fish oil has hitherto
+been almost unusable because of its powerful and persistent odor. This
+is chiefly due to a fatty acid which properly bears the uneuphonious
+name of clupanodonic acid and has the composition of C_{18}H_{28}O_{2}.
+By comparing this with the symbol of the odorless stearic acid,
+C_{18}H_{36}O_{2}, you will see that all the rank fish oil lacks to make
+it respectable is eight hydrogen atoms. A Japanese chemist, Tsujimoto,
+has discovered how to add them and now the reformed fish oil under the
+names of "talgol" and "candelite" serves for lubricant and even enters
+higher circles as a soap or food.
+
+This process of hardening fats by hydrogenation resulted from the
+experiments of a French chemist, Professor Sabatier of Toulouse, in the
+last years of the last century, but, as in many other cases, the Germans
+were the first to take it up and profit by it. Before the war the copra
+or coconut oil from the British Asiatic colonies of India, Ceylon and
+Malaya went to Germany at the rate of $15,000,000 a year. The palm
+kernels grown in British West Africa were shipped, not to Liverpool, but
+to Hamburg, $19,000,000 worth annually. Here the oil was pressed out and
+used for margarin and the residual cake used for feeding cows produced
+butter or for feeding hogs produced lard. Half of the copra raised in
+the British possessions was sent to Germany and half of the oil from it
+was resold to the British margarin candle and soap makers at a handsome
+profit. The British chemists were not blind to this, but they could do
+nothing, first because the English politician was wedded to free trade,
+second, because the English farmer would not use oil cake for his stock.
+France was in a similar situation. Marseilles produced 15,500,000
+gallons of oil from peanuts grown largely in the French African
+colonies--but shipped the oil-cake on to Hamburg. Meanwhile the Germans,
+in pursuit of their policy of attaining economic independence, were
+striving to develop their own tropical territory. The subjects of King
+George who because they had the misfortune to live in India were
+excluded from the British South African dominions or mistreated when
+they did come, were invited to come to German East Africa and set to
+raising peanuts in rivalry to French Senegal and British Coromandel.
+Before the war Germany got half of the Egyptian cottonseed and half of
+the Philippine copra. That is one of the reasons why German warships
+tried to check Dewey at Manila in 1898 and German troops tried to
+conquer Egypt in 1915.
+
+But the tide of war set the other way and the German plantations of
+palmnuts and peanuts in Africa have come into British possession and
+now the British Government is starting an educational campaign to teach
+their farmers to feed oil cake like the Germans and their people to eat
+peanuts like the Americans.
+
+The Germans shut off from the tropical fats supply were hard up for food
+and for soap, for lubricants and for munitions. Every person was given a
+fat card that reduced his weekly allowance to the minimum. Millers were
+required to remove the germs from their cereals and deliver them to the
+war department. Children were set to gathering horse-chestnuts,
+elderberries, linden-balls, grape seeds, cherry stones and sunflower
+heads, for these contain from six to twenty per cent. of oil. Even the
+blue-bottle fly--hitherto an idle creature for whom Beelzebub found
+mischief--was conscripted into the national service and set to laying
+eggs by the billion on fish refuse. Within a few days there is a crop of
+larvae which, to quote the "Chemische Zentralblatt," yields forty-five
+grams per kilogram of a yellow oil. This product, we should hope, is
+used for axle-grease and nitroglycerin, although properly purified it
+would be as nutritious as any other--to one who has no imagination.
+Driven to such straits Germany would have given a good deal for one of
+those tropical islands that we are so careless about.
+
+It might have been supposed that since the United States possessed the
+best land in the world for the production of cottonseed, coconuts,
+peanuts, and corn that it would have led all other countries in the
+utilization of vegetable oils for food. That this country has not so
+used its advantage is due to the fact that the new products have not
+merely had to overcome popular conservatism, ignorance and
+prejudice--hard things to fight in any case--but have been deliberately
+checked and hampered by the state and national governments in defense of
+vested interests. The farmer vote is a power that no politician likes to
+defy and the dairy business in every state was thoroughly organized. In
+New York the oleomargarin industry that in 1879 was turning out products
+valued at more than $5,000,000 a year was completely crushed out by
+state legislation.[2] The output of the United States, which in 1902 had
+risen to 126,000,000 pounds, was cut down to 43,000,000 pounds in 1909
+by federal legislation. According to the disingenuous custom of American
+lawmakers the Act of 1902 was passed through Congress as a "revenue
+measure," although it meant a loss to the Government of more than three
+million dollars a year over what might be produced by a straight two
+cents a pound tax. A wholesale dealer in oleomargarin was made to pay a
+higher license than a wholesale liquor dealer. The federal law put a tax
+of ten cents a pound on yellow oleomargarin and a quarter of a cent a
+pound on the uncolored. But people--doubtless from pure
+prejudice--prefer a yellow spread for their bread, so the economical
+housewife has to work over her oleomargarin with the annatto which is
+given to her when she buys a package or, if the law prohibits this,
+which she is permitted to steal from an open box on the grocer's
+counter. A plausible pretext for such legislation is afforded by the
+fact that the butter substitutes are so much like butter that they
+cannot be easily distinguished from it unless the use of annatto is
+permitted to butter and prohibited to its competitors. Fradulent sales
+of substitutes of any kind ought to be prevented, but the recent pure
+food legislation in America has shown that it is possible to secure
+truthful labeling without resorting to such drastic measures. In Europe
+the laws against substitution were very strict, but not devised to
+restrict the industry. Consequently the margarin output of Germany
+doubled in the five years preceding the war and the output of England
+tripled. In Denmark the consumption of margarin rose from 8.8 pounds per
+capita in 1890 to 32.6 pounds in 1912. Yet the butter business,
+Denmark's pride, was not injured, and Germany and England imported more
+butter than ever before. Now that the price of butter in America has
+gone over the seventy-five cent mark Congress may conclude that it no
+longer needs to be protected against competition.
+
+The "compound lards" or "lard compounds," consisting usually of
+cottonseed oil and oleo-stearin, although the latter may now be replaced
+by hardened oil, met with the same popular prejudice and attempted
+legislative interference, but succeeded more easily in coming into
+common use under such names as "Cottosuet," "Kream Krisp," "Kuxit,"
+"Korno," "Cottolene" and "Crisco."
+
+Oleomargarin, now generally abbreviated to margarin, originated, like
+many other inventions, in military necessity. The French Government in
+1869 offered a prize for a butter substitute for the army that should be
+cheaper and better than butter in that it did not spoil so easily. The
+prize was won by a French chemist, M�ge-Mouries, who found that by
+chilling beef fat the solid stearin could be separated from an oil
+(oleo) which was the substantially same as that in milk and hence in
+butter. Neutral lard acts the same.
+
+This discovery of how to separate the hard and soft fats was followed by
+improved methods for purifying them and later by the process for
+converting the soft into the hard fats by hydrogenation. The net result
+was to put into the hands of the chemist the ability to draw his
+materials at will from any land and from the vegetable and animal
+kingdoms and to combine them as he will to make new fat foods for every
+use; hard for summer, soft for winter; solid for the northerners and
+liquid for the southerners; white, yellow or any other color, and
+flavored to suit the taste. The Hindu can eat no fat from the sacred
+cow; the Mohammedan and the Jew can eat no fat from the abhorred pig;
+the vegetarian will touch neither; other people will take both. No
+matter, all can be accommodated.
+
+All the fats and oils, though they consist of scores of different
+compounds, have practically the same food value when freed from the
+extraneous matter that gives them their characteristic flavors. They are
+all practically tasteless and colorless. The various vegetable and
+animal oils and fats have about the same digestibility, 98 per cent.,[3]
+and are all ordinarily completely utilized in the body, supplying it
+with two and a quarter times as much energy as any other food.
+
+It does not follow, however, that there is no difference in the
+products. The margarin men accuse butter of harboring tuberculosis germs
+from which their product, because it has been heated or is made from
+vegetable fats, is free. The butter men retort that margarin is lacking
+in vitamines, those mysterious substances which in minute amounts are
+necessary for life and especially for growth. Both the claim and the
+objection lose a large part of their force where the margarin, as is
+customarily the case, is mixed with butter or churned up with milk to
+give it the familiar flavor. But the difficulty can be easily overcome.
+The milk used for either butter or margarin should be free or freed from
+disease germs. If margarin is altogether substituted for butter, the
+necessary vitamines may be sufficiently provided by milk, eggs and
+greens.
+
+Owing to these new processes all the fatty substances of all lands have
+been brought into competition with each other. In such a contest the
+vegetable is likely to beat the animal and the southern to win over the
+northern zones. In Europe before the war the proportion of the various
+ingredients used to make butter substitutes was as follows:
+
+  AVERAGE COMPOSITION OF EUROPEAN MARGARIN
+
+
+                            Per Cent.
+  Animal hard fats              25
+  Vegetable hard fats           35
+    Copra                       29
+    Palm-kernel                  6
+  Vegetable soft fats           26
+    Cottonseed                  13
+    Peanut                       6
+    Sesame                       6
+    Soya-bean                    1
+  Water, milk, salt             14
+                               ___
+                               100
+
+This is not the composition of any particular brand but the average of
+them all. The use of a certain amount of the oil of the sesame seed is
+required by the laws of Germany and Denmark because it can be easily
+detected by a chemical color test and so serves to prevent the margarin
+containing it from being sold as butter. "Open sesame!" is the password
+to these markets. Remembering that margarin originally was made up
+entirely of animal fats, soft and hard, we can see from the above
+figures how rapidly they are being displaced by the vegetable fats. The
+cottonseed and peanut oils have replaced the original oleo oil and the
+tropical oils from the coconut (copra) and African palm are crowding out
+the animal hard fats. Since now we can harden at will any of the
+vegetable oils it is possible to get along altogether without animal
+fats. Such vegetable margarins were originally prepared for sale in
+India, but proved unexpectedly popular in Europe, and are now being
+introduced into America. They are sold under various trade names
+suggesting their origin, such as "palmira," "palmona," "milkonut,"
+"cocose," "coconut oleomargarin" and "nucoa nut margarin." The last
+named is stated to be made of coconut oil (for the hard fat) and peanut
+oil (for the soft fat), churned up with a culture of pasteurized milk
+(to impart the butter flavor). The law requires such a product to be
+branded "oleomargarine" although it is not. Such cases of compulsory
+mislabeling are not rare. You remember the "Pigs is Pigs" story.
+
+Peanut butter has won its way into the American menu without any
+camouflage whatever, and as a salad oil it is almost equally frank about
+its lowly origin. This nut, which grows on a vine instead of a tree,
+and is dug from the ground like potatoes instead of being picked with a
+pole, goes by various names according to locality, peanuts, ground-nuts,
+monkey-nuts, arachides and goobers. As it takes the place of cotton oil
+in some of its products so it takes its place in the fields and oilmills
+of Texas left vacant by the bollweevil. The once despised peanut added
+some $56,000,000 to the wealth of the South in 1916. The peanut is rich
+in the richest of foods, some 50 per cent. of oil and 30 per cent. of
+protein. The latter can be worked up into meat substitutes that will
+make the vegetarian cease to envy his omnivorous neighbor. Thanks
+largely to the chemist who has opened these new fields of usefulness,
+the peanut-raiser got $1.25 a bushel in 1917 instead of the 30 cents
+that he got four years before.
+
+It would be impossible to enumerate all the available sources of
+vegetable oils, for all seeds and nuts contain more or less fatty matter
+and as we become more economical we shall utilize of what we now throw
+away. The germ of the corn kernel, once discarded in the manufacture of
+starch, now yields a popular table oil. From tomato seeds, one of the
+waste products of the canning factory, can be extracted 22 per cent. of
+an edible oil. Oats contain 7 per cent. of oil. From rape seed the
+Japanese get 20,000 tons of oil a year. To the sources previously
+mentioned may be added pumpkin seeds, poppy seeds, raspberry seeds,
+tobacco seeds, cockleburs, hazelnuts, walnuts, beechnuts and acorns.
+
+The oil-bearing seeds of the tropics are innumerable and will become
+increasingly essential to the inhabitants of northern lands. It was the
+realization of this that brought on the struggle of the great powers
+for the possession of tropical territory which, for years before, they
+did not think worth while raising a flag over. No country in the future
+can consider itself safe unless it has secure access to such sources. We
+had a sharp lesson in this during the war. Palm oil, it seems, is
+necessary for the manufacture of tinplate, an industry that was built up
+in the United States by the McKinley tariff. The British possessions in
+West Africa were the chief source of palm oil and the Germans had the
+handling of it. During the war the British Government assumed control of
+the palm oil products of the British and German colonies and prohibited
+their export to other countries than England. Americans protested and
+beseeched, but in vain. The British held, quite correctly, that they
+needed all the oil they could get for food and lubrication and
+nitroglycerin. But the British also needed canned meat from America for
+their soldiers and when it was at length brought to their attention that
+the packers could not ship meat unless they had cans and that cans could
+not be made without tin and that tin could not be made without palm oil
+the British Government consented to let us buy a little of their palm
+oil. The lesson is that of Voltaire's story, "Candide," "Let us
+cultivate our own garden"--and plant a few palm trees in it--also rubber
+trees, but that is another story.
+
+The international struggle for oil led to the partition of the Pacific
+as the struggle for rubber led to the partition of Africa. Theodor
+Weber, as Stevenson says, "harried the Samoans" to get copra much as
+King Leopold of Belgium harried the Congoese to get caoutchouc. It was
+Weber who first fully realized that the South Sea islands, formerly
+given over to cannibals, pirates and missionaries, might be made
+immensely valuable through the cultivation of the coconut palms. When
+the ripe coconut is split open and exposed to the sun the meat dries up
+and shrivels and in this form, called "copra," it can be cut out and
+shipped to the factory where the oil is extracted and refined. Weber
+while German Consul in Samoa was also manager of what was locally known
+as "the long-handled concern" (_Deutsche Handels und Plantagen
+Gesellschaft der S�dsee Inseln zu Hamburg_), a pioneer commercial and
+semi-official corporation that played a part in the Pacific somewhat
+like the British Hudson Bay Company in Canada or East India Company in
+Hindustan. Through the agency of this corporation on the start Germany
+acquired a virtual monopoly of the transportation and refining of
+coconut oil and would have become the dominant power in the Pacific if
+she had not been checked by force of arms. In Apia Bay in 1889 and again
+in Manila Bay in 1898 an American fleet faced a German fleet ready for
+action while a British warship lay between. So we rescued the
+Philippines and Samoa from German rule and in 1914 German power was
+eliminated from the Pacific. During the ten years before the war, the
+production of copra in the German islands more than doubled and this was
+only the beginning of the business. Now these islands have been divided
+up among Australia, New Zealand and Japan, and these countries are
+planning to take care of the copra.
+
+But although we get no extension of territory from the war we still
+have the Philippines and some of the Samoan Islands, and these are
+capable of great development. From her share of the Samoan Islands
+Germany got a million dollars' worth of copra and we might get more from
+ours. The Philippines now lead the world in the production of copra, but
+Java is a close second and Ceylon not far behind. If we do not look out
+we will be beaten both by the Dutch and the British, for they are
+undertaking the cultivation of the coconut on a larger scale and in a
+more systematic way. According to an official bulletin of the Philippine
+Government a coconut plantation should bring in "dividends ranging from
+10 to 75 per cent. from the tenth to the hundredth year." And this being
+printed in 1913 figured the price of copra at 3-1/2 cents, whereas it
+brought 4-1/2 cents in 1918, so the prospect is still more encouraging.
+The copra is half fat and can be cheaply shipped to America, where it
+can be crushed in the southern oilmills when they are not busy on
+cottonseed or peanuts. But even this cost of transportation can be
+reduced by extracting the oil in the islands and shipping it in bulk
+like petroleum in tank steamers.
+
+In the year ending June, 1918, the United States imported from the
+Philippines 155,000,000 pounds of coconut oil worth $18,000,000 and
+220,000,000 pounds of copra worth $10,000,000. But this was about half
+our total importations; the rest of it we had to get from foreign
+countries. Panama palms may give us a little relief from this dependence
+on foreign sources. In 1917 we imported 19,000,000 whole coconuts from
+Panama valued at $700,000.
+
+[Illustration: SPLITTING COCONUTS ON THE ISLAND OF TAHITI
+
+After drying in the sun the meat is picked and the oil extracted for
+making coconut butter]
+
+[Illustration: From "America's Munitions"
+
+THE ELECTRIC CURRENT PASSING THROUGH SALT WATER IN THESE CELLS
+DECOMPOSES THE SALT INTO CAUSTIC SODA AND CHLORINE GAS
+
+There were eight rooms like this in the Edgewood plant, capable of
+producing 200,000 pounds of chlorine a day]
+
+A new form of fat that has rapidly come into our market is the oil of
+the soya or soy bean. In 1918 we imported over 300,000,000 pounds of
+soy-bean oil, mostly from Manchuria. The oil is used in manufacture of
+substitutes for butter, lard, cheese, milk and cream, as well as for
+soap and paint. The soy-bean can be raised in the United States wherever
+corn can be grown and provides provender for man and beast. The soy meal
+left after the extraction of the oil makes a good cattle food and the
+fermented juice affords the shoya sauce made familiar to us through the
+popularity of the chop-suey restaurants.
+
+As meat and dairy products become scarcer and dearer we shall become
+increasingly dependent upon the vegetable fats. We should therefore
+devise means of saving what we now throw away, raise as much as we can
+under our own flag, keep open avenues for our foreign supply and
+encourage our cooks to make use of the new products invented by our
+chemists.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+FIGHTING WITH FUMES
+
+
+The Germans opened the war using projectiles seventeen inches in
+diameter. They closed it using projectiles one one-hundred millionth of
+an inch in diameter. And the latter were more effective than the former.
+As the dimensions were reduced from molar to molecular the battle became
+more intense. For when the Big Bertha had shot its bolt, that was the
+end of it. Whomever it hit was hurt, but after that the steel fragments
+of the shell lay on the ground harmless and inert. The men in the
+dugouts could hear the shells whistle overhead without alarm. But the
+poison gas could penetrate where the rifle ball could not. The malignant
+molecules seemed to search out their victims. They crept through the
+crevices of the subterranean shelters. They hunted for the pinholes in
+the face masks. They lay in wait for days in the trenches for the
+soldiers' return as a cat watches at the hole of a mouse. The cannon
+ball could be seen and heard. The poison gas was invisible and
+inaudible, and sometimes even the chemical sense which nature has given
+man for his protection, the sense of smell, failed to give warning of
+the approach of the foe.
+
+The smaller the matter that man can deal with the more he can get out of
+it. So long as man was dependent for power upon wind and water his
+working capacity was very limited. But as soon as he passed over the
+border line from physics into chemistry and learned how to use the
+molecule, his efficiency in work and warfare was multiplied manifold.
+The molecular bombardment of the piston by steam or the gases of
+combustion runs his engines and propels his cars. The first man who
+wanted to kill another from a safe distance threw the stone by his arm's
+strength. David added to his arm the centrifugal force of a sling when
+he slew Goliath. The Romans improved on this by concentrating in a
+catapult the strength of a score of slaves and casting stone cannon
+balls to the top of the city wall. But finally man got closer to
+nature's secret and discovered that by loosing a swarm of gaseous
+molecules he could throw his projectile seventy-five miles and then by
+the same force burst it into flying fragments. There is no smaller
+projectile than the atom unless our belligerent chemists can find a way
+of using the electron stream of the cathode ray. But this so far has
+figured only in the pages of our scientific romancers and has not yet
+appeared on the battlefield. If, however, man could tap the reservoir of
+sub-atomic energy he need do no more work and would make no more war,
+for unlimited powers of construction and destruction would be at his
+command. The forces of the infinitesimal are infinite.
+
+The reason why a gas is so active is because it is so egoistic.
+Psychologically interpreted, a gas consists of particles having the
+utmost aversion to one another. Each tries to get as far away from every
+other as it can. There is no cohesive force; no attractive impulse;
+nothing to draw them together except the all too feeble power of
+gravitation. The hotter they get the more they try to disperse and so
+the gas expands. The gas represents the extreme of individualism as
+steel represents the extreme of collectivism. The combination of the two
+works wonders. A hot gas in a steel cylinder is the most powerful agency
+known to man, and by means of it he accomplishes his greatest
+achievements in peace or war time.
+
+The projectile is thrown from the gun by the expansive force of the
+gases released from the powder and when it reaches its destination it is
+blown to pieces by the same force. This is the end of it if it is a
+shell of the old-fashioned sort, for the gases of combustion mingle
+harmlessly with the air of which they are normal constituents. But if it
+is a poison gas shell each molecule as it is released goes off straight
+into the air with a speed twice that of the cannon ball and carries
+death with it. A man may be hit by a heavy piece of lead or iron and
+still survive, but an unweighable amount of lethal gas may be fatal to
+him.
+
+Most of the novelties of the war were merely extensions of what was
+already known. To increase the caliber of a cannon from 38 to 42
+centimeters or its range from 30 to 75 miles does indeed make necessary
+a decided change in tactics, but it is not comparable to the revolution
+effected by the introduction of new weapons of unprecedented power such
+as airplanes, submarines, tanks, high explosives or poison gas. If any
+army had been as well equipped with these in the beginning as all armies
+were at the end it might easily have won the war. That is to say, if the
+general staff of any of the powers had had the foresight and confidence
+to develop and practise these modes of warfare on a large scale in
+advance it would have been irresistible against an enemy unprepared to
+meet them. But no military genius appeared on either side with
+sufficient courage and imagination to work out such schemes in secret
+before trying them out on a small scale in the open. Consequently the
+enemy had fair warning and ample time to learn how to meet them and
+methods of defense developed concurrently with methods of attack. For
+instance, consider the motor fortresses to which Ludendorff ascribes his
+defeat. The British first sent out a few clumsy tanks against the German
+lines. Then they set about making a lot of stronger and livelier ones,
+but by the time these were ready the Germans had field guns to smash
+them and chain fences with concrete posts to stop them. On the other
+hand, if the Germans had followed up their advantage when they first set
+the cloud of chlorine floating over the battlefield of Ypres they might
+have won the war in the spring of 1915 instead of losing it in the fall
+of 1918. For the British were unprepared and unprotected against the
+silent death that swept down upon them on the 22nd of April, 1915. What
+happened then is best told by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in his "History of
+the Great War."
+
+     From the base of the German trenches over a considerable length
+     there appeared jets of whitish vapor, which gathered and
+     swirled until they settled into a definite low cloud-bank,
+     greenish-brown below and yellow above, where it reflected the
+     rays of the sinking sun. This ominous bank of vapor, impelled
+     by a northern breeze, drifted swiftly across the space which
+     separated the two lines. The French troops, staring over the
+     top of their parapet at this curious screen which ensured them
+     a temporary relief from fire, were observed suddenly to throw
+     up their hands, to clutch at their throats, and to fall to the
+     ground in the agonies of asphyxiation. Many lay where they had
+     fallen, while their comrades, absolutely helpless against this
+     diabolical agency, rushed madly out of the mephitic mist and
+     made for the rear, over-running the lines of trenches behind
+     them. Many of them never halted until they had reached Ypres,
+     while others rushed westwards and put the canal between
+     themselves and the enemy. The Germans, meanwhile, advanced, and
+     took possession of the successive lines of trenches, tenanted
+     only by the dead garrisons, whose blackened faces, contorted
+     figures, and lips fringed with the blood and foam from their
+     bursting lungs, showed the agonies in which they had died. Some
+     thousands of stupefied prisoners, eight batteries of French
+     field-guns, and four British 4.7's, which had been placed in a
+     wood behind the French position, were the trophies won by this
+     disgraceful victory.
+
+     Under the shattering blow which they had received, a blow
+     particularly demoralizing to African troops, with their fears
+     of magic and the unknown, it was impossible to rally them
+     effectually until the next day. It is to be remembered in
+     explanation of this disorganization that it was the first
+     experience of these poison tactics, and that the troops engaged
+     received the gas in a very much more severe form than our own
+     men on the right of Langemarck. For a time there was a gap five
+     miles broad in the front of the position of the Allies, and
+     there were many hours during which there was no substantial
+     force between the Germans and Ypres. They wasted their time,
+     however, in consolidating their ground, and the chance of a
+     great coup passed forever. They had sold their souls as
+     soldiers, but the Devil's price was a poor one. Had they had a
+     corps of cavalry ready, and pushed them through the gap, it
+     would have been the most dangerous moment of the war.
+
+A deserter had come over from the German side a week before and told
+them that cylinders of poison gas had been laid in the front trenches,
+but no one believed him or paid any attention to his tale. War was then,
+in the Englishman's opinion, a gentleman's game, the royal sport, and
+poison was prohibited by the Hague rules. But the Germans were not
+playing the game according to the rules, so the British soldiers were
+strangled in their own trenches and fell easy victims to the advancing
+foe. Within half an hour after the gas was turned on 80 per cent. of the
+opposing troops were knocked out. The Canadians, with wet handkerchiefs
+over their faces, closed in to stop the gap, but if the Germans had been
+prepared for such success they could have cleared the way to the coast.
+But after such trials the Germans stopped the use of free chlorine and
+began the preparation of more poisonous gases. In some way that may not
+be revealed till the secret history of the war is published, the British
+Intelligence Department obtained a copy of the lecture notes of the
+instructions to the German staff giving details of the new system of gas
+warfare to be started in December. Among the compounds named was
+phosgene, a gas so lethal that one part in ten thousand of air may be
+fatal. The antidote for it is hexamethylene tetramine. This is not
+something the soldier--or anybody else--is accustomed to carry around
+with him, but the British having had a chance to cram up in advance on
+the stolen lecture notes were ready with gas helmets soaked in the
+reagent with the long name.
+
+The Germans rejoiced when gas bombs took the place of bayonets because
+this was a field in which intelligence counted for more than brute
+force and in which therefore they expected to be supreme. As usual they
+were right in their major premise but wrong in their conclusion, owing
+to the egoism of their implicit minor premise. It does indeed give the
+advantage to skill and science, but the Germans were beaten at their own
+game, for by the end of the war the United States was able to turn out
+toxic gases at a rate of 200 tons a day, while the output of Germany or
+England was only about 30 tons. A gas plant was started at Edgewood,
+Maryland, in November, 1917. By March it was filling shell and before
+the war put a stop to its activities in the fall it was producing
+1,300,000 pounds of chlorine, 1,000,000 pounds of chlorpicrin, 1,300,000
+pounds of phosgene and 700,000 pounds of mustard gas a month.
+
+Chlorine, the first gas used, is unpleasantly familiar to every one who
+has entered a chemical laboratory or who has smelled the breath of
+bleaching powder. It is a greenish-yellow gas made from common salt. The
+Germans employed it at Ypres by laying cylinders of the liquefied gas in
+the trenches, about a yard apart, and running a lead discharge pipe over
+the parapet. When the stop cocks are turned the gas streams out and
+since it is two and a half times as heavy as air it rolls over the
+ground like a noisome mist. It works best when the ground slopes gently
+down toward the enemy and when the wind blows in that direction at a
+rate between four and twelve miles an hour. But the wind, being strictly
+neutral, may change its direction without warning and then the gases
+turn back in their flight and attack their own side, something that
+rifle bullets have never been known to do.
+
+[Illustration: � International Film Service
+
+GERMANS STARTING A GAS ATTACK ON THE RUSSIAN LINES
+
+Behind the cylinders from which the gas streams are seen three lines of
+German troops waiting to attack. The photograph was taken from above by
+a Russian airman]
+
+[Illustration: � Press Illustrating Service
+
+FILLING THE CANNISTERS OF GAS MASKS WITH CHARCOAL MADE FROM FRUIT PITS
+IN LONG ISLAND CITY]
+
+Because free chlorine would not stay put and was dependent on the favor
+of the wind for its effect, it was later employed, not as an elemental
+gas, but in some volatile liquid that could be fired in a shell and so
+released at any particular point far back of the front trenches.
+
+The most commonly used of these compounds was phosgene, which, as the
+reader can see by inspection of its formula, COCl_{2}, consists of
+chlorine (Cl) combined with carbon monoxide (CO), the cause of deaths
+from illuminating gas. These two poisonous gases, chlorine and carbon
+monoxide, when mixed together, will not readily unite, but if a ray of
+sunlight falls upon the mixture they combine at once. For this reason
+John Davy, who discovered the compound over a hundred years ago, named
+it phosgene, that is, "produced by light." The same roots recur in
+hydrogen, so named because it is "produced from water," and phosphorus,
+because it is a "light-bearer."
+
+In its modern manufacture the catalyzer or instigator of the combination
+is not sunlight but porous carbon. This is packed in iron boxes eight
+feet long, through which the mixture of the two gases was forced. Carbon
+monoxide may be made by burning coke with a supply of air insufficient
+for complete combustion, but in order to get the pure gas necessary for
+the phosgene common air was not used, but instead pure oxygen extracted
+from it by a liquid air plant.
+
+Phosgene is a gas that may be condensed easily to a liquid by cooling it
+down to 46 degrees Fahrenheit. A mixture of three-quarters chlorine with
+one-quarter phosgene has been found most effective. By itself phosgene
+has an inoffensive odor somewhat like green corn and so may fail to
+arouse apprehension until a toxic concentration is reached. But even
+small doses have such an effect upon the heart action for days afterward
+that a slight exertion may prove fatal.
+
+The compound manufactured in largest amount in America was chlorpicrin.
+This, like the others, is not so unfamiliar as it seems. As may be seen
+from its formula, CCl_{3}NO_{2}, it is formed by joining the nitric acid
+radical (NO_{2}), found in all explosives, with the main part of
+chloroform (HCCl_{3}). This is not quite so poisonous as phosgene, but
+it has the advantage that it causes nausea and vomiting. The soldier so
+affected is forced to take off his gas mask and then may fall victim to
+more toxic gases sent over simultaneously.
+
+Chlorpicrin is a liquid and is commonly loaded in a shell or bomb with
+20 per cent. of tin chloride, which produces dense white fumes that go
+through gas masks. It is made from picric acid (trinitrophenol), one of
+the best known of the high explosives, by treatment with chlorine. The
+chlorine is obtained, as it is in the household, from common bleaching
+powder, or "chloride of lime." This is mixed with water to form a cream
+in a steel still 18 feet high and 8 feet in diameter. A solution of
+calcium picrate, that is, the lime salt of picric acid, is pumped in and
+as the reaction begins the mixture heats up and the chlorpicrin distils
+over with the steam. When the distillate is condensed the chlorpicrin,
+being the heavier liquid, settles out under the layer of water and may
+be drawn off to fill the shell.
+
+Much of what a student learns in the chemical laboratory he is apt to
+forget in later life if he does not follow it up. But there are two
+gases that he always remembers, chlorine and hydrogen sulfide. He is
+lucky if he has escaped being choked by the former or sickened by the
+latter. He can imagine what the effect would be if two offensive fumes
+could be combined without losing their offensive features. Now a
+combination something like this is the so-called mustard gas, which is
+not a gas and is not made from mustard. But it is easily gasified, and
+oil of mustard is about as near as Nature dare come to making such
+sinful stuff. It was first made by Guthrie, an Englishman, in 1860, and
+rediscovered by a German chemist, Victor Meyer, in 1886, but he found it
+so dangerous to work with that he abandoned the investigation. Nobody
+else cared to take it up, for nobody could see any use for it. So it
+remained in innocuous desuetude, a mere name in "Beilstein's
+Dictionary," together with the thousands of other organic compounds that
+have been invented and never utilized. But on July 12, 1917, the British
+holding the line at Ypres were besprinkled with this villainous
+substance. Its success was so great that the Germans henceforth made it
+their main reliance and soon the Allies followed suit. In one offensive
+of ten days the Germans are said to have used a million shells
+containing 2500 tons of mustard gas.
+
+The making of so dangerous a compound on a large scale was one of the
+most difficult tasks set before the chemists of this and other
+countries, yet it was successfully solved. The raw materials are
+chlorine, alcohol and sulfur. The alcohol is passed with steam through
+a vertical iron tube filled with kaolin and heated. This converts the
+alcohol into a gas known as ethylene (C_{2}H_{4}). Passing a stream of
+chlorine gas into a tank of melted sulfur produces sulfur monochloride
+and this treated with the ethylene makes the "mustard." The final
+reaction was carried on at the Edgewood Arsenal in seven airtight tanks
+or "reactors," each having a capacity of 30,000 pounds. The ethylene gas
+being led into the tank and distributed through the liquid sulfur
+chloride by porous blocks or fine nozzles, the two chemicals combined to
+form what is officially named "di-chlor-di-ethyl-sulfide"
+(ClC_{2}H_{4}SC_{2}H_{4}Cl). This, however, is too big a mouthful, so
+even the chemists were glad to fall in with the commonalty and call it
+"mustard gas."
+
+The effectiveness of "mustard" depends upon its persistence. It is a
+stable liquid, evaporating slowly and not easily decomposed. It lingers
+about trenches and dugouts and impregnates soil and cloth for days. Gas
+masks do not afford complete protection, for even if they are
+impenetrable they must be taken off some time and the gas lies in wait
+for that time. In some cases the masks were worn continuously for twelve
+hours after the attack, but when they were removed the soldiers were
+overpowered by the poison. A place may seem to be free from it but when
+the sun heats up the ground the liquid volatilizes and the vapor soaks
+through the clothing. As the men become warmed up by work their skin is
+blistered, especially under the armpits. The mustard acts like steam,
+producing burns that range from a mere reddening to serious
+ulcerations, always painful and incapacitating, but if treated promptly
+in the hospital rarely causing death or permanent scars. The gas attacks
+the eyes, throat, nose and lungs and may lead to bronchitis or
+pneumonia. It was found necessary at the front to put all the clothing
+of the soldiers into the sterilizing ovens every night to remove all
+traces of mustard. General Johnson and his staff in the 77th Division
+were poisoned in their dugouts because they tried to alleviate the
+discomfort of their camp cots by bedding taken from a neighboring
+village that had been shelled the day before.
+
+Of the 925 cases requiring medical attention at the Edgewood Arsenal 674
+were due to mustard. During the month of August 3-1/2 per cent. of the
+mustard plant force were sent to the hospital each day on the average.
+But the record of the Edgewood Arsenal is a striking demonstration of
+what can be done in the prevention of industrial accidents by the
+exercise of scientific prudence. In spite of the fact that from three to
+eleven thousand men were employed at the plant for the year 1918 and
+turned out some twenty thousand tons of the most poisonous gases known
+to man, there were only three fatalities and not a single case of
+blindness.
+
+Besides the four toxic gases previously described, chlorine, phosgene,
+chlorpicrin and mustard, various other compounds have been and many
+others might be made. A list of those employed in the present war
+enumerates thirty, among them compounds of bromine, arsenic and cyanogen
+that may prove more formidable than any so far used. American chemists
+kept very mum during the war but occasionally one could not refrain
+from saying: "If the Kaiser knew what I know he would surrender
+unconditionally by telegraph." No doubt the science of chemical warfare
+is in its infancy and every foresighted power has concealed weapons of
+its own in reserve. One deadly compound, whose identity has not yet been
+disclosed, is known as "Lewisite," from Professor Lewis of Northwestern,
+who was manufacturing it at the rate of ten tons a day in the "Mouse
+Trap" stockade near Cleveland.
+
+Throughout the history of warfare the art of defense has kept pace with
+the art of offense and the courage of man has never failed, no matter to
+what new danger he was exposed. As each new gas employed by the enemy
+was detected it became the business of our chemists to discover some
+method of absorbing or neutralizing it. Porous charcoal, best made from
+such dense wood as coconut shells, was packed in the respirator box
+together with layers of such chemicals as will catch the gases to be
+expected. Charcoal absorbs large quantities of any gas. Soda lime and
+potassium permanganate and nickel salts were among the neutralizers
+used.
+
+The mask is fitted tightly about the face or over the head with rubber.
+The nostrils are kept closed with a clip so breathing must be done
+through the mouth and no air can be inhaled except that passing through
+the absorbent cylinder. Men within five miles of the front were required
+to wear the masks slung on their chests so they could be put on within
+six seconds. A well-made mask with a fresh box afforded almost complete
+immunity for a time and the soldiers learned within a few days to
+handle their masks adroitly. So the problem of defense against this new
+offensive was solved satisfactorily, while no such adequate protection
+against the older weapons of bayonet and shrapnel has yet been devised.
+
+Then the problem of the offense was to catch the opponent with his
+mask off or to make him take it off. Here the lachrymators and
+the sternutators, the tear gases and the sneeze gases, came into
+play. Phenylcarbylamine chloride would make the bravest soldier
+weep on the battlefield with the abandonment of a Greek hero.
+Di-phenyl-chloro-arsine would set him sneezing. The Germans alternated
+these with diabolical ingenuity so as to catch us unawares. Some shells
+gave off voluminous smoke or a vile stench without doing much harm, but
+by the time our men got used to these and grew careless about their
+masks a few shells of some extremely poisonous gas were mixed with them.
+
+The ideal gas for belligerent purposes would be odorless, colorless and
+invisible, toxic even when diluted by a million parts of air, not set on
+fire or exploded by the detonator of the shell, not decomposed by water,
+not readily absorbed, stable enough to stand storage for six months and
+capable of being manufactured by the thousands of tons. No one gas will
+serve all aims. For instance, phosgene being very volatile and quickly
+dissipated is thrown into trenches that are soon to be taken while
+mustard gas being very tenacious could not be employed in such a case
+for the trenches could not be occupied if they were captured.
+
+The extensive use of poison gas in warfare by all the belligerents is a
+vindication of the American protest at the Hague Conference against its
+prohibition. At the First Conference of 1899 Captain Mahan argued very
+sensibly that gas shells were no worse than other projectiles and might
+indeed prove more merciful and that it was illogical to prohibit a
+weapon merely because of its novelty. The British delegates voted with
+the Americans in opposition to the clause "the contracting parties agree
+to abstain from the use of projectiles the sole object of which is the
+diffusion of asphyxiating or deleterious gases." But both Great Britain
+and Germany later agreed to the provision. The use of poison gas by
+Germany without warning was therefore an act of treachery and a
+violation of her pledge, but the United States has consistently refused
+to bind herself to any such restriction. The facts reported by General
+Amos A. Fries, in command of the overseas branch of the American
+Chemical Warfare Service, give ample support to the American contention
+at The Hague:
+
+     Out of 1000 gas casualties there are from 30 to 40 fatalities,
+     while out of 1000 high explosive casualties the number of
+     fatalities run from 200 to 250. While exact figures are as yet
+     not available concerning the men permanently crippled or
+     blinded by high explosives one has only to witness the
+     debarkation of a shipload of troops to be convinced that the
+     number is very large. On the other hand there is, so far as
+     known at present, not a single case of permanent disability or
+     blindness among our troops due to gas and this in face of the
+     fact that the Germans used relatively large quantities of this
+     material.
+
+     In the light of these facts the prejudice against the use of
+     gas must gradually give way; for the statement made to the
+     effect that its use is contrary to the principles of humanity
+     will apply with far greater force to the use of high
+     explosives. As a matter of fact, for certain purposes toxic gas
+     is an ideal agent. For example, it is difficult to imagine any
+     agent more effective or more humane that may be used to render
+     an opposing battery ineffective or to protect retreating
+     troops.
+
+Captain Mahan's argument at The Hague against the proposed prohibition
+of poison gas is so cogent and well expressed that it has been quoted in
+treatises on international law ever since. These reasons were, briefly:
+
+     1. That no shell emitting such gases is as yet in practical use
+     or has undergone adequate experiment; consequently, a vote
+     taken now would be taken in ignorance of the facts as to
+     whether the results would be of a decisive character or whether
+     injury in excess of that necessary to attain the end of
+     warfare--the immediate disabling of the enemy--would be
+     inflicted.
+
+     2. That the reproach of cruelty and perfidy, addressed against
+     these supposed shells, was equally uttered formerly against
+     firearms and torpedoes, both of which are now employed without
+     scruple. Until we know the effects of such asphyxiating shells,
+     there was no saying whether they would be more or less merciful
+     than missiles now permitted. That it was illogical, and not
+     demonstrably humane, to be tender about asphyxiating men with
+     gas, when all are prepared to admit that it was allowable to
+     blow the bottom out of an ironclad at midnight, throwing four
+     or five hundred into the sea, to be choked by water, with
+     scarcely the remotest chance of escape.
+
+As Captain Mahan says, the same objection has been raised at the
+introduction of each new weapon of war, even though it proved to be no
+more cruel than the old. The modern rifle ball, swift and small and
+sterilized by heat, does not make so bad a wound as the ancient sword
+and spear, but we all remember how gunpowder was regarded by the dandies
+of Hotspur's time:
+
+  And it was great pity, so it was,
+  This villainous saltpeter should be digg'd
+  Out of the bowels of the harmless earth
+  Which many a good tall fellow had destroy'd
+  So cowardly; and but for these vile guns
+  He would himself have been a soldier.
+
+The real reason for the instinctive aversion manifested against any new
+arm or mode of attack is that it reveals to us the intrinsic horror of
+war. We naturally revolt against premeditated homicide, but we have
+become so accustomed to the sword and latterly to the rifle that they do
+not shock us as they ought when we think of what they are made for. The
+Constitution of the United States prohibits the infliction of "cruel and
+unusual punishments." The two adjectives were apparently used almost
+synonymously, as though any "unusual" punishment were necessarily
+"cruel," and so indeed it strikes us. But our ingenious lawyers were
+able to persuade the courts that electrocution, though unknown to the
+Fathers and undeniably "unusual," was not unconstitutional. Dumdum
+bullets are rightfully ruled out because they inflict frightful and
+often incurable wounds, and the aim of humane warfare is to disable the
+enemy, not permanently to injure him.
+
+[Illustration: From "America's Munitions" THE CHLORPICRIN PLANT AT THE
+EDGEWOOD ARSENAL
+
+From these stills, filled with a mixture of bleaching powder, lime, and
+picric acid, the poisonous gas, chlorpicrin, distills off. This plant
+produced 31 tons in one day]
+
+[Illustration: Courtesy of the Metal and Thermit Corporation, N.Y.
+
+REPAIRING THE BROKEN STERN POST OF THE U.S.S. NORTHERN PACIFIC, THE
+BIGGEST MARINE WELD IN THE WORLD
+
+On the right the fractured stern post is shown. On the left it is being
+mended by means of thermit. Two crucibles each containing 700 pounds of
+the thermit mixture are seen on the sides of the vessel. From the bottom
+of these the melted steel flowed down to fill the fracture]
+
+In spite of the opposition of the American and British delegates the
+First Hague Conference adopted the clause, "The contracting powers agree
+to abstain from the use of projectiles the [sole] object of which is the
+diffusion of asphyxiating or deleterious gases." The word "sole"
+(_unique_) which appears in the original French text of The Hague
+convention is left out of the official English translation. This is a
+strange omission considering that the French and British defended their
+use of explosives which diffuse asphyxiating and deleterious gases on
+the ground that this was not the "sole" purpose of the bombs but merely
+an accidental effect of the nitric powder used.
+
+The Hague Congress of 1907 placed in its rules for war: "It is expressly
+forbidden to employ poisons or poisonous weapons." But such attempts to
+rule out new and more effective means of warfare are likely to prove
+futile in any serious conflict and the restriction gives the advantage
+to the most unscrupulous side. We Americans, if ever we give our assent
+to such an agreement, would of course keep it, but our enemy--whoever he
+may be in the future--will be, as he always has been, utterly without
+principle and will not hesitate to employ any weapon against us.
+Besides, as the Germans held, chemical warfare favors the army that is
+most intelligent, resourceful and disciplined and the nation that stands
+highest in science and industry. This advantage, let us hope, will be on
+our side.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+PRODUCTS OF THE ELECTRIC FURNACE
+
+
+The control of man over the materials of nature has been vastly enhanced
+by the recent extension of the range of temperature at his command. When
+Fahrenheit stuck the bulb of his thermometer into a mixture of snow and
+salt he thought he had reached the nadir of temperature, so he scratched
+a mark on the tube where the mercury stood and called it zero. But we
+know that absolute zero, the total absence of heat, is 459 of
+Fahrenheit's degrees lower than his zero point. The modern scientist can
+get close to that lowest limit by making use of the cooling by the
+expansion principle. He first liquefies air under pressure and then
+releasing the pressure allows it to boil off. A tube of hydrogen
+immersed in the liquid air as it evaporates is cooled down until it can
+be liquefied. Then the boiling hydrogen is used to liquefy helium, and
+as this boils off it lowers the temperature to within three or four
+degrees of absolute zero.
+
+The early metallurgist had no hotter a fire than he could make by
+blowing charcoal with a bellows. This was barely enough for the smelting
+of iron. But by the bringing of two carbon rods together, as in the
+electric arc light, we can get enough heat to volatilize the carbon at
+the tips, and this means over 7000 degrees Fahrenheit. By putting a
+pressure of twenty atmospheres onto the arc light we can raise it to
+perhaps 14,000 degrees, which is 3000 degrees hotter than the sun. This
+gives the modern man a working range of about 14,500 degrees, so it is
+no wonder that he can perform miracles.
+
+When a builder wants to make an old house over into a new one he takes
+it apart brick by brick and stone by stone, then he puts them together
+in such new fashion as he likes. The electric furnace enables the
+chemist to take his materials apart in the same way. As the temperature
+rises the chemical and physical forces that hold a body together
+gradually weaken. First the solid loosens up and becomes a liquid, then
+this breaks bonds and becomes a gas. Compounds break up into their
+elements. The elemental molecules break up into their component atoms
+and finally these begin to throw off corpuscles of negative electricity
+eighteen hundred times smaller than the smallest atom. These electrons
+appear to be the building stones of the universe. No indication of any
+smaller units has been discovered, although we need not assume that in
+the electron science has delivered, what has been called, its
+"ultim-atom." The Greeks called the elemental particles of matter
+"atoms" because they esteemed them "indivisible," but now in the light
+of the X-ray we can witness the disintegration of the atom into
+electrons. All the chemical and physical properties of matter, except
+perhaps weight, seem to depend upon the number and movement of the
+negative and positive electrons and by their rearrangement one element
+may be transformed into another.
+
+So the electric furnace, where the highest attainable temperature is
+combined with the divisive and directive force of the current, is a
+magical machine for accomplishment of the metamorphoses desired by the
+creative chemist. A hundred years ago Davy, by dipping the poles of his
+battery into melted soda lye, saw forming on one of them a shining
+globule like quicksilver. It was the metal sodium, never before seen by
+man. Nowadays this process of electrolysis (electric loosening) is
+carried out daily by the ton at Niagara.
+
+The reverse process, electro-synthesis (electric combining), is equally
+simple and even more important. By passing a strong electric current
+through a mixture of lime and coke the metal calcium disengages itself
+from the oxygen of the lime and attaches itself to the carbon. Or, to
+put it briefly,
+
+  CaO  +  3C   -->   CaC_{2} + CO
+  lime   coke       calcium    carbon
+                      carbide    monoxide
+
+This reaction is of peculiar importance because it bridges the gulf
+between the organic and inorganic worlds. It was formerly supposed that
+the substances found in plants and animals, mostly complex compounds of
+carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, could only be produced by "vital forces."
+If this were true it meant that chemistry was limited to the mineral
+kingdom and to the extraction of such carbon compounds as happened to
+exist ready formed in the vegetable and animal kingdoms. But fortunately
+this barrier to human achievement proved purely illusory. The organic
+field, once man had broken into it, proved easier to work in than the
+inorganic.
+
+But it must be confessed that man is dreadfully clumsy about it yet. He
+takes a thousand horsepower engine and an electric furnace at several
+thousand degrees to get carbon into combination with hydrogen while the
+little green leaf in the sunshine does it quietly without getting hot
+about it. Evidently man is working as wastefully as when he used a
+thousand slaves to drag a stone to the pyramid or burned down a house to
+roast a pig. Not until his laboratory is as cool and calm and
+comfortable as the forest and the field can the chemist call himself
+completely successful.
+
+But in spite of his clumsiness the chemist is actually making things
+that he wants and cannot get elsewhere. The calcium carbide that he
+manufactures from inorganic material serves as the raw material for
+producing all sorts of organic compounds. The electric furnace was first
+employed on a large scale by the Cowles Electric Smelting and Aluminum
+Company at Cleveland in 1885. On the dump were found certain lumps of
+porous gray stone which, dropped into water, gave off a gas that
+exploded at touch of a match with a splendid bang and flare. This gas
+was acetylene, and we can represent the reaction thus:
+
+  CaC_{2} + 2 H_{2}O --> C_{2}H_{2} + CaO_{2}H_{2}
+
+  calcium carbide _added_ to water _
+    gives_ acetylene _and_ slaked lime
+
+We are all familiar with this reaction now, for it is acetylene that
+gives the dazzling light of the automobiles and of the automatic signal
+buoys of the seacoast. When burned with pure oxygen instead of air it
+gives the hottest of chemical flames, hotter even than the oxy-hydrogen
+blowpipe. For although a given weight of hydrogen will give off more
+heat when it burns than carbon will, yet acetylene will give off more
+heat than either of its elements or both of them when they are separate.
+This is because acetylene has stored up heat in its formation instead of
+giving it off as in most reactions, or to put it in chemical language,
+acetylene is an endothermic compound. It has required energy to bring
+the H and the C together, therefore it does not require energy to
+separate them, but, on the contrary, energy is released when they are
+separated. That is to say, acetylene is explosive not only when mixed
+with air as coal gas is but by itself. Under a suitable impulse
+acetylene will break up into its original carbon and hydrogen with great
+violence. It explodes with twice as much force without air as ordinary
+coal gas with air. It forms an explosive compound with copper, so it has
+to be kept out of contact with brass tubes and stopcocks. But compressed
+in steel cylinders and dissolved in acetone, it is safe and commonly
+used for welding and melting. It is a marvelous though not an unusual
+sight on city streets to see a man with blue glasses on cutting down
+through a steel rail with an oxy-acetylene blowpipe as easily as a
+carpenter saws off a board. With such a flame he can carve out a pattern
+in a steel plate in a way that reminds me of the days when I used to
+make brackets with a scroll saw out of cigar boxes. The torch will
+travel through a steel plate an inch or two thick at a rate of six to
+ten inches a minute.
+
+[Illustration: Courtesy of the Carborundum Company, Niagara Falls
+
+MAKING ALOXITE IN THE ELECTRIC FURNACES BY FUSING COKE AND BAUXITE
+
+In the background are the circular furnaces. In the foreground are the
+fused masses of the product]
+
+[Illustration: Courtesy of the Carborundum Co., Niagara Falls
+
+A BLOCK OF CARBORUNDUM CRYSTALS]
+
+[Illustration: Courtesy of the Carborundum Co., Niagara Falls
+
+MAKING CARBORUNDUM IN THE ELECTRIC FURNACE
+
+At the end may be seen the attachments for the wires carrying the
+electric current and on the side the flames from the burning carbon.]
+
+The temperatures attainable with various fuels in the compound blowpipe
+are said to be:
+
+
+  Acetylene with oxygen        7878� F.
+  Hydrogen with oxygen         6785� F.
+  Coal gas with oxygen         6575� F.
+  Gasoline with oxygen         5788� F.
+
+If we compare the formula of acetylene, C_{2}H_{2} with that of
+ethylene, C_{2}H_{4}, or with ethane, C_{2}H_{6}, we see that acetylene
+could take on two or four more atoms. It is evidently what the chemists
+call an "unsaturated" compound, one that has not reached its limit of
+hydrogenation. It is therefore a very active and energetic compound,
+ready to pick up on the slightest instigation hydrogen or oxygen or
+chlorine or any other elements that happen to be handy. This is why it
+is so useful as a starting point for synthetic chemistry.
+
+To build up from this simple substance, acetylene, the higher compounds
+of carbon and oxygen it is necessary to call in the aid of that
+mysterious agency, the catalyst. Acetylene is not always acted upon by
+water, as we know, for we see it bubbling up through the water when
+prepared from the carbide. But if to the water be added a little acid
+and a mercury salt, the acetylene gas will unite with the water forming
+a new compound, acetaldehyde. We can show the change most simply in this
+fashion:
+
+  C_{2}H_{2} + H_{2}O --> C_{2}H_{4}O
+
+  acetylene _added to_ water _forms_ acetaldehyde
+
+Acetaldehyde is not of much importance in itself, but is useful as a
+transition. If its vapor mixed with hydrogen is passed over finely
+divided nickel, serving as a catalyst, the two unite and we have
+alcohol, according to this reaction:
+
+  C_{2}H_{4}O + H_{2} --> C_{2}H_{6}O
+
+  acetaldehyde _added to_ hydrogen _forms_ alcohol
+
+Alcohol we are all familiar with--some of us too familiar, but the
+prohibition laws will correct that. The point to be noted is that the
+alcohol we have made from such unpromising materials as limestone and
+coal is exactly the same alcohol as is obtained by the fermentation of
+fruits and grains by the yeast plant as in wine and beer. It is not a
+substitute or imitation. It is not the wood spirits (methyl alcohol,
+CH_{4}O), produced by the destructive distillation of wood, equally
+serviceable as a solvent or fuel, but undrinkable and poisonous.
+
+Now, as we all know, cider and wine when exposed to the air gradually
+turn into vinegar, that is, by the growth of bacteria the alcohol is
+oxidized to acetic acid. We can, if we like, dispense with the bacteria
+and speed up the process by employing a catalyst. Acetaldehyde, which is
+halfway between alcohol and acid, may also be easily oxidized to acetic
+acid. The relationship is readily seen by this:
+
+  C{2}H_{6}O -->  CC_{2}H_{4}O --> C_{2}H_{4}O_{3}
+
+  alcohol         acetaldehyde      acetic acid
+
+Acetic acid, familiar to us in a diluted and flavored form as vinegar,
+is when concentrated of great value in industry, especially as a
+solvent. I have already referred to its use in combination with
+cellulose as a "dope" for varnishing airplane canvas or making
+non-inflammable film for motion pictures. Its combination with lime,
+calcium acetate, when heated gives acetone, which, as may be seen from
+its formula (C_{3}H_{6}O) is closely related to the other compounds we
+have been considering, but it is neither an alcohol nor an acid. It is
+extensively employed as a solvent.
+
+Acetone is not only useful for dissolving solids but it will under
+pressure dissolve many times its volume of gaseous acetylene. This is a
+convenient way of transporting and handling acetylene for lighting or
+welding.
+
+If instead of simply mixing the acetone and acetylene in a solution we
+combine them chemically we can get isoprene, which is the mother
+substance of ordinary India rubber. From acetone also is made the "war
+rubber" of the Germans (methyl rubber), which I have mentioned in a
+previous chapter. The Germans had been getting about half their supply
+of acetone from American acetate of lime and this was of course shut
+off. That which was produced in Germany by the distillation of beech
+wood was not even enough for the high explosives needed at the front. So
+the Germans resorted to rotting potatoes--or rather let us say, since it
+sounds better--to the cultivation of _Bacillus macerans_. This
+particular bacillus converts the starch of the potato into two-thirds
+alcohol and one-third acetone. But soon potatoes got too scarce to be
+used up in this fashion, so the Germans turned to calcium carbide as a
+source of acetone and before the war ended they had a factory capable of
+manufacturing 2000 tons of methyl rubber a year. This shows the
+advantage of having several strings to a bow.
+
+The reason why acetylene is such an active and acquisitive thing the
+chemist explains, or rather expresses, by picturing its structure in
+this shape:
+
+  H-C[triple bond]C-H
+
+Now the carbon atoms are holding each other's hands because they have
+nothing else to do. There are no other elements around to hitch on to.
+But the two carbons of acetylene readily loosen up and keeping the
+connection between them by a single bond reach out in this fashion with
+their two disengaged arms and grab whatever alien atoms happen to be in
+the vicinity:
+
+    | |
+  H-C-C-H
+    | |
+
+Carbon atoms belong to the quadrumani like the monkeys, so they are
+peculiarly fitted to forming chains and rings. This accounts for the
+variety and complexity of the carbon compounds.
+
+So when acetylene gas mixed with other gases is passed over a catalyst,
+such as a heated mass of iron ore or clay (hydrates or silicates of iron
+or aluminum), it forms all sorts of curious combinations. In the
+presence of steam we may get such simple compounds as acetic acid,
+acetone and the like. But when three acetylene molecules join to form a
+ring of six carbon atoms we get compounds of the benzene series such as
+were described in the chapter on the coal-tar colors. If ammonia is
+mixed with acetylene we may get rings with the nitrogen atom in place of
+one of the carbons, like the pyridins and quinolins, pungent bases such
+as are found in opium and tobacco. Or if hydrogen sulfide is mixed with
+the acetylene we may get thiophenes, which have sulfur in the ring. So,
+starting with the simple combination of two atoms of carbon with two of
+hydrogen, we can get directly by this single process some of the most
+complicated compounds of the organic world, as well as many others not
+found in nature.
+
+In the development of the electric furnace America played a pioneer
+part. Provost Smith of the University of Pennsylvania, who is the best
+authority on the history of chemistry in America, claims for Robert
+Hare, a Philadelphia chemist born in 1781, the honor of constructing the
+first electrical furnace. With this crude apparatus and with no greater
+electromotive force than could be attained from a voltaic pile, he
+converted charcoal into graphite, volatilized phosphorus from its
+compounds, isolated metallic calcium and synthesized calcium carbide. It
+is to Hare also that we owe the invention in 1801 of the oxy-hydrogen
+blowpipe, which nowadays is used with acetylene as well as hydrogen.
+With this instrument he was able to fuse strontia and volatilize
+platinum.
+
+But the electrical furnace could not be used on a commercial scale until
+the dynamo replaced the battery as a source of electricity. The
+industrial development of the electrical furnace centered about the
+search for a cheap method of preparing aluminum. This is the metallic
+base of clay and therefore is common enough. But clay, as we know from
+its use in making porcelain, is very infusible and difficult to
+decompose. Sixty years ago aluminum was priced at $140 a pound, but one
+would have had difficulty in buying such a large quantity as a pound at
+any price. At international expositions a small bar of it might be seen
+in a case labeled "silver from clay." Mechanics were anxious to get the
+new metal, for it was light and untarnishable, but the metallurgists
+could not furnish it to them at a low enough price. In order to extract
+it from clay a more active metal, sodium, was essential. But sodium also
+was rare and expensive. In those days a professor of chemistry used to
+keep a little stick of it in a bottle under kerosene and once a year he
+whittled off a piece the size of a pea and threw it into water to show
+the class how it sizzled and gave off hydrogen. The way to get cheaper
+aluminum was, it seemed, to get cheaper sodium and Hamilton Young
+Castner set himself at this problem. He was a Brooklyn boy, a student of
+Chandler's at Columbia. You can see the bronze tablet in his honor at
+the entrance of Havemeyer Hall. In 1886 he produced metallic sodium by
+mixing caustic soda with iron and charcoal in an iron pot and heating in
+a gas furnace. Before this experiment sodium sold at $2 a pound; after
+it sodium sold at twenty cents a pound.
+
+But although Castner had succeeded in his experiment he was defeated in
+his object. For while he was perfecting the sodium process for making
+aluminum the electrolytic process for getting aluminum directly was
+discovered in Oberlin. So the $250,000 plant of the "Aluminium Company
+Ltd." that Castner had got erected at Birmingham, England, did not make
+aluminum at all, but produced sodium for other purposes instead. Castner
+then turned his attention to the electrolytic method of producing sodium
+by the use of the power of Niagara Falls, electric power. Here in 1894
+he succeeded in separating common salt into its component elements,
+chlorine and sodium, by passing the electric current through brine and
+collecting the sodium in the mercury floor of the cell. The sodium by
+the action of water goes into caustic soda. Nowadays sodium and chlorine
+and their components are made in enormous quantities by the
+decomposition of salt. The United States Government in 1918 procured
+nearly 4,000,000 pounds of chlorine for gas warfare.
+
+The discovery of the electrical process of making aluminum that
+displaced the sodium method was due to Charles M. Hall. He was the son
+of a Congregational minister and as a boy took a fancy to chemistry
+through happening upon an old text-book of that science in his father's
+library. He never knew who the author was, for the cover and title page
+had been torn off. The obstacle in the way of the electrolytic
+production of aluminum was, as I have said, because its compounds were
+so hard to melt that the current could not pass through. In 1886, when
+Hall was twenty-two, he solved the problem in the laboratory of Oberlin
+College with no other apparatus than a small crucible, a gasoline burner
+to heat it with and a galvanic battery to supply the electricity. He
+found that a Greenland mineral, known as cryolite (a double fluoride of
+sodium and aluminum), was readily fused and would dissolve alumina
+(aluminum oxide). When an electric current was passed through the melted
+mass the metal aluminum would collect at one of the poles.
+
+In working out the process and defending his claims Hall used up all his
+own money, his brother's and his uncle's, but he won out in the end and
+Judge Taft held that his patent had priority over the French claim of
+H�rault. On his death, a few years ago, Hall left his large fortune to
+his Alma Mater, Oberlin.
+
+Two other young men from Ohio, Alfred and Eugene Cowles, with whom Hall
+was for a time associated, wore the first to develop the wide
+possibilities of the electric furnace on a commercial scale. In 1885
+they started the Cowles Electric Smelting and Aluminum Company at
+Lockport, New York, using Niagara power. The various aluminum bronzes
+made by absorbing the electrolyzed aluminum in copper attracted
+immediate attention by their beauty and usefulness in electrical work
+and later the company turned out other products besides aluminum, such
+as calcium carbide, phosphorus, and carborundum. They got carborundum as
+early as 1885 but miscalled it "crystallized silicon," so its
+introduction was left to E.A. Acheson, who was a graduate of Edison's
+laboratory. In 1891 he packed clay and charcoal into an iron bowl,
+connected it to a dynamo and stuck into the mixture an electric light
+carbon connected to the other pole of the dynamo. When he pulled out the
+rod he found its end encrusted with glittering crystals of an unknown
+substance. They were blue and black and iridescent, exceedingly hard and
+very beautiful. He sold them at first by the carat at a rate that would
+amount to $560 a pound. They were as well worth buying as diamond dust,
+but those who purchased them must have regretted it, for much finer
+crystals were soon on sale at ten cents a pound. The mysterious
+substance turned out to be a compound of carbon and silicon, the
+simplest possible compound, one atom of each, CSi. Acheson set up a
+factory at Niagara, where he made it in ten-ton batches. The furnace
+consisted simply of a brick box fifteen feet long and seven feet wide
+and deep, with big carbon electrodes at the ends. Between them was
+packed a mixture of coke to supply the carbon, sand to supply the
+silicon, sawdust to make the mass porous and salt to make it fusible.
+
+[Illustration: The first American electric furnace, constructed by
+Robert Hare of Philadelphia. From "Chemistry in America," by Edgar Fahs
+Smith]
+
+The substance thus produced at Niagara Falls is known as "carborundum"
+south of the American-Canadian boundary and as "crystolon" north of this
+line, as "carbolon" by another firm, and as "silicon carbide" by
+chemists the world over. Since it is next to the diamond in hardness it
+takes off metal faster than emery (aluminum oxide), using less power and
+wasting less heat in futile fireworks. It is used for grindstones of
+all sizes, including those the dentist uses on your teeth. It has
+revolutionized shop-practice, for articles can be ground into shape
+better and quicker than they can be cut. What is more, the artificial
+abrasives do not injure the lungs of the operatives like sandstone. The
+output of artificial abrasives in the United States and Canada for 1917
+was:
+
+                         Tons        Value
+  Silicon carbide       8,323       $1,074,152
+  Aluminum oxide       48,463        6,969,387
+
+A new use for carborundum was found during the war when Uncle Sam
+assumed the r�le of Jove as "cloud-compeller." Acting on carborundum
+with chlorine--also, you remember, a product of electrical
+dissolution--the chlorine displaces the carbon, forming silicon
+tetra-chloride (SiCl_{4}), a colorless liquid resembling chloroform.
+When this comes in contact with moist air it gives off thick, white
+fumes, for water decomposes it, giving a white powder (silicon
+hydroxide) and hydrochloric acid. If ammonia is present the acid will
+unite with it, giving further white fumes of the salt, ammonium
+chloride. So a mixture of two parts of silicon chloride with one part of
+dry ammonia was used in the war to produce smoke-screens for the
+concealment of the movements of troops, batteries and vessels or put in
+shells so the outlook could see where they burst and so get the range.
+Titanium tetra-chloride, a similar substance, proved 50 per cent. better
+than silicon, but phosphorus--which also we get from the electric
+furnace--was the most effective mistifier of all.
+
+Before the introduction of the artificial abrasives fine grinding was
+mostly done by emery, which is an impure form of aluminum oxide found in
+nature. A purer form is made from the mineral bauxite by driving off its
+combined water. Bauxite is the ore from which is made the pure aluminum
+oxide used in the electric furnace for the production of metallic
+aluminum. Formerly we imported a large part of our bauxite from France,
+but when the war shut off this source we developed our domestic fields
+in Arkansas, Alabama and Georgia, and these are now producing half a
+million tons a year. Bauxite simply fused in the electric furnace makes
+a better abrasive than the natural emery or corundum, and it is sold for
+this purpose under the name of "aloxite," "alundum," "exolon," "lionite"
+or "coralox." When the fused bauxite is worked up with a bonding
+material into crucibles or muffles and baked in a kiln it forms the
+alundum refractory ware. Since alundum is porous and not attacked by
+acids it is used for filtering hot and corrosive liquids that would eat
+up filter-paper. Carborundum or crystolon is also made up into
+refractory ware for high temperature work. When the fused mass of the
+carborundum furnace is broken up there is found surrounding the
+carborundum core a similar substance though not quite so hard and
+infusible, known as "carborundum sand" or "siloxicon." This is mixed
+with fireclay and used for furnace linings.
+
+Many new forms of refractories have come into use to meet the demands of
+the new high temperature work. The essentials are that it should not
+melt or crumble at high heat and should not expand and contract greatly
+under changes of temperature (low coefficient of thermal expansion).
+Whether it is desirable that it should heat through readily or slowly
+(coefficient of thermal conductivity) depends on whether it is wanted as
+a crucible or as a furnace lining. Lime (calcium oxide) fuses only at
+the highest heat of the electric furnace, but it breaks down into dust.
+Magnesia (magnesium oxide) is better and is most extensively employed.
+For every ton of steel produced five pounds of magnesite is needed.
+Formerly we imported 90 per cent. of our supply from Austria, but now we
+get it from California and Washington. In 1913 the American production
+of magnesite was only 9600 tons. In 1918 it was 225,000. Zirconia
+(zirconium oxide) is still more refractory and in spite of its greater
+cost zirkite is coming into use as a lining for electric furnaces.
+
+Silicon is next to oxygen the commonest element in the world. It forms a
+quarter of the earth's crust, yet it is unfamiliar to most of us. That
+is because it is always found combined with oxygen in the form of silica
+as quartz crystal or sand. This used to be considered too refractory to
+be blown but is found to be easily manipulable at the high temperatures
+now at the command of the glass-blower. So the chemist rejoices in
+flasks that he can heat red hot in the Bunsen burner and then plunge
+into ice water without breaking, and the cook can bake and serve in a
+dish of "pyrex," which is 80 per cent. silica.
+
+At the beginning of the twentieth century minute specimens of silicon
+were sold as laboratory curiosities at the price of $100 an ounce. Two
+years later it was turned out by the barrelful at Niagara as an
+accidental by-product and could not find a market at ten cents a pound.
+Silicon from the electric furnace appears in the form of hard,
+glittering metallic crystals.
+
+An alloy of iron and silicon, ferro-silicon, made by heating a mixture
+of iron ore, sand and coke in the electrical furnace, is used as a
+deoxidizing agent in the manufacture of steel.
+
+Since silicon has been robbed with difficulty of its oxygen it takes it
+on again with great avidity. This has been made use of in the making of
+hydrogen. A mixture of silicon (or of the ferro-silicon alloy containing
+90 per cent. of silicon) with soda and slaked lime is inert, compact and
+can be transported to any point where hydrogen is needed, say at a
+battle front. Then the "hydrogenite," as the mixture is named, is
+ignited by a hot iron ball and goes off like thermit with the production
+of great heat and the evolution of a vast volume of hydrogen gas. Or the
+ferro-silicon may be simply burned in an atmosphere of steam in a closed
+tank after ignition with a pinch of gunpowder. The iron and the silicon
+revert to their oxides while the hydrogen of the water is set free. The
+French "silikol" method consists in treating silicon with a 40 per cent.
+solution of soda.
+
+Another source of hydrogen originating with the electric furnace is
+"hydrolith," which consists of calcium hydride. Metallic calcium is
+prepared from lime in the electric furnace. Then pieces of the calcium
+are spread out in an oven heated by electricity and a current of dry
+hydrogen passed through. The gas is absorbed by the metal, forming the
+hydride (CaH_{2}). This is packed up in cans and when hydrogen is
+desired it is simply dropped into water, when it gives off the gas just
+as calcium carbide gives off acetylene.
+
+This last reaction was also used in Germany for filling Zeppelins. For
+calcium carbide is convenient and portable and acetylene, when it is
+once started, as by an electric shock, decomposes spontaneously by its
+own internal heat into hydrogen and carbon. The latter is left as a
+fine, pure lampblack, suitable for printer's ink.
+
+Napoleon, who was always on the lookout for new inventions that could be
+utilized for military purposes, seized immediately upon the balloon as
+an observation station. Within a few years after the first ascent had
+been made in Paris Napoleon took balloons and apparatus for generating
+hydrogen with him on his "archeological expedition" to Egypt in which he
+hoped to conquer Asia. But the British fleet in the Mediterranean put a
+stop to this experiment by intercepting the ship, and military aviation
+waited until the Great War for its full development. This caused a
+sudden demand for immense quantities of hydrogen and all manner of means
+was taken to get it. Water is easily decomposed into hydrogen and oxygen
+by passing an electric current through it. In various electrolytical
+processes hydrogen has been a wasted by-product since the balloon demand
+was slight and it was more bother than it was worth to collect and
+purify the hydrogen. Another way of getting hydrogen in quantity is by
+passing steam over red-hot coke. This produces the blue water-gas, which
+contains about 50 per cent. hydrogen, 40 per cent. carbon monoxide and
+the rest nitrogen and carbon dioxide. The last is removed by running the
+mixed gases through lime. Then the nitrogen and carbon monoxide are
+frozen out in an air-liquefying apparatus and the hydrogen escapes to
+the storage tank. The liquefied carbon monoxide, allowed to regain its
+gaseous form, is used in an internal combustion engine to run the plant.
+
+There are then many ways of producing hydrogen, but it is so light and
+bulky that it is difficult to get it where it is wanted. The American
+Government in the war made use of steel cylinders each holding 161 cubic
+feet of the gas under a pressure of 2000 pounds per square inch. Even
+the hydrogen used by the troops in France was shipped from America in
+this form. For field use the ferro-silicon and soda process was adopted.
+A portable generator of this type was capable of producing 10,000 cubic
+feet of the gas per hour.
+
+The discovery by a Kansas chemist of natural sources of helium may make
+it possible to free ballooning of its great danger, for helium is
+non-inflammable and almost as light as hydrogen.
+
+Other uses of hydrogen besides ballooning have already been referred to
+in other chapters. It is combined with nitrogen to form synthetic
+ammonia. It is combined with oxygen in the oxy-hydrogen blowpipe to
+produce heat. It is combined with vegetable and animal oils to convert
+them into solid fats. There is also the possibility of using it as a
+fuel in the internal combustion engine in place of gasoline, but for
+this purpose we must find some way of getting hydrogen portable or
+producible in a compact form.
+
+Aluminum, like silicon, sodium and calcium, has been rescued by violence
+from its attachment to oxygen and like these metals it reverts with
+readiness to its former affinity. Dr. Goldschmidt made use of this
+reaction in his thermit process. Powdered aluminum is mixed with iron
+oxide (rust). If the mixture is heated at any point a furious struggle
+takes place throughout the whole mass between the iron and the aluminum
+as to which metal shall get the oxygen, and the aluminum always comes
+out ahead. The temperature runs up to some 6000 degrees Fahrenheit
+within thirty seconds and the freed iron, completely liquefied, runs
+down into the bottom of the crucible, where it may be drawn off by
+opening a trap door. The newly formed aluminum oxide (alumina) floats as
+slag on top. The applications of the thermit process are innumerable.
+If, for instance, it is desired to mend a broken rail or crank shaft
+without moving it from its place, the two ends are brought together or
+fixed at the proper distance apart. A crucible filled with the thermit
+mixture is set up above the joint and the thermit ignited with a priming
+of aluminum and barium peroxide to start it off. The barium peroxide
+having a superabundance of oxygen gives it up readily and the aluminum
+thus encouraged attacks the iron oxide and robs it of its oxygen. As
+soon as the iron is melted it is run off through the bottom of the
+crucible and fills the space between the rail ends, being kept from
+spreading by a mold of refractory material such as magnesite. The two
+ends of the rail are therefore joined by a section of the same size,
+shape, substance and strength as themselves. The same process can be
+used for mending a fracture or supplying a missing fragment of a steel
+casting of any size, such as a ship's propeller or a cogwheel.
+
+[Illustration: TYPES OF GAS MASK USED BY AMERICA, THE ALLIES, AND
+GERMANY DURING THE WAR
+
+In the top row are the American masks, chronologically, from left to
+right: U.S. Navy mask (obsolete), U.S. Navy mask (final type), U.S. Army
+box respirator (used throughout the war), U.S.R.F.K. respirator,
+U.S.A.T. respirator (an all-rubber mask), U.S.K.T. respirator (a sewed
+fabric mask), and U.S. "Model 1919," ready for production when the
+armistice was signed. In the middle row, left to right, are: British
+veil (the original emergency mask used in April, 1915), British P.H.
+helmet (the next emergency mask), British box respirator (standard
+British army type), French M2 mask (original type), French Tissot
+artillery mask, and French A.R.S. mask (latest type). In the front row:
+the latest German mask, the Russian mask, Italian mask, British motor
+corps mask, U.S. rear area emergency respirator, and U.S. Connell mask]
+
+[Illustration: PUMPING MELTED WHITE PHOSPHORUS INTO HAND GRENADES
+FILLED WITH WATER--EDGEWOOD ARSENAL]
+
+[Illustration: FILLING SHELL WITH "MUSTARD GAS"
+
+Empty shells are being placed on small trucks to be run into the filling
+chamber. The large truck in the foreground contains loaded shell]
+
+For smaller work thermit has two rivals, the oxy-acetylene torch and
+electric welding. The former has been described and the latter is rather
+out of the range of this volume, although I may mention that in the
+latter part of 1918 there was launched from a British shipyard the first
+rivotless steel vessel. In this the steel plates forming the shell,
+bulkheads and floors are welded instead of being fastened together by
+rivets. There are three methods of doing this depending upon the
+thickness of the plates and the sort of strain they are subject to. The
+plates may be overlapped and tacked together at intervals by pressing
+the two electrodes on opposite sides of the same point until the spot is
+sufficiently heated to fuse together the plates here. Or roller
+electrodes may be drawn slowly along the line of the desired weld,
+fusing the plates together continuously as they go. Or, thirdly, the
+plates may be butt-welded by being pushed together edge to edge without
+overlapping and the electric current being passed from one plate to the
+other heats up the joint where the conductivity is interrupted.
+
+It will be observed that the thermit process is essentially like the
+ordinary blast furnace process of smelting iron and other metals except
+that aluminum is used instead of carbon to take the oxygen away from the
+metal in the ore. This has an advantage in case carbon-free metals are
+desired and the process is used for producing manganese, tungsten,
+titanium, molybdenum, vanadium and their allows with iron and copper.
+
+During the war thermit found a new and terrible employment, as it was
+used by the airmen for setting buildings on fire and exploding
+ammunition dumps. The German incendiary bombs consisted of a perforated
+steel nose-piece, a tail to keep it falling straight and a cylindrical
+body which contained a tube of thermit packed around with mineral wax
+containing potassium perchlorate. The fuse was ignited as the missile
+was released and the thermit, as it heated up, melted the wax and
+allowed it to flow out together with the liquid iron through the holes
+in the nose-piece. The American incendiary bombs were of a still more
+malignant type. They weighed about forty pounds apiece and were charged
+with oil emulsion, thermit and metallic sodium. Sodium decomposes water
+so that if any attempt were made to put out with a hose a fire started
+by one of these bombs the stream of water would be instantaneously
+changed into a jet of blazing hydrogen.
+
+Besides its use in combining and separating different elements the
+electric furnace is able to change a single element into its various
+forms. Carbon, for instance, is found in three very distinct forms: in
+hard, transparent and colorless crystals as the diamond, in black,
+opaque, metallic scales as graphite, and in shapeless masses and powder
+as charcoal, coke, lampblack, and the like. In the intense heat of the
+electric arc these forms are convertible one into the other according to
+the conditions. Since the third form is the cheapest the object is to
+change it into one of the other two. Graphite, plumbago or "blacklead,"
+as it is still sometimes called, is not found in many places and more
+rarely found pure. The supply was not equal to the demand until Acheson
+worked out the process of making it by packing powdered anthracite
+between the electrodes of his furnace. In this way graphite can be
+cheaply produced in any desired quantity and quality.
+
+Since graphite is infusible and incombustible except at exceedingly high
+temperatures, it is extensively used for crucibles and electrodes. These
+electrodes are made in all sizes for the various forms of electric lamps
+and furnaces from rods one-sixteenth of an inch in diameter to bars a
+foot thick and six feet long. It is graphite mixed with fine clay to
+give it the desired degree of hardness that forms the filling of our
+"lead" pencils. Finely ground and flocculent graphite treated with
+tannin may be held in suspension in liquids and even pass through
+filter-paper. The mixture with water is sold under the name of
+"aquadag," with oil as "oildag" and with grease as "gredag," for
+lubrication. The smooth, slippery scales of graphite in suspension slide
+over each other easily and keep the bearings from rubbing against each
+other.
+
+The other and more difficult metamorphosis of carbon, the transformation
+of charcoal into diamond, was successfully accomplished by Moissan in
+1894. Henri Moissan was a toxicologist, that is to say, a Professor of
+Poisoning, in the Paris School of Pharmacy, who took to experimenting
+with the electric furnace in his leisure hours and did more to
+demonstrate its possibilities than any other man. With it he isolated
+fluorine, most active of the elements, and he prepared for the first
+time in their purity many of the rare metals that have since found
+industrial employment. He also made the carbides of the various metals,
+including the now common calcium carbide. Among the problems that he
+undertook and solved was the manufacture of artificial diamonds. He
+first made pure charcoal by burning sugar. This was packed with iron in
+the hollow of a block of lime into which extended from opposite sides
+the carbon rods connected to the dynamo. When the iron had melted and
+dissolved all the carbon it could, Moissan dumped it into water or
+better into melted lead or into a hole in a copper block, for this
+cooled it most rapidly. After a crust was formed it was left to solidify
+slowly. The sudden cooling of the iron on the outside subjected the
+carbon, which was held in solution, to intense pressure and when the bit
+of iron was dissolved in acid some of the carbon was found to be
+crystallized as diamond, although most of it was graphite. To be sure,
+the diamonds were hardly big enough to be seen with the naked eye, but
+since Moissan's aim was to make diamonds, not big diamonds, he ceased
+his efforts at this point.
+
+To produce large diamonds the carbon would have to be liquefied in
+considerable quantity and kept in that state while it slowly
+crystallized. But that could only be accomplished at a temperature and
+pressure and duration unattainable as yet. Under ordinary atmospheric
+pressure carbon passes over from the solid to the gaseous phase without
+passing through the liquid, just as snow on a cold, clear day will
+evaporate without melting.
+
+Probably some one in the future will take up the problem where Moissan
+dropped it and find out how to make diamonds of any size. But it is not
+a question that greatly interests either the scientist or the
+industrialist because there is not much to be learned from it and not
+much to be made out of it. If the inventor of a process for making
+cheap diamonds could keep his electric furnace secretly in his cellar
+and market his diamonds cautiously he might get rich out of it, but he
+would not dare to turn out very large stones or too many of them, for if
+a suspicion got around that he was making them the price would fall to
+almost nothing even if he did sell another one. For the high price of
+the diamond is purely fictitious. It is in the first place kept up by
+limiting the output of the natural stone by the combination of dealers
+and, further, the diamond is valued not for its usefulness or beauty but
+by its real or supposed rarity. Chesterton says: "All is gold that
+glitters, for the glitter is the gold." This is not so true of gold, for
+if gold were as cheap as nickel it would be very valuable, since we
+should gold-plate our machinery, our ships, our bridges and our roofs.
+But if diamonds were cheap they would be good for nothing except
+grindstones and drills. An imitation diamond made of heavy glass (paste)
+cannot be distinguished from the genuine gem except by an expert. It
+sparkles about as brilliantly, for its refractive index is nearly as
+high. The reason why it is not priced so highly is because the natural
+stone has presumably been obtained through the toil and sweat of
+hundreds of negroes searching in the blue ground of the Transvaal for
+many months. It is valued exclusively by its cost. To wear a diamond
+necklace is the same as hanging a certified check for $100,000 by a
+string around the neck.
+
+Real values are enhanced by reduction in the cost of the price of
+production. Fictitious values are destroyed by it. Aluminum at
+twenty-five cents a pound is immensely more valuable to the world than
+when it is a curiosity in the chemist's cabinet and priced at $160 a
+pound.
+
+So the scope of the electric furnace reaches from the costly but
+comparatively valueless diamond to the cheap but indispensable steel. As
+F.J. Tone says, if the automobile manufacturers were deprived of Niagara
+products, the abrasives, aluminum, acetylene for welding and high-speed
+tool steel, a factory now turning out five hundred cars a day would be
+reduced to one hundred. I have here been chiefly concerned with
+electricity as effecting chemical changes in combining or separating
+elements, but I must not omit to mention its rapidly extending use as a
+source of heat, as in the production and casting of steel. In 1908 there
+were only fifty-five tons of steel produced by the electric furnace in
+the United States, but by 1918 this had risen to 511,364 tons. And
+besides ordinary steel the electric furnace has given us alloys of iron
+with the once "rare metals" that have created a new science of
+metallurgy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+METALS, OLD AND NEW
+
+
+The primitive metallurgist could only make use of such metals as he
+found free in nature, that is, such as had not been attacked and
+corroded by the ubiquitous oxygen. These were primarily gold or copper,
+though possibly some original genius may have happened upon a bit of
+meteoric iron and pounded it out into a sword. But when man found that
+the red ocher he had hitherto used only as a cosmetic could be made to
+yield iron by melting it with charcoal he opened a new era in
+civilization, though doubtless the ocher artists of that day denounced
+him as a utilitarian and deplored the decadence of the times.
+
+Iron is one of the most timid of metals. It has a great disinclination
+to be alone. It is also one of the most altruistic of the elements. It
+likes almost every other element better than itself. It has an especial
+affection for oxygen, and, since this is in both air and water, and
+these are everywhere, iron is not long without a mate. The result of
+this union goes by various names in the mineralogical and chemical
+worlds, but in common language, which is quite good enough for our
+purpose, it is called iron rust.
+
+[Illustration: By courtesy _Mineral Foote-Notes_.
+
+From Agricola's "De Re Metallica 1550." Primitive furnace for smelting
+iron ore.]
+
+Not many of us have ever seen iron, the pure metal, soft, ductile and
+white like silver. As soon as it is exposed to the air it veils itself
+with a thin film of rust and becomes black and then red. For that reason
+there is practically no iron in the world except what man has made. It
+is rarer than gold, than diamonds; we find in the earth no nuggets or
+crystals of it the size of the fist as we find of these. But
+occasionally there fall down upon us out of the clear sky great chunks
+of it weighing tons. These meteorites are the mavericks of the universe.
+We do not know where they come from or what sun or planet they belonged
+to. They are our only visitors from space, and if all the other spheres
+are like these fragments we know we are alone in the universe. For they
+contain rustless iron, and where iron does not rust man cannot live, nor
+can any other animal or any plant.
+
+Iron rusts for the same reason that a stone rolls down hill, because it
+gets rid of its energy that way. All things in the universe are
+constantly trying to get rid of energy except man, who is always trying
+to get more of it. Or, on second thought, we see that man is the
+greatest spendthrift of all, for he wants to expend so much more energy
+than he has that he borrows from the winds, the streams and the coal in
+the rocks. He robs minerals and plants of the energy which they have
+stored up to spend for their own purposes, just as he robs the bee of
+its honey and the silk worm of its cocoon.
+
+Man's chief business is in reversing the processes of nature. That is
+the way he gets his living. And one of his greatest triumphs was when he
+discovered how to undo iron rust and get the metal out of it. In the
+four thousand years since he first did this he has accomplished more
+than in the millions of years before. Without knowing the value of iron
+rust man could attain only to the culture of the Aztecs and Incas, the
+ancient Egyptians and Assyrians.
+
+The prosperity of modern states is dependent on the amount of iron rust
+which they possess and utilize. England, United States, Germany, all
+nations are competing to see which can dig the most iron rust out of the
+ground and make out of it railroads, bridges, buildings, machinery,
+battleships and such other tools and toys and then let them relapse into
+rust again. Civilization can be measured by the amount of iron rusted
+per capita, or better, by the amount rescued from rust.
+
+But we are devoting so much space to the consideration of the material
+aspects of iron that we are like to neglect its esthetic and ethical
+uses. The beauty of nature is very largely dependent upon the fact that
+iron rust and, in fact, all the common compounds of iron are colored.
+Few elements can assume so many tints. Look at the paint pot ca�ons of
+the Yellowstone. Cheap glass bottles turn out brown, green, blue, yellow
+or black, according to the amount and kind of iron they contain. We
+build a house of cream-colored brick, varied with speckled brick and
+adorned with terra cotta ornaments of red, yellow and green, all due to
+iron. Iron rusts, therefore it must be painted; but what is there better
+to paint it with than iron rust itself? It is cheap and durable, for it
+cannot rust any more than a dead man can die. And what is also of
+importance, it is a good, strong, clean looking, endurable color.
+Whenever we take a trip on the railroad and see the miles of cars, the
+acres of roofing and wall, the towns full of brick buildings, we rejoice
+that iron rust is red, not white or some leas satisfying color.
+
+We do not know why it is so. Zinc and aluminum are metals very much like
+iron in chemical properties, but all their salts are colorless. Why is
+it that the most useful of the metals forms the most beautiful
+compounds? Some say, Providence; some say, chance; some say nothing. But
+if it had not been so we would have lost most of the beauty of rocks and
+trees and human beings. For the leaves and the flowers would all be
+white, and all the men and women would look like walking corpses.
+Without color in the flower what would the bees and painters do? If all
+the grass and trees were white, it would be like winter all the year
+round. If we had white blood in our veins like some of the insects it
+would be hard lines for our poets. And what would become of our morality
+if we could not blush?
+
+  "As for me, I thrill to see
+    The bloom a velvet cheek discloses!
+  Made of dust! I well believe it,
+    So are lilies, so are roses."
+
+An etiolated earth would be hardly worth living in.
+
+The chlorophyll of the leaves and the hemoglobin of the blood are
+similar in constitution. Chlorophyll contains magnesium in place of iron
+but iron is necessary to its formation. We all know how pale a plant
+gets if its soil is short of iron. It is the iron in the leaves that
+enables the plants to store up the energy of the sunshine for their own
+use and ours. It is the iron in our blood that enables us to get the
+iron out of iron rust and make it into machines to supplement our feeble
+hands. Iron is for us internally the carrier of energy, just as in the
+form of a trolley wire or of a third rail it conveys power to the
+electric car. Withdraw the iron from the blood as indicated by the
+pallor of the cheeks, and we become weak, faint and finally die. If the
+amount of iron in the blood gets too small the disease germs that are
+always attacking us are no longer destroyed, but multiply without check
+and conquer us. When the iron ceases to work efficiently we are killed
+by the poison we ourselves generate.
+
+Counting the number of iron-bearing corpuscles in the blood is now a
+common method of determining disease. It might also be useful in moral
+diagnosis. A microscopical and chemical laboratory attached to the
+courtroom would give information of more value than some of the evidence
+now obtained. For the anemic and the florid vices need very different
+treatment. An excess or a deficiency of iron in the body is liable to
+result in criminality. A chemical system of morals might be developed on
+this basis. Among the ferruginous sins would be placed murder, violence
+and licentiousness. Among the non-ferruginous, cowardice, sloth and
+lying. The former would be mostly sins of commission, the latter, sins
+of omission. The virtues could, of course, be similarly classified; the
+ferruginous virtues would include courage, self-reliance and
+hopefulness; the non-ferruginous, peaceableness, meekness and chastity.
+According to this ethical criterion the moral man would be defined as
+one whose conduct is better than we should expect from the per cent. of
+iron in his blood.
+
+The reason why iron is able to serve this unique purpose of conveying
+life-giving air to all parts of the body is because it rusts so readily.
+Oxidation and de-oxidation proceed so quietly that the tenderest cells
+are fed without injury. The blood changes from red to blue and _vice
+versa_ with greater ease and rapidity than in the corresponding
+alternations of social status in a democracy. It is because iron is so
+rustable that it is so useful. The factories with big scrap-heaps of
+rusting machinery are making the most money. The pyramids are the most
+enduring structures raised by the hand of man, but they have not
+sheltered so many people in their forty centuries as our skyscrapers
+that are already rusting.
+
+We have to carry on this eternal conflict against rust because oxygen is
+the most ubiquitous of the elements and iron can only escape its ardent
+embraces by hiding away in the center of the earth. The united elements,
+known to the chemist as iron oxide and to the outside world as rust, are
+among the commonest of compounds and their colors, yellow and red like
+the Spanish flag, are displayed on every mountainside. From the time of
+Tubal Cain man has ceaselessly labored to divorce these elements and,
+having once separated them, to keep them apart so that the iron may be
+retained in his service. But here, as usual, man is fighting against
+nature and his gains, as always, are only temporary. Sooner or later his
+vigilance is circumvented and the metal that he has extricated by the
+fiery furnace returns to its natural affinity. The flint arrowheads, the
+bronze spearpoints, the gold ornaments, the wooden idols of prehistoric
+man are still to be seen in our museums, but his earliest steel swords
+have long since crumbled into dust.
+
+Every year the blast furnaces of the world release 72,000,000 tons of
+iron from its oxides and every year a large part, said to be a quarter
+of that amount, reverts to its primeval forms. If so, then man after
+five thousand years of metallurgical industry has barely got three years
+ahead of nature, and should he cease his efforts for a generation there
+would be little left to show that man had ever learned to extract iron
+from its ores. The old question, "What becomes of all the pins?" may be
+as well asked of rails, pipes and threshing machines. The end of all
+iron is the same. However many may be its metamorphoses while in the
+service of man it relapses at last into its original state of oxidation.
+To save a pound of iron from corrosion is then as much a benefit to the
+world as to produce another pound from the ore. In fact it is of much
+greater benefit, for it takes four pounds of coal to produce one pound
+of steel, so whenever a piece of iron is allowed to oxidize it means
+that four times as much coal must be oxidized in order to replace it.
+And the beds of coal will be exhausted before the beds of iron ore.
+
+If we are ever to get ahead, if we are to gain any respite from this
+enormous waste of labor and natural resources, we must find ways of
+preventing the iron which we have obtained and fashioned into useful
+tools from being lost through oxidation. Now there is only one way of
+keeping iron and oxygen from uniting and that is to keep them apart. A
+very thin dividing wall will serve for the purpose, for instance, a film
+of oil. But ordinary oil will rub off, so it is better to cover the
+surface with an oil-like linseed which oxidizes to a hard elastic and
+adhesive coating. If with linseed oil we mix iron oxide or some other
+pigment we have a paint that will protect iron perfectly so long as it
+is unbroken. But let the paint wear off or crack so that air can get at
+the iron, then rust will form and spread underneath the paint on all
+sides. The same is true of the porcelain-like enamel with which our
+kitchen iron ware is nowadays coated. So long as the enamel holds it is
+all right but once it is broken through at any point it begins to scale
+off and gets into our food.
+
+Obviously it would be better for some purposes if we could coat our
+iron with another and less easily oxidized metal than with such
+dissimilar substances as paint or porcelain. Now the nearest relative to
+iron is nickel, and a layer of this of any desired thickness may be
+easily deposited by electricity upon any surface however irregular.
+Nickel takes a bright polish and keeps it well, so nickel plating has
+become the favorite method of protection for small objects where the
+expense is not prohibitive. Copper plating is used for fine wires. A
+sheet of iron dipped in melted tin comes out coated with a thin adhesive
+layer of the latter metal. Such tinned plate commonly known as "tin" has
+become the favorite material for pans and cans. But if the tin is
+scratched the iron beneath rusts more rapidly than if the tin were not
+there, for an electrolytic action is set up and the iron, being the
+negative element of the couple, suffers at the expense of the tin.
+
+With zinc it is quite the opposite. Zinc is negative toward iron, so
+when the two are in contact and exposed to the weather the zinc is
+oxidized first. A zinc plating affords the protection of a Swiss Guard,
+it holds out as long as possible and when broken it perishes to the last
+atom before it lets the oxygen get at the iron. The zinc may be applied
+in four different ways. (1) It may be deposited by electrolysis as in
+nickel plating, but the zinc coating is more apt to be porous. (2) The
+sheets or articles may be dipped in a bath of melted zinc. This gives us
+the familiar "galvanized iron," the most useful and when well done the
+most effective of rust preventives. Besides these older methods of
+applying zinc there are now two new ones. (3) One is the Schoop process
+by which a wire of zinc or other metal is fed into an oxy-hydrogen air
+blast of such heat and power that it is projected as a spray of minute
+drops with the speed of bullets and any object subjected to the
+bombardment of this metallic mist receives a coating as thick as
+desired. The zinc spray is so fine and cool that it may be received on
+cloth, lace, or the bare hand. The Schoop metallizing process has
+recently been improved by the use of the electric current instead of the
+blowpipe for melting the metal. Two zinc wires connected with any
+electric system, preferably the direct, are fed into the "pistol." Where
+the wires meet an electric arc is set up and the melted zinc is sprayed
+out by a jet of compressed air. (4) In the Sherardizing process the
+articles are put into a tight drum with zinc dust and heated to 800� F.
+The zinc at this temperature attacks the iron and forms a series of
+alloys ranging from pure zinc on the top to pure iron at the bottom of
+the coating. Even if this cracks in part the iron is more or less
+protected from corrosion so long as any zinc remains. Aluminum is used
+similarly in the calorizing process for coating iron, copper or brass.
+First a surface alloy is formed by heating the metal with aluminum
+powder. Then the temperature is raised to a high degree so as to cause
+the aluminum on the surface to diffuse into the metal and afterwards it
+is again baked in contact with aluminum dust which puts upon it a
+protective plating of the pure aluminum which does not oxidize.
+
+[Illustration: PHOTOMICROGRAPHS SHOWING THE STRUCTURE OF STEEL MADE BY
+PROFESSOR E.G. MARTIN OF PURDUE UNIVERSITY
+
+1. Cold-worked steel showing ferrite and sorbite (enlarged 500 times)
+
+2. Steel showing pearlite crystals (enlarged 500 times)
+
+3. Structure characteristic of air-cooled steel (enlarged 50 times)
+
+4. The triangular structure characteristic of cast steel showing ferrite
+and pearlite (enlarged 50 times)]
+
+[Illustration: Courtesy of E.G. Mahin
+
+THE MICROSCOPIC STRUCTURE OF METALS
+
+1. Malleabilized casting; temper carbon in ferrite (enlarged 50 times)
+
+2. Type metal; lead-antimony alloy in matrix of lead (enlarged 100
+times)
+
+3. Gray cast iron; carbon as graphite (enlarged 500 times)
+
+4. Steel composed of cementite (white) and pearlite (black) (enlarged 50
+times)]
+
+Another way of protecting iron ware from rusting is to rust it. This is
+a sort of prophylactic method like that adopted by modern medicine where
+inoculation with a mild culture prevents a serious attack of the
+disease. The action of air and water on iron forms a series of compounds
+and mixtures of them. Those that contain least oxygen are hard, black
+and magnetic like iron itself. Those that have most oxygen are red and
+yellow powders. By putting on a tight coating of the black oxide we can
+prevent or hinder the oxidation from going on into the pulverulent
+stage. This is done in several ways. In the Bower-Barff process the
+articles to be treated are put into a closed retort and a current of
+superheated steam passed through for twenty minutes followed by a
+current of producer gas (carbon monoxide), to reduce any higher oxides
+that may have been formed. In the Gesner process a current of gasoline
+vapor is used as the reducing agent. The blueing of watch hands, buckles
+and the like may be done by dipping them into an oxidizing bath such as
+melted saltpeter. But in order to afford complete protection the layer
+of black oxide must be thickened by repeating the process which adds to
+the time and expense. This causes a slight enlargement and the high
+temperature often warps the ware so it is not suitable for nicely
+adjusted parts of machinery and of course tools would lose their temper
+by the heat.
+
+A new method of rust proofing which is free from these disadvantages is
+the phosphate process invented by Thomas Watts Coslett, an English
+chemist, in 1907, and developed in America by the Parker Company of
+Detroit. This consists simply in dipping the sheet iron or articles into
+a tank filled with a dilute solution of iron phosphate heated nearly to
+the boiling point by steam pipes. Bubbles of hydrogen stream off rapidly
+at first, then slower, and at the end of half an hour or longer the
+action ceases, and the process is complete. What has happened is that
+the iron has been converted into a basic iron phosphate to a depth
+depending upon the density of articles processed. Any one who has
+studied elementary qualitative analysis will remember that when he added
+ammonia to his "unknown" solution, iron and phosphoric acid, if present,
+were precipitated together, or in other words, iron phosphate is
+insoluble except in acids. Therefore a superficial film of such
+phosphate will protect the iron underneath except from acids. This film
+is not a coating added on the outside like paint and enamel or tin and
+nickel plate. It is therefore not apt to scale off and it does not
+increase the size of the article. No high heat is required as in the
+Sherardizing and Bower-Barff processes, so steel tools can be treated
+without losing their temper or edge.
+
+The deposit consisting of ferrous and ferric phosphates mixed with black
+iron oxide may be varied in composition, texture and color. It is
+ordinarily a dull gray and oiling gives a soft mat black more in
+accordance with modern taste than the shiny nickel plating that
+delighted our fathers. Even the military nowadays show more quiet taste
+than formerly and have abandoned their glittering accoutrements.
+
+The phosphate bath is not expensive and can be used continuously for
+months by adding more of the concentrated solution to keep up the
+strength and removing the sludge that is precipitated. Besides the iron
+the solution contains the phosphates of other metals such as calcium or
+strontium, manganese, molybdenum, or tungsten, according to the
+particular purpose. Since the phosphating solution does not act on
+nickel it may be used on articles that have been partly nickel-plated so
+there may be produced, for instance, a bright raised design against a
+dull black background. Then, too, the surface left by the Parker process
+is finely etched so it affords a good attachment for paint or enamel if
+further protection is needed. Even if the enamel does crack, the iron
+beneath is not so apt to rust and scale off the coating.
+
+These, then, are some of the methods which are now being used to combat
+our eternal enemy, the rust that doth corrupt. All of them are useful in
+their several ways. No one of them is best for all purposes. The claim
+of "rust-proof" is no more to be taken seriously than "fire-proof." We
+should rather, if we were finical, have to speak of "rust-resisting"
+coatings as we do of "slow-burning" buildings. Nature is insidious and
+unceasing in her efforts to bring to ruin the achievements of mankind
+and we need all the weapons we can find to frustrate her destructive
+determination.
+
+But it is not enough for us to make iron superficially resistant to rust
+from the atmosphere. We should like also to make it so that it would
+withstand corrosion by acids, then it could be used in place of the
+large and expensive platinum or porcelain evaporating pans and similar
+utensils employed in chemical works. This requirement also has been met
+in the non-corrosive forms of iron, which have come into use within the
+last five years. One of these, "tantiron," invented by a British
+metallurgist, Robert N. Lennox, in 1912, contains 15 per cent. of
+silicon. Similar products are known as "duriron" and "Buflokast" in
+America, "metilure" in France, "ileanite" in Italy and "neutraleisen" in
+Germany. It is a silvery-white close-grained iron, very hard and rather
+brittle, somewhat like cast iron but with silicon as the main additional
+ingredient in place of carbon. It is difficult to cut or drill but may
+be ground into shape by the new abrasives. It is rustproof and is not
+attacked by sulfuric, nitric or acetic acid, hot or cold, diluted or
+concentrated. It does not resist so well hydrochloric acid or sulfur
+dioxide or alkalies.
+
+The value of iron lies in its versatility. It is a dozen metals in one.
+It can be made hard or soft, brittle or malleable, tough or weak,
+resistant or flexible, elastic or pliant, magnetic or non-magnetic, more
+or less conductive to electricity, by slight changes of composition or
+mere differences of treatment. No wonder that the medieval mind ascribed
+these mysterious transformations to witchcraft. But the modern
+micrometallurgist, by etching the surface of steel and photographing it,
+shows it up as composite as a block of granite. He is then able to pick
+out its component minerals, ferrite, austenite, martensite, pearlite,
+graphite, cementite, and to show how their abundance, shape and
+arrangement contribute to the strength or weakness of the specimen. The
+last of these constituents, cementite, is a definite chemical compound,
+an iron carbide, Fe_{3}C, containing 6.6 per cent. of carbon, so hard as
+to scratch glass, very brittle, and imparting these properties to
+hardened steel and cast iron.
+
+With this knowledge at his disposal the iron-maker can work with his
+eyes open and so regulate his melt as to cause these various
+constituents to crystallize out as he wants them to. Besides, he is no
+longer confined to the alloys of iron and carbon. He has ransacked the
+chemical dictionary to find new elements to add to his alloys, and some
+of these rarities have proved to possess great practical value.
+Vanadium, for instance, used to be put into a fine print paragraph in
+the back of the chemistry book, where the class did not get to it until
+the term closed. Yet if it had not been for vanadium steel we should
+have no Ford cars. Tungsten, too, was relegated to the rear, and if the
+student remembered it at all it was because it bothered him to
+understand why its symbol should be W instead of T. But the student of
+today studies his lesson in the light of a tungsten wire and relieves
+his mind by listening to a phonograph record played with a "tungs-tone"
+stylus. When I was assistant in chemistry an "analysis" of steel
+consisted merely in the determination of its percentage of carbon, and I
+used to take Saturday for it so I could have time enough to complete the
+combustion. Now the chemists of a steel works' laboratory may have to
+determine also the tungsten, chromium, vanadium, titanium, nickel,
+cobalt, phosphorus, molybdenum, manganese, silicon and sulfur, any or
+all of them, and be spry about it, because if they do not get the report
+out within fifteen minutes while the steel is melting in the electrical
+furnace the whole batch of 75 tons may go wrong. I'm glad I quit the
+laboratory before they got to speeding up chemists so.
+
+The quality of the steel depends upon the presence and the relative
+proportions of these ingredients, and a variation of a tenth of 1 per
+cent. in certain of them will make a different metal out of it. For
+instance, the steel becomes stronger and tougher as the proportion of
+nicked is increased up to about 15 per cent. Raising the percentage to
+25 we get an alloy that does not rust or corrode and is non-magnetic,
+although both its component metals, iron and nickel, are by themselves
+attracted by the magnet. With 36 per cent. nickel and 5 per cent.
+manganese we get the alloy known as "invar," because it expands and
+contracts very little with changes of temperature. A bar of the best
+form of invar will expand less than one-millionth part of its length for
+a rise of one degree Centigrade at ordinary atmospheric temperature. For
+this reason it is used in watches and measuring instruments. The alloy
+of iron with 46 per cent. nickel is called "platinite" because its rate
+of expansion and contraction is the same as platinum and glass, and so
+it can be used to replace the platinum wire passing through the glass of
+an electric light bulb.
+
+A manganese steel of 11 to 14 per cent. is too hard to be machined. It
+has to be cast or ground into shape and is used for burglar-proof safes
+and armor plate. Chrome steel is also hard and tough and finds use in
+files, ball bearings and projectiles. Titanium, which the iron-maker
+used to regard as his implacable enemy, has been drafted into service as
+a deoxidizer, increasing the strength and elasticity of the steel. It is
+reported from France that the addition of three-tenths of 1 per cent. of
+zirconium to nickel steel has made it more resistant to the German
+perforating bullets than any steel hitherto known. The new "stainless"
+cutlery contains 12 to 14 per cent. of chromium.
+
+With the introduction of harder steels came the need of tougher tools to
+work them. Now the virtue of a good tool steel is the same as of a good
+man. It must be able to get hot without losing its temper. Steel of the
+old-fashioned sort, as everybody knows, gets its temper by being heated
+to redness and suddenly cooled by quenching or plunging it into water or
+oil. But when the point gets heated up again, as it does by friction in
+a lathe, it softens and loses its cutting edge. So the necessity of
+keeping the tool cool limited the speed of the machine.
+
+But about 1868 a Sheffield metallurgist, Robert F. Mushet, found that a
+piece of steel he was working with did not require quenching to harden
+it. He had it analyzed to discover the meaning of this peculiarity and
+learned that it contained tungsten, a rare metal unrecognized in the
+metallurgy of that day. Further investigation showed that steel to which
+tungsten and manganese or chromium had been added was tougher and
+retained its temper at high temperature better than ordinary carbon
+steel. Tools made from it could be worked up to a white heat without
+losing their cutting power. The new tools of this type invented by
+"Efficiency" Taylor at the Bethlehem Steel Works in the nineties have
+revolutionized shop practice the world over. A tool of the old sort
+could not cut at a rate faster than thirty feet a minute without
+overheating, but the new tungsten tools will plow through steel ten
+times as fast and can cut away a ton of the material in an hour. By
+means of these high-speed tools the United States was able to turn out
+five times the munitions that it could otherwise have done in the same
+time. On the other hand, if Germany alone had possessed the secret of
+the modern steels no power could have withstood her. A slight
+superiority in metallurgy has been the deciding factor in many a battle.
+Those of my readers who have had the advantages of Sunday school
+training will recall the case described in I Samuel 13:19-22.
+
+By means of these new metals armor plate has been made
+invulnerable--except to projectiles pointed with similar material.
+Flying has been made possible through engines weighing no more than two
+pounds per horse power. The cylinders of combustion engines and the
+casing of cannon have been made to withstand the unprecedented pressure
+and corrosive action of the fiery gases evolved within. Castings are
+made so hard that they cannot be cut--save with tools of the same sort.
+In the high-speed tools now used 20 or 30 per cent, of the iron is
+displaced by other ingredients; for example, tungsten from 14 to 25 per
+cent., chromium from 2 to 7 per cent., vanadium from 1/2 to 1-1/2 per
+cent., carbon from 6 to 8 per cent., with perhaps cobalt up to 4 per
+cent. Molybdenum or uranium may replace part of the tungsten.
+
+Some of the newer alloys for high-speed tools contain no iron at all.
+That which bears the poetic name of star-stone, stellite, is composed of
+chromium, cobalt and tungsten in varying proportions. Stellite keeps a
+hard cutting edge and gets tougher as it gets hotter. It is very hard
+and as good for jewelry as platinum except that it is not so expensive.
+Cooperite, its rival, is an alloy of nickel and zirconium, stronger,
+lighter and cheaper than stellite.
+
+Before the war nearly half of the world's supply of tungsten ore
+(wolframite) came from Burma. But although Burma had belonged to the
+British for a hundred years they had not developed its mineral resources
+and the tungsten trade was monopolized by the Germans. All the ore was
+shipped to Germany and the British Admiralty was content to buy from the
+Germans what tungsten was needed for armor plate and heavy guns. When
+the war broke out the British had the ore supply, but were unable at
+first to work it because they were not familiar with the processes.
+Germany, being short of tungsten, had to sneak over a little from
+Baltimore in the submarine _Deutschland_. In the United States before
+the war tungsten ore was selling at $6.50 a unit, but by the beginning
+of 1916 it had jumped to $85 a unit. A unit is 1 per cent. of tungsten
+trioxide to the ton, that is, twenty pounds. Boulder County, Colorado,
+and San Bernardino, California, then had mining booms, reminding one of
+older times. Between May and December, 1918, there was manufactured in
+the United States more than 45,500,000 pounds of tungsten steel
+containing some 8,000,000 pounds of tungsten.
+
+If tungsten ores were more abundant and the metal more easily
+manipulated, it would displace steel for many purposes. It is harder
+than steel or even quartz. It never rusts and is insoluble in acids. Its
+expansion by heat is one-third that of iron. It is more than twice as
+heavy as iron and its melting point is twice as high. Its electrical
+resistance is half that of iron and its tensile strength is a third
+greater than the strongest steel. It can be worked into wire .0002 of an
+inch in diameter, almost too thin to be seen, but as strong as copper
+wire ten times the size.
+
+The tungsten wires in the electric lamps are about .03 of an inch in
+diameter, and they give three times the light for the same consumption
+of electricity as the old carbon filament. The American manufacturers of
+the tungsten bulb have very appropriately named their lamp "Mazda" after
+the light god of the Zoroastrians. To get the tungsten into wire form
+was a problem that long baffled the inventors of the world, for it was
+too refractory to be melted in mass and too brittle to be drawn. Dr.
+W.D. Coolidge succeeded in accomplishing the feat in 1912 by reducing
+the tungstic acid by hydrogen and molding the metallic powder into a bar
+by pressure. This is raised to a white heat in the electric furnace,
+taken out and rolled down, and the process repeated some fifty times,
+until the wire is small enough so it can be drawn at a red heat through
+diamond dies of successively smaller apertures.
+
+The German method of making the lamp filaments is to squirt a mixture of
+tungsten powder and thorium oxide through a perforated diamond of the
+desired diameter. The filament so produced is drawn through a chamber
+heated to 2500� C. at a velocity of eight feet an hour, which
+crystallizes the tungsten into a continuous thread.
+
+The first metallic filament used in the electric light on a commercial
+scale was made of tantalum, the metal of Tantalus. In the period
+1905-1911 over 100,000,000 tantalus lamps were sold, but tungsten
+displaced them as soon as that metal could be drawn into wire.
+
+A recent rival of tungsten both as a filament for lamps and hardener for
+steel is molybdenum. One pound of this metal will impart more resiliency
+to steel than three or four pounds of tungsten. The molybdenum steel,
+because it does not easily crack, is said to be serviceable for
+armor-piercing shells, gun linings, air-plane struts, automobile axles
+and propeller shafts. In combination with its rival as a
+tungsten-molybdenum alloy it is capable of taking the place of the
+intolerably expensive platinum, for it resists corrosion when used for
+spark plugs and tooth plugs. European steel men have taken to molybdenum
+more than Americans. The salts of this metal can be used in dyeing and
+photography.
+
+Calcium, magnesium and aluminum, common enough in their compounds, have
+only come into use as metals since the invention of the electric
+furnace. Now the photographer uses magnesium powder for his flashlight
+when he wants to take a picture of his friends inside the house, and the
+aviator uses it when he wants to take a picture of his enemies on the
+open field. The flares prepared by our Government for the war consist of
+a sheet iron cylinder, four feet long and six inches thick, containing a
+stick of magnesium attached to a tightly rolled silk parachute twenty
+feet in diameter when expanded. The whole weighed 32 pounds. On being
+dropped from the plane by pressing a button, the rush of air set
+spinning a pinwheel at the bottom which ignited the magnesium stick and
+detonated a charge of black powder sufficient to throw off the case and
+release the parachute. The burning flare gave off a light of 320,000
+candle power lasting for ten minutes as the parachute slowly descended.
+This illuminated the ground on the darkest night sufficiently for the
+airman to aim his bombs or to take photographs.
+
+The addition of 5 or 10 per cent. of magnesium to aluminum gives an
+alloy (magnalium) that is almost as light as aluminum and almost as
+strong as steel. An alloy of 90 per cent. aluminum and 10 per cent.
+calcium is lighter and harder than aluminum and more resistant to
+corrosion. The latest German airplane, the "Junker," was made entirely
+of duralumin. Even the wings were formed of corrugated sheets of this
+alloy instead of the usual doped cotton-cloth. Duralumin is composed of
+about 85 per cent. of aluminum, 5 per cent. of copper, 5 per cent. of
+zinc and 2 per cent. of tin.
+
+When platinum was first discovered it was so cheap that ingots of it
+were gilded and sold as gold bricks to unwary purchasers. The Russian
+Government used it as we use nickel, for making small coins. But this is
+an exception to the rule that the demand creates the supply. Platinum is
+really a "rare metal," not merely an unfamiliar one. Nowhere except in
+the Urals is it found in quantity, and since it seems indispensable in
+chemical and electrical appliances, the price has continually gone up.
+Russia collapsed into chaos just when the war work made the heaviest
+demand for platinum, so the governments had to put a stop to its use for
+jewelry and photography. The "gold brick" scheme would now have to be
+reversed, for gold is used as a cheaper metal to "adulterate" platinum.
+All the members of the platinum family, formerly ignored, were pressed
+into service, palladium, rhodium, osmium, iridium, and these, alloyed
+with gold or silver, were employed more or less satisfactorily by the
+dentist, chemist and electrician as substitutes for the platinum of
+which they had been deprived. One of these alloys, composed of 20 per
+cent. palladium and 80 per cent. gold, and bearing the telescoped name
+of "palau" (palladium au-rum) makes very acceptable crucibles for the
+laboratory and only costs half as much as platinum. "Rhotanium" is a
+similar alloy recently introduced. The points of our gold pens are
+tipped with an osmium-iridium alloy. It is a pity that this family of
+noble metals is so restricted, for they are unsurpassed in tenacity and
+incorruptibility. They could be of great service to the world in war and
+peace. As the "Bad Child" says in his "Book of Beasts":
+
+  I shoot the hippopotamus with bullets made of platinum,
+  Because if I use leaden ones, his hide is sure to flatten 'em.
+
+Along in the latter half of the last century chemists had begun to
+perceive certain regularities and relationships among the various
+elements, so they conceived the idea that some sort of a pigeon-hole
+scheme might be devised in which the elements could be filed away in the
+order of their atomic weights so that one could see just how a certain
+element, known or unknown, would behave from merely observing its
+position in the series. Mendel�ef, a Russian chemist, devised the most
+ingenious of such systems called the "periodic law" and gave proof that
+there was something in his theory by predicting the properties of three
+metallic elements, then unknown but for which his arrangement showed
+three empty pigeon-holes. Sixteen years later all three of these
+predicted elements had been discovered, one by a Frenchman, one by a
+German and one by a Scandinavian, and named from patriotic impulse,
+gallium, germanium and scandium. This was a triumph of scientific
+prescience as striking as the mathematical proof of the existence of the
+planet Neptune by Leverrier before it had been found by the telescope.
+
+But although Mendel�ef's law told "the truth," it gradually became
+evident that it did not tell "the whole truth and nothing but the
+truth," as the lawyers put it. As usually happens in the history of
+science the hypothesis was found not to explain things so simply and
+completely as was at first assumed. The anomalies in the arrangement did
+not disappear on closer study, but stuck out more conspicuously. Though
+Mendel�ef had pointed out three missing links, he had failed to make
+provision for a whole group of elements since discovered, the inert
+gases of the helium-argon group. As we now know, the scheme was built
+upon the false assumptions that the elements are immutable and that
+their atomic weights are invariable.
+
+The elements that the chemists had most difficulty in sorting out and
+identifying were the heavy metals found in the "rare earths." There were
+about twenty of them so mixed up together and so much alike as to baffle
+all ordinary means of separating them. For a hundred years chemists
+worked over them and quarreled over them before they discovered that
+they had a commercial value. It was a problem as remote from
+practicality as any that could be conceived. The man in the street did
+not see why chemists should care whether there were two didymiums any
+more than why theologians should care whether there were two Isaiahs.
+But all of a sudden, in 1885, the chemical puzzle became a business
+proposition. The rare earths became household utensils and it made a big
+difference with our monthly gas bills whether the ceria and the thoria
+in the burner mantles were absolutely pure or contained traces of some
+of the other elements that were so difficult to separate.
+
+This sudden change of venue from pure to applied science came about
+through a Viennese chemist, Dr. Carl Auer, later and in consequence
+known as Baron Auer von Welsbach. He was trying to sort out the rare
+earths by means of the spectroscopic method, which consists ordinarily
+in dipping a platinum wire into a solution of the unknown substance and
+holding it in a colorless gas flame. As it burns off, each element gives
+a characteristic color to the flame, which is seen as a series of lines
+when looked at through the spectroscope. But the flash of the flame from
+the platinum wire was too brief to be studied, so Dr. Auer hit upon the
+plan of soaking a thread in the liquid and putting this in the gas jet.
+The cotton of course burned off at once, but the earths held together
+and when heated gave off a brilliant white light, very much like the
+calcium or limelight which is produced by heating a stick of quicklime
+in the oxy-hydrogen flame. But these rare earths do not require any such
+intense heat as that, for they will glow in an ordinary gas jet.
+
+So the Welsbach mantle burner came into use everywhere and rescued the
+coal gas business from the destruction threatened by the electric light.
+It was no longer necessary to enrich the gas with oil to make its flame
+luminous, for a cheaper fuel gas such as is used for a gas stove will
+give, with a mantle, a fine white light of much higher candle power than
+the ordinary gas jet. The mantles are knit in narrow cylinders on
+machines, cut off at suitable lengths, soaked in a solution of the salts
+of the rare earths and dried. Artificial silk (viscose) has been found
+better than cotton thread for the mantles, for it is solid, not hollow,
+more uniform in quality and continuous instead of being broken up into
+one-inch fibers. There is a great deal of difference in the quality of
+these mantles, as every one who has used them knows. Some that give a
+bright glow at first with the gas-cock only half open will soon break up
+or grow dull and require more gas to get any kind of a light out of
+them. Others will last long and grow better to the last. Slight
+impurities in the earths or the gas will speedily spoil the light. The
+best results are obtained from a mixture of 99 parts thoria and 1 part
+ceria. It is the ceria that gives the light, yet a little more of it
+will lower the luminosity.
+
+The non-chemical reader is apt to be confused by the strange names and
+their varied terminations, but he need not be when he learns that the
+new metals are given names ending in _-um_, such as sodium, cerium,
+thorium, and that their oxides (compounds with oxygen, the earths) are
+given the termination _-a_, like soda, ceria, thoria. So when he sees a
+name ending in _-um_ let him picture to himself a metal, any metal since
+they mostly look alike, lead or silver, for example. And when he comes
+across a name ending in _-a_ he may imagine a white powder like lime.
+Thorium, for instance, is, as its name implies, a metal named after the
+thunder god Thor, to whom we dedicate one day in each week, Thursday.
+Cerium gets its name from the Roman goddess of agriculture by way of the
+asteroid.
+
+The chief sources of the material for the Welsbach burners is monazite,
+a glittering yellow sand composed of phosphate of cerium with some 5 per
+cent. of thorium. In 1916 the United States imported 2,500,000 pounds of
+monazite from Brazil and India, most of which used to go to Germany. In
+1895 we got over a million and a half pounds from the Carolinas, but the
+foreign sand is richer and cheaper. The price of the salts of the rare
+metals fluctuates wildly. In 1895 thorium nitrate sold at $200 a pound;
+in 1913 it fell to $2.60, and in 1916 it rose to $8.
+
+Since the monazite contains more cerium than thorium and the mantles
+made from it contain more thorium than cerium, there is a superfluity of
+cerium. The manufacturers give away a pound of cerium salts with every
+purchase of a hundred pounds of thorium salts. It annoyed Welsbach to
+see the cerium residues thrown away and accumulating around his mantle
+factory, so he set out to find some use for it. He reduced the mixed
+earths to a metallic form and found that it gave off a shower of sparks
+when scratched. An alloy of cerium with 30 or 35 per cent. of iron
+proved the best and was put on the market in the form of automatic
+lighters. A big business was soon built up in Austria on the basis of
+this obscure chemical element rescued from the dump-heap. The sale of
+the cerite lighters in France threatened to upset the finances of the
+republic, which derived large revenue from its monopoly of match-making,
+so the French Government imposed a tax upon every man who carried one.
+American tourists who bought these lighters in Germany used to be much
+annoyed at being held up on the French frontier and compelled to take
+out a license. During the war the cerium sparklers were much used in the
+trenches for lighting cigarettes, but--as those who have seen "The
+Better 'Ole" will know--they sometimes fail to strike fire. Auer-metal
+or cerium-iron alloy was used in munitions to ignite hand grenades and
+to blazon the flight of trailer shells. There are many other pyrophoric
+(light-producing) alloys, including steel, which our ancestors used with
+flint before matches and percussion caps were invented.
+
+There are more than fifty metals known and not half of them have come
+into common use, so there is still plenty of room for the expansion of
+the science of metallurgy. If the reader has not forgotten his
+arithmetic of permutations he can calculate how many different alloys
+may be formed by varying the combinations and proportions of these
+fifty. We have seen how quickly elements formerly known only to
+chemists--and to some of them known only by name--have become
+indispensable in our daily life. Any one of those still unutilized may
+be found to have peculiar properties that fit it for filling a long
+unfelt want in modern civilization.
+
+Who, for instance, will find a use for gallium, the metal of France? It
+was described in 1869 by Mendel�ef in advance of its advent and has been
+known in person since 1875, but has not yet been set to work. It is
+such a remarkable metal that it must be good for something. If you saw
+it in a museum case on a cold day you might take it to be a piece of
+aluminum, but if the curator let you hold it in your hand--which he
+won't--it would melt and run over the floor like mercury. The melting
+point is 87� Fahr. It might be used in thermometers for measuring
+temperatures above the boiling point of mercury were it not for the
+peculiar fact that gallium wets glass so it sticks to the side of the
+tube instead of forming a clear convex curve on top like mercury.
+
+Then there is columbium, the American metal. It is strange that an
+element named after Columbia should prove so impractical. Columbium is a
+metal closely resembling tantalum and tantalum found a use as electric
+light filaments. A columbium lamp should appeal to our patriotism.
+
+The so-called "rare elements" are really abundant enough considering the
+earth's crust as a whole, though they are so thinly scattered that they
+are usually overlooked and hard to extract. But whenever one of them is
+found valuable it is soon found available. A systematic search generally
+reveals it somewhere in sufficient quantity to be worked. Who, then,
+will be the first to discover a use for indium, germanium, terbium,
+thulium, lanthanum, neodymium, scandium, samarium and others as unknown
+to us as tungsten was to our fathers?
+
+As evidence of the statement that it does not matter how rare an element
+may be it will come into common use if it is found to be commonly
+useful, we may refer to radium. A good rich specimen of radium ore,
+pitchblende, may contain as much, as one part in 4,000,000. Madame
+Curie, the brilliant Polish Parisian, had to work for years before she
+could prove to the world that such an element existed and for years
+afterwards before she could get the metal out. Yet now we can all afford
+a bit of radium to light up our watch dials in the dark. The amount
+needed for this is infinitesimal. If it were more it would scorch our
+skins, for radium is an element in eruption. The atom throws off
+corpuscles at intervals as a Roman candle throws off blazing balls. Some
+of these particles, the alpha rays, are atoms of another element,
+helium, charged with positive electricity and are ejected with a
+velocity of 18,000 miles a second. Some of them, the beta rays, are
+negative electrons, only about one seven-thousandth the size of the
+others, but are ejected with almost the speed of light, 186,000 miles a
+second. If one of the alpha projectiles strikes a slice of zinc sulfide
+it makes a splash of light big enough to be seen with a microscope, so
+we can now follow the flight of a single atom. The luminous watch dials
+consist of a coating of zinc sulfide under continual bombardment by the
+radium projectiles. Sir William Crookes invented this radium light
+apparatus and called it a "spinthariscope," which is Greek for
+"spark-seer."
+
+Evidently if radium is so wasteful of its substance it cannot last
+forever nor could it have forever existed. The elements then ate not
+necessarily eternal and immutable, as used to be supposed. They have a
+natural length of life; they are born and die and propagate, at least
+some of them do. Radium, for instance, is the offspring of ionium,
+which is the great-great-grandson of uranium, the heaviest of known
+elements. Putting this chemical genealogy into biblical language we
+might say: Uranium lived 5,000,000,000 years and begot Uranium X1, which
+lived 24.6 days and begot Uranium X2, which lived 69 seconds and begot
+Uranium 2, which lived 2,000,000 years and begot Ionium, which lived
+200,000 years and begot Radium, which lived 1850 years and begot Niton,
+which lived 3.85 days and begot Radium A, which lived 3 minutes and
+begot Radium B, which lived 26.8 minutes and begot Radium C, which lived
+19.5 minutes and begot Radium D, which lived 12 years and begot Radium
+E, which lived 5 days and begot Polonium, which lived 136 days and begot
+Lead.
+
+The figures I have given are the times when half the parent substance
+has gone over into the next generation. It will be seen that the chemist
+is even more liberal in his allowance of longevity than was Moses with
+the patriarchs. It appears from the above that half of the radium in any
+given specimen will be transformed in about 2000 years. Half of what is
+left will disappear in the next 2000 years, half of that in the next
+2000 and so on. The reader can figure out for himself when it will all
+be gone. He will then have the answer to the old Eleatic conundrum of
+when Achilles will overtake the tortoise. But we may say that after
+100,000 years there would not be left any radium worth mentioning, or in
+other words practically all the radium now in existence is younger than
+the human race. The lead that is found in uranium and has presumably
+descended from uranium, behaves like other lead but is lighter. Its
+atomic weight is only 206, while ordinary lead weighs 207. It appears
+then that the same chemical element may have different atomic weights
+according to its ancestry, while on the other hand different chemical
+elements may have the same atomic weight. This would have seemed
+shocking heresy to the chemists of the last century, who prided
+themselves on the immutability of the elements and did not take into
+consideration their past life or heredity. The study of these
+radioactive elements has led to a new atomic theory. I suppose most of
+us in our youth used to imagine the atom as a little round hard ball,
+but now it is conceived as a sort of solar system with an
+electropositive nucleus acting as the sun and negative electrons
+revolving around it like the planets. The number of free positive
+electrons in the nucleus varies from one in hydrogen to 92 in uranium.
+This leaves room for 92 possible elements and of these all but six are
+more or less certainly known and definitely placed in the scheme. The
+atom of uranium, weighing 238 times the atom of hydrogen, is the
+heaviest known and therefore the ultimate limit of the elements, though
+it is possible that elements may be found beyond it just as the planet
+Neptune was discovered outside the orbit of Uranus. Considering the
+position of uranium and its numerous progeny as mentioned above, it is
+quite appropriate that this element should bear the name of the father
+of all the gods.
+
+In these radioactive elements we have come upon sources of energy such
+as was never dreamed of in our philosophy. The most striking peculiarity
+of radium is that it is always a little warmer than its surroundings, no
+matter how warm these may be. Slowly, spontaneously and continuously,
+it decomposes and we know no way of hastening or of checking it. Whether
+it is cooled in liquefied air or heated to its melting point the change
+goes on just the same. An ounce of radium salt will give out enough heat
+in one hour to melt an ounce of ice and in the next hour will raise this
+water to the boiling point, and so on again and again without cessation
+for years, a fire without fuel, a realization of the philosopher's lamp
+that the alchemists sought in vain. The total energy so emitted is
+millions of times greater than that produced by any chemical combination
+such as the union of oxygen and hydrogen to form water. From the heavy
+white salt there is continually rising a faint fire-mist like the
+will-o'-the-wisp over a swamp. This gas is known as the emanation or
+niton, "the shining one." A pound of niton would give off energy at the
+rate of 23,000 horsepower; fine stuff to run a steamer, one would think,
+but we must remember that it does not last. By the sixth day the power
+would have fallen off by half. Besides, no one would dare to serve as
+engineer, for the radiation will rot away the flesh of a living man who
+comes near it, causing gnawing ulcers or curing them. It will not only
+break down the complex and delicate molecules of organic matter but will
+attack the atom itself, changing, it is believed, one element into
+another, again the fulfilment of a dream of the alchemists. And its
+rays, unseen and unfelt by us, are yet strong enough to penetrate an
+armorplate and photograph what is behind it.
+
+But radium is not the most mysterious of the elements but the least so.
+It is giving out the secret that the other elements have kept. It
+suggests to us that all the other elements in proportion to their weight
+have concealed within them similar stores of energy. Astronomers have
+long dazzled our imaginations by calculating the horsepower of the
+world, making us feel cheap in talking about our steam engines and
+dynamos when a minutest fraction of the waste dynamic energy of the
+solar system would make us all as rich as millionaires. But the heavenly
+bodies are too big for us to utilize in this practical fashion.
+
+And now the chemists have become as exasperating as the astronomers, for
+they give us a glimpse of incalculable wealth in the meanest substance.
+For wealth is measured by the available energy of the world, and if a
+few ounces of anything would drive an engine or manufacture nitrogenous
+fertilizer from the air all our troubles would be over. Kipling in his
+sketch, "With the Night Mail," and Wells in his novel, "The World Set
+Free," stretched their imaginations in trying to tell us what it would
+mean to have command of this power, but they are a little hazy in their
+descriptions of the machinery by which it is utilized. The atom is as
+much beyond our reach as the moon. We cannot rob its vault of the
+treasure.
+
+
+
+
+READING REFERENCES
+
+
+The foregoing pages will not have achieved their aim unless their
+readers have become sufficiently interested in the developments of
+industrial chemistry to desire to pursue the subject further in some of
+its branches. Assuming such interest has been aroused, I am giving below
+a few references to books and articles which may serve to set the reader
+upon the right track for additional information. To follow the rapid
+progress of applied science it is necessary to read continuously such
+periodicals as the _Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry_
+(New York), _Metallurgical and Chemical Engineering_ (New York),
+_Journal of the Society of Chemical Industry_ (London), _Chemical
+Abstracts_ (published by the American Chemical Society, Easton, Pa.),
+and the various journals devoted to special trades. The reader may need
+to be reminded that the United States Government publishes for free
+distribution or at low price annual volumes or special reports dealing
+with science and industry. Among these may be mentioned "Yearbook of the
+Department of Agriculture"; "Mineral Resources of the United States,"
+published by the United States Geological Survey in two annual volumes,
+Vol. I on the metals and Vol. II on the non-metals; the "Annual Report
+of the Smithsonian Institution," containing selected articles on pure
+and applied science; the daily "Commerce Reports" and special bulletins
+of Department of Commerce. Write for lists of publications of these
+departments.
+
+The following books on industrial chemistry in general are recommended
+for reading and reference: "The Chemistry of Commerce" and "Some
+Chemical Problems of To-Day" by Robert Kennedy Duncan (Harpers, N.Y.),
+"Modern Chemistry and Its Wonders" by Martin (Van Nostrand), "Chemical
+Discovery and Invention in the Twentieth Century" by Sir William A.
+Tilden (Dutton, N.Y.), "Discoveries and Inventions of the Twentieth
+Century" by Edward Cressy (Dutton), "Industrial Chemistry" by Allen
+Rogers (Van Nostrand).
+
+"Everyman's Chemistry" by Ellwood Hendrick (Harpers, Modern Science
+Series) is written in a lively style and assumes no previous knowledge
+of chemistry from the reader. The chapters on cellulose, gums, sugars
+and oils are particularly interesting. "Chemistry of Familiar Things" by
+S.S. Sadtler (Lippincott) is both comprehensive and comprehensible.
+
+The following are intended for young readers but are not to be despised
+by their elders who may wish to start in on an easy up-grade: "Chemistry
+of Common Things" (Allyn & Bacon, Boston) is a popular high school
+text-book but differing from most text-books in being readable and
+attractive. Its descriptions of industrial processes are brief but
+clear. The "Achievements of Chemical Science" by James C. Philip
+(Macmillan) is a handy little book, easy reading for pupils.
+"Introduction to the Study of Science" by W.P. Smith and E.G. Jewett
+(Macmillan) touches upon chemical topics in a simple way.
+
+On the history of commerce and the effect of inventions on society the
+following titles may be suggested: "Outlines of Industrial History" by
+E. Cressy (Macmillan); "The Origin of Invention," a study of primitive
+industry, by O.T. Mason (Scribner); "The Romance of Commerce" by Gordon
+Selbridge (Lane); "Industrial and Commercial Geography" or "Commerce and
+Industry" by J. Russell Smith (Holt); "Handbook of Commercial Geography"
+by G.G. Chisholm (Longmans).
+
+The newer theories of chemistry and the constitution of the atom are
+explained in "The Realities of Modern Science" by John Mills
+(Macmillan), and "The Electron" by R.A. Millikan (University of Chicago
+Press), but both require a knowledge of mathematics. The little book on
+"Matter and Energy" by Frederick Soddy (Holt) is better adapted to the
+general reader. The most recent text-book is the "Introduction to
+General Chemistry" by H.N. McCoy and E.M. Terry. (Chicago, 1919.)
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+The reader who may be interested in following up this subject will find
+references to all the literature in the summary by Helen R. Hosmer, of
+the Research Laboratory of the General Electric Company, in the _Journal
+of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry_, New York, for April, 1917.
+Bucher's paper may be found in the same journal for March, and the issue
+for September contains a full report of the action of U.S. Government
+and a comparison of the various processes. Send fifteen cents to the
+U.S. Department of Commerce (or to the nearest custom house) for
+Bulletin No. 52, Special Agents Series on "Utilization of Atmospheric
+Nitrogen" by T.H. Norton. The Smithsonian Institution of Washington has
+issued a pamphlet on "Sources of Nitrogen Compounds in the United
+States." In the 1913 report of the Smithsonian Institution there are two
+fine articles on this subject: "The Manufacture of Nitrates from the
+Atmosphere" and "The Distribution of Mankind," which discusses Sir
+William Crookes' prediction of the exhaustion of wheat land. The D. Van
+Nostrand Co., New York, publishes a monograph on "Fixation of
+Atmospheric Nitrogen" by J. Knox, also "TNT and Other Nitrotoluenes" by
+G.C. Smith. The American Cyanamid Company, New York, gives out some
+attractive literature on their process.
+
+"American Munitions 1917-1918," the report of Benedict Crowell, Director
+of Munitions, to the Secretary of War, gives a fully illustrated
+account of the manufacture of arms, explosives and toxic gases. Our war
+experience in the "Oxidation of Ammonia" is told by C.L. Parsons in
+_Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry_, June, 1919, and
+various other articles on the government munition work appeared in the
+same journal in the first half of 1919. "The Muscle Shoals Nitrate
+Plant" in _Chemical and Metallurgical Engineering_, January, 1919.
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+The Department of Agriculture or your congressman will send you
+literature on the production and use of fertilizers. From your state
+agricultural experiment station you can procure information as to local
+needs and products. Consult the articles on potash salts and phosphate
+rock in the latest volume of "Mineral Resources of the United States,"
+Part II Non-Metals (published free by the U.S. Geological Survey). Also
+consult the latest Yearbook of the Department of Agriculture. For
+self-instruction, problems and experiments get "Extension Course in
+Soils," Bulletin No. 355, U.S. Dept. of Agric. A list of all government
+publications on "Soil and Fertilizers" is sent free by Superintendent of
+Documents, Washington. The _Journal of Industrial and Engineering
+Chemistry_ for July, 1917, publishes an article by W.C. Ebaugh on
+"Potash and a World Emergency," and various articles on American sources
+of potash appeared in the same _Journal_ October, 1918, and February,
+1918. Bulletin 102, Part 2, of the United States National Museum
+contains an interpretation of the fertilizer situation in 1917 by J.E.
+Poque. On new potash deposits in Alsace and elsewhere see _Scientific
+American Supplement_, September 14, 1918.
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+Send ten cents to the Department of Commerce, Washington, for "Dyestuffs
+for American Textile and Other Industries," by Thomas H. Norton,
+Special Agents' Series, No. 96. A more technical bulletin by the same
+author is "Artificial Dyestuffs Used in the United States," Special
+Agents' Series, No. 121, thirty cents. "Dyestuff Situation in U.S.,"
+Special Agents' Series, No. 111, five cents. "Coal-Tar Products," by
+H.G. Porter, Technical Paper 89, Bureau of Mines, Department of the
+Interior, five cents. "Wealth in Waste," by Waldemar Kaempfert,
+_McClure's_, April, 1917. "The Evolution of Artificial Dyestuffs," by
+Thomas H. Norton, _Scientific American_, July 21, 1917. "Germany's
+Commercial Preparedness for Peace," by James Armstrong, _Scientific
+American_, January 29, 1916. "The Conquest of Commerce" and "American
+Made," by Edwin E. Slosson in _The Independent_ of September 6 and
+October 11, 1915. The H. Koppers Company, Pittsburgh, give out an
+illustrated pamphlet on their "By-Product Coke and Gas Ovens." The
+addresses delivered during the war on "The Aniline Color, Dyestuff and
+Chemical Conditions," by I.F. Stone, president of the National Aniline
+and Chemical Company, have been collected in a volume by the author. For
+"Dyestuffs as Medicinal Agents" by G. Heyl, see _Color Trade Journal_,
+vol. 4, p. 73, 1919. "The Chemistry of Synthetic Drugs" by Percy May,
+and "Color in Relation to Chemical Constitution" by E.R. Watson are
+published in Longmans' "Monographs on Industrial Chemistry." "Enemy
+Property in the United States" by A. Mitchell Palmer in _Saturday
+Evening Post_, July 19, 1919, tells of how Germany monopolized chemical
+industry. "The Carbonization of Coal" by V.B. Lewis (Van Nostrand,
+1912). "Research in the Tar Dye Industry" by B.C. Hesse in _Journal of
+Industrial and Engineering Chemistry_, September, 1916.
+
+Kekul� tells how he discovered the constitution of benzene in the
+_Berichte der Deutschen chemischen Gesellschaft_, V. XXIII, I, p. 1306.
+I have quoted it with some other instances of dream discoveries in _The
+Independent_ of Jan. 26, 1918. Even this innocent scientific vision has
+not escaped the foul touch of the Freudians. Dr. Alfred Robitsek in
+"Symbolisches Denken in der chemischen Forschung," _Imago_, V. I, p. 83,
+has deduced from it that Kekul� was morally guilty of the crime of
+OEdipus as well as minor misdemeanors.
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+Read up on the methods of extracting perfumes from flowers in any
+encyclopedia or in Duncan's "Chemistry of Commerce" or Tilden's
+"Chemical Discovery in the Twentieth Century" or Rogers' "Industrial
+Chemistry."
+
+The pamphlet containing a synopsis of the lectures by the late Alois von
+Isakovics on "Synthetic Perfumes and Flavors," published by the Synfleur
+Scientific Laboratories, Monticello, New York, is immensely interesting.
+Van Dyk & Co., New York, issue a pamphlet on the composition of oil of
+rose. Gildemeister's "The Volatile Oils" is excellent on the history of
+the subject. Walter's "Manual for the Essence Industry" (Wiley) gives
+methods and recipes. Parry's "Chemistry of Essential Oils and Artificial
+Perfumes," 1918 edition. "Chemistry and Odoriferous Bodies Since 1914"
+by G. Satie in _Chemie et Industrie_, vol. II, p. 271, 393. "Odor and
+Chemical Constitution," _Chemical Abstracts_, 1917, p. 3171 and _Journal
+of Society for Chemical Industry_, v. 36, p. 942.
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+The bulletin on "By-Products of the Lumber Industry" by H.K. Benson
+(published by Department of Commerce, Washington, 10 cents) contains a
+description of paper-making and wood distillation. There is a good
+article on cellulose products by H.S. Mork in _Journal of the Franklin
+Institute_, September, 1917, and in _Paper_, September 26, 1917. The
+Government Forest Products Laboratory at Madison, Wisconsin, publishes
+technical papers on distillation of wood, etc. The Forest Service of the
+U.S. Department of Agriculture is the chief source of information on
+forestry. The standard authority is Cross and Bevans' "Cellulose." For
+the acetates see the eighth volume of Worden's "Technology of the
+Cellulose Esters."
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+The speeches made when Hyatt was awarded the Perkin medal by the
+American Chemical Society for the discovery of celluloid may be found in
+the _Journal of the Society of Chemical Industry_ for 1914, p. 225. In
+1916 Baekeland received the same medal, and the proceedings are reported
+in the same _Journal_, v. 35, p. 285.
+
+A comprehensive technical paper with bibliography on "Synthetic Resins"
+by L.V. Redman appeared in the _Journal of Industrial and Engineering
+Chemistry_, January, 1914. The controversy over patent rights may be
+followed in the same _Journal_, v. 8 (1915), p. 1171, and v. 9 (1916),
+p. 207. The "Effects of Heat on Celluloid" have been examined by the
+Bureau of Standards, Washington (Technological Paper No. 98), abstract
+in _Scientific American Supplement_, June 29, 1918.
+
+For casein see Tague's article in Rogers' "Industrial Chemistry" (Van
+Nostrand). See also Worden's "Nitrocellulose Industry" and "Technology
+of the Cellulose Esters" (Van Nostrand); Hodgson's "Celluloid" and Cross
+and Bevan's "Cellulose."
+
+For references to recent research and new patent specifications on
+artificial plastics, resins, rubber, leather, wood, etc., see the
+current numbers of _Chemical Abstracts_ (Easton, Pa.) and such journals
+as the _India Rubber Journal, Paper, Textile World, Leather World_ and
+_Journal of American Leather Chemical Association._
+
+The General Bakelite Company, New York, the Redmanol Products Company,
+Chicago, the Condensite Company, Bloomfield, N.J., the Arlington
+Company, New York (handling pyralin), give out advertising literature
+regarding their respective products.
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+Sir William Tilden's "Chemical Discovery and Invention in the Twentieth
+Century" (E.P. Dutton & Co.) contains a readable chapter on rubber with
+references to his own discovery. The "Wonder Book of Rubber," issued by
+the B.F. Goodrich Rubber Company, Akron, Ohio, gives an interesting
+account of their industry. Iles: "Leading American Inventors" (Henry
+Holt & Co.) contains a life of Goodyear, the discoverer of
+vulcanization. Potts: "Chemistry of the Rubber Industry, 1912." The
+Rubber Industry: Report of the International Rubber Congress, 1914.
+Pond: "Review of Pioneer Work in Rubber Synthesis" in _Journal of the
+American Chemical Society_, 1914. Bang: "Synthetic Rubber" in
+_Metallurgical and Chemical Engineering_, May 1, 1917. Castellan:
+"L'Industrie caoutchouci�re," doctor's thesis, University of Paris,
+1915. The _India Rubber World_, New York, all numbers, especially "What
+I Saw in the Philippines," by the Editor, 1917. Pearson: "Production of
+Guayule Rubber," _Commerce Reports_, 1918, and _India Rubber World_,
+1919. "Historical Sketch of Chemistry of Rubber" by S.C. Bradford in
+_Science Progress_, v. II, p. 1.
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+"The Cane Sugar Industry" (Bulletin No. 53, Miscellaneous Series,
+Department of Commerce, 50 cents) gives agricultural and manufacturing
+costs in Hawaii, Porto Rico, Louisiana and Cuba.
+
+"Sugar and Its Value as Food," by Mary Hinman Abel. (Farmer's Bulletin
+No. 535, Department of Agriculture, free.)
+
+"Production of Sugar in the United States and Foreign Countries," by
+Perry Elliott. (Department of Agriculture, 10 cents.)
+
+"Conditions in the Sugar Market January to October, 1917," a pamphlet
+published by the American Sugar Refining Company, 117 Wall Street, New
+York, gives an admirable survey of the present situation as seen by the
+refiners.
+
+"Cuban Cane Sugar," by Robert Wiles, 1916 (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill
+Co., 75 cents), an attractive little book in simple language.
+
+"The World's Cane Sugar Industry, Past and Present," by H.C.P. Geering.
+
+"The Story of Sugar," by Prof. G.T. Surface of Yale (Appleton, 1910). A
+very interesting and reliable book.
+
+The "Digestibility of Glucose" is discussed in _Journal of Industrial
+and Engineering Chemistry_, August, 1917. "Utilization of Beet Molasses"
+in _Metallurgical and Chemical Engineering_, April 5, 1917.
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+"Maize," by Edward Alber (Bulletin of the Pan-American Union, January,
+1915).
+
+"Glucose," by Geo. W. Rolfe _(Scientific American Supplement_, May 15 or
+November 6, 1915, and in Boger's "Industrial Chemistry").
+
+On making ethyl alcohol from wood, see Bulletin No. 110, Special Agents'
+Series, Department of Commerce (10 cents), and an article by F.W.
+Kressmann in _Metallurgical and Chemical Engineering_, July 15, 1916. On
+the manufacture and uses of industrial alcohol the Department of
+Agriculture has issued for free distribution Farmer's Bulletin 269 and
+424, and Department Bulletin 182.
+
+On the "Utilization of Corn Cobs," see _Journal of Industrial and
+Engineering Chemistry_, Nov., 1918. For John Winthrop's experiment, see
+the same _Journal_, Jan., 1919.
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+President Scherer's "Cotton as a World Power" (Stokes, 1916) is a
+fascinating volume that combines the history, science and politics of
+the plant and does not ignore the poetry and legend.
+
+In the Yearbook of the Department of Agriculture for 1916 will be found
+an interesting article by H.S. Bailey on "Some American Vegetable Oils"
+(sold separate for five cents), also "The Peanut: A Great American Food"
+by same author in the Yearbook of 1917. "The Soy Bean Industry" is
+discussed in the same volume. See also: Thompson's "Cottonseed Products
+and Their Competitors in Northern Europe" (Part I, Cake and Meal; Part
+II, Edible Oils. Department of Commerce, 10 cents each). "Production and
+Conservation of Fats and Oils in the United States" (Bulletin No. 769,
+1919, U.S. Dept. of Agriculture). "Cottonseed Meal for Feeding Cattle"
+(U.S. Department of Agriculture, Farmer's Bulletin 655, free).
+"Cottonseed Industry in Foreign Countries," by T.H. Norton, 1915
+(Department of Commerce, 10 cents). "Cottonseed Products" in _Journal of
+the Society of Chemical Industry_, July 16, 1917, and Baskerville's
+article in the same journal (1915, vol. 7, p. 277). Dunstan's "Oil Seeds
+and Feeding Cakes," a volume on British problems since the war. Ellis's
+"The Hydrogenation of Oils" (Van Nostrand, 1914). Copeland's "The
+Coconut" (Macmillan). Barrett's "The Philippine Coconut Industry"
+(Bulletin No. 25, Philippine Bureau of Agriculture). "Coconuts, the
+Consols of the East" by Smith and Pope (London). "All About Coconuts" by
+Belfort and Hoyer (London). Numerous articles on copra and other oils
+appear in _U.S. Commerce Reports_ and _Philippine Journal of Science_.
+"The World Wide Search for Oils" in _The Americas_ (National City Bank,
+N.Y.). "Modern Margarine Technology" by W. Clayton in _Journal Society
+of Chemical Industry_, Dec. 5, 1917; also see _Scientific_ _American
+Supplement_, Sept. 21, 1918. A court decision on the patent rights of
+hydrogenation is given in _Journal of Industrial and Engineering
+Chemistry_ for December, 1917. The standard work on the whole subject is
+Lewkowitsch's "Chemical Technology of Oils, Fats and Waxes" (3 vols.,
+Macmillan, 1915).
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+A full account of the development of the American Warfare Service has
+been published in the _Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry_
+in the monthly issues from January to August, 1919, and an article on
+the British service in the issue of April, 1918. See also Crowell's
+Report on "America's Munitions," published by War Department.
+_Scientific American_, March 29, 1919, contains several articles. A.
+Russell Bond's "Inventions of the Great War" (Century) contains chapters
+on poison gas and explosives.
+
+Lieutenant Colonel S.J.M. Auld, Chief Gas Officer of Sir Julian Byng's
+army and a member of the British Military Mission to the United States,
+has published a volume on "Gas and Flame in Modern Warfare" (George H.
+Doran Co.).
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+See chapter in Cressy's "Discoveries and Inventions of Twentieth
+Century." "Oxy-Acetylene Welders," Bulletin No. 11, Federal Board of
+Vocational Education, Washington, June, 1918, gives practical directions
+for welding. _Reactions_, a quarterly published by Goldschmidt Thermit
+Company, N.Y., reports latest achievements of aluminothermics. Provost
+Smith's "Chemistry in America" (Appleton) tells of the experiments of
+Robert Hare and other pioneers. "Applications of Electrolysis in
+Chemical Industry" by A.F. Hall (Longmans). For recent work on
+artificial diamonds see _Scientific American Supplement_, Dec. 8, 1917,
+and August 24, 1918. On acetylene see "A Storehouse of Sleeping Energy"
+by J.M. Morehead in _Scientific American_, January 27, 1917.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+Spring's "Non-Technical Talks on Iron and Steel" (Stokes) is a model of
+popular science writing, clear, comprehensive and abundantly
+illustrated. Tilden's "Chemical Discovery in the Twentieth Century" must
+here again be referred to. The Encyclopedia Britannica is convenient for
+reference on the various metals mentioned; see the article on "Lighting"
+for the Welsbach burner. The annual "Mineral Resources of the United
+States, Part I," contains articles on the newer metals by Frank W. Hess;
+see "Tungsten" in the volume for 1914, also Bulletin No. 652, U.S.
+Geological Survey, by same author. _Foote-Notes_, the house organ of the
+Foote Mineral Company, Philadelphia, gives information on the rare
+elements. Interesting advertising literature may be obtained from the
+Titantium Alloy Manufacturing Company, Niagara Falls, N.Y.; Duriron
+Castings Company, Dayton, O.; Buffalo Foundry and Machine Company,
+Buffalo, N.Y., manufacturers of "Buflokast" acid-proof apparatus, and
+similar concerns. The following additional references may be useful:
+Stellite alloys in _Jour. Ind. & Eng. Chem._, v. 9, p. 974; Rossi's work
+on titantium in same journal, Feb., 1918; Welsbach mantles in _Journal
+Franklin Institute_, v. 14, p. 401, 585; pure alloys in _Trans. Amer.
+Electro-Chemical Society_, v. 32, p. 269; molybdenum in _Engineering_,
+1917, or _Scientific American Supplement_, Oct. 20, 1917; acid-resisting
+iron in _Sc. Amer. Sup._, May 31, 1919; ferro-alloys in _Jour. Ind. &
+Eng. Chem._, v. 10, p. 831; influence of vanadium, etc., on iron, in
+_Met. Chem. Eng._, v. 15, p. 530; tungsten in _Engineering_, v. 104, p.
+214.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+  Abrasives, 249-251
+  Acetanilid, 87
+  Acetone, 125, 154, 243, 245
+  Acetylene, 30, 154, 240-248, 257, 307, 308
+  Acheson, 249
+  Air, liquefied, 33
+  Alcohol, ethyl, 101, 102, 127, 174, 190-194, 242-244, 305
+    methyl, 101, 102, 127, 191
+  Aluminum, 31, 246-248, 255, 272, 284
+  Ammonia, 27, 29, 31, 33, 56, 64, 250
+  American dye industry, 82
+  Aniline dyes, 60-92
+  Antiseptics, 86, 87
+  Argon, 16
+  Art and nature, 8, 9, 170, 173
+  Artificial silk, 116, 118, 119
+  Aspirin, 84
+  Atomic theory, 293-296, 299
+  Aylesworth, 140
+
+  Baekeland, 137
+  Baeyer, Adolf von, 77
+  Bakelite, 138, 303
+  Balata, 159
+  Bauxite, 31
+  Beet sugar, 165, 169, 305
+  Benzene formula, 67, 301, 101
+  Berkeley, 61
+  Berthelot, 7, 94
+  Birkeland-Eyde process, 26
+  Bucher process, 32
+  Butter, 201, 208
+
+  Calcium, 246, 253
+  Calcium carbide, 30, 339
+  Camphor, 100, 131
+  Cane sugar, 164, 167, 177, 180, 305
+  Carbolic acid, 18, 64, 84, 101, 102, 137
+  Carborundum, 249-251
+  Caro and Frank process, 30
+  Casein, 142
+  Castner, 246
+  Catalyst, 28, 204
+  Celluloid, 128-135, 302
+  Cellulose, 110-127, 129, 137, 302
+  Cellulose acetate, 118, 120, 302
+  Cerium, 288-290
+  Chemical warfare, 218-235, 307
+  Chlorin, 224, 226, 250
+  Chlorophyll, 267
+  Chlorpicrin, 224, 226
+  Chromicum, 278, 280
+  Coal, distillation of, 60, 64, 70, 84, 301
+  Coal tar colors, 60-92
+  Cochineal, 79
+  Coconut oil, 203, 211-215, 306
+  Collodion, 117, 123, 130
+  Cologne, eau de, 107
+  Copra, 203, 211-215, 306
+  Corn oil, 183, 305
+  Cotton, 112, 120, 129, 197
+  Cocain, 88
+  Condensite, 141
+  Cordite, 18, 19
+  Corn products, 181-195, 305
+  Coslett process, 273
+  Cottonseed oil, 201
+  Cowles, 248
+  Creative chemistry, 7
+  Crookes, Sir William, 292, 299
+  Curie, Madame, 292
+  Cyanamid, 30, 35, 299
+  Cyanides, 32
+
+  Diamond, 259-261, 308
+  Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan, 221
+  Drugs, synthetic, 6, 84, 301
+  Duisberg, 151
+  Dyestuffs, 60-92
+
+  Edison, 84, 141
+  Ehrlich, 86, 87
+  Electric furnace, 236-262, 307
+
+  Fats, 196-217, 306
+  Fertilizers, 37, 41, 43, 46, 300
+  Flavors, synthetic, 93-109
+  Food, synthetic, 94
+  Formaldehyde, 136, 142
+  Fruit flavors, synthetic, 99, 101
+
+  Galalith, 142
+  Gas masks, 223, 226, 230, 231
+  Gerhardt, 6, 7
+  Glucose, 137, 184-189, 194, 305
+  Glycerin, 194, 203
+  Goldschmidt, 256
+  Goodyear, 161
+  Graphite, 258
+  Guayule, 159, 304
+  Guncotton, 17, 117, 125, 130
+  Gunpowder, 14, 15, 22, 234
+  Gutta percha, 159
+
+  Haber process, 27, 28
+  Hall, C.H., 247
+  Hare, Robert, 237, 245, 307
+  Harries, 149
+  Helium, 236
+  Hesse, 70, 72, 90
+  Hofmann, 72, 80
+  Huxley, 10
+  Hyatt, 128, 129, 303
+  Hydrogen, 253-255
+  Hydrogenation of oils, 202-205, 306
+
+  Indigo, 76, 79
+  Iron, 236, 253, 262-270, 308
+  Isoprene, 136, 146, 149, 150, 154
+
+  Kelp products, 53, 142
+  Kekul�'s dream, 66, 301
+
+  Lard substitutes, 209
+  Lavoisier, 6
+  Leather substitutes, 124
+  Leucite, 53
+  Liebig, 38
+  Linseed oil, 202, 205, 270
+
+  Magnesium, 283
+  Maize products, 181-196, 305
+  Manganese, 278
+  Margarin, 207-212, 307
+  Mauve, discovery of, 74
+  Mendel�ef, 285, 291
+  Mercerized cotton, 115
+  Moissan, 259
+  Molybdenum, 283, 308
+  Munition manufacture in U.S., 33, 224, 299, 307
+  Mushet, 279
+  Musk, synthetic, 96, 97, 106
+  Mustard gas, 224, 227-229
+
+  Naphthalene, 4, 142, 154
+  Nature and art, 8-13, 118, 122, 133
+  Nitrates, Chilean, 22, 24, 30, 36
+  Nitric acid derivatives, 20
+  Nitrocellulose, 17, 117
+  Nitrogen, in explosives, 14, 16, 117, 299
+    fixation, 24, 25, 29, 299
+  Nitro-glycerin, 18, 117, 214
+  Nobel, 18, 117
+
+  Oils, 196-217, 306
+  Oleomargarin, 207-212, 307
+  Orange blossoms, 99, 100
+  Osmium, 28
+  Ostwald, 29, 55
+  Oxy-hydrogen blowpipe, 246
+
+  Paper, 111, 132
+  Parker process, 273
+  Peanut oil, 206, 211, 214, 306
+  Perfumery, Art of, 103-108
+  Perfumes, synthetic, 93-109, 302
+  Perkin, W.H., 148
+  Perkin, Sir William, 72, 80, 102
+  Pharmaceutical chemistry, 6, 85-88
+  Phenol, 18, 64, 84, 101, 102, 137
+  Phonograph records, 84, 141
+  Phosphates, 56-59
+  Phosgene, 224, 225
+  Photographic developers, 88
+  Picric acid, 18, 84, 85, 226
+  Platinum, 28, 278, 280, 284, 286
+  Plastics, synthetic, 128-143
+  Pneumatic tires, 162
+  Poisonous gases in warfare, 218-235, 307
+  Potash, 37, 45-56, 300
+  Priestley, 150, 160
+  Purple, royal, 75, 79
+  Pyralin, 132, 133
+  Pyrophoric alloys, 290
+  Pyroxylin, 17, 127, 125, 130
+
+  Radium, 291, 295
+  Rare earths, 286-288, 308
+  Redmanol, 140
+  Remsen, Ira, 178
+  Refractories, 251-252
+  Resins, synthetic, 135-143
+  Rose perfume, 93, 96, 97, 99, 105
+  Rubber, natural, 155-161, 304
+    synthetic, 136, 145-163, 304
+  Rumford, Count, 160
+  Rust, protection from, 262-275
+
+  Saccharin, 178, 179
+  Salicylic acid, 88, 101
+  Saltpeter, Chilean, 22, 30, 36, 42
+  Schoop process, 272
+  Serpek process, 31
+  Silicon, 249, 253
+  Smell, sense of, 97, 98, 103, 109
+  Smith, Provost, 237, 245, 307
+  Smokeless powder, 15
+  Sodium, 148, 238, 247
+  Soil chemistry, 38, 39
+  Soy bean, 142, 211, 217, 306
+  Starch, 137, 184, 189, 190
+  Stassfort salts, 47, 49, 55
+  Stellites, 280, 308
+  Sugar, 164-180, 304
+  Sulfuric acid, 57
+
+  Tantalum, 282
+  Terpenes, 100, 154
+  Textile industry, 5, 112, 121, 300
+  Thermit, 256
+  Thermodynamics, Second law of, 145
+  Three periods of progress, 3
+  Tin plating, 271
+  Tilden, 146, 298
+  Titanium, 278, 308
+  TNT, 19, 21, 84, 299
+  Trinitrotoluol, 19, 21, 84, 299
+  Tropics, value of, 96, 156, 165, 196, 206, 213, 216
+  Tungsten, 257, 277, 281, 308
+
+  Uranium, 28
+
+  Vanadium, 277, 280, 308
+  Vanillin, 103
+  Violet perfume, 100
+  Viscose, 116
+  Vitamines, 211
+  Vulcanization, 161
+
+  Welding, 256
+  Welsbach burner, 287-289, 308
+  Wheat problem, 43, 299
+  Wood, distillation of, 126, 127
+  Wood pulp, 112, 120, 303
+
+  Ypres, Use of gases at, 221
+
+  Zinc plating, 271
+
+
+
+
+_Once a Slosson Reader_
+
+_Always a Slosson Fan_
+
+JUST PUBLISHED
+
+CHATS ON SCIENCE
+
+By E.E. SLOSSON
+
+Author of "Creative Chemistry," etc.
+
+
+Dr. Slosson is nothing short of a prodigy. He is a triple-starred
+scientist man who can bring down the highest flying scientific fact and
+tame it so that any of us can live with it and sometimes even love it.
+He can make a fairy tale out of coal-tar dyes and a laboratory into a
+joyful playhouse while it continues functioning gloriously as a
+laboratory. But to readers of "Creative Chemistry" it is wasting time to
+talk about Dr. Slosson's style.
+
+"Chats On Science," which has just been published, is made up of
+eighty-five brief chapters or sections or periods, each complete in
+itself, dealing with a gorgeous variety of subjects. They go from
+Popover Stars to Soda Water, from How Old Is Disease to Einstein in
+Words of One Syllable. The reader can begin anywhere, but when he begins
+he will ultimately read the entire series. It is good science and good
+reading. It contains some of the best writing Dr. Slosson has ever done.
+
+The Boston Transcript says: "These 'Chats' are even more fascinating,
+were that possible, than 'Creative Chemistry.' They are more marvelous
+than the most marvelous of fairy tales ... Even an adequate review could
+give little idea of the treasures of modern scientific knowledge 'Chats
+on Science' contains ... Dr. Slosson has, besides rare scientific
+knowledge, that gift of the gods--imagination."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+("Chats on Science" by E.E. Slosson is published by The Century Company,
+353 Fourth Avenue, New York City. It is sold for $2.00 at all
+bookstores, or it may be ordered from the publisher.)
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] I am quoting mostly Unstead's figures from the _Geographical
+Journal_ of 1913. See also Dickson's "The Distribution of Mankind," in
+Smithsonian Report, 1913.
+
+[2] United States Abstract of Census of Manufactures, 1914, p. 34.
+
+[3] United States Department of Agriculture, Bulletin No. 505.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CREATIVE CHEMISTRY***
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+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Creative Chemistry, by Edwin E. Slosson</title>
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+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, Creative Chemistry, by Edwin E. Slosson</h1>
+<pre>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at <a href = "https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: Creative Chemistry</p>
+<p>       Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries</p>
+<p>Author: Edwin E. Slosson</p>
+<p>Release Date: November 24, 2005  [eBook #17149]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CREATIVE CHEMISTRY***</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>E-text prepared by Kevin Handy, John Hagerson, Josephine Paolucci,<br />
+    and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br />
+    (https://www.pgdp.net/)</h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h3>The Century Books of Useful Science</h3>
+
+<h1><b>CREATIVE CHEMISTRY</b></h1>
+
+<h2>DESCRIPTIVE OF RECENT ACHIEVEMENTS IN THE CHEMICAL INDUSTRIES</h2>
+
+<h3>BY</h3>
+
+<h2>EDWIN E. SLOSSON, M.S., PH.D.</h2>
+
+<h4>LITERARY EDITOR OF <i>THE INDEPENDENT</i>, ASSOCIATE IN COLUMBIA SCHOOL OF
+JOURNALISM</h4>
+
+<h5>Author of "Great American Universities," "Major Prophets of Today," "Six
+Major Prophets," "On Acylhalogenamine Derivatives and the Beckmann
+Rearrangement," "Composition of Wyoming Petroleum," etc.</h5>
+
+<h4><i>WITH MANY ILLUSTRATIONS</i></h4>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 50px;">
+<img src="images/image002.jpg" width="50" height="48" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h4>
+NEW YORK<br />
+THE CENTURY CO.<br />
+</h4>
+
+<h4>
+Copyright, 1919, by<br />
+THE CENTURY CO.<br />
+<br />
+Copyright, 1917, 1918, 1919, by<br />
+THE INDEPENDENT CORPORATION<br />
+<br />
+<i>Published, October, 1919</i><br />
+</h4>
+<p><a name="image_1" id="image_1"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/image001.jpg" width="300" height="437" alt="From &quot;America&#39;s Munitions&quot;" title="" />
+<span class="caption">From &quot;America&#39;s Munitions&quot;</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p><b>THE PRODUCTION OF NEW AND STRONGER FORMS OF STEEL IS ONE OF THE GREATEST
+TRIUMPHS OF MODERN CHEMISTRY</b></p>
+
+<p><b>The photograph shows the manufacture of a 12-inch gun at the plant of
+the Midvale Steel Company during the late war. The gun tube, 41 feet
+long, has just been drawn from the furnace where it was tempered at
+white heat and is now ready for quenching.</b></p></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h4><a name="TO_MY_FIRST_TEACHER" id="TO_MY_FIRST_TEACHER"></a>TO MY FIRST TEACHER</h4>
+
+<h3>PROFESSOR E.H.S. BAILEY</h3> <h5>OF THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS</h5>
+
+<h4>AND MY LAST TEACHER</h4>
+
+<h3>PROFESSOR JULIUS STIEGLITZ</h3> <h5>OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO</h5>
+
+<h4>THIS VOLUME IS GRATEFULLY DEDICATED</h4>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td align='right'>I</td><td align='left'>THREE PERIODS OF PROGRESS</td><td align='right'><a href="#I"><b>3</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>II</td><td align='left'>NITROGEN</td><td align='right'><a href="#II"><b>14</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>III</td><td align='left'>FEEDING THE SOIL</td><td align='right'><a href="#III"><b>37</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>IV</td><td align='left'>COAL-TAR COLORS</td><td align='right'><a href="#IV"><b>60</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>V</td><td align='left'>SYNTHETIC PERFUMES AND FLAVORS</td><td align='right'><a href="#V"><b>93</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>VI</td><td align='left'>CELLULOSE</td><td align='right'><a href="#VI"><b>110</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>VII</td><td align='left'>SYNTHETIC PLASTICS</td><td align='right'><a href="#VII"><b>128</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>VIII</td><td align='left'>THE RACE FOR RUBBER</td><td align='right'><a href="#VIII"><b>145</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>IX</td><td align='left'>THE RIVAL SUGARS</td><td align='right'><a href="#IX"><b>164</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>X</td><td align='left'>WHAT COMES FROM CORN</td><td align='right'><a href="#X"><b>181</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XI</td><td align='left'>SOLIDIFIED SUNSHINE</td><td align='right'><a href="#XI"><b>196</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XII</td><td align='left'>FIGHTING WITH FUMES</td><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XII"><b>218</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XIII</td><td align='left'>PRODUCTS OF THE ELECTRIC FURNACE</td><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII"><b>236</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XIV</td><td align='left'>METALS, OLD AND NEW</td><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XIV"><b>263</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'></td><td align='left'>READING REFERENCES</td><td align='right'><a href="#READING_REFERENCES"><b>297</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'></td><td align='left'>INDEX</td><td align='right'><a href="#INDEX"><b>309</b></a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="A_CARD_OF_THANKS" id="A_CARD_OF_THANKS"></a>A CARD OF THANKS</h2>
+
+
+<p>This book originated in a series of articles prepared for <i>The
+Independent</i> in 1917-18 for the purpose of interesting the general
+reader in the recent achievements of industrial chemistry and providing
+supplementary reading for students of chemistry in colleges and high
+schools. I am indebted to Hamilton Holt, editor of <i>The Independent</i>,
+and to Karl V.S. Howland, its publisher, for stimulus and opportunity to
+undertake the writing of these pages and for the privilege of reprinting
+them in this form.</p>
+
+<p>In gathering the material for this volume I have received the kindly aid
+of so many companies and individuals that it is impossible to thank them
+all but I must at least mention as those to whom I am especially
+grateful for information, advice and criticism: Thomas H. Norton of the
+Department of Commerce; Dr. Bernhard C. Hesse; H.S. Bailey of the
+Department of Agriculture; Professor Julius Stieglitz of the University
+of Chicago; L.E. Edgar of the Du Pont de Nemours Company; Milton Whitney
+of the U.S. Bureau of Soils; Dr. H.N. McCoy; K.F. Kellerman of the
+Bureau of Plant Industry.</p>
+
+<p>E.E.S.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="LIST_OF_ILLUSTRATIONS" id="LIST_OF_ILLUSTRATIONS"></a>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td align='left'>The production of new and stronger forms of steel is one of the greatest triumphs of modern chemistry</td><td align='right'><i><a href="#image_1"><b>Frontispiece</b></a></i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='right'>FACING PAGE</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The hand grenades contain potential chemical energy capable of causing a vast amount of destruction when released</td><td align='right'><a href="#image_2"><b>16</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Women in a munition plant engaged in the manufacture of tri-nitro-toluol</td><td align='right'><a href="#image_3"><b>17</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>A chemical reaction on a large scale</td><td align='right'><a href="#image_4"><b>32</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Burning air in a Birkeland-Eyde furnace at the DuPont plant</td><td align='right'><a href="#image_5"><b>33</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>A battery of Birkeland-Eyde furnaces for the fixation of nitrogen at the DuPont plant</td><td align='right'><a href="#image_6"><b>33</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Fixing nitrogen by calcium carbide</td><td align='right'><a href="#image_7"><b>40</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>A barrow full of potash salts extracted from six tons of green kelp by the government chemists</td><td align='right'><a href="#image_8"><b>41</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Nature's silent method of nitrogen fixation</td><td align='right'><a href="#image_9"><b>41</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>In order to secure a new supply of potash salts the United States Government set up an experimental plant at Sutherland, California, for utilization of kelp</td><td align='right'><a href="#image_10"><b>52</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Overhead suction at the San Diego wharf pumping kelp from the barge to the digestion tanks</td><td align='right'><a href="#image_11"><b>53</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The kelp harvester gathering the seaweed from the Pacific Ocean</td><td align='right'><a href="#image_12"><b>53</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>A battery of Koppers by-product coke-ovens at the plant of the Bethlehem Steel Company, Sparrows Point, Maryland</td><td align='right'><a href="#image_13"><b>60</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>In these mixing vats at the Buffalo Works, aniline dyes are prepared</td><td align='right'><a href="#image_14"><b>61</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>A paper mill in action</td><td align='right'><a href="#image_15"><b>120</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Cellulose from wood pulp is now made into a large variety of useful articles of which a few examples are here pictured</td><td align='right'><a href="#image_16"><b>121</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Plantation rubber</td><td align='right'><a href="#image_17"><b>160</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Forest rubber</td><td align='right'><a href="#image_18"><b>160</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>In making garden hose the rubber is formed into a tube by the machine on the right and coiled on the table to the left</td><td align='right'><a href="#image_19"><b>161</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The rival sugars</td><td align='right'><a href="#image_20"><b>176</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Interior of a sugar mill showing the machinery for crushing cane to extract the juice</td><td align='right'><a href="#image_21"><b>177</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Vacuum pans of the American Sugar Refinery Company</td><td align='right'><a href="#image_22"><b>177</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Cotton seed oil as it is squeezed from the seed by the presses</td><td align='right'><a href="#image_23"><b>200</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Cotton seed oil as it comes from the compressors flowing out of the faucets</td><td align='right'><a href="#image_24"><b>201</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Splitting coconuts on the island of Tahiti</td><td align='right'><a href="#image_25"><b>216</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The electric current passing through salt water in these cells decomposes the salt into caustic soda and chlorine gas</td><td align='right'><a href="#image_26"><b>217</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Germans starting a gas attack on the Russian lines</td><td align='right'><a href="#image_27"><b>224</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Filling the cannisters of gas masks with charcoal made from fruit pits&mdash;Long Island City</td><td align='right'><a href="#image_28"><b>225</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The chlorpicrin plant at the Bdgewood Arsenal</td><td align='right'><a href="#image_29"><b>234</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Repairing the broken stern post of the <i>U.S.S. Northern Pacific</i>, the biggest marine weld in the world</td><td align='right'><a href="#image_30"><b>235</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Making aloxite in the electric furnaces by fusing coke and bauxite</td><td align='right'><a href="#image_31"><b>240</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>A block of carborundum crystals</td><td align='right'><a href="#image_32"><b>241</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Making carborundum in the electric furnace</td><td align='right'><a href="#image_33"><b>241</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Types of gas mask used by America, the Allies and Germany during the war</td><td align='right'><a href="#image_34"><b>256</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Pumping melted white phosphorus into hand grenades filled with water&mdash;Edgewood Arsenal</td><td align='right'><a href="#image_35"><b>257</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Filling shell with "mustard gas"</td><td align='right'><a href="#image_36"><b>257</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Photomicrographs showing the structure of steel made by Professor E.G. Mahin of Purdue University</td><td align='right'><a href="#image_37"><b>272</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The microscopic structure of metals</td><td align='right'><a href="#image_38"><b>273</b></a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="INTRODUCTION" id="INTRODUCTION"></a>INTRODUCTION</h2>
+
+<h3>BY JULIUS STIEGLITZ</h3>
+
+<h4>Formerly President of the American Chemical Society, Professor of
+Chemistry in The University of Chicago</h4>
+
+
+<p>The recent war as never before in the history of the world brought to
+the nations of the earth a realization of the vital place which the
+science of chemistry holds in the development of the resources of a
+nation. Some of the most picturesque features of this awakening reached
+the great public through the press. Thus, the adventurous trips of the
+<i>Deutschland</i> with its cargoes of concentrated aniline dyes, valued at
+millions of dollars, emphasized as no other incident our former
+dependence upon Germany for these products of her chemical industries.</p>
+
+<p>The public read, too, that her chemists saved Germany from an early
+disastrous defeat, both in the field of military operations and in the
+matter of economic supplies: unquestionably, without the tremendous
+expansion of her plants for the production of nitrates and ammonia from
+the air by the processes of Haber, Ostwald and others of her great
+chemists, the war would have ended in 1915, or early in 1916, from
+exhaustion of Germany's supplies of nitrate explosives, if not indeed
+from exhaustion of her food supplies as a consequence of the lack of
+nitrate and ammonia fertilizer for her fields. Inventions of substitutes
+for cotton, copper, rubber, wool and many other basic needs have been
+reported.</p>
+
+<p>These feats of chemistry, performed under the stress of dire necessity,
+have, no doubt, excited the wonder and interest of our public. It is far
+more important at this time, however, when both for war and for peace
+needs, the resources of our country are strained to the utmost, that the
+public should awaken to a clear realization of what this science of
+chemistry really means for mankind, to the realization that its wizardry
+permeates the whole life of the nation as a vitalizing, protective and
+constructive agent very much in the same way as our blood, coursing
+through our veins and arteries, carries the constructive, defensive and
+life-bringing materials to every organ in the body.</p>
+
+<p>If the layman will but understand that chemistry is the fundamental
+<i>science of the transformation of matter</i>, he will readily accept the
+validity of this sweeping assertion: he will realize, for instance, why
+exactly the same fundamental laws of the science apply to, and make
+possible scientific control of, such widely divergent national
+industries as agriculture and steel manufacturing. It governs the
+transformation of the salts, minerals and humus of our fields and the
+components of the air into corn, wheat, cotton and the innumerable other
+products of the soil; it governs no less the transformation of crude
+ores into steel and alloys, which, with the cunning born of chemical
+knowledge, may be given practically any conceivable quality of hardness,
+elasticity, toughness or strength. And exactly the same thing may be
+said of the hundreds of national activities that lie between the two
+extremes of agriculture and steel manufacture!</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, the domain of the science of the transformation of matter
+includes even life itself as its loftiest phase: from our birth to our
+return to dust the laws of chemistry are the controlling laws of life,
+health, disease and death, and the ever clearer recognition of this
+relation is the strongest force that is raising medicine from the
+uncertain realm of an art to the safer sphere of an exact science. To
+many scientific minds it has even become evident that those most
+wonderful facts of life, heredity and character, must find their final
+explanation in the chemical composition of the components of life
+producing, germinal protoplasm: mere form and shape are no longer
+supreme but are relegated to their proper place as the housing only of
+the living matter which functions chemically.</p>
+
+<p>It must be quite obvious now why thoughtful men are insisting that the
+public should be awakened to a broad realization of the significance of
+the science of chemistry for its national life.</p>
+
+<p>It is a difficult science in its details, because it has found that it
+can best interpret the visible phenomena of the material world on the
+basis of the conception of invisible minute material atoms and
+molecules, each a world in itself, whose properties may be nevertheless
+accurately deduced by a rigorous logic controlling the highest type of
+scientific imagination. But a layman is interested in the wonders of
+great bridges and of monumental buildings without feeling the need of
+inquiring into the painfully minute and extended calculations of the
+engineer and architect of the strains and stresses to which every pin
+and every bar of the great bridge and every bit of stone, every foot of
+arch in a monumental edifice, will be exposed. So the public may
+understand and appreciate with the keenest interest the results of
+chemical effort without the need of instruction in the intricacies of
+our logic, of our dealings with our minute, invisible particles.</p>
+
+<p>The whole nation's welfare demands, indeed, that our public be
+enlightened in the matter of the relation of chemistry to our national
+life. Thus, if our commerce and our industries are to survive the
+terrific competition that must follow the re&euml;stablishment of peace, our
+public must insist that its representatives in Congress preserve that
+independence in chemical manufacturing which the war has forced upon us
+in the matter of dyes, of numberless invaluable remedies to cure and
+relieve suffering; in the matter, too, of hundreds of chemicals, which
+our industries need for their successful existence.</p>
+
+<p>Unless we are independent in these fields, how easily might an
+unscrupulous competing nation do us untold harm by the mere device, for
+instance, of delaying supplies, or by sending inferior materials to this
+country or by underselling our chemical manufacturers and, after the
+destruction of our chemical independence, handicapping our industries as
+they were in the first year or two of the great war! This is not a mere
+possibility created by the imagination, for our economic history
+contains instance after instance of the purposeful undermining and
+destruction of our industries in finer chemicals, dyes and drugs by
+foreign interests bent on preserving their monopoly. If one recalls that
+through control, for instance, of dyes by a competing nation, control is
+in fact also established over products, valued in the hundreds of
+millions of dollars, in which dyes enter as an essential factor, one
+may realize indeed the tremendous industrial and commercial power which
+is controlled by the single lever&mdash;chemical dyes. Of even more vital
+moment is chemistry in the domain of health: the pitiful calls of our
+hospitals for local anesthetics to alleviate suffering on the operating
+table, the frantic appeals for the hypnotic that soothes the epileptic
+and staves off his seizure, the almost furious demands for remedy after
+remedy, that came in the early years of the war, are still ringing in
+the hearts of many of us. No wonder that our small army of chemists is
+grimly determined not to give up the independence in chemistry which war
+has achieved for us! Only a widely enlightened public, however, can
+insure the permanence of what farseeing men have started to accomplish
+in developing the power of chemistry through research in every domain
+which chemistry touches.</p>
+
+<p>The general public should realize that in the support of great chemical
+research laboratories of universities and technical schools it will be
+sustaining important centers from which the science which improves
+products, abolishes waste, establishes new industries and preserves
+life, may reach out helpfully into all the activities of our great
+nation, that are dependent on the transformation of matter.</p>
+
+<p>The public is to be congratulated upon the fact that the writer of the
+present volume is better qualified than any other man in the country to
+bring home to his readers some of the great results of modern chemical
+activity as well as some of the big problems which must continue to
+engage the attention of our chemists. Dr. Slosson has indeed the unique
+quality of combining an exact and intimate knowledge of chemistry with
+the exquisite clarity and pointedness of expression of a born writer.</p>
+
+<p>We have here an exposition by a master mind, an exposition shorn of the
+terrifying and obscuring technicalities of the lecture room, that will
+be as absorbing reading as any thrilling romance. For the story of
+scientific achievement is the greatest epic the world has ever known,
+and like the great national epics of bygone ages, should quicken the
+life of the nation by a realization of its powers and a picture of its
+possibilities.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CREATIVE_CHEMISTRY" id="CREATIVE_CHEMISTRY"></a>CREATIVE CHEMISTRY</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>La Chimie poss&eacute;de cette facult&eacute; cr&eacute;atrice &agrave; un degr&eacute; plus
+&eacute;minent que les autres sciences, parce qu'elle p&eacute;n&egrave;tre plus
+profond&eacute;ment et atteint jusqu'aux &eacute;l&eacute;ments naturels des &ecirc;tres.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;<i>Berthelot</i>.</p></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="I" id="I"></a>I</h2>
+
+<h3>THREE PERIODS OF PROGRESS</h3>
+
+
+<p>The story of Robinson Crusoe is an allegory of human history. Man is a
+castaway upon a desert planet, isolated from other inhabited worlds&mdash;if
+there be any such&mdash;by millions of miles of untraversable space. He is
+absolutely dependent upon his own exertions, for this world of his, as
+Wells says, has no imports except meteorites and no exports of any kind.
+Man has no wrecked ship from a former civilization to draw upon for
+tools and weapons, but must utilize as best he may such raw materials as
+he can find. In this conquest of nature by man there are three stages
+distinguishable:</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">1. The Appropriative Period</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">2. The Adaptive Period</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">3. The Creative Period</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>These eras overlap, and the human race, or rather its vanguard,
+civilized man, may be passing into the third stage in one field of human
+endeavor while still lingering in the second or first in some other
+respect. But in any particular line this sequence is followed. The
+primitive man picks up whatever he can find available for his use. His
+successor in the next stage of culture shapes and develops this crude
+instrument <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span>until it becomes more suitable for his purpose. But in the
+course of time man often finds that he can make something new which is
+better than anything in nature or naturally produced. The savage
+discovers. The barbarian improves. The civilized man invents. The first
+finds. The second fashions. The third fabricates.</p>
+
+<p>The primitive man was a troglodyte. He sought shelter in any cave or
+crevice that he could find. Later he dug it out to make it more roomy
+and piled up stones at the entrance to keep out the wild beasts. This
+artificial barricade, this false fa&ccedil;ade, was gradually extended and
+solidified until finally man could build a cave for himself anywhere in
+the open field from stones he quarried out of the hill. But man was not
+content with such materials and now puts up a building which may be
+composed of steel, brick, terra cotta, glass, concrete and plaster, none
+of which materials are to be found in nature.</p>
+
+<p>The untutored savage might cross a stream astride a floating tree trunk.
+By and by it occurred to him to sit inside the log instead of on it, so
+he hollowed it out with fire or flint. Later, much later, he constructed
+an ocean liner.</p>
+
+<p>Cain, or whoever it was first slew his brother man, made use of a stone
+or stick. Afterward it was found a better weapon could be made by tying
+the stone to the end of the stick, and as murder developed into a fine
+art the stick was converted into the bow and this into the catapult and
+finally into the cannon, while the stone was developed into the high
+explosive projectile. The first music to soothe the savage breast was
+the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span>soughing of the wind through the trees. Then strings were stretched
+across a crevice for the wind to play upon and there was the &AElig;olian
+harp. The second stage was entered when Hermes strung the tortoise shell
+and plucked it with his fingers and when Athena, raising the wind from
+her own lungs, forced it through a hollow reed. From these beginnings we
+have the organ and the orchestra, producing such sounds as nothing in
+nature can equal.</p>
+
+<p>The first idol was doubtless a meteorite fallen from heaven or a
+fulgurite or concretion picked up from the sand, bearing some slight
+resemblance to a human being. Later man made gods in his own image, and
+so sculpture and painting grew until now the creations of futuristic art
+could be worshiped&mdash;if one wanted to&mdash;without violation of the second
+commandment, for they are not the likeness of anything that is in heaven
+above or that is in the earth beneath or that is in the water under the
+earth.</p>
+
+<p>In the textile industry the same development is observable. The
+primitive man used the skins of animals he had slain to protect his own
+skin. In the course of time he&mdash;or more probably his wife, for it is to
+the women rather than to the men that we owe the early steps in the arts
+and sciences&mdash;fastened leaves together or pounded out bark to make
+garments. Later fibers were plucked from the sheepskin, the cocoon and
+the cotton-ball, twisted together and woven into cloth. Nowadays it is
+possible to make a complete suit of clothes, from hat to shoes, of any
+desirable texture, form and color, and not include any substance to be
+found in nature. The first metals available were those <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span>found free in
+nature such as gold and copper. In a later age it was found possible to
+extract iron from its ores and today we have artificial alloys made of
+multifarious combinations of rare metals. The medicine man dosed his
+patients with decoctions of such roots and herbs as had a bad taste or
+queer look. The pharmacist discovered how to extract from these their
+medicinal principle such as morphine, quinine and cocaine, and the
+creative chemist has discovered how to make innumerable drugs adapted to
+specific diseases and individual idiosyncrasies.</p>
+
+<p>In the later or creative stages we enter the domain of chemistry, for it
+is the chemist alone who possesses the power of reducing a substance to
+its constituent atoms and from them producing substances entirely new.
+But the chemist has been slow to realize his unique power and the world
+has been still slower to utilize his invaluable services. Until recently
+indeed the leaders of chemical science expressly disclaimed what should
+have been their proudest boast. The French chemist Lavoisier in 1793
+defined chemistry as "the science of analysis." The German chemist
+Gerhardt in 1844 said: "I have demonstrated that the chemist works in
+opposition to living nature, that he burns, destroys, analyzes, that the
+vital force alone operates by synthesis, that it reconstructs the
+edifice torn down by the chemical forces."</p>
+
+<p>It is quite true that chemists up to the middle of the last century were
+so absorbed in the destructive side of their science that they were
+blind to the constructive side of it. In this respect they were less
+prescient than their contemned predecessors, the alchemists, who,
+foolish <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span>and pretentious as they were, aspired at least to the formation
+of something new.</p>
+
+<p>It was, I think, the French chemist Berthelot who first clearly
+perceived the double aspect of chemistry, for he defined it as "the
+science of analysis <i>and synthesis</i>," of taking apart and of putting
+together. The motto of chemistry, as of all the empirical sciences, is
+<i>savoir c'est pouvoir</i>, to know in order to do. This is the pragmatic
+test of all useful knowledge. Berthelot goes on to say:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Chemistry creates its object. This creative faculty, comparable
+to that of art itself, distinguishes it essentially from the
+natural and historical sciences.... These sciences do not
+control their object. Thus they are too often condemned to an
+eternal impotence in the search for truth of which they must
+content themselves with possessing some few and often uncertain
+fragments. On the contrary, the experimental sciences have the
+power to realize their conjectures.... What they dream of that
+they can manifest in actuality....</p>
+
+<p>Chemistry possesses this creative faculty to a more eminent
+degree than the other sciences because it penetrates more
+profoundly and attains even to the natural elements of
+existences.</p></div>
+
+<p>Since Berthelot's time, that is, within the last fifty years, chemistry
+has won its chief triumphs in the field of synthesis. Organic chemistry,
+that is, the chemistry of the carbon compounds, so called because it was
+formerly assumed, as Gerhardt says, that they could only be formed by
+"vital force" of organized plants and animals, has taken a development
+far overshadowing inorganic chemistry, or the chemistry of mineral
+substances.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> Chemists have prepared or know how to prepare hundreds of
+thousands of such "organic compounds," few of which occur in the natural
+world.</p>
+
+<p>But this conception of chemistry is yet far from having been accepted by
+the world at large. This was brought forcibly to my attention during the
+publication of these chapters in "The Independent" by various letters,
+raising such objections as the following:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>When you say in your article on "What Comes from Coal Tar" that
+"Art can go ahead of nature in the dyestuff business" you have
+doubtless for the moment allowed your enthusiasm to sweep you
+away from the moorings of reason. Shakespeare, anticipating you
+and your "Creative Chemistry," has shown the utter
+untenableness of your position:</p></div>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Nature is made better by no mean,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 4em;">But nature makes that mean: so o'er that art,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Which, you say, adds to nature, is an art</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 4em;">That nature makes.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>How can you say that art surpasses nature when you know very
+well that nothing man is able to make can in any way equal the
+perfection of all nature's products?</p>
+
+<p>It is blasphemous of you to claim that man can improve the
+works of God as they appear in nature. Only the Creator can
+create. Man only imitates, destroys or defiles God's handiwork.</p></div>
+
+<p>No, it was not in momentary absence of mind that I claimed that man
+could improve upon nature in the making of dyes. I not only said it, but
+I proved it. I not only proved it, but I can back it up. I will give a
+million dollars to anybody finding in nature dyestuffs as numerous,
+varied, brilliant, pure and cheap as those that are manufactured in the
+laboratory. I haven't <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span>that amount of money with me at the moment, but
+the dyers would be glad to put it up for the discovery of a satisfactory
+natural source for their tinctorial materials. This is not an opinion of
+mine but a matter of fact, not to be decided by Shakespeare, who was not
+acquainted with the aniline products.</p>
+
+<p>Shakespeare in the passage quoted is indulging in his favorite amusement
+of a play upon words. There is a possible and a proper sense of the word
+"nature" that makes it include everything except the supernatural.
+Therefore man and all his works belong to the realm of nature. A
+tenement house in this sense is as "natural" as a bird's nest, a peapod
+or a crystal.</p>
+
+<p>But such a wide extension of the term destroys its distinctive value. It
+is more convenient and quite as correct to use "nature" as I have used
+it, in contradistinction to "art," meaning by the former the products of
+the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms, excluding the designs,
+inventions and constructions of man which we call "art."</p>
+
+<p>We cannot, in a general and abstract fashion, say which is superior, art
+or nature, because it all depends on the point of view. The worm loves a
+rotten log into which he can bore. Man prefers a steel cabinet into
+which the worm cannot bore. If man cannot improve Upon nature he has no
+motive for making anything. Artificial products are therefore superior
+to natural products as measured by man's convenience, otherwise they
+would have no reason for existence.</p>
+
+<p>Science and Christianity are at one in abhorring the natural man and
+calling upon the civilized man to fight and subdue him. The conquest of
+nature, not the imitation <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span>of nature, is the whole duty of man.
+Metchnikoff and St. Paul unite in criticizing the body we were born
+with. St. Augustine and Huxley are in agreement as to the eternal
+conflict between man and nature. In his Romanes lecture on "Evolution
+and Ethics" Huxley said: "The ethical progress of society depends, not
+on imitating the cosmic process, still less on running away from it, but
+on combating it," and again: "The history of civilization details the
+steps by which man has succeeded in building up an artificial world
+within the cosmos."</p>
+
+<p>There speaks the true evolutionist, whose one desire is to get away from
+nature as fast and far as possible. Imitate Nature? Yes, when we cannot
+improve upon her. Admire Nature? Possibly, but be not blinded to her
+defects. Learn from Nature? We should sit humbly at her feet until we
+can stand erect and go our own way. Love Nature? Never! She is our
+treacherous and unsleeping foe, ever to be feared and watched and
+circumvented, for at any moment and in spite of all our vigilance she
+may wipe out the human race by famine, pestilence or earthquake and
+within a few centuries obliterate every trace of its achievement. The
+wild beasts that man has kept at bay for a few centuries will in the end
+invade his palaces: the moss will envelop his walls and the lichen
+disrupt them. The clam may survive man by as many millennia as it
+preceded him. In the ultimate devolution of the world animal life will
+disappear before vegetable, the higher plants will be killed off before
+the lower, and finally the three kingdoms of nature will be reduced to
+one, the mineral. Civilized man, enthroned in his citadel and defended
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span>by all the forces of nature that he has brought under his control, is
+after all in the same situation as a savage, shivering in the darkness
+beside his fire, listening to the pad of predatory feet, the rustle of
+serpents and the cry of birds of prey, knowing that only the fire keeps
+his enemies off, but knowing too that every stick he lays on the fire
+lessens his fuel supply and hastens the inevitable time when the beasts
+of the jungle will make their fatal rush.</p>
+
+<p>Chaos is the "natural" state of the universe. Cosmos is the rare and
+temporary exception. Of all the million spheres this is apparently the
+only one habitable and of this only a small part&mdash;the reader may draw
+the boundaries to suit himself&mdash;can be called civilized. Anarchy is the
+natural state of the human race. It prevailed exclusively all over the
+world up to some five thousand years ago, since which a few peoples have
+for a time succeeded in establishing a certain degree of peace and
+order. This, however, can be maintained only by strenuous and persistent
+efforts, for society tends naturally to sink into the chaos out of which
+it has arisen.</p>
+
+<p>It is only by overcoming nature that man can rise. The sole salvation
+for the human race lies in the removal of the primal curse, the sentence
+of hard labor for life that was imposed on man as he left Paradise. Some
+folks are trying to elevate the laboring classes; some are trying to
+keep them down. The scientist has a more radical remedy; he wants to
+annihilate the laboring classes by abolishing labor. There is no longer
+any need for human labor in the sense of personal toil, for the physical
+energy necessary to accomplish all <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span>kinds of work may be obtained from
+external sources and it can be directed and controlled without extreme
+exertion. Man's first effort in this direction was to throw part of his
+burden upon the horse and ox or upon other men. But within the last
+century it has been discovered that neither human nor animal servitude
+is necessary to give man leisure for the higher life, for by means of
+the machine he can do the work of giants without exhaustion. But the
+introduction of machines, like every other step of human progress, met
+with the most violent opposition from those it was to benefit. "Smash
+'em!" cried the workingman. "Smash 'em!" cried the poet. "Smash 'em!"
+cried the artist. "Smash 'em!" cried the theologian. "Smash 'em!" cried
+the magistrate. This opposition yet lingers and every new invention,
+especially in chemistry, is greeted with general distrust and often with
+legislative prohibition.</p>
+
+<p>Man is the tool-using animal, and the machine, that is, the power-driven
+tool, is his peculiar achievement. It is purely a creation of the human
+mind. The wheel, its essential feature, does not exist in nature. The
+lever, with its to-and-fro motion, we find in the limbs of all animals,
+but the continuous and revolving lever, the wheel, cannot be formed of
+bone and flesh. Man as a motive power is a poor thing. He can only
+convert three or four thousand calories of energy a day and he does that
+very inefficiently. But he can make an engine that will handle a hundred
+thousand times that, twice as efficiently and three times as long. In
+this way only can he get rid of pain and toil and gain the wealth he
+wants.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span>Gradually then he will substitute for the natural world an artificial
+world, molded nearer to his heart's desire. Man the Artifex will
+ultimately master Nature and reign supreme over his own creation until
+chaos shall come again. In the ancient drama it was <i>deus ex machina</i>
+that came in at the end to solve the problems of the play. It is to the
+same supernatural agency, the divinity in machinery, that we must look
+for the salvation of society. It is by means of applied science that the
+earth can be made habitable and a decent human life made possible.
+Creative evolution is at last becoming conscious.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="II" id="II"></a>II</h2>
+
+<h3>NITROGEN</h3>
+
+<h3>PRESERVER AND DESTROYER OF LIFE</h3>
+
+
+<p>In the eyes of the chemist the Great War was essentially a series of
+explosive reactions resulting in the liberation of nitrogen. Nothing
+like it has been seen in any previous wars. The first battles were
+fought with cellulose, mostly in the form of clubs. The next were fought
+with silica, mostly in the form of flint arrowheads and spear-points.
+Then came the metals, bronze to begin with and later iron. The
+nitrogenous era in warfare began when Friar Roger Bacon or Friar
+Schwartz&mdash;whichever it was&mdash;ground together in his mortar saltpeter,
+charcoal and sulfur. The Chinese, to be sure, had invented gunpowder
+long before, but they&mdash;poor innocents&mdash;did not know of anything worse to
+do with it than to make it into fire-crackers. With the introduction of
+"villainous saltpeter" war ceased to be the vocation of the nobleman and
+since the nobleman had no other vocation he began to become extinct. A
+bullet fired from a mile away is no respecter of persons. It is just as
+likely to kill a knight as a peasant, and a brave man as a coward. You
+cannot fence with a cannon ball nor overawe it with a plumed hat. The
+only thing you can do is to hide and shoot back. Now you cannot hide if
+you send up a column of smoke by day and a pillar of fire by night&mdash;the
+most conspicuous of signals&mdash;every time you shoot. So the next step <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span>was
+the invention of a smokeless powder. In this the oxygen necessary for
+the combustion is already in such close combination with its fuel, the
+carbon and hydrogen, that no black particles of carbon can get away
+unburnt. In the old-fashioned gunpowder the oxygen necessary for the
+combustion of the carbon and sulfur was in a separate package, in the
+molecule of potassium nitrate, and however finely the mixture was
+ground, some of the atoms, in the excitement of the explosion, failed to
+find their proper partners at the moment of dispersal. The new gunpowder
+besides being smokeless is ashless. There is no black sticky mass of
+potassium salts left to foul the gun barrel.</p>
+
+<p>The gunpowder period of warfare was actively initiated at the battle of
+Cressy, in which, as a contemporary historian says, "The English guns
+made noise like thunder and caused much loss in men and horses."
+Smokeless powder as invented by Paul Vieille was adopted by the French
+Government in 1887. This, then, might be called the beginning of the
+guncotton or nitrocellulose period&mdash;or, perhaps in deference to the
+caveman's club, the second cellulose period of human warfare. Better,
+doubtless, to call it the "high explosive period," for various other
+nitro-compounds besides guncotton are being used.</p>
+
+<p>The important thing to note is that all the explosives from gunpowder
+down contain nitrogen as the essential element. It is customary to call
+nitrogen "an inert element" because it was hard to get it into
+combination with other elements. It might, on the other hand, be looked
+upon as an active element because it acts so energetically in getting
+out of its compounds. We can <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span>dodge the question by saying that nitrogen
+is a most unreliable and unsociable element. Like Kipling's cat it walks
+by its wild lone.</p>
+
+<p>It is not so bad as Argon the Lazy and the other celibate gases of that
+family, where each individual atom goes off by itself and absolutely
+refuses to unite even temporarily with any other atom. The nitrogen
+atoms will pair off with each other and stick together, but they are
+reluctant to associate with other elements and when they do the
+combination is likely to break up any moment. You all know people like
+that, good enough when by themselves but sure to break up any club,
+church or society they get into. Now, the value of nitrogen in warfare
+is due to the fact that all the atoms desert in a body on the field of
+battle. Millions of them may be lying packed in a gun cartridge, as
+quiet as you please, but let a little disturbance start in the
+neighborhood&mdash;say a grain of mercury fulminate flares up&mdash;and all the
+nitrogen atoms get to trembling so violently that they cannot be
+restrained. The shock spreads rapidly through the whole mass. The
+hydrogen and carbon atoms catch up the oxygen and in an instant they are
+off on a stampede, crowding in every direction to find an exit, and
+getting more heated up all the time. The only movable side is the cannon
+ball in front, so they all pound against that and give it such a shove
+that it goes ten miles before it stops. The external bombardment by the
+cannon ball is, therefore, preceded by an internal bombardment on the
+cannon ball by the molecules of the hot gases, whose speed is about as
+great as the speed of the projectile that they propel.</p>
+
+<p><a name="image_2" id="image_2"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 288px;">
+<img src="images/image032.jpg" width="288" height="435" alt="&copy; Underwood &amp; Underwood" title="" />
+<span class="caption">&copy; Underwood &amp; Underwood</span>
+</div>
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p><b>THE HAND GRENADES WHICH THESE WOMEN ARE BORING</b></p><p> <b>will contain potential
+chemical energy capable of causing a vast amount of destruction when
+released. During the war the American Government placed orders for
+68,000,000 such grenades as are here shown.</b></p>
+</div>
+<p><a name="image_3" id="image_3"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 421px;">
+<img src="images/image033.jpg" width="421" height="290" alt="&copy; International Film Service, Inc." title="" />
+<span class="caption">&copy; International Film Service, Inc.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p><b>WOMEN IN A MUNITION PLANT ENGAGED IN THE MANUFACTURE OF
+TRI-NITRO-TOLUOL, THE MOST IMPORTANT OF MODERN HIGH EXPLOSIVES</b></p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span>The active agent in all these explosives is the nitrogen atom in
+combination with two oxygen atoms, which the chemist calls the "nitro
+group" and which he represents by NO<sub>2</sub>. This group was, as I have
+said, originally used in the form of saltpeter or potassium nitrate, but
+since the chemist did not want the potassium part of it&mdash;for it fouled
+his guns&mdash;he took the nitro group out of the nitrate by means of
+sulfuric acid and by the same means hooked it on to some compound of
+carbon and hydrogen that would burn without leaving any residue, and
+give nothing but gases. One of the simplest of these hydrocarbon
+derivatives is glycerin, the same as you use for sunburn. This mixed
+with nitric and sulfuric acids gives nitroglycerin, an easy thing to
+make, though I should not advise anybody to try making it unless he has
+his life insured. But nitroglycerin is uncertain stuff to keep and being
+a liquid is awkward to handle. So it was mixed with sawdust or porous
+earth or something else that would soak it up. This molded into sticks
+is our ordinary dynamite.</p>
+
+<p>If instead of glycerin we take cellulose in the form of wood pulp or
+cotton and treat this with nitric acid in the presence of sulfuric we
+get nitrocellulose or guncotton, which is the chief ingredient of
+smokeless powder.</p>
+
+<p>Now guncotton looks like common cotton. It is too light and loose to
+pack well into a gun. So it is dissolved with ether and alcohol or
+acetone to make a plastic mass that can be molded into rods and cut into
+grains of suitable shape and size to burn at the proper speed.</p>
+
+<p>Here, then, we have a liquid explosive, nitroglycerin, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span>that has to be
+soaked up in some porous solid, and a porous solid, guncotton, that has
+to soak up some liquid. Why not solve both difficulties together by
+dissolving the guncotton in the nitroglycerin and so get a double
+explosive? This is a simple idea. Any of us can see the sense of
+it&mdash;once it is suggested to us. But Alfred Nobel, the Swedish chemist,
+who thought it out first in 1878, made millions out of it. Then,
+apparently alarmed at the possible consequences of his invention, he
+bequeathed the fortune he had made by it to found international prizes
+for medical, chemical and physical discoveries, idealistic literature
+and the promotion of peace. But his posthumous efforts for the
+advancement of civilization and the abolition of war did not amount to
+much and his high explosives were later employed to blow into pieces the
+doctors, chemists, authors and pacifists he wished to reward.</p>
+
+<p>Nobel's invention, "cordite," is composed of nitroglycerin and
+nitrocellulose with a little mineral jelly or vaseline. Besides cordite
+and similar mixtures of nitroglycerin and nitrocellulose there are two
+other classes of high explosives in common use.</p>
+
+<p>One is made from carbolic acid, which is familiar to us all by its use
+as a disinfectant. If this is treated with nitric and sulfuric acids we
+get from it picric acid, a yellow crystalline solid. Every government
+has its own secret formula for this type of explosive. The British call
+theirs "lyddite," the French "melinite" and the Japanese "shimose."</p>
+
+<p>The third kind of high explosives uses as its base toluol. This is not
+so familiar to us as glycerin, cotton or carbolic acid. It is one of the
+coal tar products, an <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span>inflammable liquid, resembling benzene. When
+treated with nitric acid in the usual way it takes up like the others
+three nitro groups and so becomes tri-nitro-toluol. Realizing that
+people could not be expected to use such a mouthful of a word, the
+chemists have suggested various pretty nicknames, trotyl, tritol,
+trinol, tolite and trilit, but the public, with the wilfulness it always
+shows in the matter of names, persists in calling it TNT, as though it
+were an author like G.B.S., or G.K.C, or F.P.A. TNT is the latest of
+these high explosives and in some ways the best of them. Picric acid has
+the bad habit of attacking the metals with which it rests in contact
+forming sensitive picrates that are easily set off, but TNT is inert
+toward metals and keeps well. TNT melts far below the boiling point of
+water so can be readily liquefied and poured into shells. It is
+insensitive to ordinary shocks. A rifle bullet can be fired through a
+case of it without setting it off, and if lighted with a match it burns
+quietly. The amazing thing about these modern explosives, the organic
+nitrates, is the way they will stand banging about and burning, yet the
+terrific violence with which they blow up when shaken by an explosive
+wave of a particular velocity like that of a fulminating cap. Like
+picric acid, TNT stains the skin yellow and causes soreness and
+sometimes serious cases of poisoning among the employees, mostly girls,
+in the munition factories. On the other hand, the girls working with
+cordite get to using it as chewing gum; a harmful habit, not because of
+any danger of being blown up by it, but because nitroglycerin is a heart
+stimulant and they do not need that.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/image037.jpg" width="600" height="397" alt="The Genealogical Tree of Nitric Acid From W.Q. Whitman&#39;s
+&quot;The Story of Nitrates in the War,&quot; General Science Quarterly" title="" />
+<span class="caption">The Genealogical Tree of Nitric Acid From W.Q. Whitman&#39;s
+&quot;The Story of Nitrates in the War,&quot; General Science Quarterly</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span>TNT is by no means smokeless. The German shells that exploded with a
+cloud of black smoke and which British soldiers called "Black Marias,"
+"coal-boxes" or "Jack Johnsons" were loaded with it. But it is an
+advantage to have a shell show where it strikes, although a disadvantage
+to have it show where it starts.</p>
+
+<p>It is these high explosives that have revolutionized warfare. As soon as
+the first German shell packed with these new nitrates burst inside the
+Gruson cupola at Li&egrave;ge and tore out its steel and concrete by the roots
+the world knew that the day of the fixed fortress was gone. The armies
+deserted their expensively prepared fortifications and took to the
+trenches. The British troops in France found their weapons futile and
+sent across the Channel the cry of "Send us high explosives or we
+perish!" The home Government was slow to heed the appeal, but no
+progress was made against the Germans until the Allies had the means to
+blast them out of their entrenchments by shells loaded with five hundred
+pounds of TNT.</p>
+
+<p>All these explosives are made from nitric acid and this used to be made
+from nitrates such as potassium nitrate or saltpeter. But nitrates are
+rarely found in large quantities. Napoleon and Lee had a hard time to
+scrape up enough saltpeter from the compost heaps, cellars and caves for
+their gunpowder, and they did not use as much nitrogen in a whole
+campaign as was freed in a few days' cannonading on the Somme. Now there
+is one place in the world&mdash;and so far as we know one only&mdash;where
+nitrates are to be found abundantly. This is in a desert on the western
+slope of the Andes where ancient guano deposits have decomposed and
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span>there was not enough rain to wash away their salts. Here is a bed two
+miles wide, two hundred miles long and five feet deep yielding some
+twenty to fifty per cent. of sodium nitrate. The deposit originally
+belonged to Peru, but Chile fought her for it and got it in 1881. Here
+all countries came to get their nitrates for agriculture and powder
+making. Germany was the largest customer and imported 750,000 tons of
+Chilean nitrate in 1913, besides using 100,000 tons of other nitrogen
+salts. By this means her old, wornout fields were made to yield greater
+harvests than our fresh land. Germany and England were like two duelists
+buying powder at the same shop. The Chilean Government, pocketing an
+export duty that aggregated half a billion dollars, permitted the
+saltpeter to be shoveled impartially into British and German ships, and
+so two nitrogen atoms, torn from their Pacific home and parted, like
+Evangeline and Gabriel, by transportation oversea, may have found
+themselves flung into each other's arms from the mouths of opposing
+howitzers in the air of Flanders. Goethe could write a romance on such a
+theme.</p>
+
+<p>Now the moment war broke out this source of supply was shut off to both
+parties, for they blockaded each other. The British fleet closed up the
+German ports while the German cruisers in the Pacific took up a position
+off the coast of Chile in order to intercept the ships carrying nitrates
+to England and France. The Panama Canal, designed to afford relief in
+such an emergency, caved in most inopportunely. The British sent a fleet
+to the Pacific to clear the nitrate route, but it was outranged and
+defeated on November 1, 1914. Then a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span>stronger British fleet was sent
+out and smashed the Germans off the Falkland Islands on December 8. But
+for seven weeks the nitrate route had been closed while the chemical
+reactions on the Marne and Yser were decomposing nitrogen-compounds at
+an unheard of rate.</p>
+
+<p>England was now free to get nitrates for her munition factories, but
+Germany was still bottled up. She had stored up Chilean nitrates in
+anticipation of the war and as soon as it was seen to be coming she
+bought all she could get in Europe. But this supply was altogether
+inadequate and the war would have come to an end in the first winter if
+German chemists had not provided for such a contingency in advance by
+working out methods of getting nitrogen from the air. Long ago it was
+said that the British ruled the sea and the French the land so that left
+nothing to the German but the air. The Germans seem to have taken this
+jibe seriously and to have set themselves to make the most of the aerial
+realm in order to challenge the British and French in the fields they
+had appropriated. They had succeeded so far that the Kaiser when he
+declared war might well have considered himself the Prince of the Power
+of the Air. He had a fleet of Zeppelins and he had means for the
+fixation of nitrogen such as no other nation possessed. The Zeppelins
+burst like wind bags, but the nitrogen plants worked and made Germany
+independent of Chile not only during the war, but in the time of peace.</p>
+
+<p>Germany during the war used 200,000 tons of nitric acid a year in
+explosives, yet her supply of nitrogen is exhaustless.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/image041.jpg" width="600" height="459" alt="World production and consumption of fixed inorganic
+nitrogen expressed in tons nitrogen
+
+From The Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry, March,
+1919." title="" />
+<span class="caption">World production and consumption of fixed inorganic
+nitrogen expressed in tons nitrogen
+
+From The Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry, March,
+1919.</span>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Nitrogen is free as air. That is the trouble; it is too free. It is
+fixed nitrogen that we want and that we are willing to pay for; nitrogen
+in combination with some other elements in the form of food or
+fertilizer so we can make use of it as we set it free. Fixed nitrogen in
+its cheapest form, Chile saltpeter, rose to $250 during the war. Free
+nitrogen costs nothing and is good for nothing. If a land-owner has a
+right to an expanding pyramid of air above him to the limits of the
+atmosphere&mdash;as, I believe, the courts have decided in the eaves-dropping
+cases&mdash;then for every square foot of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span>his ground he owns as much
+nitrogen as he could buy for $2500. The air is four-fifths free nitrogen
+and if we could absorb it in our lungs as we do the oxygen of the other
+fifth a few minutes breathing would give us a full meal. But we let this
+free nitrogen all out again through our noses and then go and pay 35
+cents a pound for steak or 60 cents a dozen for eggs in order to get
+enough combined nitrogen to live on. Though man is immersed in an ocean
+of nitrogen, yet he cannot make use of it. He is like Coleridge's
+"Ancient Mariner" with "water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to
+drink."</p>
+
+<p>Nitrogen is, as Hood said not so truly about gold, "hard to get and hard
+to hold." The bacteria that form the nodules on the roots of peas and
+beans have the power that man has not of utilizing free nitrogen.
+Instead of this quiet inconspicuous process man has to call upon the
+lightning when he wants to fix nitrogen. The air contains the oxygen and
+nitrogen which it is desired to combine to form nitrates but the atoms
+are paired, like to like. Passing an electric spark through the air
+breaks up some of these pairs and in the confusion of the shock the
+lonely atoms seize on their nearest neighbor and so may get partners of
+the other sort. I have seen this same thing happen in a square dance
+where somebody made a blunder. It is easy to understand the reaction if
+we represent the atoms of oxygen and nitrogen by the initials of their
+names in this fashion:</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">NN&nbsp; +&nbsp; OO&nbsp;  &#8594;&nbsp;  NO + NO</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">&nbsp;nitrogen&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; oxygen&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp; nitric oxide</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span>The &#8594; represents Jove's thunderbolt, a stroke of artificial
+lightning. We see on the left the molecules of oxygen and nitrogen,
+before taking the electric treatment, as separate elemental pairs, and
+then to the right of the arrow we find them as compound molecules of
+nitric oxide. This takes up another atom of oxygen from the air and
+becomes NOO, or using a subscript figure to indicate the number of atoms
+and so avoid repeating the letter, NO<sub>2</sub> which is the familiar nitro
+group of nitric acid (HO&mdash;NO<sub>2</sub>) and of its salts, the nitrates, and of
+its organic compounds, the high explosives. The NO<sub>2</sub> is a brown and
+evil-smelling gas which when dissolved in water (HOH) and further
+oxidized is completely converted into nitric acid.</p>
+
+<p>The apparatus which effects this transformation is essentially a
+gigantic arc light in a chimney through which a current of hot air is
+blown. The more thoroughly the air comes under the action of the
+electric arc the more molecules of nitrogen and oxygen will be broken up
+and rearranged, but on the other hand if the mixture of gases remains in
+the path of the discharge the NO molecules are also broken up and go
+back into their original form of NN and OO. So the object is to spread
+out the electric arc as widely as possible and then run the air through
+it rapidly. In the Sch&ouml;nherr process the electric arc is a spiral flame
+twenty-three feet long through which the air streams with a vortex
+motion. In the Birkeland-Eyde furnace there is a series of semi-circular
+arcs spread out by the repellent force of a powerful electric magnet in
+a flaming disc seven feet in diameter with a temperature of 6300&deg; F. In
+the Pauling furnace the electrodes between which <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span>the current strikes
+are two cast iron tubes curving upward and outward like the horns of a
+Texas steer and cooled by a stream of water passing through them. These
+electric furnaces produce two or three ounces of nitric acid for each
+kilowatt-hour of current consumed. Whether they can compete with the
+natural nitrates and the products of other processes depends upon how
+cheaply they can get their electricity. Before the war there were
+several large installations in Norway and elsewhere where abundant water
+power was available and now the Norwegians are using half a million
+horse power continuously in the fixation of nitrogen and the rest of the
+world as much again. The Germans had invested largely in these foreign
+oxidation plants, but shortly before the war they had sold out and
+turned their attention to other processes not requiring so much
+electrical energy, for their country is poorly provided with water
+power. The Haber process, that they made most of, is based upon as
+simple a reaction as that we have been considering, for it consists in
+uniting two elemental gases to make a compound, but the elements in this
+case are not nitrogen and oxygen, but nitrogen and hydrogen. This gives
+ammonia instead of nitric acid, but ammonia is useful for its own
+purposes and it can be converted into nitric acid if this is desired.
+The reaction is:</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">NN&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp; +&nbsp;  HH + HH + HH &#8594; NHHH + NHHH</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Nitrogen&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;hydrogen&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  ammonia</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>The animals go in two by two, but they come out four by four. Four
+molecules of the mixed elements are turned into two molecules and so the
+gas shrinks to half <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span>its volume. At the same time it acquires an
+odor&mdash;familiar to us when we are curing a cold&mdash;that neither of the
+original gases had. The agent that effects the transformation in this
+case is not the electric spark&mdash;for this would tend to work the reaction
+backwards&mdash;but uranium, a rare metal, which has the peculiar property of
+helping along a reaction while seeming to take no part in it. Such a
+substance is called a catalyst. The action of a catalyst is rather
+mysterious and whenever we have a mystery we need an analogy. We may,
+then, compare the catalyst to what is known as "a good mixer" in
+society. You know the sort of man I mean. He may not be brilliant or
+especially talkative, but somehow there is always "something doing" at a
+picnic or house-party when he is along. The tactful hostess, the salon
+leader, is a social catalyst. The trouble with catalysts, either human
+or metallic, is that they are rare and that sometimes they get sulky and
+won't work if the ingredients they are supposed to mix are unsuitable.</p>
+
+<p>But the uranium, osmium, platinum or whatever metal is used as a
+catalyzing agent is expensive and although it is not used up it is
+easily "poisoned," as the chemists say, by impurities in the gases. The
+nitrogen and the hydrogen for the Haber process must then be prepared
+and purified before trying to combine them into ammonia. The nitrogen is
+obtained by liquefying air by cold and pressure and then boiling off the
+nitrogen at 194&deg; C. The oxygen left is useful for other purposes. The
+hydrogen needed is extracted by a similar process of fractional
+distillation from "water-gas," the blue-flame burning gas used for
+heating.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> Then the nitrogen and hydrogen, mixed in the proportion of one
+to three, as shown in the reaction given above, are compressed to two
+hundred atmospheres, heated to 1300&deg; F. and passed over the finely
+divided uranium. The stream of gas that comes out contains about four
+per cent. of ammonia, which is condensed to a liquid by cooling and the
+uncombined hydrogen and nitrogen passed again through the apparatus.</p>
+
+<p>The ammonia can be employed in refrigeration and other ways but if it is
+desired to get the nitrogen into the form of nitric acid it has to be
+oxidized by the so-called Ostwald process. This is the reaction:</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">NH<sub>3</sub>&nbsp; +&nbsp; 4O&nbsp;  &#8594;&nbsp;  HNO<sub>3</sub> + H<sub>2</sub>O</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">ammonia&nbsp; oxygen&nbsp; &nbsp; nitric acid&nbsp; water</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>The catalyst used to effect this combination is the metal platinum in
+the form of fine wire gauze, since the action takes place only on the
+surface. The ammonia gas is mixed with air which supplies the oxygen and
+the heated mixture run through the platinum gauze at the rate of several
+yards a second. Although the gases come in contact with the platinum
+only a five-hundredth part of a second yet eighty-five per cent. is
+converted into nitric acid.</p>
+
+<p>The Haber process for the making of ammonia by direct synthesis from its
+constituent elements and the supplemental Ostwald process for the
+conversion of the ammonia into nitric acid were the salvation of
+Germany. As soon as the Germans saw that their dash toward Paris had
+been stopped at the Marne they knew that they were in for a long war and
+at once made plans for a supply of fixed nitrogen. The chief German dye
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span>factories, the Badische Anilin and Soda-Fabrik, promptly put
+$100,000,000 into enlarging its plant and raised its production of
+ammonium sulfate from 30,000 to 300,000 tons. One German electrical firm
+with aid from the city of Berlin contracted to provide 66,000,000 pounds
+of fixed nitrogen a year at a cost of three cents a pound for the next
+twenty-five years. The 750,000 tons of Chilean nitrate imported annually
+by Germany contained about 116,000 tons of the essential element
+nitrogen. The fourteen large plants erected during the war can fix in
+the form of nitrates 500,000 tons of nitrogen a year, which is more than
+twice the amount needed for internal consumption. So Germany is now not
+only independent of the outside world but will have a surplus of
+nitrogen products which could be sold even in America at about half what
+the farmer has been paying for South American saltpeter.</p>
+
+<p>Besides the Haber or direct process there are other methods of making
+ammonia which are, at least outside of Germany, of more importance. Most
+prominent of these is the cyanamid process. This requires electrical
+power since it starts with a product of the electrical furnace, calcium
+carbide, familiar to us all as a source of acetylene gas.</p>
+
+<p>If a stream of nitrogen is passed over hot calcium carbide it is taken
+up by the carbide according to the following equation:</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">CaC<sub>2</sub>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; +&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; N<sub>2</sub>&nbsp; &nbsp; &#8594;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp; CaCN<sub>2</sub>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; +&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; C</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">calcium carbide nitrogen&nbsp;  calcium cyanamid&nbsp; carbon</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Calcium cyanamid was discovered in 1895 by Caro and Franke when they
+were trying to work out a new <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span>process for making cyanide to use in
+extracting gold. It looks like stone and, under the name of
+lime-nitrogen, or Kalkstickstoff, or nitrolim, is sold as a fertilizer.
+If it is desired to get ammonia, it is treated with superheated steam.
+The reaction produces heat and pressure, so it is necessary to carry it
+on in stout autoclaves or enclosed kettles. The cyanamid is completely
+and quickly converted into pure ammonia and calcium carbonate, which is
+the same as the limestone from which carbide was made. The reaction is:</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">CaCN<sub>2</sub>&nbsp; +&nbsp; 3H<sub>2</sub>O&nbsp;  &#8594;&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; CaCO<sub>3</sub>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; +&nbsp; 2NH<sub>3</sub></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">calcium cyanamid&nbsp; water&nbsp;  calcium carbonate&nbsp; ammonia</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Another electrical furnace method, the Serpek process, uses aluminum
+instead of calcium for the fixation of nitrogen. Bauxite, or impure
+aluminum oxide, the ordinary mineral used in the manufacture of metallic
+aluminum, is mixed with coal and heated in a revolving electrical
+furnace through which nitrogen is passing. The equation is:</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Al<sub>2</sub>O<sub>3</sub> &nbsp;&nbsp;+ &nbsp;&nbsp;3C&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;N<sub>2</sub>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&#8594;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;2AlN&nbsp;&nbsp;+&nbsp;&nbsp;3CO</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">aluminum&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;carbon&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; nitrogen&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;aluminum&nbsp;&nbsp;carbon</span><br />&nbsp;
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">oxide&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  nitride&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;  monoxide</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Then the aluminum nitride is treated with steam under pressure, which
+produces ammonia and gives back the original aluminum oxide, but in a
+purer form than the mineral from which was made</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">2AlN&nbsp; +&nbsp; 3H<sub>2</sub>O &#8594; 2NH<sub>3</sub> + Al<sub>2</sub>O<sub>3</sub></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Aluminum&nbsp; water&nbsp; &nbsp;  ammonia&nbsp;  aluminum oxide</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">nitride</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>The Serpek process is employed to some extent in France in connection
+with the aluminum industry. These are the principal processes for the
+fixation of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span>nitrogen now in use, but they by no means exhaust the
+possibilities. For instance, Professor John C. Bucher, of Brown
+University, created a sensation in 1917 by announcing a new process
+which he had worked out with admirable completeness and which has some
+very attractive features. It needs no electric power or high pressure
+retorts or liquid air apparatus. He simply fills a twenty-foot tube with
+briquets made out of soda ash, iron and coke and passes producer gas
+through the heated tube. Producer gas contains nitrogen since it is made
+by passing air over hot coal. The reaction is:</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">2Na<sub>2</sub>CO<sub>3</sub>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; + &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;4C &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; N<sub>2</sub>&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp; =&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;  2NaCN + 3CO</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">sodium&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;  carbon&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; nitrogen&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; sodium&nbsp;  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;carbon</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">carbonate&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;cyanide&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;  monoxide</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>The iron here acts as the catalyst and converts two harmless substances,
+sodium carbonate, which is common washing soda, and carbon, into two of
+the most deadly compounds known to man, cyanide and carbon monoxide,
+which is what kills you when you blow out the gas. Sodium cyanide is a
+salt of hydrocyanic acid, which for, some curious reason is called
+"Prussic acid." It is so violent a poison that, as the freshman said in
+a chemistry recitation, "a single drop of it placed on the tongue of a
+dog will kill a man."</p>
+
+<p>But sodium cyanide is not only useful in itself, for the extraction of
+gold and cleaning of silver, but can be converted into ammonia, and a
+variety of other compounds such as urea and oxamid, which are good
+fertilizers; sodium ferrocyanide, that makes Prussian blue; and oxalic
+acid used in dyeing. Professor Bucher claimed that his furnace could be
+set up in a day at a cost of less than $100 and could turn out 150
+pounds of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span>sodium cyanide in twenty-four hours. This process was placed
+freely at the disposal of the United States Government for the war and a
+10-ton plant was built at Saltville, Va., by the Ordnance Department.
+But the armistice put a stop to its operations and left the future of
+the process undetermined.</p>
+<p><a name="image_4" id="image_4"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 424px;">
+<img src="images/image050.jpg" width="424" height="268" alt="A CHEMICAL REACTION ON A LARGE SCALE" title="" />
+<span class="caption">A CHEMICAL REACTION ON A LARGE SCALE</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p><b>From the chemist's standpoint modern warfare consists in the rapid
+liberation of nitrogen from its compounds</b></p>
+</div>
+
+<p><a name="image_5" id="image_5"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 423px;">
+<img src="images/image051a.jpg" width="423" height="264" alt="Courtesy of E.I. du Pont de Nemours Co." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Courtesy of E.I. du Pont de Nemours Co.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p><b>BURNING AIR IN A BIRKELAND-EYDE FURNACE AT THE DU PONT PLANT</b></p>
+
+<p><b>An electric arc consuming about 4000 horse-power of energy is passing
+between the U-shaped electrodes which are made of copper tube cooled by
+an internal current of water. On the sides of the chamber are seen the
+openings through which the air passes impinging directly on both sides
+of the surface of the disk of flame. This flame is approximately seven
+feet in diameter and appears to be continuous although an alternating
+current of fifty cycles a second is used. The electric arc is spread
+into this disk flame by the repellent power of an electro-magnet the
+pointed pole of which is seen at bottom of the picture. Under this
+intense heat a part of the nitrogen and oxygen of the air combine to
+form oxides of nitrogen which when dissolved in water form the nitric
+acid used in explosives.</b></p>
+</div>
+<p><a name="image_6" id="image_6"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 430px;">
+<img src="images/image051b.jpg" width="430" height="264" alt="Courtesy of E.I. du Pont de Nemours Co." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Courtesy of E.I. du Pont de Nemours Co.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p><b>A BATTERY OF BIRKELAND-EYDE FURNACES FOR THE FIXATION OF NITROGEN AT THE
+DU PONT PLANT</b></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>We might have expected that the fixation of nitrogen by passing an
+electrical spark through hot air would have been an American invention,
+since it was Franklin who snatched the lightning from the heavens as
+well as the scepter from the tyrant and since our output of hot air is
+unequaled by any other nation. But little attention was paid to the
+nitrogen problem until 1916 when it became evident that we should soon
+be drawn into a war "with a first class power." On June 3, 1916,
+Congress placed $20,000,000 at the disposal of the president for
+investigation of "the best, cheapest and most available means for the
+production of nitrate and other products for munitions of war and useful
+in the manufacture of fertilizers and other useful products by water
+power or any other power." But by the time war was declared on April 6,
+1917, no definite program had been approved and by the time the
+armistice was signed on November 11, 1918, no plants were in active
+operation. But five plants had been started and two of them were nearly
+ready to begin work when they were closed by the ending of the war.
+United States Nitrate Plant No. 1 was located at Sheffield, Alabama, and
+was designed for the production of ammonia by "direct action" from
+nitrogen and hydrogen according to the plans of the American Chemical
+Company. Its capacity was calculated at 60,000 pounds of anhydrous
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span>ammonia a day, half of which was to be oxidized to nitric acid. Plant
+No. 2 was erected at Muscle Shoals, Alabama, to use the process of the
+American Cyanamid Company. This was contracted to produce 110,000 tons
+of ammonium nitrate a year and later two other cyanamid plants of half
+that capacity were started at Toledo and Ancor, Ohio.</p>
+
+<p>At Muscle Shoals a mushroom city of 20,000 sprang up on an Alabama
+cotton field in six months. The raw material, air, was as abundant there
+as anywhere and the power, water, could be obtained from the Government
+hydro-electric plant on the Tennessee River, but this was not available
+during the war, so steam was employed instead. The heat of the coal was
+used to cool the air down to the liquefying point. The principle of this
+process is simple. Everybody knows that heat expands and cold contracts,
+but not everybody has realized the converse of this rule, that expansion
+cools and compression heats. If air is forced into smaller space, as in
+a tire pump, it heats up and if allowed to expand to ordinary pressure
+it cools off again. But if the air while compressed is cooled and then
+allowed to expand it must get still colder and the process can go on
+till it becomes cold enough to congeal. That is, by expanding a great
+deal of air, a little of it can be reduced to the liquefying point. At
+Muscle Shoals the plant for liquefying air, in order to get the nitrogen
+out of it, consisted of two dozen towers each capable of producing 1765
+cubic feet of pure nitrogen per hour. The air was drawn in through two
+pipes, a yard across, and passed through scrubbing towers to remove
+impurities. The air was then compressed to 600 pounds per square <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span>inch.
+Nine tenths of the air was permitted to expand to 50 pounds and this
+expansion cooled down the other tenth, still under high pressure, to the
+liquefying point. Rectifying towers 24 feet high were stacked with trays
+of liquid air from which the nitrogen was continually bubbling off since
+its boiling point is twelve degrees centigrade lower than that of
+oxygen. Pure nitrogen gas collected at the top of the tower and the
+residual liquid air, now about half oxygen, was allowed to escape at the
+bottom.</p>
+
+<p>The nitrogen was then run through pipes into the lime-nitrogen ovens.
+There were 1536 of these about four feet square and each holding 1600
+pounds of pulverized calcium carbide. This is at first heated by an
+electrical current to start the reaction which afterwards produces
+enough heat to keep it going. As the stream of nitrogen gas passes over
+the finely divided carbide it is absorbed to form calcium cyanamid as
+described on a previous page. This product is cooled, powdered and wet
+to destroy any quicklime or carbide left unchanged. Then it is charged
+into autoclaves and steam at high temperature and pressure is admitted.
+The steam acting on the cyanamid sets free ammonia gas which is carried
+to towers down which cold water is sprayed, giving the ammonia water,
+familiar to the kitchen and the bathroom.</p>
+
+<p>But since nitric acid rather than ammonia was needed for munitions, the
+oxygen of the air had to be called into play. This process, as already
+explained, is carried on by aid of a catalyzer, in this case platinum
+wire. At Muscle Shoals there were 696 of these catalyzer boxes. The
+ammonia gas, mixed with air to provide <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span>the necessary oxygen, was
+admitted at the top and passed down through a sheet of platinum gauze of
+80 mesh to the inch, heated to incandescence by electricity. In contact
+with this the ammonia is converted into gaseous oxides of nitrogen (the
+familiar red fumes of the laboratory) which, carried off in pipes,
+cooled and dissolved in water, form nitric acid.</p>
+
+<p>But since none of the national plants could be got into action during
+the war, the United States was compelled to draw upon South America for
+its supply. The imports of Chilean saltpeter rose from half a million
+tons in 1914 to a million and a half in 1917. After peace was made the
+Department of War turned over to the Department of Agriculture its
+surplus of saltpeter, 150,000 tons, and it was sold to American farmers
+at cost, $81 a ton.</p>
+
+<p>For nitrogen plays a double r&ocirc;le in human economy. It appears like
+Brahma in two aspects, Vishnu the Preserver and Siva the Destroyer. Here
+I have been considering nitrogen in its maleficent aspect, its use in
+war. We now turn to its beneficent aspect, its use in peace.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="III" id="III"></a>III</h2>
+
+<h3>FEEDING THE SOIL</h3>
+
+
+<p>The Great War not only starved people: it starved the land. Enough
+nitrogen was thrown away in some indecisive battle on the Aisne to save
+India from a famine. The population of Europe as a whole has not been
+lessened by the war, but the soil has been robbed of its power to
+support the population. A plant requires certain chemical elements for
+its growth and all of these must be within reach of its rootlets, for it
+will accept no substitutes. A wheat stalk in France before the war had
+placed at its feet nitrates from Chile, phosphates from Florida and
+potash from Germany. All these were shut off by the firing line and the
+shortage of shipping.</p>
+
+<p>Out of the eighty elements only thirteen are necessary for crops. Four
+of these are gases: hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and chlorine. Five are
+metals: potassium, magnesium, calcium, iron and sodium. Four are
+non-metallic solids: carbon, sulfur, phosphorus and silicon. Three of
+these, hydrogen, oxygen and carbon, making up the bulk of the plant, are
+obtainable <i>ad libitum</i> from the air and water. The other ten in the
+form of salts are dissolved in the water that is sucked up from the
+soil. The quantity needed by the plant is so small and the quantity
+contained in the soil is so great that ordinarily we need not bother
+about the supply <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span>except in case of three of them. They are nitrogen,
+potassium and phosphorus. These would be useless or fatal to plant life
+in the elemental form, but fixed in neutral salt they are essential
+plant foods. A ton of wheat takes away from the soil about 47 pounds of
+nitrogen, 18 pounds of phosphoric acid and 12 pounds of potash. If then
+the farmer does not restore this much to his field every year he is
+drawing upon his capital and this must lead to bankruptcy in the long
+run.</p>
+
+<p>So much is easy to see, but actually the question is extremely
+complicated. When the German chemist, Justus von Liebig, pointed out in
+1840 the possibility of maintaining soil fertility by the application of
+chemicals it seemed at first as though the question were practically
+solved. Chemists assumed that all they had to do was to analyze the soil
+and analyze the crop and from this figure out, as easily as balancing a
+bank book, just how much of each ingredient would have to be restored to
+the soil every year. But somehow it did not work out that way and the
+practical agriculturist, finding that the formulas did not fit his farm,
+sneered at the professors and whenever they cited Liebig to him he
+irreverently transposed the syllables of the name. The chemist when he
+went deeper into the subject saw that he had to deal with the colloids,
+damp, unpleasant, gummy bodies that he had hitherto fought shy of
+because they would not crystallize or filter. So the chemist called to
+his aid the physicist on the one hand and the biologist on the other and
+then they both had their hands full. The physicist found that he had to
+deal with a polyvariant system of solids, liquids and gases <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span>mutually
+miscible in phases too numerous to be handled by Gibbs's Rule. The
+biologist found that he had to deal with the invisible flora and fauna
+of a new world.</p>
+
+<p>Plants obey the injunction of Tennyson and rise on the stepping stones
+of their dead selves to higher things. Each successive generation lives
+on what is left of the last in the soil plus what it adds from the air
+and sunshine. As soon as a leaf or tree trunk falls to the ground it is
+taken in charge by a wrecking crew composed of a myriad of microscopic
+organisms who proceed to break it up into its component parts so these
+can be used for building a new edifice. The process is called "rotting"
+and the product, the black, gummy stuff of a fertile soil, is called
+"humus." The plants, that is, the higher plants, are not able to live on
+their own proteids as the animals are. But there are lower plants,
+certain kinds of bacteria, that can break up the big complicated proteid
+molecules into their component parts and reduce the nitrogen in them to
+ammonia or ammonia-like compounds. Having done this they stop and turn
+over the job to another set of bacteria to be carried through the next
+step. For you must know that soil society is as complex and specialized
+as that above ground and the tiniest bacterium would die rather than
+violate the union rules. The second set of bacteria change the ammonia
+over to nitrites and then a third set, the Amalgamated Union of Nitrate
+Workers, steps in and completes the process of oxidation with an
+efficiency that Ostwald might envy, for ninety-six per cent. of the
+ammonia of the soil is converted into nitrates. But if the conditions
+are not just right, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span>if the food is insufficient or unwholesome or if
+the air that circulates through the soil is contaminated with poison
+gases, the bacteria go on a strike. The farmer, not seeing the thing
+from the standpoint of the bacteria, says the soil is "sick" and he
+proceeds to doctor it according to his own notion of what ails it. First
+perhaps he tries running in strike breakers. He goes to one of the firms
+that makes a business of supplying nitrogen-fixing bacteria from the
+scabs or nodules of the clover roots and scatters these colonies over
+the field. But if the living conditions remain bad the newcomers will
+soon quit work too and the farmer loses his money. If he is wise, then,
+he will remedy the conditions, putting a better ventilation system in
+his soil perhaps or neutralizing the sourness by means of lime or
+killing off the ameboid banditti that prey upon the peaceful bacteria
+engaged in the nitrogen industry. It is not an easy job that the farmer
+has in keeping billions of billions of subterranean servants contented
+and working together, but if he does not succeed at this he wastes his
+seed and labor.</p>
+
+<p>The layman regards the soil as a platform or anchoring place on which to
+set plants. He measures its value by its superficial area without
+considering its contents, which is as absurd as to estimate a man's
+wealth by the size of his safe. The difference in point of view is well
+illustrated by the old story of the city chap who was showing his farmer
+uncle the sights of New York. When he took him to Central Park he tried
+to astonish him by saying "This land is worth $500,000 an acre." The old
+farmer dug his toe into the ground, kicked out a clod, broke it open,
+looked at it, spit on it <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span>and squeezed it in his hand and then said,
+"Don't you believe it; 'tain't worth ten dollars an acre. Mighty poor
+soil I call it." Both were right.</p>
+<p><a name="image_7" id="image_7"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 442px;">
+<img src="images/image060.jpg" width="442" height="314" alt="Courtesy of American Cyanamid Co." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Courtesy of American Cyanamid Co.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p><b>FIXING NITROGEN BY CALCIUM CARBIDE</b></p>
+
+<p>A <b>view of the oven room in the plant of the American Cyanamid Company.
+The steel cylinders standing in the background are packed with the
+carbide and then put into the ovens sunk in the floor. When these are
+heated internally by electricity to 2000 degrees Fahrenheit pure
+nitrogen is let in and absorbed by the carbide, making cyanamid, which
+may be used as a fertilizer or for ammonia.</b></p></div>
+<p><a name="image_8" id="image_8"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 337px;">
+<img src="images/image061a.jpg" width="337" height="324" alt="Photo by International Film Service" title="" />
+<span class="caption">Photo by International Film Service</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p><b>A BARROW FULL OF POTASH SALTS EXTRACTED FROM SIX TONS OF GREEN KELP BY
+THE GOVERNMENT CHEMISTS</b></p>
+</div>
+<p><a name="image_9" id="image_9"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 426px;">
+<img src="images/image061.jpg" width="426" height="161" alt="NATURE&#39;S SILENT METHOD OF NITROGEN FIXATION" title="" />
+<span class="caption">NATURE&#39;S SILENT METHOD OF NITROGEN FIXATION</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p><b>The nodules on the vetch roots contain colonies of bacteria which have
+the power of taking the free nitrogen out of the air and putting it in
+compounds suitable for plant food.</b></p></div>
+
+<p>The modern agriculturist realizes that the soil is a laboratory for the
+production of plant food and he ordinarily takes more pains to provide a
+balanced ration for it than he does for his family. Of course the
+necessity of feeding the soil has been known ever since man began to
+settle down and the ancient methods of maintaining its fertility, though
+discovered accidentally and followed blindly, were sound and
+efficacious. Virgil, who like Liberty Hyde Bailey was fond of publishing
+agricultural bulletins in poetry, wrote two thousand years ago:</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">But sweet vicissitudes of rest and toil</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Make easy labor and renew the soil</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Yet sprinkle sordid ashes all around</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And load with fatt'ning dung thy fallow soil.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>The ashes supplied the potash and the dung the nitrate and phosphate.
+Long before the discovery of the nitrogen-fixing bacteria, the custom
+prevailed of sowing pea-like plants every third year and then plowing
+them under to enrich the soil. But such local supplies were always
+inadequate and as soon as deposits of fertilizers were discovered
+anywhere in the world they were drawn upon. The richest of these was the
+Chincha Islands off the coast of Peru, where millions of penguins and
+pelicans had lived in a most untidy manner for untold centuries. The
+guano composed of the excrement of the birds mixed with the remains of
+dead birds and the fishes they fed upon was piled up to a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span>depth of 120
+feet. From this Isle of Penguins&mdash;which is not that described by Anatole
+France&mdash;a billion dollars' worth of guano was taken and the deposit was
+soon exhausted.</p>
+
+<p>Then the attention of the world was directed to the mainland of Peru and
+Chile, where similar guano deposits had been accumulated and, not being
+washed away on account of the lack of rain, had been deposited as sodium
+nitrate, or "saltpeter." These beds were discovered by a German, Taddeo
+Haenke, in 1809, but it was not until the last quarter of the century
+that the nitrates came into common use as a fertilizer. Since then more
+than 53,000,000 tons have been taken out of these beds and the
+exportation has risen to a rate of 2,500,000 to 3,000,000 tons a year.
+How much longer they will last is a matter of opinion and opinion is
+largely influenced by whether you have your money invested in Chilean
+nitrate stock or in one of the new synthetic processes for making
+nitrates. The United States Department of Agriculture says the nitrate
+beds will be exhausted in a few years. On the other hand the Chilean
+Inspector General of Nitrate Deposits in his latest official report says
+that they will last for two hundred years at the present rate and that
+then there are incalculable areas of low grade deposits, containing less
+than eleven per cent., to be drawn upon.</p>
+
+<p>Anyhow, the South American beds cannot long supply the world's need of
+nitrates and we shall some time be starving unless creative chemistry
+comes to the rescue. In 1898 Sir William Crookes&mdash;the discoverer of the
+"Crookes tubes," the radiometer and radiant matter&mdash;startled the British
+Association for the Advancement <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span>of Science by declaring that the world
+was nearing the limit of wheat production and that by 1931 the
+bread-eaters, the Caucasians, would have to turn to other grains or
+restrict their population while the rice and millet eaters of Asia would
+continue to increase. Sir William was laughed at then as a
+sensationalist. He was, but his sensations were apt to prove true and it
+is already evident that he was too near right for comfort. Before we
+were half way to the date he set we had two wheatless days a week,
+though that was because we persisted in shooting nitrates into the air.
+The area producing wheat was by decades:<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p>
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td align='left'>THE WHEAT FIELDS OF THE WORLD</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><b>Acres</b></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>1881-90</td><td align='left'>192,000,000</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>1890-1900</td><td align='left'>211,000,000</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>1900-10</td><td align='left'>242,000,000</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Probable limit</td><td align='left'>300,000,000</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p>If 300,000,000 acres can be brought under cultivation for wheat and the
+average yield raised to twenty bushels to the acre, that will give
+enough to feed a billion people if they eat six bushels a year as do the
+English. Whether this maximum is correct or not there is evidently some
+limit to the area which has suitable soil and climate for growing wheat,
+so we are ultimately thrown back upon Crookes's solution of the problem;
+that is, we must increase the yield per acre and this can only be done
+by the use of fertilizers and especially by the fixation of atmospheric
+nitrogen. Crookes estimated <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span>the average yield of wheat at 12.7 bushels
+to the acre, which is more than it is in the new lands of the United
+States, Australia and Russia, but less than in Europe, where the soil is
+well fed. What can be done to increase the yield may be seen from these
+figures:</p>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td align='left'> GAIN IN THE YIELD OF WHEAT IN BUSHELS PER ACRE</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'>1889-90</td><td align='left'>1913</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Germany</td><td align='left'>19</td><td align='left'>35</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Belgium</td><td align='left'>30</td><td align='left'>35</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>France</td><td align='left'>17</td><td align='left'>20</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>United Kingdom</td><td align='left'>28</td><td align='left'>32</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>United States</td><td align='left'>12</td><td align='left'>15</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+<p>The greatest gain was made in Germany and we see a reason for it in the
+fact that the German importation of Chilean saltpeter was 55,000 tons in
+1880 and 747,000 tons in 1913. In potatoes, too, Germany gets twice as
+big a crop from the same ground as we do, 223 bushels per acre instead
+of our 113 bushels. But the United States uses on the average only 28
+pounds of fertilizer per acre, while Europe uses 200.</p>
+
+<p>It is clear that we cannot rely upon Chile, but make nitrates for
+ourselves as Germany had to in war time. In the first chapter we
+considered the new methods of fixing the free nitrogen from the air. But
+the fixation of nitrogen is a new business in this country and our chief
+reliance so far has been the coke ovens. When coal is heated in retorts
+or ovens for making coke or gas a lot of ammonia comes off with the
+other products of decomposition and is caught in the sulfuric acid used
+to wash the gas as ammonium sulfate. Our American coke-makers have been
+in the habit of letting <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span>this escape into the air and consequently we
+have been losing some 700,000 tons of ammonium salts every year, enough
+to keep our land rich and give us all the explosives we should need. But
+now they are reforming and putting in ovens that save the by-products
+such as ammonia and coal tar, so in 1916 we got from this source 325,000
+tons a year.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/image066.jpg" width="600" height="404" alt="Courtesy of Scientific American." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Courtesy of Scientific American.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p><b>Consumption of potash for agricultural purposes in different countries</b></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Germany had a natural monopoly of potash as Chile had a natural monopoly
+of nitrates. The agriculture of Europe and America has been virtually
+dependent upon these two sources of plant foods. Now when the world was
+cleft in twain by the shock of August, 1914, the Allied Powers had the
+nitrates and the Central Powers had the potash. If Germany had not had
+up her sleeve a new process for making nitrates she could not long have
+carried on a war and doubtless would not have ventured upon it. But the
+outside world had no <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span>such substitute for the German potash salts and
+has not yet discovered one. Consequently the price of potash in the
+United States jumped from $40 to $400 and the cost of food went up with
+it. Even under the stimulus of prices ten times the normal and with
+chemists searching furnace crannies and bad lands the United States was
+able to scrape up less than 10,000 tons of potash in 1916, and this was
+barely enough to satisfy our needs for two weeks!</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/image067.jpg" width="600" height="530" alt="What happened to potash when the war broke out. This
+diagram from the Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry of
+July, 1917, shows how the supply of potassium muriate from Germany was
+shut off in 1914 and how its price rose." title="" />
+<span class="caption">What happened to potash when the war broke out. This
+diagram from the Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry of
+July, 1917, shows how the supply of potassium muriate from Germany was
+shut off in 1914 and how its price rose.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Yet potash compounds are as cheap as dirt. Pick up a handful of gravel
+and you will be able to find much of it feldspar or other mineral
+containing some ten per cent. of potash. Unfortunately it is in
+combination with silica, which is harder to break up than a trust.</p>
+
+<p>But "constant washing wears away stones" and the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span>potash that the
+metallurgist finds too hard to extract in his hottest furnace is washed
+out in the course of time through the dropping of the gentle rain from
+heaven. "All rivers run to the sea" and so the sea gets salt, all sorts
+of salts, principally sodium chloride (our table salt) and next
+magnesium, calcium and potassium chlorides or sulfates in this order of
+abundance. But if we evaporate sea-water down to dryness all these are
+left in a mix together and it is hard to sort them out. Only patient
+Nature has time for it and she only did on a large scale in one place,
+that is at Stassfurt, Germany. It seems that in the days when
+northwestern Prussia was undetermined whether it should be sea or land
+it was flooded annually by sea-water. As this slowly evaporated the
+dissolved salts crystallized out at the critical points, leaving beds of
+various combinations. Each year there would be deposited three to five
+inches of salts with a thin layer of calcium sulfate or gypsum on top.
+Counting these annual layers, like the rings on a stump, we find that
+the Stassfurt beds were ten thousand years in the making. They were
+first worked for their salt, common salt, alone, but in 1837 the
+Prussian Government began prospecting for new and deeper deposits and
+found, not the clean rock salt that they wanted, but bittern, largely
+magnesium sulfate or Epsom salt, which is not at all nice for table use.
+This stuff was first thrown away until it was realized that it was much
+more valuable for the potash it contains than was the rock salt they
+were after. Then the Germans began to purify the Stassfurt salts and
+market them throughout the world. They contain from fifteen to
+twenty-five per cent. of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span>magnesium chloride mixed with magnesium
+chloride in "carnallite," with magnesium sulfate in "kainite" and sodium
+chloride in "sylvinite." More than thirty thousand miners and workmen
+are employed in the Stassfurt works. There are some seventy distinct
+establishments engaged in the business, but they are in combination. In
+fact they are compelled to be, for the German Government is as anxious
+to promote trusts as the American Government is to prevent them. Once
+the Stassfurt firms had a falling out and began a cutthroat competition.
+But the German Government objects to its people cutting each other's
+throats. American dealers were getting unheard of bargains when the
+German Government stepped in and compelled the competing corporations to
+recombine under threat of putting on an export duty that would eat up
+their profits.</p>
+
+<p>The advantages of such business co&ouml;peration are specially shown in
+opening up a new market for an unknown product as in the case of the
+introduction of the Stassfurt salts into American agriculture. The
+farmer in any country is apt to be set in his ways and when it comes to
+inducing him to spend his hard-earned money for chemicals that he never
+heard of and could not pronounce he&mdash;quite rightly&mdash;has to be shown.
+Well, he was shown. It was, if I remember right, early in the nineties
+that the German Kali Syndikat began operations in America and the United
+States Government became its chief advertising agent. In every state
+there was an agricultural experiment station and these were provided
+liberally with illustrated literature on Stassfurt salts with colored
+wall charts and sets of samples and free sacks of salts for field
+experiments.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> The station men, finding that they could rely upon the
+scientific accuracy of the information supplied by Kali and that the
+experiments worked out well, became enthusiastic advocates of potash
+fertilizers. The station bulletins&mdash;which Uncle Sam was kind enough to
+carry free to all the farmers of the state&mdash;sometimes were worded so
+like the Kali Company advertising that the company might have raised a
+complaint of plagiarizing, but they never did. The Chilean nitrates,
+which are under British control, were later introduced by similar
+methods through the agency of the state agricultural experiment
+stations.</p>
+
+<p>As a result of all this missionary work, which cost the Kali Company
+$50,000 a year, the attention of a large proportion of American farmers
+was turned toward intensive farming and they began to realize the
+necessity of feeding the soil that was feeding them. They grew dependent
+upon these two foreign and widely separated sources of supply. In the
+year before the war the United States imported a million tons of
+Stassfurt salts, for which the farmers paid more than $20,000,000. Then
+a declaration of American independence&mdash;the German embargo of 1915&mdash;cut
+us off from Stassfurt and for five years we had to rely upon our own
+resources. We have seen how Germany&mdash;shut off from Chile&mdash;solved the
+nitrogen problem for her fields and munition plants. It was not so easy
+for us&mdash;shut off from Germany&mdash;to solve the potash problem.</p>
+
+<p>There is no more lack of potash in the rocks than there is of nitrogen
+in the air, but the nitrogen is free and has only to be caught and
+combined, while the potash is shut up in a granite prison from which it
+is hard <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span>to get it free. It is not the percentage in the soil but the
+percentage in the soil water that counts. A farmer with his potash
+locked up in silicates is like the merchant who has left the key of his
+safe at home in his other trousers. He may be solvent, but he cannot
+meet a sight draft. It is only solvent potash that passes current.</p>
+
+<p>In the days of our grandfathers we had not only national independence
+but household independence. Every homestead had its own potash plant and
+soap factory. The frugal housewife dumped the maple wood ashes of the
+fireplace into a hollow log set up on end in the backyard. Water poured
+over the ashes leached out the lye, which drained into a bucket beneath.
+This gave her a solution of pearl ash or potassium carbonate whose
+concentration she tested with an egg as a hydrometer. In the meantime
+she had been saving up all the waste grease from the frying pan and pork
+rinds from the plate and by trying out these she got her soap fat. Then
+on a day set apart for this disagreeable process in chemical technology
+she boiled the fat and the lye together and got "soft soap," or as the
+chemist would call it, potassium stearate. If she wanted hard soap she
+"salted it out" with brine. The sodium stearate being less soluble was
+precipitated to the top and cooled into a solid cake that could be cut
+into bars by pack thread. But the frugal housewife threw away in the
+waste water what we now consider the most valuable ingredients, the
+potash and the glycerin.</p>
+
+<p>But the old lye-leach is only to be found in ruins on an abandoned farm
+and we no longer burn wood at the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span>rate of a log a night. In 1916 even
+under the stimulus of tenfold prices the amount of potash produced as
+pearl ash was only 412 tons&mdash;and we need 300,000 tons in some form. It
+would, of course, be very desirable as a conservation measure if all the
+sawdust and waste wood were utilized by charring it in retorts. The gas
+makes a handy fuel. The tar washed from the gas contains a lot of
+valuable products. And potash can be leached out of the charcoal or from
+its ashes whenever it is burned. But this at best would not go far
+toward solving the problem of our national supply.</p>
+
+<p>There are other potash-bearing wastes that might be utilized. The cement
+mills which use feldspar in combination with limestone give off a potash
+dust, very much to the annoyance of their neighbors. This can be
+collected by running the furnace clouds into large settling chambers or
+long flues, where the dust may be caught in bags, or washed out by water
+sprays or thrown down by electricity. The blast furnaces for iron also
+throw off potash-bearing fumes.</p>
+
+<p>Our six-million-ton crop of sugar beets contains some 12,000 tons of
+nitrogen, 4000 tons of phosphoric acid and 18,000 tons of potash, all of
+which is lost except where the waste liquors from the sugar factory are
+used in irrigating the beet land. The beet molasses, after extracting
+all the sugar possible by means of lime, leaves a waste liquor from
+which the potash can be recovered by evaporation and charring and
+leaching the residue. The Germans get 5000 tons of potassium cyanide and
+as much ammonium sulfate annually from the waste liquor of their beet
+sugar factories and if it pays them to save this it ought to pay us
+where potash <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span>is dearer. Various other industries can put in a bit when
+Uncle Sam passes around the contribution basket marked "Potash for the
+Poor." Wool wastes and fish refuse make valuable fertilizers, although
+they will not go far toward solving the problem. If we saved all our
+potash by-products they would not supply more than fifteen per cent. of
+our needs.</p>
+
+<p>Though no potash beds comparable to those of Stassfurt have yet been
+discovered in the United States, yet in Nebraska, Utah, California and
+other western states there are a number of alkali lakes, wet or dry,
+containing a considerable amount of potash mixed with soda salts. Of
+these deposits the largest is Searles Lake, California. Here there are
+some twelve square miles of salt crust some seventy feet deep and the
+brine as pumped out contains about four per cent. of potassium chloride.
+The quantity is sufficient to supply the country for over twenty years,
+but it is not an easy or cheap job to separate the potassium from the
+sodium salts which are five times more abundant. These being less
+soluble than the potassium salts crystallize out first when the brine is
+evaporated. The final crystallization is done in vacuum pans as in
+getting sugar from the cane juice. In this way the American Trona
+Corporation is producing some 4500 tons of potash salts a month besides
+a thousand tons of borax. The borax which is contained in the brine to
+the extent of 1-1/2 per cent. is removed from the fertilizer for a
+double reason. It is salable by itself and it is detrimental to plant
+life.</p>
+
+<p>Another mineral source of potash is alunite, which is a sort of natural
+alum, or double sulfate of potassium and aluminum, with about ten per
+cent. of potash. It <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span>contains a lot of extra alumina, but after roasting
+in a kiln the potassium sulfate can be leached out. The alunite beds
+near Marysville, Utah, were worked for all they were worth during the
+war, but the process does not give potash cheap enough for our needs in
+ordinary times.</p>
+
+<p><a name="image_10" id="image_10"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 435px;">
+<img src="images/image074.jpg" width="435" height="251" alt="Photo by International Film Service" title="" />
+<span class="caption">Photo by International Film Service</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p><b>IN ORDER TO SECURE A NEW SUPPLY OF POTASH SALTS</b></p>
+
+<p><b>The United States Government set up an experimental plant at Sutherland,
+California, for the utilization of kelp. The harvester cuts 40 tons of
+kelp at a load.</b></p>
+</div>
+<p><a name="image_11" id="image_11"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 259px;">
+<img src="images/image075a.jpg" width="259" height="418" alt="THE KELP HARVESTER GATHERING THE SEAWEED FROM THE
+PACIFIC OCEAN" title="" />
+<span class="caption">THE KELP HARVESTER GATHERING THE SEAWEED FROM THE
+PACIFIC OCEAN</span>
+</div>
+<p><a name="image_12" id="image_12"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 320px;">
+<img src="images/image075b.jpg" width="320" height="365" alt="Courtesy of Hercules Powder Co." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Courtesy of Hercules Powder Co.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p><b>OVERHEAD SUCTION AT THE SAN DIEGO WHARF PUMPING KELP FROM THE BARGE TO
+THE DIGESTION TANKS</b></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The tourist going through Wyoming on the Union Pacific will have to the
+north of him what is marked on the map as the "Leucite Hills." If he
+looks up the word in the Unabridged that he carries in his satchel he
+will find that leucite is a kind of lava and that it contains potash.
+But he will also observe that the potash is combined with alumina and
+silica, which are hard to get out and useless when you get them out. One
+of the lavas of the Leucite Hills, that named from its native state
+"Wyomingite," gives fifty-seven per cent. of its potash in a soluble
+form on roasting with alunite&mdash;but this costs too much. The same may be
+said of all the potash feldspars and mica. They are abundant enough, but
+until we find a way of utilizing the by-products, say the silica in
+cement and the aluminum as a metal, they cannot solve our problem.</p>
+
+<p>Since it is so hard to get potash from the land it has been suggested
+that we harvest the sea. The experts of the United States Department of
+Agriculture have placed high hopes in the kelp or giant seaweed which
+floats in great masses in the Pacific Ocean not far off from the
+California coast. This is harvested with ocean reapers run by gasoline
+engines and brought in barges to the shore, where it may be dried and
+used locally as a fertilizer or burned and the potassium chloride
+leached out of the charcoal ashes. But it is hard to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span>handle the bulky,
+slimy seaweed cheaply enough to get out of it the small amount of potash
+it contains. So efforts are now being made to get more out of the kelp
+than the potash. Instead of burning the seaweed it is fermented in vats
+producing acetic acid (vinegar). From the resulting liquid can be
+obtained lime acetate, potassium chloride, potassium iodide, acetone,
+ethyl acetate (used as a solvent for guncotton) and algin, a
+gelatin-like gum.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h3>PRODUCTION OF POTASH IN THE UNITED STATES</h3>
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="1" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='center'>1916</td><td align='left'></td><td align='center'>1917</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Source</td><td align='center'>Tons K<sub>2</sub>O</td><td align='center'>Per cent. of total production</td><td align='center'>Tons K<sub>2</sub>O</td><td align='center'>Per cent. of total production</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Mineral sources:</td><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Natural brines</td><td align='right'>3,994</td><td align='right'>41.1</td><td align='left'>20,652</td><td align='right'>63.4</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Altmite</td><td align='right'>1,850</td><td align='right'>19.0</td><td align='right'>2,402</td><td align='right'>7.3</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Dust from cement mills</td><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='right'>1,621</td><td align='right'>5.0</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Dust from blast furnaces</td><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='right'>185</td><td align='right'>0.6</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Organic Sources:</td><td align='right'>&nbsp;</td><td align='right'>&nbsp;</td><td align='right'>&nbsp;</td><td align='right'>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Kelp</td><td align='right'>1,556</td><td align='right'>16.0</td><td align='right'>3,752</td><td align='right'>10.9</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Molasses residue from distillers</td><td align='right'>1,845</td><td align='right'>19.0</td><td align='right'>2,846</td><td align='right'>8.8</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Wood ashes</td><td align='right'>412</td><td align='right'>4.2</td><td align='right'>621</td><td align='right'>1.9</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Waste liquors from beet-sugar refineries</td><td align='right'>&nbsp;</td><td align='right'>&nbsp;</td><td align='right'>369</td><td align='right'>1.1</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Miscellaneous industrial wastes</td><td align='right'>63</td><td align='right'>.7</td><td align='right'>305</td><td align='right'>1.0</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Total</td><td align='right'>9,720</td><td align='right'>100.0</td><td align='right'>32,573</td><td align='right'>100.0</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p><b>&mdash;From U S. Bureau of Mines Report, 1918</b>.</p>
+
+<p>This table shows how inadequate was the reaction of the United States to
+the war demand for potassium salts. The minimum yearly requirements of
+the United States are estimated to be 250,000 tons of potash.</p>
+
+<p>This completes our survey of the visible sources of potash in America.
+In 1917 under the pressure of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span>embargo and unprecedented prices the
+output of potash (K<sub>2</sub>O) in various forms was raised to 32,573 tons,
+but this is only about a tenth as much as we needed. In 1918 potash
+production was further raised to 52,135 tons, chiefly through the
+increase of the output from natural brines to 39,255 tons, nearly twice
+what it was the year before. The rust in cotton and the resulting
+decrease in yield during the war are laid to lack of potash. Truck crops
+grown in soils deficient in potash do not stand transportation well. The
+Bureau of Animal Industry has shown in experiments in Aroostook County,
+Maine, that the addition of moderate amounts of potash doubled the yield
+of potatoes.</p>
+
+<p>Professor Ostwald, the great Leipzig chemist, boasted in the war:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>America went into the war like a man with a rope round his neck
+which is in his enemy's hands and is pretty tightly drawn. With
+its tremendous deposits Germany has a world monopoly in potash,
+a point of immense value which cannot be reckoned too highly
+when once this war is going to be settled. It is in Germany's
+power to dictate which of the nations shall have plenty of food
+and which shall starve.</p></div>
+
+<p>If, indeed, some mineralogist or metallurgist will cut that rope by
+showing us a supply of cheap potash we will erect him a monument as big
+as Washington's. But Ostwald is wrong in supposing that America is as
+dependent as Germany upon potash. The bulk of our food crops are at
+present raised without the use of any fertilizers whatever.</p>
+
+<p>As the cession of Lorraine in 1871 gave Germany the phosphates she
+needed for fertilizers so the retrocession <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span>of Alsace in 1919 gives
+France the potash she needed for fertilizers. Ten years before the war a
+bed of potash was discovered in the Forest of Monnebruck, near
+Hartmannsweilerkopf, the peak for which French and Germans contested so
+fiercely and so long. The layer of potassium salts is 16-1/2 feet thick
+and the total deposit is estimated to be 275,000,000 tons of potash. At
+any rate it is a formidable rival of Stassfurt and its acquisition by
+France breaks the German monopoly.</p>
+
+<p>When we turn to the consideration of the third plant food we feel
+better. While the United States has no such monopoly of phosphates as
+Germany had of potash and Chile had of nitrates we have an abundance and
+to spare. Whereas we formerly <i>imported</i> about $17,000,000 worth of
+potash from Germany and $20,000,000 worth of nitrates from Chile a year
+we <i>exported</i> $7,000,000 worth of phosphates.</p>
+
+<p>Whoever it was who first noticed that the grass grew thicker around a
+buried bone he lived so long ago that we cannot do honor to his powers
+of observation, but ever since then&mdash;whenever it was&mdash;old bones have
+been used as a fertilizer. But we long ago used up all the buffalo bones
+we could find on the prairies and our packing houses could not give us
+enough bone-meal to go around, so we have had to draw upon the old
+bone-yards of prehistoric animals. Deposits of lime phosphate of such
+origin were found in South Carolina in 1870 and in Florida in 1888.
+Since then the industry has developed with amazing rapidity until in
+1913 the United States produced over three million tons of phosphates,
+nearly half of which was sent abroad. The chief source at present is the
+Florida pebbles, which <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span>are dredged up from the bottoms of lakes and
+rivers or washed out from the banks of streams by a hydraulic jet. The
+gravel is washed free from the sand and clay, screened and dried, and
+then is ready for shipment. The rock deposits of Florida and South
+Carolina are more limited than the pebble beds and may be exhausted in
+twenty-five or thirty years, but Tennessee and Kentucky have a lot in
+reserve and behind them are Idaho, Wyoming and other western states with
+millions of acres of phosphate land, so in this respect we are
+independent.</p>
+
+<p>But even here the war hit us hard. For the calcium phosphate as it comes
+from the ground is not altogether available because it is not very
+soluble and the plants can only use what they can get in the water that
+they suck up from the soil. But if the phosphate is treated with
+sulfuric acid it becomes more soluble and this product is sold as
+"superphosphate." The sulfuric acid is made mostly from iron pyrite and
+this we have been content to import, over 800,000 tons of it a year,
+largely from Spain, although we have an abundance at home. Since the
+shortage of shipping shut off the foreign supply we are using more of
+our own pyrite and also our deposits of native sulfur along the Gulf
+coast. But as a consequence of this sulfuric acid during the war went up
+from $5 to $25 a ton and acidulated phosphates rose correspondingly.</p>
+
+<p>Germany is short on natural phosphates as she is long on natural potash.
+But she has made up for it by utilizing a by-product of her steelworks.
+When phosphorus occurs in iron ore, even in minute amounts, it makes the
+steel brittle. Much of the iron ores of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> Alsace-Lorraine were formerly
+considered unworkable because of this impurity, but shortly after
+Germany took these provinces from France in 1871 a method was discovered
+by two British metallurgists, Thomas and Gilchrist, by which the
+phosphorus is removed from the iron in the process of converting it into
+steel. This consists in lining the crucible or converter with lime and
+magnesia, which takes up the phosphorus from the melted iron. This slag
+lining, now rich in phosphates, can be taken out and ground up for
+fertilizer. So the phosphorus which used to be a detriment is now an
+additional source of profit and this British invention has enabled
+Germany to make use of the territory she stole from France to outstrip
+England in the steel business. In 1910 Germany produced 2,000,000 tons
+of Thomas slag while only 160,000 tons were produced in the United
+Kingdom. The open hearth process now chiefly used in the United States
+gives an acid instead of a basic phosphate slag, not suitable as a
+fertilizer. The iron ore of America, with the exception of some of the
+southern ores, carries so small a percentage of phosphorus as to make a
+basic process inadvisable.</p>
+
+<p>Recently the Germans have been experimenting with a combined fertilizer,
+Schr&ouml;der's potassium phosphate, which is said to be as good as Thomas
+slag for phosphates and as good as Stassfurt salts for potash. The
+American Cyanamid Company is just putting out a similar product,
+"Ammo-Phos," in which the ammonia can be varied from thirteen to twenty
+per cent. and the phosphoric acid from twenty to forty-seven per cent.
+so as to give the proportions desired for any crop. We have then the
+possibility of getting <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span>the three essential plant foods altogether in
+one compound with the elimination of most of the extraneous elements
+such as lime and magnesia, chlorids and sulfates.</p>
+
+<p>For the last three hundred years the American people have been living on
+the unearned increment of the unoccupied land. But now that all our land
+has been staked out in homesteads and we cannot turn to new soil when we
+have used up the old, we must learn, as the older races have learned,
+how to keep up the supply of plant food. Only in this way can our
+population increase and prosper. As we have seen, the phosphate question
+need not bother us and we can see our way clear toward solving the
+nitrate question. We gave the Government $20,000,000 to experiment on
+the production of nitrates from the air and the results will serve for
+fields as well as firearms. But the question of an independent supply of
+cheap potash is still unsolved.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="IV" id="IV"></a>IV</h2>
+
+<h3>COAL-TAR COLORS</h3>
+
+
+<p>If you put a bit of soft coal into a test tube (or, if you haven't a
+test tube, into a clay tobacco pipe and lute it over with clay) and heat
+it you will find a gas coming out of the end of the tube that will burn
+with a yellow smoky flame. After all the gas comes off you will find in
+the bottom of the test tube a chunk of dry, porous coke. These, then,
+are the two main products of the destructive distillation of coal. But
+if you are an unusually observant person, that is, if you are a born
+chemist with an eye to by-products, you will notice along in the middle
+of the tube where it is neither too hot nor too cold some dirty drops of
+water and some black sticky stuff. If you are just an ordinary person,
+you won't pay any attention to this because there is only a little of it
+and because what you are after is the coke and gas. You regard the
+nasty, smelly mess that comes in between as merely a nuisance because it
+clogs up and spoils your nice, clean tube.</p>
+
+<p>Now that is the way the gas-makers and coke-makers&mdash;being for the most
+part ordinary persons and not born chemists&mdash;used to regard the water
+and tar that got into their pipes. They washed it out so as to have the
+gas clean and then ran it into the creek. But the neighbors&mdash;especially
+those who fished in the stream below the gas-works&mdash;made a fuss about
+spoil<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span>ing the water, so the gas-men gave away the tar to the boys for use
+in celebrating the Fourth of July and election night or sold it for
+roofing.</p>
+<p><a name="image_13" id="image_13"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 439px;">
+<img src="images/image084.jpg" width="439" height="278" alt="THE PRODUCTION OF COAL TAR" title="" />
+<span class="caption">THE PRODUCTION OF COAL TAR</span>
+</div>
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p><b>A battery of Koppers by-product coke-ovens at the plant of the Bethlehem
+Steel Company, Sparrows Point, Maryland. The coke is being pushed out of
+one of the ovens into the waiting car. The vapors given off from the
+coal contain ammonia and the benzene compound used to make dyes and
+explosives.</b></p>
+</div>
+<p><a name="image_14" id="image_14"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 445px;">
+<img src="images/image085.jpg" width="445" height="277" alt="IN THESE MIXING VATS AT THE BUFFALO WORKS, ANILINE DYES
+ARE PREPARED" title="" />
+<span class="caption">IN THESE MIXING VATS AT THE BUFFALO WORKS, ANILINE DYES
+ARE PREPARED</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>But this same tar, which for a hundred years was thrown away and nearly
+half of which is thrown away yet in the United States, turns out to be
+one of the most useful things in the world. It is one of the strategic
+points in war and commerce. It wounds and heals. It supplies munitions
+and medicines. It is like the magic purse of Fortunatus from which
+anything wished for could be drawn. The chemist puts his hand into the
+black mass and draws out all the colors of the rainbow. This
+evil-smelling substance beats the rose in the production of perfume and
+surpasses the honey-comb in sweetness.</p>
+
+<p>Bishop Berkeley, after having proved that all matter was in your mind,
+wrote a book to prove that wood tar would cure all diseases. Nobody
+reads it now. The name is enough to frighten them off: "Siris: A Chain
+of Philosophical Reflections and Inquiries Concerning the Virtues of Tar
+Water." He had a sort of mystical idea that tar contained the
+quintessence of the forest, the purified spirit of the trees, which
+could somehow revive the spirit of man. People said he was crazy on the
+subject, and doubtless he was, but the interesting thing about it is
+that not even his active and ingenious imagination could begin to
+suggest all of the strange things that can be got out of tar, whether
+wood or coal.</p>
+
+<p>The reason why tar supplies all sorts of useful material is because it
+is indeed the quintessence of the forest, of the forests of untold
+millenniums if it is coal tar.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> If you are acquainted with a village
+tinker, one of those all-round mechanics who still survive in this age
+of specialization and can mend anything from a baby-carriage to an
+automobile, you will know that he has on the floor of his back shop a
+heap of broken machinery from which he can get almost anything he wants,
+a copper wire, a zinc plate, a brass screw or a steel rod. Now coal tar
+is the scrap-heap of the vegetable kingdom. It contains a little of
+almost everything that makes up trees. But you must not imagine that all
+that comes out of coal tar is contained in it. There are only about a
+dozen primary products extracted from coal tar, but from these the
+chemist is able to build up hundreds of thousands of new substances.
+This is true creative chemistry, for most of these compounds are not to
+be found in plants and never existed before they were made in the
+laboratory. It used to be thought that organic compounds, the products
+of vegetable and animal life, could only be produced by organized
+beings, that they were created out of inorganic matter by the magic
+touch of some "vital principle." But since the chemist has learned how,
+he finds it easier to make organic than inorganic substances and he is
+confident that he can reproduce any compound that he can analyze. He
+cannot only imitate the manufacturing processes of the plants and
+animals, but he can often beat them at their own game.</p>
+
+<p>When coal is heated in the open air it is burned up and nothing but the
+ashes is left. But heat the coal in an enclosed vessel, say a big
+fireclay retort, and it cannot burn up because the oxygen of the air
+cannot get to it. So it breaks up. All parts of it that can be volatized
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span>at a high heat pass off through the outlet pipe and nothing is left in
+the retort but coke, that is carbon with the ash it contains. When the
+escaping vapors reach a cool part of the outlet pipe the oily and tarry
+matter condenses out. Then the gas is passed up through a tower down
+which water spray is falling and thus is washed free from ammonia and
+everything else that is soluble in water.</p>
+
+<p>This process is called "destructive distillation." What products come
+off depends not only upon the composition of the particular variety of
+coal used, but upon the heat, pressure and rapidity of distillation. The
+way you run it depends upon what you are most anxious to have. If you
+want illuminating gas you will leave in it the benzene. If you are after
+the greatest yield of tar products, you impoverish the gas by taking out
+the benzene and get a blue instead of a bright yellow flame. If all you
+are after is cheap coke, you do not bother about the by-products, but
+let them escape and burn as they please. The tourist passing across the
+coal region at night could see through his car window the flames of
+hundreds of old-fashioned bee-hive coke-ovens and if he were of
+economical mind he might reflect that this display of fireworks was
+costing the country $75,000,000 a year besides consuming the
+irreplaceable fuel supply of the future. But since the gas was not
+needed outside of the cities and since the coal tar, if it could be sold
+at all, brought only a cent or two a gallon, how could the coke-makers
+be expected to throw out their old bee-hive ovens and put in the
+expensive retorts and towers necessary to the recovery of the
+by-products? But within the last ten years the by-product <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span>ovens have
+come into use and now nearly half our coke is made in them.</p>
+
+<p>Although the products of destructive distillation vary within wide
+limits, yet the following table may serve to give an approximate idea of
+what may be got from a ton of soft coal:</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">1 ton of coal may give</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Gas, 12,000 cubic feet</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Liquor (Washings) ammonium sulfate (7-25 pounds)</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Tar (120 pounds)&nbsp; benzene (10-20 pounds)</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 12em;">toluene (3 pounds)</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 12em;">xylene&nbsp; (1-1/2 pounds)</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 12em;">phenol&nbsp; (1/2 pound)</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 12em;">naphthalene (3/8 pound)</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 12em;">anthracene&nbsp; (1/4 pound)</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 12em;">pitch (80 pounds)</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Coke (1200-1500 pounds)</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>When the tar is redistilled we get, among other things, the ten "crudes"
+which are fundamental material for making dyes. Their names are:
+benzene, toluene, xylene, phenol, cresol, naphthalene, anthracene,
+methyl anthracene, phenanthrene and carbazol.</p>
+
+<p>There! I had to introduce you to the whole receiving line, but now that
+that ceremony is over we are at liberty to do as we do at a reception,
+meet our old friends, get acquainted with one or two more and turn our
+backs on the rest. Two of them, I am sure, you've met before, phenol,
+which is common carbolic acid, and naphthalene, which we use for
+mothballs. But notice one thing in passing, that not one of them is a
+dye. They are all colorless liquids or white solids. Also they all have
+an indescribable odor&mdash;all odors that you don't know are
+indescribable&mdash;which gives them and their progeny, even when odorless,
+the name of "aromatic compounds."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 767px;">
+<img src="images/image091alt.jpg" width="767" height="600" alt="Fig. 8. Diagram of the products obtained from coal and
+some of their uses." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Fig. 8. Diagram of the products obtained from coal and
+some of their uses.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span>The most important of the ten because he is the father of the family is
+benzene, otherwise called benzol, but must not be confused with
+"benzine" spelled with an <i>i</i> which we used to burn and clean our
+clothes with. "Benzine" is a kind of gasoline, but benzene <i>alias</i>
+benzol has quite another constitution, although it looks and burns the
+same. Now the search for the constitution of benzene is one of the most
+exciting chapters in chemistry; also one of the most intricate chapters,
+but, in spite of that, I believe I can make the main point of it clear
+even to those who have never studied chemistry&mdash;provided they retain
+their childish liking for puzzles. It is really much like putting
+together the old six-block Chinese puzzle. The chemist can work better
+if he has a picture of what he is working with. Now his unit is the
+molecule, which is too small even to analyze with the microscope, no
+matter how high powered. So he makes up a sort of diagram of the
+molecule, and since he knows the number of atoms and that they are
+somehow attached to one another, he represents each atom by the first
+letter of its name and the points of attachment or bonds by straight
+lines connecting the atoms of the different elements. Now it is one of
+the rules of the game that all the bonds must be connected or hooked up
+with atoms at both ends, that there shall be no free hands reaching out
+into empty space. Carbon, for instance, has four bonds and hydrogen only
+one. They unite, therefore, in the proportion of one atom of carbon to
+four of hydrogen, or CH<sub>4</sub>, which is methane or marsh gas and obviously
+the simplest of the hydrocarbons. But we have more complex hydrocarbons
+such as C<sub>6</sub>H<sub>14</sub>, known as hexane. Now if you try to draw the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span>
+diagrams or structural formulas of these two compounds you will easily
+get</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">H&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;H H H&nbsp; H &nbsp;H &nbsp;H</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">&nbsp;|&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; |&nbsp;&nbsp; | &nbsp;&nbsp;|&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; |&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; |&nbsp;&nbsp; |</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">H-C-H&nbsp; &nbsp; H-C-C-C-C-C-C-H</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">&nbsp;|&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;|&nbsp;&nbsp; | &nbsp;&nbsp;|&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; |&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; | &nbsp;&nbsp;|</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">H&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; H H H&nbsp; H&nbsp; H&nbsp; H</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">methane&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; hexane</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Each carbon atom, you see, has its four hands outstretched and duly
+grasped by one-handed hydrogen atoms or by neighboring carbon atoms in
+the chain. We can have such chains as long as you please, thirty or more
+in a chain; they are all contained in kerosene and paraffin.</p>
+
+<p>So far the chemist found it east to construct diagrams that would
+satisfy his sense of the fitness of things, but when he found that
+benzene had the compostion C<sub>6</sub>H<sub>6</sub> he was puzzled. If you try to draw
+the picture of C<sub>6</sub>H<sub>6</sub> you will get something like this:</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">&nbsp;|&nbsp;&nbsp; |&nbsp;&nbsp; |&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; |&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; |&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; |</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">-C-C-C-C-C-C-</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">&nbsp;|&nbsp;&nbsp; |&nbsp;&nbsp; |&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; | &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;| &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;|</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">H H H&nbsp; H&nbsp; H&nbsp; H</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>which is an absurdity because more than half of the carbon hands are
+waving wildly around asking to be held by something. Benzene,
+C<sub>6</sub>H<sub>6</sub>, evidently is like hexane, C<sub>6</sub>H<sub>14</sub>, in having a chain of
+six carbon atoms, but it has dropped its H's like an Englishman. Eight
+of the H's are missing.</p>
+
+<p>Now one of the men who was worried over this benzene puzzle was the
+German chemist, Kekul&eacute;. One evening after working over the problem all
+day he was sitting by the fire trying to rest, but he could not <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span>throw
+it off his mind. The carbon and the hydrogen atoms danced like imps on
+the carpet and as he watched them through his half-closed eyes he
+suddenly saw that the chain of six carbon atoms had joined at the ends
+and formed a ring while the six hydrogen atoms were holding on to the
+outside hands, in this fashion:</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">H</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">&nbsp;|</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">C</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">/ \\</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">H-C&nbsp;  C-H</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">||&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; |</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">H-C&nbsp;  C-H</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">\ //</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">C</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">&nbsp;|</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">H</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Professor Kekul&eacute; saw at once that the demons of his subconscious self
+had furnished him with a clue to the labyrinth, and so it proved. We
+need not suppose that the benzene molecule if we could see it would look
+anything like this diagram of it, but the theory works and that is all
+the scientist asks of any theory. By its use thousands of new compounds
+have been constructed which have proved of inestimable value to man. The
+modern chemist is not a discoverer, he is an inventor. He sits down at
+his desk and draws a "Kekul&eacute; ring" or rather hexagon. Then he rubs out
+an H and hooks a nitro group (NO<sub>2</sub>) on to the carbon in place of it;
+next he rubs out the O<sub>2</sub> of the nitro group and puts in H<sub>2</sub>; then he
+hitches on such other elements, or carbon chains and rings as he likes.
+He works like an architect designing a house and when he gets a picture
+of the proposed compounds to suit him he goes into the laboratory to
+make it. First he takes down the bottle <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span>of benzene and boils up some of
+this with nitric acid and sulfuric acid. This he puts in the nitro group
+and makes nitro-benzene, C<sub>6</sub>H<sub>5</sub>NO<sub>2</sub>. He treats this with hydrogen,
+which displaces the oxygen and gives C<sub>6</sub>H<sub>5</sub>NH<sub>2</sub> or aniline, which
+is the basis of so many of these compounds that they are all commonly
+called "the aniline dyes." But aniline itself is not a dye. It is a
+colorless or brownish oil.</p>
+
+<p>It is not necessary to follow our chemist any farther now that we have
+seen how he works, but before we pass on we will just look at one of his
+products, not one of the most complicated but still complicated enough.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 189px;">
+<img src="images/coaltar.jpg" width="189" height="500" alt="A molecule of a coal-tar dye" title="" />
+<span class="caption">A molecule of a coal-tar dye</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span>The name of this is sodium
+ditolyl-disazo-beta-naphthylamine-6-sulfonic-beta-naphthylamine-3.6-disulfonate.</p>
+
+<p>These chemical names of organic compounds are discouraging to the
+beginner and amusing to the layman, but that is because neither of them
+realizes that they are not really words but formulas. They are
+hyphenated because they come from Germany. The name given above is no
+more of a mouthful than "a-square-plus-two-a-b-plus-b-square" or "Third
+Assistant Secretary of War to the President of the United States of
+America." The trade name of this dye is Brilliant Congo, but while that
+is handier to say it does not mean anything. Nobody but an expert in
+dyes would know what it was, while from the formula name any chemist
+familiar with such compounds could draw its picture, tell how it would
+behave and what it was made from, or even make it. The old alchemist was
+a secretive and pretentious person and used to invent queer names for
+the purpose of mystifying and awing the ignorant. But the chemist in
+dropping the al- has dropped the idea of secrecy and his names, though
+equally appalling to the layman, are designed to reveal and not to
+conceal.</p>
+
+<p>From this brief explanation the reader who has not studied chemistry
+will, I think, be able to get some idea of how these very intricate
+compounds are built up step by step. A completed house is hard to
+understand, but when we see the mason laying one brick on top of another
+it does not seem so difficult, although if we tried to do it we should
+not find it so easy as we think. Anyhow, let me give you a hint. If you
+want to make a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span>good impression on a chemist don't tell him that he
+seems to you a sort of magician, master of a black art, and all that
+nonsense. The chemist has been trying for three hundred years to live
+down the reputation of being inspired of the devil and it makes him mad
+to have his past thrown up at him in this fashion. If his tactless
+admirers would stop saying "it is all a mystery <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span>and a miracle to me,
+and I cannot understand it" and pay attention to what he is telling them
+they would understand it and would find that it is no more of a mystery
+or a miracle than anything else. You can make an electrician mad in the
+same way by interrupting his explanation of a dynamo by asking: "But you
+cannot tell me what electricity really is." The electrician does not
+care a rap what electricity "really is"&mdash;if there really is any meaning
+to that phrase. All he wants to know is what he can do with it.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 475px;">
+<img src="images/image098.jpg" width="475" height="600" alt="COMPARISON OF COAL AND ITS DISTILLATION PRODUCTS" title="" />
+<span class="caption">COMPARISON OF COAL AND ITS DISTILLATION PRODUCTS</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p><b>From Hesse's "The Industry of the Coal Tar Dyes," <i>Journal of Industrial and
+Engineering Chemistry</i>, December, 1914</b></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The tar obtained from the gas plant or the coke plant has now to be
+redistilled, giving off the ten "crudes" already mentioned and leaving
+in the still sixty-five per cent. of pitch, which may be used for
+roofing, paving and the like. The ten primary products or crudes are
+then converted into secondary products or "intermediates" by processes
+like that for the conversion of benzene into aniline. There are some
+three hundred of these intermediates in use and from them are built up
+more than three times as many dyes. The year before the war the American
+custom house listed 5674 distinct brands of synthetic dyes imported,
+chiefly from Germany, but some of these were trade names for the same
+product made by different firms or represented by different degrees of
+purity or form of preparation. Although the number of possible products
+is unlimited and over five thousand dyes are known, yet only about nine
+hundred are in use. We can summarize the situation so:</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Coal-tar &#8594; 10 crudes &#8594; 300 intermediates &#8594; 900 dyes &#8594; 5000 brands.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Or, to borrow the neat simile used by Dr. Bernhard C.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> Hesse, it is like
+cloth-making where "ten fibers make 300 yarns which are woven into 900
+patterns."</p>
+
+<p>The advantage of the artificial dyestuffs over those found in nature
+lies in their variety and adaptability. Practically any desired tint or
+shade can be made for any particular fabric. If my lady wants a new kind
+of green for her stockings or her hair she can have it. Candies and
+jellies and drinks can be made more attractive and therefore more
+appetizing by varied colors. Easter eggs and Easter bonnets take on new
+and brighter hues.</p>
+
+<p>More and more the chemist is becoming the architect of his own fortunes.
+He does not make discoveries by picking up a beaker and pouring into it
+a little from each bottle on the shelf to see what happens. He generally
+knows what he is after, and he generally gets it, although he is still
+often baffled and occasionally happens on something quite unexpected and
+perhaps more valuable than what he was looking for. Columbus was looking
+for India when he ran into an obstacle that proved to be America.
+William Henry Perkin was looking for quinine when he blundered into that
+rich and undiscovered country, the aniline dyes. William Henry was a
+queer boy. He had rather listen to a chemistry lecture than eat. When he
+was attending the City of London School at the age of thirteen there was
+an extra course of lectures on chemistry given at the noon recess, so he
+skipped his lunch to take them in. Hearing that a German chemist named
+Hofmann had opened a laboratory in the Royal College of London he headed
+for that. Hofmann obviously had no fear of forcing the young intellect
+prematurely. He <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span>perhaps had never heard that "the tender petals of the
+adolescent mind must be allowed to open slowly." He admitted young
+Perkin at the age of fifteen and started him on research at the end of
+his second year. An American student nowadays thinks he is lucky if he
+gets started on his research five years older than Perkin. Now if
+Hofmann had studied pedagogical psychology he would have been informed
+that nothing chills the ardor of the adolescent mind like being set at
+tasks too great for its powers. If he had heard this and believed it, he
+would not have allowed Perkin to spend two years in fruitless endeavors
+to isolate phenanthrene from coal tar and to prepare artificial
+quinine&mdash;and in that case Perkin would never have discovered the aniline
+dyes. But Perkin, so far from being discouraged, set up a private
+laboratory so he could work over-time. While working here during the
+Easter vacation of 1856&mdash;the date is as well worth remembering as
+1066&mdash;he was oxidizing some aniline oil when he got what chemists most
+detest, a black, tarry mass instead of nice, clean crystals. When he
+went to wash this out with alcohol he was surprised to find that it gave
+a beautiful purple solution. This was "mauve," the first of the aniline
+dyes.</p>
+
+<p>The funny thing about it was that when Perkin tried to repeat the
+experiment with purer aniline he could not get his color. It was because
+he was working with impure chemicals, with aniline containing a little
+toluidine, that he discovered mauve. It was, as I said, a lucky
+accident. But it was not accidental that the accident happened to the
+young fellow who spent his noonings and vacations at the study of
+chemistry. A man <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span>may not find what he is looking for, but he never
+finds anything unless he is looking for something.</p>
+
+<p>Mauve was a product of creative chemistry, for it was a substance that
+had never existed before. Perkin's next great triumph, ten years later,
+was in rivaling Nature in the manufacture of one of her own choice
+products. This is alizarin, the coloring matter contained in the madder
+root. It was an ancient and oriental dyestuff, known as "Turkey red" or
+by its Arabic name of "alizari." When madder was introduced into France
+it became a profitable crop and at one time half a million tons a year
+were raised. A couple of French chemists, Robiquet and Colin, extracted
+from madder its active principle, alizarin, in 1828, but it was not
+until forty years later that it was discovered that alizarin had for its
+base one of the coal-tar products, anthracene. Then came a neck-and-neck
+race between Perkin and his German rivals to see which could discover a
+cheap process for making alizarin from anthracene. The German chemists
+beat him to the patent office by one day! Graebe and Liebermann filed
+their application for a patent on the sulfuric acid process as No. 1936
+on June 25, 1869. Perkin filed his for the same process as No. 1948 on
+June 26. It had required twenty years to determine the constitution of
+alizarin, but within six months from its first synthesis the commercial
+process was developed and within a few years the sale of artificial
+alizarin reached $8,000,000 annually. The madder fields of France were
+put to other uses and even the French soldiers became dependent on
+made-in-Germany dyes for their red trousers. The British soldiers were
+placed in a similar situation as <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span>regards their red coats when after
+1878 the azo scarlets put the cochineal bug out of business.</p>
+
+<p>The modern chemist has robbed royalty of its most distinctive insignia,
+Tyrian purple. In ancient times to be "porphyrogene," that is "born to
+the purple," was like admission to the Almanach de Gotha at the present
+time, for only princes or their wealthy rivals could afford to pay $600
+a pound for crimsoned linen. The precious dye is secreted by a
+snail-like shellfish of the eastern coast of the Mediterranean. From a
+tiny sac behind the head a drop of thick whitish liquid, smelling like
+garlic, can be extracted. If this is spread upon cloth of any kind and
+exposed to air and sunlight it turns first green, next blue and then
+purple. If the cloth is washed with soap&mdash;that is, set by alkali&mdash;it
+becomes a fast crimson, such as Catholic cardinals still wear as princes
+of the church. The Ph&#339;nician merchants made fortunes out of their
+monopoly, but after the fall of Tyre it became one of "the lost
+arts"&mdash;and accordingly considered by those whose faces are set toward
+the past as much more wonderful than any of the new arts. But in 1909
+Friedlander put an end to the superstition by analyzing Tyrian purple
+and finding that it was already known. It was the same as a dye that had
+been prepared five years before by Sachs but had not come into
+commercial use because of its inferiority to others in the market. It
+required 12,000 of the mollusks to supply the little material needed for
+analysis, but once the chemist had identified it he did not need to
+bother the Murex further, for he could make it by the ton if he had
+wanted to. The coloring principle turned out to be a di-brom indigo,
+that is the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span>same as the substance extracted from the Indian plant, but
+with the addition of two atoms of bromine. Why a particular kind of a
+shellfish should have got the habit of extracting this rare element from
+sea water and stowing it away in this peculiar form is "one of those
+things no fellow can find out." But according to the chemist the Murex
+mollusk made a mistake in hitching the bromine to the wrong carbon
+atoms. He finds as he would word it that the 6:6' di-brom indigo
+secreted by the shellfish is not so good as the 5:5' di-brom indigo now
+manufactured at a cheap rate and in unlimited quantity. But we must not
+expect too much of a mollusk's mind. In their cheapness lies the offense
+of the aniline dyes in the minds of some people. Our modern aristocrats
+would delight to be entitled "porphyrogeniti" and to wear exclusive
+gowns of "purple and scarlet from the isles of Elishah" as was done in
+Ezekiel's time, but when any shopgirl or sailor can wear the royal color
+it spoils its beauty in their eyes. Applied science accomplishes a real
+democracy such as legislation has ever failed to establish.</p>
+
+<p>Any kind of dye found in nature can be made in the laboratory whenever
+its composition is understood and usually it can be made cheaper and
+purer than it can be extracted from the plant. But to work out a
+profitable process for making it synthetically is sometimes a task
+requiring high skill, persistent labor and heavy expenditure. One of the
+latest and most striking of these achievements of synthetic chemistry is
+the manufacture of indigo.</p>
+
+<p>Indigo is one of the oldest and fastest of the dyestuffs. To see that it
+is both ancient and lasting look <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span>at the unfaded blue cloths that enwrap
+an Egyptian mummy. When Caesar conquered our British ancestors he found
+them tattooed with woad, the native indigo. But the chief source of
+indigo was, as its name implies, India. In 1897 nearly a million acres
+in India were growing the indigo plant and the annual value of the crop
+was $20,000,000. Then the fall began and by 1914 India was producing
+only $300,000 worth! What had happened to destroy this profitable
+industry? Some blight or insect? No, it was simply that the Badische
+Anilin-und-Soda Fabrik had worked out a practical process for making
+artificial indigo.</p>
+
+<p>That indigo on breaking up gave off aniline was discovered as early as
+1840. In fact that was how aniline got its name, for when Fritzsche
+distilled indigo with caustic soda he called the colorless distillate
+"aniline," from the Arabic name for indigo, "anil" or "al-nil," that is,
+"the blue-stuff." But how to reverse the process and get indigo from
+aniline puzzled chemists for more than forty years until finally it was
+solved by Adolf von Baeyer of Munich, who died in 1917 at the age of
+eighty-four. He worked on the problem of the constitution of indigo for
+fifteen years and discovered several ways of making it. It is possible
+to start from benzene, toluene or naphthalene. The first process was the
+easiest, but if you will refer to the products of the distillation of
+tar you will find that the amount of toluene produced is less than the
+naphthalene, which is hard to dispose of. That is, if a dye factory had
+worked out a process for making indigo from toluene it would not be
+practicable because there was not enough toluene produced to supply the
+demand for <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span>indigo. So the more complicated napthalene process was
+chosen in preference to the others in order to utilize this by-product.</p>
+
+<p>The Badische Anilin-und-Soda Fabrik spent $5,000,000 and seventeen years
+in chemical research before they could make indigo, but they gained a
+monopoly (or, to be exact, ninety-six per cent.) of the world's
+production. A hundred years ago indigo cost as much as $4 a pound. In
+1914 we were paying fifteen cents a pound for it. Even the pauper labor
+of India could not compete with the German chemists at that price. At
+the beginning of the present century Germany was paying more than
+$3,000,000 a year for indigo. Fourteen years later Germany was <i>selling</i>
+indigo to the amount of $12,600,000. Besides its cheapness, artificial
+indigo is preferable because it is of uniform quality and greater
+purity. Vegetable indigo contains from forty to eighty per cent. of
+impurities, among them various other tinctorial substances. Artificial
+indigo is made pure and of any desired strength, so the dyers can depend
+on it.</p>
+
+<p>The value of the aniline colors lies in their infinite variety. Some are
+fast, some will fade, some will stand wear and weather as long as the
+fabric, some will wash out on the spot. Dyes can be made that will
+attach themselves to wool, to silk or to cotton, and give it any shade
+of any color. The period of discovery by accident has long gone by. The
+chemist nowadays decides first just what kind of a dye he wants, and
+then goes to work systematically to make it. He begins by drawing a
+diagram of the molecule, double-linking nitrogen or carbon and oxygen
+atoms to give the required <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span>intensity, putting in acid or basic radicals
+to fasten it to the fiber, shifting the color back and forth along the
+spectrum at will by introducing methyl groups, until he gets it just to
+his liking.</p>
+
+<p>Art can go ahead of nature in the dyestuff business. Before man found
+that he could make all the dyes he wanted from the tar he had been
+burning up at home he searched the wide world over to find colors by
+which he could make himself&mdash;or his wife&mdash;garments as beautiful as those
+that arrayed the flower, the bird and the butterfly. He sent divers down
+into the Mediterranean to rob the murex of his purple. He sent ships to
+the new world to get Brazil wood and to the oldest world for indigo. He
+robbed the lady cochineal of her scarlet coat. Why these peculiar
+substances were formed only by these particular plants, mussels and
+insects it is hard to understand. I don't know that Mrs. Cacti Coccus
+derived any benefit from her scarlet uniform when khaki would be safer,
+and I can't imagine that to a shellfish it was of advantage to turn red
+as it rots or to an indigo plant that its leaves in decomposing should
+turn blue. But anyhow, it was man that took advantage of them until he
+learned how to make his own dyestuffs.</p>
+
+<p>Our independent ancestors got along so far as possible with what grew in
+the neighborhood. Sweetapple bark gave a fine saffron yellow. Ribbons
+were given the hue of the rose by poke berry juice. The Confederates in
+their butternut-colored uniform were almost as invisible as if in khaki
+or <i>feldgrau</i>. Madder was cultivated in the kitchen garden. Only logwood
+from Jamaica and indigo from India had to be imported.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> That we are not
+so independent today is our own fault, for we waste enough coal tar to
+supply ourselves and other countries with all the new dyes needed. It is
+essentially a question of economy and organization. We have forgotten
+how to economize, but we have learned how to organize.</p>
+
+<p>The British Government gave the discoverer of mauve a title, but it did
+not give him any support in his endeavors to develop the industry,
+although England led the world in textiles and needed more dyes than any
+other country. So in 1874 Sir William Perkin relinquished the attempt to
+manufacture the dyes he had discovered because, as he said, Oxford and
+Cambridge refused to educate chemists or to carry on research. Their
+students, trained in the classics for the profession of being a
+gentleman, showed a decided repugnance to the laboratory on account of
+its bad smells. So when Hofmann went home he virtually took the infant
+industry along with him to Germany, where Ph.D.'s were cheap and
+plentiful and not afraid of bad smells. There the business throve
+amazingly, and by 1914 the Germans were manufacturing more than
+three-fourths of all the coal-tar products of the world and supplying
+material for most of the rest. The British cursed the universities for
+thus imperiling the nation through their narrowness and neglect; but
+this accusation, though natural, was not altogether fair, for at least
+half the blame should go to the British dyer, who did not care where his
+colors came from, so long as they were cheap. When finally the
+universities did turn over a new leaf and began to educate chemists, the
+manufacturers would not employ them. Before the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span>war six English
+factories producing dyestuffs employed only 35 chemists altogether,
+while one German color works, the H&ouml;chster Farbwerke, employed 307
+expert chemists and 74 technologists.</p>
+
+<p>This firm united with the six other leading dye companies of Germany on
+January 1, 1916, to form a trust to last for fifty years. During this
+time they will maintain uniform prices and uniform wage scales and hours
+of labor, and exchange patents and secrets. They will divide the foreign
+business <i>pro rata</i> and share the profits. The German chemical works
+made big profits during the war, mostly from munitions and medicines,
+and will be, through this new combination, in a stronger position than
+ever to push the export trade.</p>
+
+<p>As a consequence of letting the dye business get away from her, England
+found herself in a fix when war broke out. She did not have dyes for her
+uniforms and flags, and she did not have drugs for her wounded. She
+could not take advantage of the blockade to capture the German trade in
+Asia and South America, because she could not color her textiles. A blue
+cotton dyestuff that sold before the war at sixty cents a pound, brought
+$34 a pound. A bright pink rhodamine formerly quoted at a dollar a pound
+jumped to $48. When one keg of dye ordinarily worth $15 was put up at
+forced auction sale in 1915 it was knocked down at $1500. The
+Highlanders could not get the colors for their kilts until some German
+dyes were smuggled into England. The textile industries of Great
+Britain, that brought in a billion dollars a year and employed one and a
+half million workers, were crippled for lack of dyes. The demand for
+high explosives from the front could not be <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span>met because these also are
+largely coal-tar products. Picric acid is both a dye and an explosive.
+It is made from carbolic acid and the famous trinitrotoluene is made
+from toluene, both of which you will find in the list of the ten
+fundamental "crudes."</p>
+
+<p>Both Great Britain and the United States realized the danger of allowing
+Germany to recover her former monopoly, and both have shown a readiness
+to cast overboard their traditional policies to meet this emergency. The
+British Government has discovered that a country without a tariff is a
+land without walls. The American Government has discovered that an
+industry is not benefited by being cut up into small pieces. Both
+governments are now doing all they can to build up big concerns and to
+provide them with protection. The British Government assisted in the
+formation of a national company for the manufacture of synthetic dyes by
+taking one-sixth of the stock and providing $500,000 for a research
+laboratory. But this effort is now reported to be "a great failure"
+because the Government put it in charge of the politicians instead of
+the chemists.</p>
+
+<p>The United States, like England, had become dependent upon Germany for
+its dyestuffs. We imported nine-tenths of what we used and most of those
+that were produced here were made from imported intermediates. When the
+war broke out there were only seven firms and 528 persons employed in
+the manufacture of dyes in the United States. One of these, the
+Schoelkopf Aniline and Chemical Works, of Buffalo, deserves mention, for
+it had stuck it out ever since 1879, and in 1914 was making 106 dyes. In
+June, 1917, this firm, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span>with the encouragement of the Government Bureau
+of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, joined with some of the other American
+producers to form a trade combination, the National Aniline and Chemical
+Company. The Du Pont Company also entered the field on an extensive
+scale and soon there were 118 concerns engaged in it with great profit.
+During the war $200,000,000 was invested in the domestic dyestuff
+industry. To protect this industry Congress put on a specific duty of
+five cents a pound and an ad valorem duty of 30 per cent. on imported
+dyestuffs; but if, after five years, American manufacturers are not
+producing 60 per cent. in value of the domestic consumption, the
+protection is to be removed. For some reason, not clearly understood and
+therefore hotly discussed, Congress at the last moment struck off the
+specific duty from two of the most important of the dyestuffs, indigo
+and alizarin, as well as from all medicinals and flavors.</p>
+
+<p>The manufacture of dyes is not a big business, but it is a strategic
+business. Heligoland is not a big island, but England would have been
+glad to buy it back during the war at a high price per square yard.
+American industries employing over two million men and women and
+producing over three billion dollars' worth of products a year are
+dependent upon dyes. Chief of these is of course textiles, using more
+than half the dyes; next come leather, paper, paint and ink. We have
+been importing more than $12,000,000 worth of coal-tar products a year,
+but the cottonseed oil we exported in 1912 would alone suffice to pay
+that bill twice over. But although the manufacture of dyes cannot be
+called a big business, in comparison with some others, it is a paying
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span>business when well managed. The German concerns paid on an average 22
+per cent. dividends on their capital and sometimes as high as 50 per
+cent. Most of the standard dyes have been so long in use that the
+patents are off and the processes are well enough known. We have the
+coal tar and we have the chemists, so there seems no good reason why we
+should not make our own dyes, at least enough of them so we will not be
+caught napping as we were in 1914. It was decidedly humiliating for our
+Government to have to beg Germany to sell us enough colors to print our
+stamps and greenbacks and then have to beg Great Britain for permission
+to bring them over by Dutch ships.</p>
+
+<p>The raw material for the production of coal-tar products we have in
+abundance if we will only take the trouble to save it. In 1914 the crude
+light oil collected from the coke-ovens would have produced only about
+4,500,000 gallons of benzol and 1,500,000 gallons of toluol, but in 1917
+this output was raised to 40,200,000 gallons of benzol and 10,200,000 of
+toluol. The toluol was used mostly in the manufacture of trinitrotoluol
+for use in Europe. When the war broke out in 1914 it shut off our supply
+of phenol (carbolic acid) for which we were dependent upon foreign
+sources. This threatened not only to afflict us with headaches by
+depriving us of aspirin but also to removed the consolation of music,
+for phenol is used in making phonographic records. Mr. Edison with his
+accustomed energy put up a factory within a few weeks for the
+manufacture of synthetic phenol. When we entered the war the need for
+phenol became yet more imperative, for it was <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span>needed to make picric
+acid for filling bombs. This demand was met, and in 1917 there were
+fifteen new plants turning out 64,146,499 pounds of phenol valued at
+$23,719,805.</p>
+
+<p>Some of the coal-tar products, as we see, serve many purposes. For
+instance, picric acid appears in three places in this book. It is a high
+explosive. It is a powerful and permanent yellow dye as any one who has
+touched it knows. Thirdly it is used as an antiseptic to cover burned
+skin. Other coal-tar dyes are used for the same purpose, "malachite
+green," "brilliant green," "crystal violet," "ethyl violet" and
+"Victoria blue," so a patient in a military hospital is decorated like
+an Easter egg. During the last five years surgeons have unfortunately
+had unprecedented opportunities for the study of wounds and fortunately
+they have been unprecedentedly successful in finding improved methods of
+treating them. In former wars a serious wound meant usually death or
+amputation. Now nearly ninety per cent. of the wounded are able to
+continue in the service. The reason for this improvement is that
+medicines are now being made to order instead of being gathered "from
+China to Peru." The old herb doctor picked up any strange plant that he
+could find and tried it on any sick man that would let him. This
+empirical method, though hard on the patients, resulted in the course of
+five thousand years in the discovery of a number of useful remedies. But
+the modern medicine man when he knows the cause of the disease is
+usually able to devise ways of counteracting it directly. For instance,
+he knows, thanks to Pasteur and Metchnikoff, that the cause of wound
+infection is <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span>the bacterial enemies of man which swarm by the million
+into any breach in his protective armor, the skin. Now when a breach is
+made in a line of intrenchments the defenders rush troops to the
+threatened spot for two purposes, constructive and destructive,
+engineers and warriors, the former to build up the rampart with
+sandbags, the latter to kill the enemy. So when the human body is
+invaded the blood brings to the breach two kinds of defenders. One is
+the serum which neutralizes the bacterial poison and by coagulating
+forms a new skin or scab over the exposed flesh. The other is the
+phagocytes or white corpuscles, the free lances of our corporeal
+militia, which attack and kill the invading bacteria. The aim of the
+physician then is to aid these defenders as much as possible without
+interfering with them. Therefore the antiseptic he is seeking is one
+that will assist the serum in protecting and repairing the broken
+tissues and will kill the hostile bacteria without killing the friendly
+phagocytes. Carbolic acid, the most familiar of the coal-tar
+antiseptics, will destroy the bacteria when it is diluted with 250 parts
+of water, but unfortunately it puts a stop to the fighting activities of
+the phagocytes when it is only half that strength, or one to 500, so it
+cannot destroy the infection without hindering the healing.</p>
+
+<p>In this search for substances that would attack a specific disease germ
+one of the leading investigators was Prof. Paul Ehrlich, a German
+physician of the Hebrew race. He found that the aniline dyes were useful
+for staining slides under the microscope, for they would pick out
+particular cells and leave others uncolored and from this starting point
+he worked out <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span>organic and metallic compounds which would destroy the
+bacteria and parasites that cause some of the most dreadful of diseases.
+A year after the war broke out Professor Ehrlich died while working in
+his laboratory on how to heal with coal-tar compounds the wounds
+inflicted by explosives from the same source.</p>
+
+<p>One of the most valuable of the aniline antiseptics employed by Ehrlich
+is flavine or, if the reader prefers to call it by its full name,
+diaminomethylacridinium chloride. Flavine, as its name implies, is a
+yellow dye and will kill the germs causing ordinary abscesses when in
+solution as dilute as one part of the dye to 200,000 parts of water, but
+it does not interfere with the bactericidal action of the white blood
+corpuscles unless the solution is 400 times as strong as this, that is
+one part in 500. Unlike carbolic acid and other antiseptics it is said
+to stimulate the serum instead of impairing its activity. Another
+antiseptic of the coal-tar family which has recently been brought into
+use by Dr. Dakin of the Rockefeller Institute is that called by European
+physicians chloramine-T and by American physicians chlorazene and by
+chemists para-toluene-sodium-sulfo-chloramide.</p>
+
+<p>This may serve to illustrate how a chemist is able to make such remedies
+as the doctor needs, instead of depending upon the accidental
+by-products of plants. On an earlier page I explained how by starting
+with the simplest of ring-compounds, the benzene of coal tar, we could
+get aniline. Suppose we go a step further and boil the aniline oil with
+acetic acid, which is the acid of vinegar minus its water. This easy
+process gives us acetanilid, which when introduced into the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span>market some
+years ago under the name of "antifebrin" made a fortune for its makers.</p>
+
+<p>The making of medicines from coal tar began in 1874 when Kolbe made
+salicylic acid from carbolic acid. Salicylic acid is a rheumatism remedy
+and had previously been extracted from willow bark. If now we treat
+salicylic acid with concentrated acetic acid we get "aspirin." From
+aniline again are made "phenacetin," "antipyrin" and a lot of other
+drugs that have become altogether too popular as headache remedies&mdash;say
+rather "headache relievers."</p>
+
+<p>Another class of synthetics equally useful and likewise abused, are the
+soporifics, such as "sulphonal," "veronal" and "medinal." When it is not
+desired to put the patient to sleep but merely to render insensible a
+particular place, as when a tooth is to be pulled, cocain may be used.
+This, like alcohol and morphine, has proved a curse as well as a
+blessing and its sale has had to be restricted because of the many
+victims to the habit of using this drug. Cocain is obtained from the
+leaves of the South American coca tree, but can be made artificially
+from coal-tar products. The laboratory is superior to the forest because
+other forms of local anesthetics, such as eucain and novocain, can be
+made that are better than the natural alkaloid because more effective
+and less poisonous.</p>
+
+<p>I must not forget to mention another lot of coal-tar derivatives in
+which some of my readers will take a personal interest. That is the
+photographic developers. I am old enough to remember when we used to
+develop our plates in ferrous sulfate solution and you never saw nicer
+negatives than we got with it. But <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span>when pyrogallic acid came in we
+switched over to that even though it did stain our fingers and sometimes
+our plates. Later came a swarm of new organic reducing agents under
+various fancy names, such as metol, hydro (short for hydro-quinone) and
+eikongen ("the image-maker"). Every fellow fixed up his own formula and
+called his fellow-members of the camera club fools for not adopting it
+though he secretly hoped they would not.</p>
+
+<p>Under the double stimulus of patriotism and high prices the American
+drug and dyestuff industry developed rapidly. In 1917 about as many
+pounds of dyes were manufactured in America as were imported in 1913 and
+our <i>exports</i> of American-made dyes exceeded in value our <i>imports</i>
+before the war. In 1914 the output of American dyes was valued at
+$2,500,000. In 1917 it amounted to over $57,000,000. This does not mean
+that the problem was solved, for the home products were not equal in
+variety and sometimes not in quality to those made in Germany. Many
+valuable dyes were lacking and the cost was of course much higher.
+Whether the American industry can compete with the foreign in an open
+market and on equal terms is impossible to say because such conditions
+did not prevail before the war and they are not going to prevail in the
+future. Formerly the large German cartels through their agents and
+branches in this country kept the business in their own hands and now
+the American manufacturers are determined to maintain the independence
+they have acquired. They will not depend hereafter upon the tariff to
+cut off competition but have adopted more effective measures. The 4500
+German chemical <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span>patents that had been seized by the Alien Property
+Custodian were sold by him for $250,000 to the Chemical Foundation, an
+association of American manufacturers organized "for the Americanization
+of such institutions as may be affected thereby, for the exclusion or
+elimination of alien interests hostile or detrimental to said industries
+and for the advancement of chemical and allied science and industry in
+the United States." The Foundation has a large fighting fund so that it
+"may be able to commence immediately and prosecute with the utmost vigor
+infringement proceedings whenever the first German attempt shall
+hereafter be made to import into this country."</p>
+
+<p>So much mystery has been made of the achievements of German chemists&mdash;as
+though the Teutonic brain had a special lobe for that faculty, lacking
+in other craniums&mdash;that I want to quote what Dr. Hesse says about his
+first impressions of a German laboratory of industrial research:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Directly after graduating from the University of Chicago in
+1896, I entered the employ of the largest coal-tar dye works in
+the world at its plant in Germany and indeed in one of its
+research laboratories. This was my first trip outside the
+United States and it was, of course, an event of the first
+magnitude for me to be in Europe, and, as a chemist, to be in
+Germany, in a German coal-tar dye plant, and to cap it all in
+its research laboratory&mdash;a real <i>sanctum sanctorum</i> for
+chemists. In a short time the daily routine wore the novelty
+off my experience and I then settled down to calm analysis and
+dispassionate appraisal of my surroundings and to compare what
+was actually before and around me with my expectations.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> I
+found that the general laboratory equipment was no better than
+what I had been accustomed to; that my colleagues had no better
+fundamental training than I had enjoyed nor any better fact&mdash;or
+manipulative&mdash;equipment than I; that those in charge of the
+work had no better general intellectual equipment nor any more
+native ability than had my instructors; in short, there was
+nothing new about it all, nothing that we did not have back
+home, nothing&mdash;except the specific problems that were engaging
+their attention, and the special opportunities of attacking
+them. Those problems were of no higher order of complexity than
+those I had been accustomed to for years, in fact, most of them
+were not very complex from a purely intellectual viewpoint.
+There was nothing inherently uncanny, magical or wizardly about
+their occupation whatever. It was nothing but plain hard work
+and keeping everlastingly at it. Now, what was the actual thing
+behind that chemical laboratory that we did not have at home?
+It was money, willing to back such activity, convinced that in
+the final outcome, a profit would be made; money, willing to
+take university graduates expecting from them no special
+knowledge other than a good and thorough grounding in
+scientific research and provide them with opportunity to become
+specialists suited to the factory's needs.</p></div>
+
+<p>It is evidently not impossible to make the United States self-sufficient
+in the matter of coal-tar products. We've got the tar; we've got the
+men; we've got the money, too. Whether such a policy would pay us in the
+long run or whether it is necessary as a measure of military or
+commercial self-defense is another question that cannot here be decided.
+But whatever share we may have in it the coal-tar industry has increased
+the economy of civilization and added to the wealth of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span>world by
+showing how a waste by-product could be utilized for making new dyes and
+valuable medicines, a better use for tar than as fuel for political
+bonfires and as clothing for the nakedness of social outcasts.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="V" id="V"></a>V</h2>
+
+<h3>SYNTHETIC PERFUMES AND FLAVORS</h3>
+
+
+<p>The primitive man got his living out of such wild plants and animals as
+he could find. Next he, or more likely his wife, began to cultivate the
+plants and tame the animals so as to insure a constant supply. This was
+the first step toward civilization, for when men had to settle down in a
+community (<i>civitas</i>) they had to ameliorate their manners and make laws
+protecting land and property. In this settled and orderly life the
+plants and animals improved as well as man and returned a hundredfold
+for the pains that their master had taken in their training. But still
+man was dependent upon the chance bounties of nature. He could select,
+but he could not invent. He could cultivate, but he could not create. If
+he wanted sugar he had to send to the West Indies. If he wanted spices
+he had to send to the East Indies. If he wanted indigo he had to send to
+India. If he wanted a febrifuge he had to send to Peru. If he wanted a
+fertilizer he had to send to Chile. If he wanted rubber he had to send
+to the Congo. If he wanted rubies he had to send to Mandalay. If he
+wanted otto of roses he had to send to Turkey. Man was not yet master of
+his environment.</p>
+
+<p>This period of cultivation, the second stage of civilization, began
+before the dawn of history and lasted <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span>until recent times. We might
+almost say up to the twentieth century, for it was not until the
+fundamental laws of heredity were discovered that man could originate
+new species of plants and animals according to a predetermined plan by
+combining such characteristics as he desired to perpetuate. And it was
+not until the fundamental laws of chemistry were discovered that man
+could originate new compounds more suitable to his purpose than any to
+be found in nature. Since the progress of mankind is continuous it is
+impossible to draw a date line, unless a very jagged one, along the
+frontier of human culture, but it is evident that we are just entering
+upon the third era of evolution in which man will make what he needs
+instead of trying to find it somewhere. The new epoch has hardly dawned,
+yet already a man may stay at home in New York or London and make his
+own rubber and rubies, his own indigo and otto of roses. More than this,
+he can make gems and colors and perfumes that never existed since time
+began. The man of science has signed a declaration of independence of
+the lower world and we are now in the midst of the revolution.</p>
+
+<p>Our eyes are dazzled by the dawn of the new era. We know what the hunter
+and the horticulturist have already done for man, but we cannot imagine
+what the chemist can do. If we look ahead through the eyes of one of the
+greatest of French chemists, Berthelot, this is what we shall see:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>The problem of food is a chemical problem. Whenever energy can
+be obtained economically we can begin to make all kinds of
+aliment, with carbon borrowed from carbonic acid, hydrogen
+taken from the water and oxygen and nitrogen <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span>drawn from the
+air.... The day will come when each person will carry for his
+nourishment his little nitrogenous tablet, his pat of fatty
+matter, his package of starch or sugar, his vial of aromatic
+spices suited to his personal taste; all manufactured
+economically and in unlimited quantities; all independent of
+irregular seasons, drought and rain, of the heat that withers
+the plant and of the frost that blights the fruit; all free
+from pathogenic microbes, the origin of epidemics and the
+enemies of human life. On that day chemistry will have
+accomplished a world-wide revolution that cannot be estimated.
+There will no longer be hills covered with vineyards and fields
+filled with cattle. Man will gain in gentleness and morality
+because he will cease to live by the carnage and destruction of
+living creatures.... The earth will be covered with grass,
+flowers and woods and in it the human race will dwell in the
+abundance and joy of the legendary age of gold&mdash;provided that a
+spiritual chemistry has been discovered that changes the nature
+of man as profoundly as our chemistry transforms material
+nature.</p></div>
+
+<p>But this is looking so far into the future that we can trust no man's
+eyesight, not even Berthelot's. There is apparently no impossibility
+about the manufacture of synthetic food, but at present there is no
+apparent probability of it. There is no likelihood that the laboratory
+will ever rival the wheat field. The cornstalk will always be able to
+work cheaper than the chemist in the manufacture of starch. But in rarer
+and choicer products of nature the chemist has proved his ability to
+compete and even to excel.</p>
+
+<p>What have been from the dawn of history to the rise of synthetic
+chemistry the most costly products of nature? What could tempt a
+merchant to brave the perils of a caravan journey over the deserts of
+Asia <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span>beset with Arab robbers? What induced the Portuguese and Spanish
+mariners to risk their frail barks on perilous waters of the Cape of
+Good Hope or the Horn? The chief prizes were perfumes, spices, drugs and
+gems. And why these rather than what now constitutes the bulk of oversea
+and overland commerce? Because they were precious, portable and
+imperishable. If the merchant got back safe after a year or two with a
+little flask of otto of roses, a package of camphor and a few pearls
+concealed in his garments his fortune was made. If a single ship of the
+argosy sent out from Lisbon came back with a load of sandalwood, indigo
+or nutmeg it was regarded as a successful venture. You know from reading
+the Bible, or if not that, from your reading of Arabian Nights, that a
+few grains of frankincense or a few drops of perfumed oil were regarded
+as gifts worthy the acceptance of a king or a god. These products of the
+Orient were equally in demand by the toilet and the temple. The
+unctorium was an adjunct of the Roman bathroom. Kings had to be greased
+and fumigated before they were thought fit to sit upon a throne. There
+was a theory, not yet altogether extinct, that medicines brought from a
+distance were most efficacious, especially if, besides being expensive,
+they tasted bad like myrrh or smelled bad like asafetida. And if these
+failed to save the princely patient he was embalmed in aromatics or, as
+we now call them, antiseptics of the benzene series.</p>
+
+<p>Today, as always, men are willing to pay high for the titillation of the
+senses of smell and taste. The African savage will trade off an ivory
+tusk for a piece of soap reeking with synthetic musk. The clubman <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span>will
+pay $10 for a bottle of wine which consists mostly of water with about
+ten per cent. of alcohol, worth a cent or two, but contains an
+unweighable amount of the "bouquet" that can only be produced on the
+sunny slopes of Champagne or in the valley of the Rhine. But very likely
+the reader is quite as extravagant, for when one buys the natural violet
+perfumery he is paying at the rate of more than $10,000 a pound for the
+odoriferous oil it contains; the rest is mere water and alcohol. But you
+would not want the pure undiluted oil if you could get it, for it is
+unendurable. A single whiff of it paralyzes your sense of smell for a
+time just as a loud noise deafens you.</p>
+
+<p>Of the five senses, three are physical and two chemical. By touch we
+discern pressures and surface textures. By hearing we receive
+impressions of certain air waves and by sight of certain ether waves.
+But smell and taste lead us to the heart of the molecule and enable us
+to tell how the atoms are put together. These twin senses stand like
+sentries at the portals of the body, where they closely scrutinize
+everything that enters. Sounds and sights may be disagreeable, but they
+are never fatal. A man can live in a boiler factory or in a cubist art
+gallery, but he cannot live in a room containing hydrogen sulfide. Since
+it is more important to be warned of danger than guided to delights our
+senses are made more sensitive to pain than pleasure. We can detect by
+the smell one two-millionth of a milligram of oil of roses or musk, but
+we can detect one two-billionth of a milligram of mercaptan, which is
+the vilest smelling compound that man has so far invented. If you do not
+know how much a milligram <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span>is consider a drop picked up by the point of
+a needle and imagine that divided into two billion parts. Also try to
+estimate the weight of the odorous particles that guide a dog to the fox
+or warn a deer of the presence of man. The unaided nostril can rival the
+spectroscope in the detection and analysis of unweighable amounts of
+matter.</p>
+
+<p>What we call flavor or savor is a joint effect of taste and odor in
+which the latter predominates. There are only four tastes of importance,
+acid, alkaline, bitter and sweet. The acid, or sour taste, is the
+perception of hydrogen atoms charged with positive electricity. The
+alkaline, or soapy taste, is the perception of hydroxyl radicles charged
+with negative electricity. The bitter and sweet tastes and all the odors
+depend upon the chemical constitution of the compound, but the laws of
+the relation have not yet been worked out. Since these sense organs, the
+taste and smell buds, are sunk in the moist mucous membrane they can
+only be touched by substances soluble in water, and to reach the sense
+of smell they must also be volatile so as to be diffused in the air
+inhaled by the nose. The "taste" of food is mostly due to the volatile
+odors of it that creep up the back-stairs into the olfactory chamber.</p>
+
+<p>A chemist given an unknown substance would have to make an elementary
+analysis and some tedious tests to determine whether it contained methyl
+or ethyl groups, whether it was an aldehyde or an ester, whether the
+carbon atoms were singly or doubly linked and whether it was an open
+chain or closed. But let him get a whiff of it and he can give instantly
+a pretty shrewd guess as to these points. His nose knows.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span>Although the chemist does not yet know enough to tell for certain from
+looking at the structural formula what sort of odor the compound would
+have or whether it would have any, yet we can divide odoriferous
+substances into classes according to their constitution. What are
+commonly known as "fruity" odors belong mostly to what the chemist calls
+the fatty or aliphatic series. For instance, we may have in a ripe fruit
+an alcohol (say ethyl or common alcohol) and an acid (say acetic or
+vinegar) and a combination of these, the ester or organic salt (in this
+case ethyl acetate), which is more odorous than either of its
+components. These esters of the fatty acids give the characteristic
+savor to many of our favorite fruits, candies and beverages. The pear
+flavor, amyl acetate, is made from acetic acid and amyl alcohol&mdash;though
+amyl alcohol (fusel oil) has a detestable smell. Pineapple is ethyl
+butyrate&mdash;but the acid part of it (butyric acid) is what gives Limburger
+cheese its aroma. These essential oils are easily made in the
+laboratory, but cannot be extracted from the fruit for separate use.</p>
+
+<p>If the carbon chain contains one or more double linkages we get the
+"flowery" perfumes. For instance, here is the symbol of geraniol, the
+chief ingredient of otto of roses:</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">(CH<sub>3</sub>)<sub>2</sub>C = CHCH<sub>2</sub>CH<sub>2</sub>C(CH<sub>3</sub>)<sub>2</sub> = CHCH<sub>2</sub>OH</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>The rose would smell as sweet under another name, but it may be
+questioned whether it would stand being called by the name of
+dimethyl-2-6-octadiene-2-6-ol-8. Geraniol by oxidation goes into the
+aldehyde, citral, which occurs in lemons, oranges and verbena flowers.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span>
+Another compound of this group, linalool, is found in lavender, bergamot
+and many flowers.</p>
+
+<p>Geraniol, as you would see if you drew up its structural formula in the
+way I described in the last chapter, contains a chain of six carbon
+atoms, that is, the same number as make a benzene ring. Now if we shake
+up geraniol and other compounds of this group (the diolefines) with
+diluted sulfuric acid the carbon chain hooks up to form a benzene ring,
+but with the other carbon atoms stretched across it; rather too
+complicated to depict here. These "bridged rings" of the formula
+C<sub>5</sub>H<sub>8</sub>, or some multiple of that, constitute the important group of
+the terpenes which occur in turpentine and such wild and woodsy things
+as sage, lavender, caraway, pine needles and eucalyptus. Going further
+in this direction we are led into the realm of the heavy oriental odors,
+patchouli, sandalwood, cedar, cubebs, ginger and camphor. Camphor can
+now be made directly from turpentine so we may be independent of Formosa
+and Borneo.</p>
+
+<p>When we have a six carbon ring without double linkings (cyclo-aliphatic)
+or with one or two such, we get soft and delicate perfumes like the
+violet (ionone and irone). But when these pass into the benzene ring
+with its three double linkages the odor becomes more powerful and so
+characteristic that the name "aromatic compound" has been extended to
+the entire class of benzene derivatives, although many of them are
+odorless. The essential oils of jasmine, orange blossoms, musk,
+heliotrope, tuberose, ylang ylang, etc., consist mostly of this class
+and can be made from the common source of aromatic compounds, coal tar.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span>The synthetic flavors and perfumes are made in the same way as the dyes
+by starting with some coal-tar product or other crude material and
+building up the molecule to the desired complexity. For instance, let us
+start with phenol, the ill-smelling and poisonous carbolic acid of
+disagreeable associations and evil fame. Treat this to soda-water and it
+is transformed into salicylic acid, a white odorless powder, used as a
+preservative and as a rheumatism remedy. Add to this methyl alcohol
+which is obtained by the destructive distillation of wood and is much
+more poisonous than ordinary ethyl alcohol. The alcohol and the acid
+heated together will unite with the aid of a little sulfuric acid and we
+get what the chemist calls methyl salicylate and other people call oil
+of wintergreen, the same as is found in wintergreen berries and birch
+bark. We have inherited a taste for this from our pioneer ancestors and
+we use it extensively to flavor our soft drinks, gum, tooth paste and
+candy, but the Europeans have not yet found out how nice it is.</p>
+
+<p>But, starting with phenol again, let us heat it with caustic alkali and
+chloroform. This gives us two new compounds of the same composition, but
+differing a little in the order of the atoms. If you refer back to the
+diagram of the benzene ring which I gave in the last chapter, you will
+see that there are six hydrogen atoms attached to it. Now any or all
+these hydrogen atoms may be replaced by other elements or groups and
+what the product is depends not only on what the new elements are, but
+where they are put. It is like spelling words. The three letters <i>t</i>,
+<i>r</i> and <i>a</i> mean very different things according to whether they are put
+together <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span>as <i>art</i>, <i>tar</i> or <i>rat</i>. Or, to take a more apposite
+illustration, every hostess knows that the success of her dinner depends
+upon how she seats her guests around the table. So in the case of
+aromatic compounds, a little difference in the seating arrangement
+around the benzene ring changes the character. The two derivatives of
+phenol, which we are now considering, have two substituting groups. One
+is&mdash;O-H (called the hydroxyl group). The other is&mdash;CHO (called the
+aldehyde group). If these are opposite (called the para position) we
+have an odorless white solid. If they are side by side (called the ortho
+position) we have an oil with the odor of meadowsweet. Treating the
+odorless solid with methyl alcohol we get audepine (or anisic aldehyde)
+which is the perfume of hawthorn blossoms. But treating the other of the
+twin products, the fragrant oil, with dry acetic acid ("Perkin's
+reaction") we get cumarin, which is the perfume part of the tonka or
+tonquin beans that our forefathers used to carry in their snuff boxes.
+One ounce of cumarin is equal to four pounds of tonka beans. It smells
+sufficiently like vanilla to be used as a substitute for it in cheap
+extracts. In perfumery it is known as "new mown hay."</p>
+
+<p>You may remember what I said on a former page about the career of
+William Henry Perkin, the boy who loved chemistry better than eating,
+and how he discovered the coal-tar dyes. Well, it is also to his
+ingenious mind that we owe the starting of the coal-tar perfume business
+which has had almost as important a development. Perkin made cumarin in
+1868, but this, like the dye industry, escaped from English hands and
+flew over the North Sea. Before the war<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> Germany was exporting
+$1,500,000 worth of synthetic perfumes a year. Part of these went to
+France, where they were mixed and put up in fancy bottles with French
+names and sold to Americans at fancy prices.</p>
+
+<p>The real vanilla flavor, vanillin, was made by Tiemann in 1874. At first
+it sold for nearly $800 a pound, but now it may be had for $10. How
+extensively it is now used in chocolate, ice cream, soda water, cakes
+and the like we all know. It should be noted that cumarin and vanillin,
+however they may be made, are not imitations, but identical with the
+chief constituent of the tonka and vanilla beans and, of course, are
+equally wholesome or harmless. But the nice palate can distinguish a
+richer flavor in the natural extracts, for they contain small quantities
+of other savory ingredients.</p>
+
+<p>A true perfume consists of a large number of odoriferous chemical
+compounds mixed in such proportions as to produce a single harmonious
+effect upon the sense of smell in a fine brand of perfume may be
+compounded a dozen or twenty different ingredients and these, if they
+are natural essences, are complex mixtures of a dozen or so distinct
+substances. Perfumery is one of the fine arts. The perfumer, like the
+orchestra leader, must know how to combine and co&ouml;rdinate his
+instruments to produce a desired sensation. A Wagnerian opera requires
+103 musicians. A Strauss opera requires 112. Now if the concert manager
+wants to economize he will insist upon cutting down on the most
+expensive musicians and dropping out some of the others, say, the
+supernumerary violinists and the man who blows a single blast or tinkles
+a triangle once <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span>in the course of the evening. Only the trained ear will
+detect the difference and the manager can make more money.</p>
+
+<p>Suppose our mercenary impresario were unable to get into the concert
+hall of his famous rival. He would then listen outside the window and
+analyze the sound in this fashion: "Fifty per cent. of the sound is made
+by the tuba, 20 per cent. by the bass drum, 15 per cent. by the 'cello
+and 10 per cent. by the clarinet. There are some other instruments, but
+they are not loud and I guess if we can leave them out nobody will know
+the difference." So he makes up his orchestra out of these four alone
+and many people do not know the difference.</p>
+
+<p>The cheap perfumer goes about it in the same way. He analyzes, for
+instance, the otto or oil of roses which cost during the war $400 a
+pound&mdash;if you could get it at any price&mdash;and he finds that the chief
+ingredient is geraniol, costing only $5, and next is citronelol, costing
+$20; then comes nerol and others. So he makes up a cheap brand of
+perfumery out of three or four such compounds. But the genuine oil of
+roses, like other natural essences, contains a dozen or more
+constituents and to leave many of them out is like reducing an orchestra
+to a few loud-sounding instruments or a painting to a three-color print.
+A few years ago an attempt was made to make music electrically by
+producing separately each kind of sound vibration contained in the
+instruments imitated. Theoretically that seems easy, but practically the
+tone was not satisfactory because the tones and overtones of a full
+orchestra or even of a single violin are too numerous and complex <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span>to be
+reproduced individually. So the synthetic perfumes have not driven out
+the natural perfumes, but, on the contrary, have aided and stimulated
+the growth of flowers for essences. The otto or attar of roses, favorite
+of the Persian monarchs and romances, has in recent years come chiefly
+from Bulgaria. But wars are not made with rosewater and the Bulgars for
+the last five years have been engaged in other business than cultivating
+their own gardens. The alembic or still was invented by the Arabian
+alchemists for the purpose of obtaining the essential oil or attar of
+roses. But distillation, even with the aid of steam, is not altogether
+satisfactory. For instance, the distilled rose oil contains anywhere
+from 10 to 74 per cent. of a paraffin wax (stearopten) that is odorless
+and, on the other hand, phenyl-ethyl alcohol, which is an important
+constituent of the scent of roses, is broken up in the process of
+distillation. So the perfumer can improve on the natural or rather the
+distilled oil by leaving out part of the paraffin and adding the missing
+alcohol. Even the imported article taken direct from the still is not
+always genuine, for the wily Bulgar sometimes "increases the yield" by
+sprinkling his roses in the vat with synthetic geraniol just as the wily
+Italian pours a barrel of American cottonseed oil over his olives in the
+press.</p>
+
+<p>Another method of extracting the scent of flowers is by <i>enfleurage</i>,
+which takes advantage of the tendency of fats to absorb odors. You know
+how butter set beside fish in the ice box will get a fishy flavor. In
+<i>enfleurage</i> moist air is carried up a tower passing alternately over
+trays of fresh flowers, say violets, and over <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span>glass plates covered with
+a thin layer of lard. The perfumed lard may then be used as a pomade or
+the perfume may be extracted by alcohol.</p>
+
+<p>But many sweet flowers do not readily yield an essential oil, so in such
+oases we have to rely altogether upon more or less successful
+substitutes. For instance, the perfumes sold under the names of
+"heliotrope," "lily of the valley," "lilac," "cyclamen," "honeysuckle,"
+"sweet pea," "arbutus," "mayflower" and "magnolia" are not produced from
+these flowers but are simply imitations made from other essences,
+synthetic or natural. Among the "thousand flowers" that contribute to
+the "Eau de Mille Fleurs" are the civet cat, the musk deer and the sperm
+whale. Some of the published formulas for "Jockey Club" call for civet
+or ambergris and those of "Lavender Water" for musk and civet. The less
+said about the origin of these three animal perfumes the better.
+Fortunately they are becoming too expensive to use and are being
+displaced by synthetic products more agreeable to a refined imagination.
+The musk deer may now be saved from extinction since we can make
+tri-nitro-butyl-xylene from coal tar. This synthetic musk passes muster
+to human nostrils, but a cat will turn up her nose at it. The synthetic
+musk is not only much cheaper than the natural, but a dozen times as
+strong, or let us say, goes a dozen times as far, for nobody wants it
+any stronger.</p>
+
+<p>Such powerful scents as these are only pleasant when highly diluted, yet
+they are, as we have seen, essential ingredients of the finest perfumes.
+For instance, the natural oil of jasmine and other flowers contain
+traces <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span>of indols and skatols which have most disgusting odors. Though
+our olfactory organs cannot detect their presence yet we perceive their
+absence so they have to be put into the artificial perfume. Just so a
+brief but violent discord in a piece of music or a glaring color
+contrast in a painting may be necessary to the harmony of the whole.</p>
+
+<p>It is absurd to object to "artificial" perfumes, for practically all
+perfumes now sold are artificial in the sense of being compounded by the
+art of the perfumer and whether the materials he uses are derived from
+the flowers of yesteryear or of Carboniferous Era is nobody's business
+but his. And he does not tell. The materials can be purchased in the
+open market. Various recipes can be found in the books. But every famous
+perfumer guards well the secret of his formulas and hands it as a legacy
+to his posterity. The ancient Roman family of Frangipani has been made
+immortal by one such hereditary recipe. The Farina family still claims
+to have the exclusive knowledge of how to make Eau de Cologne. This
+famous perfume was first compounded by an Italian, Giovanni Maria
+Farina, who came to Cologne in 1709. It soon became fashionable and was
+for a time the only scent allowed at some of the German courts. The
+various published recipes contain from six to a dozen ingredients,
+chiefly the oils of neroli, rosemary, bergamot, lemon and lavender
+dissolved in very pure alcohol and allowed to age like wine. The
+invention, in 1895, of artificial neroli (orange flowers) has improved
+the product.</p>
+
+<p>French perfumery, like the German, had its origin in Italy, when
+Catherine de' Medici came to Paris as <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span>the bride of Henri II. She
+brought with her, among other artists, her perfumer, Sieur Toubarelli,
+who established himself in the flowery land of Grasse. Here for four
+hundred years the industry has remained rooted and the family formulas
+have been handed down from generation to generation. In the city of
+Grasse there were at the outbreak of the war fifty establishments making
+perfumes. The French perfumer does not confine himself to a single
+sense. He appeals as well to sight and sound and association. He adds to
+the attractiveness of his creation by a quaintly shaped bottle, an
+artistic box and an enticing name such as "Dans les Nues," "Le Coeur de
+Jeannette," "Nuit de Chine," "Un Air Embaum&eacute;," "Le Vertige," "Bon Vieux
+Temps," "L'Heure Bleue," "Nuit d'Amour," "Quelques Fleurs," "Djer-Kiss."</p>
+
+<p>The requirements of a successful scent are very strict. A perfume must
+be lasting, but not strong. All its ingredients must continue to
+evaporate in the same proportion, otherwise it will change odor and
+deteriorate. Scents kill one another as colors do. The minutest trace of
+some impurity or foreign odor may spoil the whole effect. To mix the
+ingredients in a vessel of any metal but aluminum or even to filter
+through a tin funnel is likely to impair the perfume. The odoriferous
+compounds are very sensitive and unstable bodies, otherwise they would
+have no effect upon the olfactory organ. The combination that would be
+suitable for a toilet water would not be good for a talcum powder and
+might spoil in a soap. Perfumery is used even in the "scentless" powders
+and soaps. In fact it is now used more extensively, if less intensively,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span>than ever before in the history of the world. During the Unwashed Ages,
+commonly called the Dark Ages, between the destruction of the Roman
+baths and the construction of the modern bathroom, the art of the
+perfumer, like all the fine arts, suffered an eclipse. "The odor of
+sanctity" was in highest esteem and what that odor was may be imagined
+from reading the lives of the saints. But in the course of centuries the
+refinements of life began to seep back into Europe from the East by
+means of the Arabs and Crusaders, and chemistry, then chiefly the art of
+cosmetics, began to revive. When science, the greatest democratizing
+agent on earth, got into action it elevated the poor to the ranks of
+kings and priests in the delights of the palate and the nose. We should
+not despise these delights, for the pleasure they confer is greater, in
+amount at least, than that of the so-called higher senses. We eat three
+times a day; some of us drink oftener; few of us visit the concert hall
+or the art gallery as often as we do the dining room. Then, too, these
+primitive senses have a stronger influence upon our emotional nature
+than those acquired later in the course of evolution. As Kipling puts
+it:</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Smells are surer than sounds or sights</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To make your heart-strings crack.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="VI" id="VI"></a>VI</h2>
+
+<h3>CELLULOSE</h3>
+
+
+<p>Organic compounds, on which our life and living depend, consist chiefly
+of four elements: carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen. These compounds
+are sometimes hard to analyze, but when once the chemist has ascertained
+their constitution he can usually make them out of their elements&mdash;if he
+wants to. He will not want to do it as a business unless it pays and it
+will not pay unless the manufacturing process is cheaper than the
+natural process. This depends primarily upon the cost of the crude
+materials. What, then, is the market price of these four elements?
+Oxygen and nitrogen are free as air, and as we have seen in the second
+chapter, their direct combination by the electric spark is possible.
+Hydrogen is free in the form of water but expensive to extricate by
+means of the electric current. But we need more carbon than anything
+else and where shall we get that? Bits of crystallized carbon can be
+picked up in South Africa and elsewhere, but those who can afford to buy
+them prefer to wear them rather than use them in making synthetic food.
+Graphite is rare and hard to melt. We must then have recourse to the
+compounds of carbon. The simplest of these, carbon dioxide, exists in
+the air but only four parts in ten thousand by volume. To extract the
+carbon and get it into combination with the other elements would be a
+difficult and expensive <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span>process. Here, then, we must call in cheap
+labor, the cheapest of all laborers, the plants. Pine trees on the
+highlands and cotton plants on the lowlands keep their green traps set
+all the day long and with the captured carbon dioxide build up
+cellulose. If, then, man wants free carbon he can best get it by
+charring wood in a kiln or digging up that which has been charred in
+nature's kiln during the Carboniferous Era. But there is no reason why
+he should want to go back to elemental carbon when he can have it
+already combined with hydrogen in the remains of modern or fossil
+vegetation. The synthetic products on which modern chemistry prides
+itself, such as vanillin, camphor and rubber, are not built up out of
+their elements, C, H and O, although they might be as a laboratory
+stunt. Instead of that the raw material of the organic chemist is
+chiefly cellulose, or the products of its recent or remote destructive
+distillation, tar and oil.</p>
+
+<p>It is unnecessary to tell the reader what cellulose is since he now
+holds a specimen of it in his hand, pretty pure cellulose except for the
+sizing and the specks of carbon that mar the whiteness of its surface.
+This utilization of cellulose is the chief cause of the difference
+between the modern world and the ancient, for what is called the
+invention of printing is essentially the inventing of paper. The Romans
+made type to stamp their coins and lead pipes with and if they had had
+paper to print upon the world might have escaped the Dark Ages. But the
+clay tablets of the Babylonians were cumbersome; the wax tablets of the
+Greeks were perishable; the papyrus of the Egyptians was fragile;
+parchment was expensive and penning <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span>was slow, so it was not until
+literature was put on a paper basis that democratic education became
+possible. At the present time sheepskin is only used for diplomas,
+treaties and other antiquated documents. And even if your diploma is
+written in Latin it is likely to be made of sulfated cellulose.</p>
+
+<p>The textile industry has followed the same law of development that I
+have indicated in the other industries. Here again we find the three
+stages of progress, (1) utilization of natural products, (2) cultivation
+of natural products, (3) manufacture of artificial products. The
+ancients were dependent upon plants, animals and insects for their
+fibers. China used silk, Greece and Rome used wool, Egypt used flax and
+India used cotton. In the course of cultivation for three thousand years
+the animal and vegetable fibers were lengthened and strengthened and
+cheapened. But at last man has risen to the level of the worm and can
+spin threads to suit himself. He can now rival the wasp in the making of
+paper. He is no longer dependent upon the flax and the cotton plant, but
+grinds up trees to get his cellulose. A New York newspaper uses up
+nearly 2000 acres of forest a year. The United States grinds up about
+five million cords of wood a year in the manufacture of pulp for paper
+and other purposes.</p>
+
+<p>In making "mechanical pulp" the blocks of wood, mostly spruce and
+hemlock, are simply pressed sidewise of the grain against wet
+grindstones. But in wood fiber the cellulose is in part combined with
+lignin, which is worse than useless. To break up the ligno-cellulose
+combine chemicals are used. The logs for <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span>this are not ground fine, but
+cut up by disk chippers. The chips are digested for several hours under
+heat and pressure with acid or alkali. There are three processes in
+vogue. In the most common process the reagent is calcium sulfite, made
+by passing sulfur fumes (SO<sub>2</sub>) into lime water. In another process a
+solution of caustic of soda is used to disintegrate the wood. The third,
+known as the "sulfate" process, should rather be called the sulfide
+process since the active agent is an alkaline solution of sodium sulfide
+made by roasting sodium sulfate with the carbonaceous matter extracted
+from the wood. This sulfate process, though the most recent of the
+three, is being increasingly employed in this country, for by means of
+it the resinous pine wood of the South can be worked up and the final
+product, known as kraft paper because it is strong, is used for
+wrapping.</p>
+
+<p>But whatever the process we get nearly pure cellulose which, as you can
+see by examining this page under a microscope, consists of a tangled web
+of thin white fibers, the remains of the original cell walls. Owing to
+the severe treatment it has undergone wood pulp paper does not last so
+long as the linen rag paper used by our ancestors. The pages of the
+newspapers, magazines and books printed nowadays are likely to become
+brown and brittle in a few years, no great loss for the most part since
+they have served their purpose, though it is a pity that a few copies of
+the worst of them could not be printed on permanent paper for
+preservation in libraries so that future generations could congratulate
+themselves on their progress in civilization.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span>But in our absorption in the printed page we must not forget the other
+uses of paper. The paper clothing, so often prophesied, has not yet
+arrived. Even paper collars have gone out of fashion&mdash;if they ever were
+in. In Germany during the war paper was used for socks, shirts and shoes
+as well as handkerchiefs and napkins but it could not stand wear and
+washing. Our sanitary engineers have set us to drinking out of
+sharp-edged paper cups and we blot our faces instead of wiping them.
+Twine is spun of paper and furniture made of the twine, a rival of
+rattan. Cloth and matting woven of paper yarn are being used for burlap
+and grass in the making of bags and suitcases.</p>
+
+<p>Here, however, we are not so much interested in manufactures of
+cellulose itself, that is, wood, paper and cotton, as we are in its
+chemical derivatives. Cellulose, as we can see from the symbol,
+C<sub>6</sub>H<sub>10</sub>O<sub>5</sub>, is composed of the three elements of carbon, hydrogen
+and oxygen. These are present in the same proportion as in starch
+(C<sub>6</sub>H<sub>10</sub>O<sub>5</sub>), while glucose or grape sugar (C<sub>6</sub>H<sub>12</sub>O<sub>6</sub>) has
+one molecule of water more. But glucose is soluble in cold water and
+starch is soluble in hot, while cellulose is soluble in neither.
+Consequently cellulose cannot serve us for food, although some of the
+vegetarian animals, notably the goat, have a digestive apparatus that
+can handle it. In Finland and Germany birch wood pulp and straw were
+used not only as an ingredient of cattle food but also put into war
+bread. It is not likely, however, that the human stomach even under the
+pressure of famine is able to get much nutriment out of sawdust. But by
+digesting with dilute acid sawdust can be transformed into <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span>sugars and
+these by fermentation into alcohol, so it would be possible for a man
+after he has read his morning paper to get drunk on it.</p>
+
+<p>If the cellulose, instead of being digested a long time in dilute acid,
+is dipped into a solution of sulfuric acid (50 to 80 per cent.) and then
+washed and dried it acquires a hard, tough and translucent coating that
+makes it water-proof and grease-proof. This is the "parchment paper"
+that has largely replaced sheepskin. Strong alkali has a similar effect
+to strong acid. In 1844 John Mercer, a Lancashire calico printer,
+discovered that by passing cotton cloth or yarn through a cold 30 per
+cent. solution of caustic soda the fiber is shortened and strengthened.
+For over forty years little attention was paid to this discovery, but
+when it was found that if the material was stretched so that it could
+not shrink on drying the twisted ribbons of the cotton fiber were
+changed into smooth-walled cylinders like silk, the process came into
+general use and nowadays much that passes for silk is "mercerized"
+cotton.</p>
+
+<p>Another step was taken when Cross of London discovered that when the
+mercerized cotton was treated with carbon disulfide it was dissolved to
+a yellow liquid. This liquid contains the cellulose in solution as a
+cellulose xanthate and on acidifying or heating the cellulose is
+recovered in a hydrated form. If this yellow solution of cellulose is
+squirted out of tubes through extremely minute holes into acidulated
+water, each tiny stream becomes instantly solidified into a silky thread
+which may be spun and woven like that ejected from the spinneret of the
+silkworm. The origin of natural silk, if we think about it, rather
+detracts <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span>from the pleasure of wearing it, and if "he who needlessly
+sets foot upon a worm" is to be avoided as a friend we must hope that
+the advance of the artificial silk industry will be rapid enough to
+relieve us of the necessity of boiling thousands of baby worms in their
+cradles whenever we want silk stockings.</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">On a plain rush hurdle a silkworm lay</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">When a proud young princess came that way.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The haughty daughter of a lordly king</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Threw a sidelong glance at the humble thing,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Little thinking she walked in pride</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In the winding sheet where the silkworm died.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>But so far we have not reached a stage where we can altogether dispense
+with the services of the silkworm. The viscose threads made by the
+process look as well as silk, but they are not so strong, especially
+when wet.</p>
+
+<p>Besides the viscose method there are several other methods of getting
+cellulose into solution so that artificial fibers may be made from it. A
+strong solution of zinc chloride will serve and this process used to be
+employed for making the threads to be charred into carbon filaments for
+incandescent bulbs. Cellulose is also soluble in an ammoniacal solution
+of copper hydroxide. The liquid thus formed is squirted through a fine
+nozzle into a precipitating solution of caustic soda and glucose, which
+brings back the cellulose to its original form.</p>
+
+<p>In the chapter on explosives I explained how cellulose treated with
+nitric acid in the presence of sulfuric acid was nitrated. The cellulose
+molecule having three hydroxyl (&mdash;OH) groups, can take up one, two or
+three nitrate groups (&mdash;ONO<sub>2</sub>). The higher nitrates are known as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span>
+guncotton and form the basis of modern dynamite and smokeless powder.
+The lower nitrates, known as pyroxylin, are less explosive, although
+still very inflammable. All these nitrates are, like the original
+cellulose, insoluble in water, but unlike the original cellulose,
+soluble in a mixture of ether and alcohol. The solution is called
+collodion and is now in common use to spread a new skin over a wound.
+The great war might be traced back to Nobel's cut finger. Alfred Nobel
+was a Swedish chemist&mdash;and a pacifist. One day while working in the
+laboratory he cut his finger, as chemists are apt to do, and, again as
+chemists are apt to do, he dissolved some guncotton in ether-alcohol and
+swabbed it on the wound. At this point, however, his conduct diverges
+from the ordinary, for instead of standing idle, impatiently waving his
+hand in the air to dry the film as most people, including chemists, are
+apt to do, he put his mind on it and it occurred to him that this sticky
+stuff, slowly hardening to an elastic mass, might be just the thing he
+was hunting as an absorbent and solidifier of nitroglycerin. So instead
+of throwing away the extra collodion that he had made he mixed it with
+nitroglycerin and found that it set to a jelly. The "blasting gelatin"
+thus discovered proved to be so insensitive to shock that it could be
+safely transported or fired from a cannon. This was the first of the
+high explosives that have been the chief factor in modern warfare.</p>
+
+<p>But on the whole, collodion has healed more wounds than it has caused
+besides being of infinite service to mankind otherwise. It has made
+modern photography <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span>possible, for the film we use in the camera and
+moving picture projector consists of a gelatin coating on a pyroxylin
+backing. If collodion is forced through fine glass tubes instead of
+through a slit, it comes out a thread instead of a film. If the
+collodion jet is run into a vat of cold water the ether and alcohol
+dissolve; if it is run into a chamber of warm air they evaporate. The
+thread of nitrated cellulose may be rendered less inflammable by taking
+out the nitrate groups by treatment with ammonium or calcium sulfide.
+This restores the original cellulose, but now it is an endless thread of
+any desired thickness, whereas the native fiber was in size and length
+adapted to the needs of the cottonseed instead of the needs of man. The
+old motto, "If you want a thing done the way you want it you must do it
+yourself," explains why the chemist has been called in to supplement the
+work of nature in catering to human wants.</p>
+
+<p>Instead of nitric acid we may use strong acetic acid to dissolve the
+cotton. The resulting cellulose acetates are less inflammable than the
+nitrates, but they are more brittle and more expensive. Motion picture
+films made from them can be used in any hall without the necessity of
+imprisoning the operator in a fire-proof box where if anything happens
+he can burn up all by himself without disturbing the audience. The
+cellulose acetates are being used for auto goggles and gas masks as well
+as for windows in leather curtains and transparent coverings for index
+cards. A new use that has lately become important is the varnishing of
+aeroplane wings, as it does not readily absorb water or catch fire <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span>and
+makes the cloth taut and air-tight. Aeroplane wings can be made of
+cellulose acetate sheets as transparent as those of a dragon-fly and not
+easy to see against the sky.</p>
+
+<p>The nitrates, sulfates and acetates are the salts or esters of the
+respective acids, but recently true ethers or oxides of cellulose have
+been prepared that may prove still better since they contain no acid
+radicle and are neutral and stable.</p>
+
+<p>These are in brief the chief processes for making what is commonly but
+quite improperly called "artificial silk." They are not the same
+substance as silkworm silk and ought not to be&mdash;though they sometimes
+are&mdash;sold as such. They are none of them as strong as the silk fiber
+when wet, although if I should venture to say which of the various makes
+weakens the most on wetting I should get myself into trouble. I will
+only say that if you have a grudge against some fisherman give him a fly
+line of artificial silk, 'most any kind.</p>
+
+<p>The nitrate process was discovered by Count Hilaire de Chardonnet while
+he was at the Polytechnic School of Paris, and he devoted his life and
+his fortune trying to perfect it. Samples of the artificial silk were
+exhibited at the Paris Exposition in 1889 and two years later he started
+a factory at Basan&ccedil;on. In 1892, Cross and Bevan, English chemists,
+discovered the viscose or xanthate process, and later the acetate
+process. But although all four of these processes were invented in
+France and England, Germany reaped most benefit from the new industry,
+which was bringing into that country $6,000,000 a year before the war.
+The largest <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span>producer in the world was the Vereinigte
+Glanzstoff-Fabriken of Elberfeld, which was paying annual dividends of
+34 per cent. in 1914.</p>
+
+<p>The raw materials, as may be seen, are cheap and abundant, merely
+cellulose, salt, sulfur, carbon, air and water. Any kind of cellulose
+can be used, cotton waste, rags, paper, or even wood pulp. The processes
+are various, the names of the products are numerous and the uses are
+innumerable. Even the most inattentive must have noticed the widespread
+employment of these new forms of cellulose. We can buy from a street
+barrow for fifteen cents near-silk neckties that look as well as those
+sold for seventy-five. As for wear&mdash;well, they all of them wear till
+after we get tired of wearing them. Paper "vulcanized" by being run
+through a 30 per cent. solution of zinc chloride and subjected to
+hydraulic pressure comes out hard and horny and may be used for trunks
+and suit cases. Viscose tubes for sausage containers are more sanitary
+and appetizing than the customary casings. Viscose replaces ramie or
+cotton in the Welsbach gas mantles. Viscose film, transparent and a
+thousandth of an inch thick (cellophane), serves for candy wrappers.
+Cellulose acetate cylinders spun out of larger orifices than silk are
+trying&mdash;not very successfully as yet&mdash;to compete with hog's bristles and
+horsehair. Stir powdered metals into the cellulose solution and you have
+the Bayko yarn. Bayko (from the manufacturers, Farbenfabriken vorm.
+Friedr. Bayer and Company) is one of those telescoped names like Socony,
+Nylic, Fominco, Alco, Ropeco, Ripans, Penn-Yan, Anzac, Dagor, Dora and
+Cadets, which will be the despair of future philologers.</p>
+
+<p><a name="image_15" id="image_15"></a></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 441px;">
+<img src="images/image149.jpg" width="441" height="284" alt="A PAPER MILL IN ACTION" title="" />
+<span class="caption">A PAPER MILL IN ACTION</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p><b>This photograph was taken in the barking room of the big pulp mill of
+the Great Northern Paper Company at Millinocket, Maine</b></p>
+</div>
+<p><a name="image_16" id="image_16"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 317px;">
+<img src="images/image150.jpg" width="317" height="422" alt="CELLULOSE FROM WOOD PULP" title="" />
+<span class="caption">CELLULOSE FROM WOOD PULP</span>
+</div>
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p><b>This is now made into a large variety of useful articles of which a few
+examples are here pictured</b></p>
+</div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span>Soluble cellulose may enable us in time to dispense with the weaver as
+well as the silkworm. It may by one operation give us fabrics instead of
+threads. A machine has been invented for manufacturing net and lace, the
+liquid material being poured on one side of a roller and the fabric
+being reeled off on the other side. The process seems capable of
+indefinite extension and application to various sorts of woven, knit and
+reticulated goods. The raw material is cotton waste and the finished
+fabric is a good substitute for silk. As in the process of making
+artificial silk the cellulose is dissolved in a cupro-ammoniacal
+solution, but instead of being forced out through minute openings to
+form threads, as in that process, the paste is allowed to flow upon a
+revolving cylinder which is engraved with the pattern of the desired
+textile. A scraper removes the excess and the turning of the cylinder
+brings the paste in the engraved lines down into a bath which solidifies
+it.</p>
+
+<p>Tulle or net is now what is chiefly being turned out, but the engraved
+design may be as elaborate and artistic as desired, and various
+materials can be used. Since the threads wherever they cross are united,
+the fabric is naturally stronger than the ordinary. It is all of a piece
+and not composed of parts. In short, we seem to be on the eve of a
+revolution in textiles that is the same as that taking place in building
+materials. Our concrete structures, however great, are all one stone.
+They are not built up out of blocks, but cast as a whole.</p>
+
+<p>Lace has always been the aristocrat among textiles. It has maintained
+its exclusiveness hitherto by being <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span>based upon hand labor. In no other
+way could one get so much painful, patient toil put into such a light
+and portable form. A filmy thing twined about a neck or dropping from a
+wrist represented years of work by poor peasant girls or pallid, unpaid
+nuns. A visit to a lace factory, even to the public rooms where the
+wornout women were not to be seen, is enough to make one resolve never
+to purchase any such thing made by hand again. But our good resolutions
+do not last long and in time we forget the strained eyes and bowed
+backs, or, what is worse, value our bit of lace all the more because it
+means that some poor woman has put her life and health into it, netting
+and weaving, purling and knotting, twining and twisting, throwing and
+drawing, thread by thread, day after day, until her eyes can no longer
+see and her fingers have become stiffened.</p>
+
+<p>But man is not naturally cruel. He does not really enjoy being a slave
+driver, either of human or animal slaves, although he can be hardened to
+it with shocking ease if there seems no other way of getting what he
+wants. So he usually welcomes that Great Liberator, the Machine. He
+prefers to drive the tireless engine than to whip the straining horses.
+He had rather see the farmer riding at ease in a mowing machine than
+bending his back over a scythe.</p>
+
+<p>The Machine is not only the Great Liberator, it is the Great Leveler
+also. It is the most powerful of the forces for democracy. An
+aristocracy can hardly be maintained except by distinction in dress, and
+distinction in dress can only be maintained by sumptuary laws or
+costliness. Sumptuary laws are unconstitutional in this country, hence
+the stress laid upon costliness.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> But machinery tends to bring styles
+and fabrics within the reach of all. The shopgirl is almost as well
+dressed on the street as her rich customer. The man who buys ready-made
+clothing is only a few weeks behind the vanguard of the fashion. There
+is often no difference perceptible to the ordinary eye between cheap and
+high-priced clothing once the price tag is off. Jewels as a portable
+form of concentrated costliness have been in favor from the earliest
+ages, but now they are losing their factitious value through the advance
+of invention. Rubies of unprecedented size, not imitation, but genuine
+rubies, can now be manufactured at reasonable rates. And now we may hope
+that lace may soon be within the reach of all, not merely lace of the
+established forms, but new and more varied and intricate and beautiful
+designs, such as the imagination has been able to conceive, but the hand
+cannot execute.</p>
+
+<p>Dissolving nitrocellulose in ether and alcohol we get the collodion
+varnish that we are all familiar with since we have used it on our cut
+fingers. Spread it on cloth instead of your skin and it makes a very
+good leather substitute. As we all know to our cost the number of
+animals to be skinned has not increased so rapidly in recent years as
+the number of feet to be shod. After having gone barefoot for a million
+years or so the majority of mankind have decided to wear shoes and this
+change in fashion comes at a time, roughly speaking, when pasture land
+is getting scarce. Also there are books to be bound and other new things
+to be done for which leather is needed. The war has intensified the
+stringency; so has feminine fashion. The conventions require that the
+shoe-tops extend nearly to skirt-bottom <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span>and this means that an inch or
+so must be added to the shoe-top every year. Consequent to this rise in
+leather we have to pay as much for one shoe as we used to pay for a
+pair.</p>
+
+<p>Here, then, is a chance for Necessity to exercise her maternal function.
+And she has responded nobly. A progeny of new substances have been
+brought forth and, what is most encouraging to see, they are no longer
+trying to worm their way into favor as surreptitious surrogates under
+the names of "leatheret," "leatherine," "leatheroid" and
+"leather-this-or-that" but come out boldly under names of their own
+coinage and declare themselves not an imitation, not even a substitute,
+but "better than leather." This policy has had the curious result of
+compelling the cowhide men to take full pages in the magazines to call
+attention to the forgotten virtues of good old-fashioned sole-leather!
+There are now upon the market synthetic shoes that a vegetarian could
+wear with a clear conscience. The soles are made of some rubber
+composition; the uppers of cellulose fabric (canvas) coated with a
+cellulose solution such as I have described.</p>
+
+<p>Each firm keeps its own process for such substance a dead secret, but
+without prying into these we can learn enough to satisfy our legitimate
+curiosity. The first of the artificial fabrics was the old-fashioned and
+still indispensable oil-cloth, that is canvas painted or printed with
+linseed oil carrying the desired pigments. Linseed oil belongs to the
+class of compounds that the chemist calls "unsaturated" and the
+psychologist would call "unsatisfied." They take up oxygen from the air
+and become solid, hence are called <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span>the "drying oils," although this
+does not mean that they lose water, for they have not any to lose.
+Later, ground cork was mixed with the linseed oil and then it went by
+its Latin name, "linoleum."</p>
+
+<p>The next step was to cut loose altogether from the natural oils and use
+for the varnish a solution of some of the cellulose esters, usually the
+nitrate (pyroxylin or guncotton), more rarely the acetate. As a solvent
+the ether-alcohol mixture forming collodion was, as we have seen, the
+first to be employed, but now various other solvents are in use, among
+them castor oil, methyl alcohol, acetone, and the acetates of amyl or
+ethyl. Some of these will be recognized as belonging to the fruit
+essences that we considered in Chapter V, and doubtless most of us have
+perceived an odor as of over-ripe pears, bananas or apples mysteriously
+emanating from a newly lacquered radiator. With powdered bronze,
+imitation gold, aluminum or something of the kind a metallic finish can
+be put on any surface.</p>
+
+<p>Canvas coated or impregnated with such soluble cellulose gives us new
+flexible and durable fabrics that have other advantages over leather
+besides being cheaper and more abundant. Without such material for
+curtains and cushions the automobile business would have been sorely
+hampered. It promises to provide us with a book binding that will not
+crumble to powder in the course of twenty years. Linen collars may be
+water-proofed and possibly Dame Fashion&mdash;being a fickle lady&mdash;may some
+day relent and let us wear such sanitary and economical neckwear. For
+shoes, purses, belts and the like the cellulose varnish or veneer is
+usually colored and stamped to resemble <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span>the grain of any kind of
+leather desired, even snake or alligator.</p>
+
+<p>If instead of dissolving the cellulose nitrate and spreading it on
+fabric we combine it with camphor we get celluloid, a plastic solid
+capable of innumerable applications. But that is another story and must
+be reserved for the next chapter.</p>
+
+<p>But before leaving the subject of cellulose proper I must refer back
+again to its chief source, wood. We inherited from the Indians a
+well-wooded continent. But the pioneer carried an ax on his shoulder and
+began using it immediately. For three hundred years the trees have been
+cut down faster than they could grow, first to clear the land, next for
+fuel, then for lumber and lastly for paper. Consequently we are within
+sight of a shortage of wood as we are of coal and oil. But the coal and
+oil are irrecoverable while the wood may be regrown, though it would
+require another three hundred years and more to grow some of the trees
+we have cut down. For fuel a pound of coal is about equal to two pounds
+of wood, and a pound of gasoline to three pounds of wood in heating
+value, so there would be a great loss in efficiency and economy if the
+world had to go back to a wood basis. But when that time shall come, as,
+of course, it must come some time, the wood will doubtless not be burned
+in its natural state but will be converted into hydrogen and carbon
+monoxide in a gas producer or will be distilled in closed ovens giving
+charcoal and gas and saving the by-products, the tar and acid liquors.
+As it is now the lumberman wastes two-thirds of every tree he cuts down.
+The rest is left in the forest as stump and tops <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span>or thrown out at the
+mill as sawdust and slabs. The slabs and other scraps may be used as
+fuel or worked up into small wood articles like laths and clothes-pins.
+The sawdust is burned or left to rot. But it is possible, although it
+may not be profitable, to save all this waste.</p>
+
+<p>In a former chapter I showed the advantages of the introduction of
+by-product coke-ovens. The same principle applies to wood as to coal. If
+a cord of wood (128 cubic feet) is subjected to a process of destructive
+distillation it yields about 50 bushels of charcoal, 11,500 cubic feet
+of gas, 25 gallons of tar, 10 gallons of crude wood alcohol and 200
+pounds of crude acetate of lime. Resinous woods such as pine and fir
+distilled with steam give turpentine and rosin. The acetate of lime
+gives acetic acid and acetone. The wood (methyl) alcohol is almost as
+useful as grain (ethyl) alcohol in arts and industry and has the
+advantage of killing off those who drink it promptly instead of slowly.</p>
+
+<p>The chemist is an economical soul. He is never content until he has
+converted every kind of waste product into some kind of profitable
+by-product. He now has his glittering eye fixed upon the mountains of
+sawdust that pile up about the lumber mills. He also has a notion that
+he can beat lumber for some purposes.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="VII" id="VII"></a>VII</h2>
+
+<h3>SYNTHETIC PLASTICS</h3>
+
+
+<p>In the last chapter I told how Alfred Nobel cut his finger and, daubing
+it over with collodion, was led to the discovery of high explosive,
+dynamite. I remarked that the first part of this process&mdash;the hurting
+and the healing of the finger&mdash;might happen to anybody but not everybody
+would be led to discovery thereby. That is true enough, but we must not
+think that the Swedish chemist was the only observant man in the world.
+About this same time a young man in Albany, named John Wesley Hyatt, got
+a sore finger and resorted to the same remedy and was led to as great a
+discovery. His father was a blacksmith and his education was confined to
+what he could get at the seminary of Eddytown, New York, before he was
+sixteen. At that age he set out for the West to make his fortune. He
+made it, but after a long, hard struggle. His trade of typesetter gave
+him a living in Illinois, New York or wherever he wanted to go, but he
+was not content with his wages or his hours. However, he did not strike
+to reduce his hours or increase his wages. On the contrary, he increased
+his working time and used it to increase his income. He spent his nights
+and Sundays in making billiard balls, not at all the sort of thing you
+would expect of a young man of his Christian name. But working with
+billiard balls is more profitable than playing <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span>with them&mdash;though that
+is not the sort of thing you would expect a man of my surname to say.
+Hyatt had seen in the papers an offer of a prize of $10,000 for the
+discovery of a satisfactory substitute for ivory in the making of
+billiard balls and he set out to get that prize. I don't know whether he
+ever got it or not, but I have in my hand a newly published circular
+announcing that Mr. Hyatt has now perfected a process for making
+billiard balls "better than ivory." Meantime he has turned out several
+hundred other inventions, many of them much more useful and profitable,
+but I imagine that he takes less satisfaction in any of them than he
+does in having solved the problem that he undertook fifty years ago.</p>
+
+<p>The reason for the prize was that the game on the billiard table was
+getting more popular and the game in the African jungle was getting
+scarcer, especially elephants having tusks more than 2-7/16 inches in
+diameter. The raising of elephants is not an industry that promises as
+quick returns as raising chickens or Belgian hares. To make a ball
+having exactly the weight, color and resiliency to which billiard
+players have become accustomed seemed an impossibility. Hyatt tried
+compressed wood, but while he did not succeed in making billiard balls
+he did build up a profitable business in stamped checkers and dominoes.</p>
+
+<p>Setting type in the way they did it in the sixties was hard on the
+hands. And if the skin got worn thin or broken the dirty lead type were
+liable to infect the fingers. One day in 1863 Hyatt, finding his fingers
+were getting raw, went to the cupboard where was kept the "liquid
+cuticle" used by the printers. But when <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span>he got there he found it was
+bare, for the vial had tipped over&mdash;you know how easily they tip
+over&mdash;and the collodion had run out and solidified on the shelf.
+Possibly Hyatt was annoyed, but if so he did not waste time raging
+around the office to find out who tipped over that bottle. Instead he
+pulled off from the wood a bit of the dried film as big as his thumb
+nail and examined it with that "'satiable curtiosity," as Kipling calls
+it, which is characteristic of the born inventor. He found it tough and
+elastic and it occurred to him that it might be worth $10,000. It turned
+out to be worth many times that.</p>
+
+<p>Collodion, as I have explained in previous chapters, is a solution in
+ether and alcohol of guncotton (otherwise known as pyroxylin or
+nitrocellulose), which is made by the action of nitric acid on cotton.
+Hyatt tried mixing the collodion with ivory powder, also using it to
+cover balls of the necessary weight and solidity, but they did not work
+very well and besides were explosive. A Colorado saloon keeper wrote in
+to complain that one of the billiard players had touched a ball with a
+lighted cigar, which set it off and every man in the room had drawn his
+gun.</p>
+
+<p>The trouble with the dissolved guncotton was that it could not be
+molded. It did not swell up and set; it merely dried up and shrunk. When
+the solvent evaporated it left a wrinkled, shriveled, horny film,
+satisfactory to the surgeon but not to the man who wanted to make balls
+and hairpins and knife handles out of it. In England Alexander Parkes
+began working on the problem in 1855 and stuck to it for ten years
+before he, or rather his backers, gave up. He tried mixing in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span>various
+things to stiffen up the pyroxylin. Of these, camphor, which he tried in
+1865, worked the best, but since he used castor oil to soften the mass
+articles made of "parkesine" did not hold up in all weathers.</p>
+
+<p>Another Englishman, Daniel Spill, an associate of Parkes, took up the
+problem where he had dropped it and turned out a better product,
+"xylonite," though still sticking to the idea that castor oil was
+necessary to get the two solids, the guncotton and the camphor,
+together.</p>
+
+<p>But Hyatt, hearing that camphor could be used and not knowing enough
+about what others had done to follow their false trails, simply mixed
+his camphor and guncotton together without any solvent and put the
+mixture in a hot press. The two solids dissolved one another and when
+the press was opened there was a clear, solid, homogeneous block
+of&mdash;what he named&mdash;"celluloid." The problem was solved and in the
+simplest imaginable way. Tissue paper, that is, cellulose, is treated
+with nitric acid in the presence of sulfuric acid. The nitration is not
+carried so far as to produce the guncotton used in explosives but only
+far enough to make a soluble nitrocellulose or pyroxylin. This is pulped
+and mixed with half the quantity of camphor, pressed into cakes and
+dried. If this mixture is put into steam-heated molds and subjected to
+hydraulic pressure it takes any desired form. The process remains
+essentially the same as was worked out by the Hyatt brothers in the
+factory they set up in Newark in 1872 and some of their original
+machines are still in use. But this protean plastic takes innumerable
+forms and almost as many names. Each factory has its own <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span>secrets and
+lays claim to peculiar merits. The fundamental product itself is not
+patented, so trade names are copyrighted to protect the product. I have
+already mentioned three, "parkesine," "xylonite" and "celluloid," and I
+may add, without exhausting the list of species belonging to this genus,
+"viscoloid," "lithoxyl," "fiberloid," "coraline," "eburite,"
+"pulveroid," "ivorine," "pergamoid," "duroid," "ivortus," "crystalloid,"
+"transparene," "litnoid," "petroid," "pasbosene," "cellonite" and
+"pyralin."</p>
+
+<p>Celluloid can be given any color or colors by mixing in aniline dyes or
+metallic pigments. The color may be confined to the surface or to the
+interior or pervade the whole. If the nitrated tissue paper is bleached
+the celluloid is transparent or colorless. In that case it is necessary
+to add an antacid such as urea to prevent its getting yellow or opaque.
+To make it opaque and less inflammable oxides or chlorides of zinc,
+aluminum, magnesium, etc., are mixed in.</p>
+
+<p>Without going into the question of their variations and relative merits
+we may consider the advantages of the pyroxylin plastics in general.
+Here we have a new substance, the product of the creative genius of man,
+and therefore adaptable to his needs. It is hard but light, tough but
+elastic, easily made and tolerably cheap. Heated to the boiling point of
+water it becomes soft and flexible. It can be turned, carved, ground,
+polished, bent, pressed, stamped, molded or blown. To make a block of
+any desired size simply pile up the sheets and put them in a hot press.
+To get sheets of any desired thickness, simply shave them off the block.
+To make a tube of any desired size, shape or thickness <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span>squirt out the
+mixture through a ring-shaped hole or roll the sheets around a hot bar.
+Cut the tube into sections and you have rings to be shaped and stamped
+into box bodies or napkin rings. Print words or pictures on a celluloid
+sheet, put a thin transparent sheet over it and weld them together, then
+you have something like the horn book of our ancestors, but better.</p>
+
+<p>Nowadays such things as celluloid and pyralin can be sold under their
+own name, but in the early days the artificial plastics, like every new
+thing, had to resort to <i>camouflage</i>, a very humiliating expedient since
+in some cases they were better than the material they were forced to
+imitate. Tortoise shell, for instance, cracks, splits and twists, but a
+"tortoise shell" comb of celluloid looks as well and lasts better. Horn
+articles are limited to size of the ceratinous appendages that can be
+borne on the animal's head, but an imitation of horn can be made of any
+thickness by wrapping celluloid sheets about a cone. Ivory, which also
+has a laminated structure, may be imitated by rolling together alternate
+white opaque and colorless translucent sheets. Some of the sheets are
+wrinkled in order to produce the knots and irregularities of the grain
+of natural ivory. Man's chief difficulty in all such work is to imitate
+the imperfections of nature. His whites are too white, his surfaces are
+too smooth, his shapes are too regular, his products are too pure.</p>
+
+<p>The precious red coral of the Mediterranean can be perfectly imitated by
+taking a cast of a coral branch and filling in the mold with celluloid
+of the same color and hardness. The clear luster of amber, the dead
+black of ebony, the cloudiness of onyx, the opalescence <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span>of alabaster,
+the glow of carnelian&mdash;once confined to the selfish enjoyment of the
+rich&mdash;are now within the reach of every one, thanks to this chameleon
+material. Mosaics may be multiplied indefinitely by laying together
+sheets and sticks of celluloid, suitably cut and colored to make up the
+picture, fusing the mass, and then shaving off thin layers from the end.
+That <i>chef d'&#339;uvre</i> of the Venetian glass makers, the Battle of Isus,
+from the House of the Faun in Pompeii, can be reproduced as fast as the
+machine can shave them off the block. And the tesserae do not fall out
+like those you bought on the Rialto.</p>
+
+<p>The process thus does for mosaics, ivory and coral what printing does
+for pictures. It is a mechanical multiplier and only by such means can
+we ever attain to a state of democratic luxury. The product, in cases
+where the imitation is accurate, is equally valuable except to those who
+delight in thinking that coral insects, Italian craftsmen and elephants
+have been laboring for years to put a trinket into their hands. The Lord
+may be trusted to deal with such selfish souls according to their
+deserts.</p>
+
+<p>But it is very low praise for a synthetic product that it can pass
+itself off, more or less acceptably, as a natural product. If that is
+all we could do without it. It must be an improvement in some respects
+on anything to be found in nature or it does not represent a real
+advance. So celluloid and its congeners are not confined to the shapes
+of shell and coral and crystal, or to the grain of ivory and wood and
+horn, the colors of amber and amethyst and lapis lazuli, but can be
+given <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span>forms and textures and tints that were never known before 1869.</p>
+
+<p>Let me see now, have I mentioned all the uses of celluloid? Oh, no,
+there are handles for canes, umbrellas, mirrors and brushes, knives,
+whistles, toys, blown animals, card cases, chains, charms, brooches,
+badges, bracelets, rings, book bindings, hairpins, campaign buttons,
+cuff and collar buttons, cuffs, collars and dickies, tags, cups, knobs,
+paper cutters, picture frames, chessmen, pool balls, ping pong balls,
+piano keys, dental plates, masks for disfigured faces, penholders,
+eyeglass frames, goggles, playing cards&mdash;and you can carry on the list
+as far as you like.</p>
+
+<p>Celluloid has its disadvantages. You may mold, you may color the stuff
+as you will, the scent of the camphor will cling around it still. This
+is not usually objectionable except where the celluloid is trying to
+pass itself off for something else, in which case it deserves no
+sympathy. It is attacked and dissolved by hot acids and alkalies. It
+softens up when heated, which is handy in shaping it though not so
+desirable afterward. But the worst of its failings is its
+combustibility. It is not explosive, but it takes fire from a flame and
+burns furiously with clouds of black smoke.</p>
+
+<p>But celluloid is only one of many plastic substances that have been
+introduced to the present generation. A new and important group of them
+is now being opened up, the so-called "condensation products." If you
+will take down any old volume of chemical research you will find
+occasionally words to this effect: "The reaction resulted in nothing but
+an insoluble resin <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span>which was not further investigated." Such a passage
+would be marked with a tear if chemists were given to crying over their
+failures. For it is the epitaph of a buried hope. It likely meant the
+loss of months of labor. The reason the chemist did not do anything
+further with the gummy stuff that stuck up his test tube was because he
+did not know what to do with it. It could not be dissolved, it could not
+be crystallized, it could not be distilled, therefore it could not be
+purified, analyzed and identified.</p>
+
+<p>What had happened was in most cases this. The molecule of the compound
+that the chemist was trying to make had combined with others of its kind
+to form a molecule too big to be managed by such means. Financiers call
+the process a "merger." Chemists call it "polymerization." The resin was
+a molecular trust, indissoluble, uncontrollable and contaminating
+everything it touched.</p>
+
+<p>But chemists&mdash;like governments&mdash;have learned wisdom in recent years.
+They have not yet discovered in all cases how to undo the process of
+polymerization, or, if you prefer the financial phrase, how to
+unscramble the eggs. But they have found that these molecular mergers
+are very useful things in their way. For instance there is a liquid
+known as isoprene (C<sub>5</sub>H<sub>8</sub>). This on heating or standing turns into a
+gum, that is nothing less than rubber, which is some multiple of
+C<sub>5</sub>H<sub>8</sub>.</p>
+
+<p>For another instance there is formaldehyde, an acrid smelling gas, used
+as a disinfectant. This has the simplest possible formula for a
+carbohydrate, CH<sub>2</sub>O. But in the leaf of a plant this molecule
+multiplies itself by <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span>six and turns into a sweet solid glucose
+(C<sub>6</sub>H<sub>12</sub>O<sub>6</sub>), or with the loss of water into starch
+(C<sub>6</sub>H<sub>10</sub>O<sub>5</sub>) or cellulose (C<sub>6</sub>H<sub>10</sub>O<sub>5</sub>).</p>
+
+<p>But formaldehyde is so insatiate that it not only combines with itself
+but seizes upon other substances, particularly those having an
+acquisitive nature like its own. Such a substance is carbolic acid
+(phenol) which, as we all know, is used as a disinfectant like
+formaldehyde because it, too, has the power of attacking decomposable
+organic matter. Now Prof. Adolf von Baeyer discovered in 1872 that when
+phenol and formaldehyde were brought into contact they seized upon one
+another and formed a combine of unusual tenacity, that is, a resin. But
+as I have said, chemists in those days were shy of resins. Kleeberg in
+1891 tried to make something out of it and W.H. Story in 1895 went so
+far as to name the product "resinite," but nothing came of it until 1909
+when L.H. Baekeland undertook a serious and systematic study of this
+reaction in New York. Baekeland was a Belgian chemist, born at Ghent in
+1863 and professor at Bruges. While a student at Ghent he took up
+photography as a hobby and began to work on the problem of doing away
+with the dark-room by producing a printing paper that could be developed
+under ordinary light. When he came over to America in 1889 he brought
+his idea with him and four years later turned out "Velox," with which
+doubtless the reader is familiar. Velox was never patented because, as
+Dr. Baekeland explained in his speech of acceptance of the Perkin medal
+from the chemists of America, lawsuits are too expensive. Manufacturers
+seem to be coming generally to the opinion that a synthetic <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span>name
+copyrighted as a trademark affords better protection than a patent.</p>
+
+<p>Later Dr. Baekeland turned his attention to the phenol condensation
+products, working gradually up from test tubes to ton vats according to
+his motto: "Make your mistakes on a small scale and your profits on a
+large scale." He found that when equal weights of phenol and
+formaldehyde were mixed and warmed in the presence of an alkaline
+catalytic agent the solution separated into two layers, the upper
+aqueous and the lower a resinous precipitate. This resin was soft,
+viscous and soluble in alcohol or acetone. But if it was heated under
+pressure it changed into another and a new kind of resin that was hard,
+inelastic, unplastic, infusible and insoluble. The chemical name of this
+product is "polymerized oxybenzyl methylene glycol anhydride," but
+nobody calls it that, not even chemists. It is called "Bakelite" after
+its inventor.</p>
+
+<p>The two stages in its preparation are convenient in many ways. For
+instance, porous wood may be soaked in the soft resin and then by heat
+and pressure it is changed to the bakelite form and the wood comes out
+with a hard finish that may be given the brilliant polish of Japanese
+lacquer. Paper, cardboard, cloth, wood pulp, sawdust, asbestos and the
+like may be impregnated with the resin, producing tough and hard
+material suitable for various purposes. Brass work painted with it and
+then baked at 300&deg; F. acquires a lacquered surface that is unaffected by
+soap. Forced in powder or sheet form into molds under a pressure of 1200
+to 2000 pounds to the square inch it takes the most delicate
+impressions. Billiard balls of bakelite <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span>are claimed to be better than
+ivory because, having no grain, they do not swell unequally with heat
+and humidity and so lose their sphericity. Pipestems and beads of
+bakelite have the clear brilliancy of amber and greater strength.
+Fountain pens made of it are transparent so you can see how much ink you
+have left. A new and enlarging field for bakelite and allied products is
+the making of noiseless gears for automobiles and other machinery, also
+of air-plane propellers.</p>
+
+<p>Celluloid is more plastic and elastic than bakelite. It is therefore
+more easily worked in sheets and small objects. Celluloid can be made
+perfectly transparent and colorless while bakelite is confined to the
+range between a clear amber and an opaque brown or black. On the other
+hand bakelite has the advantage in being tasteless, odorless, inert,
+insoluble and non-inflammable. This last quality and its high electrical
+resistance give bakelite its chief field of usefulness. Electricity was
+discovered by the Greeks, who found that amber (<i>electron</i>) when rubbed
+would pick up straws. This means simply that amber, like all such
+resinous substances, natural or artificial, is a non-conductor or
+di-electric and does not carry off and scatter the electricity collected
+on the surface by the friction. Bakelite is used in its liquid form for
+impregnating coils to keep the wires from shortcircuiting and in its
+solid form for commutators, magnetos, switch blocks, distributors, and
+all sorts of electrical apparatus for automobiles, telephones, wireless
+telegraphy, electric lighting, etc.</p>
+
+<p>Bakelite, however, is only one of an indefinite number of such
+condensation products. As Baeyer said long ago: "It seems that all the
+aldehydes will, under <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span>suitable circumstances, unite with the aromatic
+hydrocarbons to form resins." So instead of phenol, other coal tar
+products such as cresol, naphthol or benzene itself may be used. The
+carbon links (-CH<sub>2</sub>-, methylene) necessary to hook these carbon rings
+together may be obtained from other substances than the aldehydes, for
+instance from the amines, or ammonia derivatives. Three chemists, L.V.
+Kedman, A.J. Weith and F.P. Broek, working in 1910 on the Industrial
+Fellowships of the late Robert Kennedy Duncan at the University of
+Kansas, developed a process using formin instead of formaldehyde.
+Formin&mdash;or, if you insist upon its full name,
+hexa-methylene-tetramine&mdash;is a sugar-like substance with a fish-like
+smell. This mixed with crystallized carbolic acid and slightly warmed
+melts to a golden liquid that sets on pouring into molds. It is still
+plastic and can be bent into any desired shape, but on further heating
+it becomes hard without the need of pressure. Ammonia is given off in
+this process instead of water which is the by-product in the case of
+formaldehyde. The product is similar to bakelite, exactly how similar is
+a question that the courts will have to decide. The inventors threatened
+to call it Phenyl-endeka-saligeno-saligenin, but, rightly fearing that
+this would interfere with its salability, they have named it "redmanol."</p>
+
+<p>A phenolic condensation product closely related to bakelite and redmanol
+is condensite, the invention of Jonas Walter Aylesworth. Aylesworth was
+trained in what he referred to as "the greatest university of the world,
+the Edison laboratory." He entered this university at the age of
+nineteen at a salary of $3 a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span>week, but Edison soon found that he had in
+his new boy an assistant who could stand being shut up in the laboratory
+working day and night as long as he could. After nine years of close
+association with Edison he set up a little laboratory in his own back
+yard to work out new plastics. He found that by acting on
+naphthalene&mdash;the moth-ball stuff&mdash;with chlorine he got a series of
+useful products called "halowaxes." The lower chlorinated products are
+oils, which may be used for impregnating paper or soft wood, making it
+non-inflammable and impregnable to water. If four atoms of chlorine
+enter the naphthalene molecule the product is a hard wax that rings like
+a metal.</p>
+
+<p>Condensite is anhydrous and infusible, and like its rivals finds its
+chief employment in the insulation parts of electrical apparatus. The
+records of the Edison phonograph are made of it. So are the buttons of
+our blue-jackets. The Government at the outbreak of the war ordered
+40,000 goggles in condensite frames to protect the eyes of our gunners
+from the glare and acid fumes.</p>
+
+<p>The various synthetics played an important part in the war. According to
+an ancient military pun the endurance of soldiers depends upon the
+strength of their soles. The new compound rubber soles were found useful
+in our army and the Germans attribute their success in making a little
+leather go a long way during the late war to the use of a new synthetic
+tanning material known as "neradol." There are various forms of this.
+Some are phenolic condensation products of formaldehyde like those we
+have been considering, but some use coal-tar compounds having no <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span>phenol
+groups, such as naphthalene sulfonic acid. These are now being made in
+England under such names as "paradol," "cresyntan" and "syntan." They
+have the advantage of the natural tannins such as bark in that they are
+of known strength and can be varied to suit.</p>
+
+<p>This very grasping compound, formaldehyde, will attack almost anything,
+even molecules many times its size. Gelatinous and albuminous substances
+of all sorts are solidified by it. Glue, skimmed milk, blood, eggs,
+yeast, brewer's slops, may by this magic agent be rescued from waste and
+reappear in our buttons, hairpins, roofing, phonographs, shoes or
+shoe-polish. The French have made great use of casein hardened by
+formaldehyde into what is known as "galalith" (i.e., milkstone). This is
+harder than celluloid and non-inflammable, but has the disadvantages of
+being more brittle and of absorbing moisture. A mixture of casein and
+celluloid has something of the merits of both.</p>
+
+<p>The Japanese, as we should expect, are using the juice of the soy bean,
+familiar as a condiment to all who patronize chop-sueys or use
+Worcestershire sauce. The soy glucine coagulated by formalin gives a
+plastic said to be better and cheaper than celluloid. Its inventor, S.
+Sato, of Sendai University, has named it, according to American
+precedent, "Satolite," and has organized a million-dollar Satolite
+Company at Mukojima.</p>
+
+<p>The algin extracted from the Pacific kelp can be used as a rubber
+surrogate for water-proofing cloth. When combined with heavier alkaline
+bases it forms a tough and elastic substance that can be rolled into
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span>transparent sheets like celluloid or turned into buttons and knife
+handles.</p>
+
+<p>In Australia when the war shut off the supply of tin the Government
+commission appointed to devise means of preserving fruits recommended
+the use of cardboard containers varnished with "magramite." This is a
+name the Australians coined for synthetic resin made from phenol and
+formaldehyde like bakelite. Magramite dissolved in alcohol is painted on
+the cardboard cans and when these are stoved the coating becomes
+insoluble.</p>
+
+<p>Tarasoff has made a series of condensation products from phenol and
+formaldehyde with the addition of sulfonated oils. These are formed by
+the action of sulfuric acid on coconut, castor, cottonseed or mineral
+oils. The products of this combination are white plastics, opaque,
+insoluble and infusible.</p>
+
+<p>Since I am here chiefly concerned with "Creative Chemistry," that is,
+with the art of making substances not found in nature, I have not spoken
+of shellac, asphaltum, rosin, ozocerite and the innumerable gums, resins
+and waxes, animal, mineral and vegetable, that are used either by
+themselves or in combination with the synthetics. What particular "dope"
+or "mud" is used to coat a canvas or form a telephone receiver is often
+hard to find out. The manufacturer finds secrecy safer than the patent
+office and the chemist of a rival establishment is apt to be baffled in
+his attempt to analyze and imitate. But we of the outside world are not
+concerned with this, though we are interested in the manifold
+applications of these new materials.</p>
+
+<p>There seems to be no limit to these compounds and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span>every week the
+journals report new processes and patents. But we must not allow the new
+ones to crowd out the remembrance of the oldest and most famous of the
+synthetic plasters, hard rubber, to which a separate chapter must be
+devoted.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="VIII" id="VIII"></a>VIII</h2>
+
+<h3>THE RACE FOR RUBBER</h3>
+
+
+<p>There is one law that regulates all animate and inanimate things. It is
+formulated in various ways, for instance:</p>
+
+<p>Running down a hill is easy. In Latin it reads, <i>facilis descensus
+Averni.</i> Herbert Spencer calls it the dissolution of definite coherent
+heterogeneity into indefinite incoherent homogeneity. Mother Goose
+expresses it in the fable of Humpty Dumpty, and the business man
+extracts the moral as, "You can't unscramble an egg." The theologian
+calls it the dogma of natural depravity. The physicist calls it the
+second law of thermodynamics. Clausius formulates it as "The entropy of
+the world tends toward a maximum." It is easier to smash up than to
+build up. Children find that this is true of their toys; the Bolsheviki
+have found that it is true of a civilization. So, too, the chemist knows
+analysis is easier than synthesis and that creative chemistry is the
+highest branch of his art.</p>
+
+<p>This explains why chemists discovered how to take rubber apart over
+sixty years before they could find out how to put it together. The first
+is easy. Just put some raw rubber into a retort and heat it. If you can
+stand the odor you will observe the caoutchouc decomposing and a
+benzine-like liquid distilling over.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> This is called "isoprene." Any
+Freshman chemist could write the reaction for this operation. It is
+simply</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">C<sub>10</sub>H<sub>16</sub>&nbsp;  &#8594;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 2C<sub>5</sub>H<sub>8</sub></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">caoutchouc&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  isoprene</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>That is, one molecule of the gum splits up into two molecules of the
+liquid. It is just as easy to write the reaction in the reverse
+directions, as 2 isoprene&#8594; 1 caoutchouc, but nobody could make it go
+in that direction. Yet it could be done. It had been done. But the man
+who did it did not know how he did it and could not do it again.
+Professor Tilden in May, 1892, read a paper before the Birmingham
+Philosophical Society in which he said:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>I was surprised a few weeks ago at finding the contents of the
+bottles containing isoprene from turpentine entirely changed in
+appearance. In place of a limpid, colorless liquid the bottles
+contained a dense syrup in which were floating several large
+masses of a yellowish color. Upon examination this turned out
+to be India rubber.</p></div>
+
+<p>But neither Professor Tilden nor any one else could repeat this
+accidental metamorphosis. It was tantalizing, for the world was willing
+to pay $2,000,000,000 a year for rubber and the forests of the Amazon
+and Congo were failing to meet the demand. A large share of these
+millions would have gone to any chemist who could find out how to make
+synthetic rubber and make it cheaply enough. With such a reward of fame
+and fortune the competition among chemists was intense. It took the form
+of an international contest in which England and Germany were neck and
+neck.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 305px;">
+<img src="images/image177.jpg" width="305" height="437" alt="Courtesy of the &quot;India Rubber World.&quot;
+
+What goes into rubber and what is made out of it" title="" />
+<span class="caption">Courtesy of the &quot;India Rubber World.&quot;
+
+What goes into rubber and what is made out of it</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span>The English, who had been beaten by the Germans in the dye business
+where they had the start, were determined not to lose in this. Prof.
+W.H. Perkin, of Manchester University, was one of the most eager, for he
+was inspired by a personal grudge against the Germans as well as by
+patriotism and scientific zeal. It was his father who had, fifty years
+before, discovered mauve, the first of the anilin dyes, but England
+could not hold the business and its rich rewards went over to Germany.
+So in 1909 a corps of chemists set to work under Professor Perkin in the
+Manchester laboratories to solve the problem of synthetic rubber. What
+reagent could be found that would reverse the reaction and convert the
+liquid isoprene into the solid rubber? It was discovered, by accident,
+we may say, but it should be understood that such advantageous accidents
+happen only to those who are working for them and know how to utilize
+them. In July, 1910, Dr. Matthews, who had charge of the research, set
+some isoprene to drying over metallic sodium, a common laboratory method
+of freeing a liquid from the last traces of water. In September he found
+that the flask was filled with a solid mass of real rubber instead of
+the volatile colorless liquid he had put into it.</p>
+
+<p>Twenty years before the discovery would have been useless, for sodium
+was then a rare and costly metal, a little of it in a sealed glass tube
+being passed around the chemistry class once a year as a curiosity, or a
+tiny bit cut off and dropped in water to see what a fuss it made. But
+nowadays metallic sodium is cheaply produced by the aid of electricity.
+The difficulty lay rather in the cost of the raw material, isoprene. In
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span>industrial chemistry it is not sufficient that a thing can be made; it
+must be made to pay. Isoprene could be obtained from turpentine, but
+this was too expensive and limited in supply. It would merely mean the
+destruction of pine forests instead of rubber forests. Starch was
+finally decided upon as the best material, since this can be obtained
+for about a cent a pound from potatoes, corn and many other sources.
+Here, however, the chemist came to the end of his rope and had to call
+the bacteriologist to his aid. The splitting of the starch molecule is
+too big a job for man; only the lower organisms, the yeast plant, for
+example, know enough to do that. Owing perhaps to the <i>entente cordiale</i>
+a French biologist was called into the combination, Professor Fernbach,
+of the Pasteur Institute, and after eighteen months' hard work he
+discovered a process of fermentation by which a large amount of fusel
+oil can be obtained from any starchy stuff. Hitherto the aim in
+fermentation and distillation had been to obtain as small a proportion
+of fusel as possible, for fusel oil is a mixture of the heavier
+alcohols, all of them more poisonous and malodorous than common alcohol.
+But here, as has often happened in the history of industrial chemistry,
+the by-product turned out to be more valuable than the product. From
+fusel oil by the use of chlorine isoprene can be prepared, so the chain
+was complete.</p>
+
+<p>But meanwhile the Germans had been making equal progress. In 1905 Prof.
+Karl Harries, of Berlin, found out the name of the caoutchouc molecule.
+This discovery was to the chemists what the architect's plan of a house
+is to the builder. They knew then <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span>what they were trying to construct
+and could go about their task intelligently.</p>
+
+<p>Mark Twain said that he could understand something about how astronomers
+could measure the distance of the planets, calculate their weights and
+so forth, but he never could see how they could find out their names
+even with the largest telescopes. This is a joke in astronomy but it is
+not in chemistry. For when the chemist finds out the structure of a
+compound he gives it a name which means that. The stuff came to be
+called "caoutchouc," because that was the way the Spaniards of
+Columbus's time caught the Indian word "cahuchu." When Dr. Priestley
+called it "India rubber" he told merely where it came from and what it
+was good for. But when Harries named it
+"1-5-dimethyl-cyclo-octadien-1-5" any chemist could draw a picture of it
+and give a guess as to how it could be made. Even a person without any
+knowledge of chemistry can get the main point of it by merely looking at
+this diagram:</p>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 350px;">
+<img src="images/image180.jpg" width="350" height="131" alt="isoprene turns into caoutchouc" title="" />
+<span class="caption">isoprene turns into caoutchouc</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>I have dropped the 16 H's or hydrogen atoms of the formula for
+simplicity's sake. They simply hook on wherever they can. You will see
+that the isoprene consists of a chain of four carbon atoms (represented
+by the C's) with an extra carbon on the side. In the transformation of
+this colorless liquid into soft rubber <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span>two of the double linkages break
+and so permit the two chains of 4 C's to unite to form one ring of
+eight. If you have ever played ring-around-a-rosy you will get the idea.
+In Chapter IV I explained that the anilin dyes are built up upon the
+benzene ring of six carbon atoms. The rubber ring consists of eight at
+least and probably more. Any substance containing that peculiar carbon
+chain with two double links C=C-C=C can double up&mdash;polymerize, the
+chemist calls it&mdash;into a rubber-like substance. So we may have many
+kinds of rubber, some of which may prove to be more useful than that
+which happens to be found in nature.</p>
+
+<p>With the structural formula of Harries as a clue chemists all over the
+world plunged into the problem with renewed hope. The famous Bayer dye
+works at Elberfeld took it up and there in August, 1909, Dr. Fritz
+Hofmann worked out a process for the converting of pure isoprene into
+rubber by heat. Then in 1910 Harries happened upon the same sodium
+reaction as Matthews, but when he came to get it patented he found that
+the Englishman had beaten him to the patent office by a few weeks.</p>
+
+<p>This Anglo-German rivalry came to a dramatic climax in 1912 at the great
+hall of the College of the City of New York when Dr. Carl Duisberg, of
+the Elberfeld factory, delivered an address on the latest achievements
+of the chemical industry before the Eighth&mdash;and the last for a long
+time&mdash;International Congress of Applied Chemistry. Duisberg insisted
+upon talking in German, although more of his auditors would have
+understood him in English. He laid full <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span>emphasis upon German
+achievements and cast doubt upon the claim of "the Englishman Tilden" to
+have prepared artificial rubber in the eighties. Perkin, of Manchester,
+confronted him with his new process for making rubber from potatoes, but
+Duisberg countered by proudly displaying two automobile tires made of
+synthetic rubber with which he had made a thousand-mile run.</p>
+
+<p>The intense antagonism between the British and German chemists at this
+congress was felt by all present, but we did not foresee that in two
+years from that date they would be engaged in manufacturing poison gas
+to fire at one another. It was, however, realized that more was at stake
+than personal reputation and national prestige. Under pressure of the
+new demand for automobiles the price of rubber jumped from $1.25 to $3 a
+pound in 1910, and millions had been invested in plantations. If
+Professor Perkin was right when he told the congress that by his process
+rubber could be made for less than 25 cents a pound it meant that these
+plantations would go the way of the indigo plantations when the Germans
+succeeded in making artificial indigo. If Dr. Duisberg was right when he
+told the congress that synthetic rubber would "certainly appear on the
+market in a very short time," it meant that Germany in war or peace
+would become independent of Brazil in the matter of rubber as she had
+become independent of Chile in the matter of nitrates.</p>
+
+<p>As it turned out both scientists were too sanguine. Synthetic rubber has
+not proved capable of displacing natural rubber by underbidding it nor
+even of replacing <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span>natural rubber when this is shut out. When Germany
+was blockaded and the success of her armies depended on rubber, price
+was no object. Three Danish sailors who were caught by United States
+officials trying to smuggle dental rubber into Germany confessed that
+they had been selling it there for gas masks at $73 a pound. The German
+gas masks in the latter part of the war were made without rubber and
+were frail and leaky. They could not have withstood the new gases which
+American chemists were preparing on an unprecedented scale. Every scrap
+of old rubber in Germany was saved and worked over and over and diluted
+with fillers and surrogates to the limit of elasticity. Spring tires
+were substituted for pneumatics. So it is evident that the supply of
+synthetic rubber could not have been adequate or satisfactory. Neither,
+on the other hand, have the British made a success of the Perkin
+process, although they spent $200,000 on it in the first two years. But,
+of course, there was not the same necessity for it as in the case of
+Germany, for England had practically a monopoly of the world's supply of
+natural rubber either through owning plantations or controlling
+shipping. If rubber could not be manufactured profitably in Germany when
+the demand was imperative and price no consideration it can hardly be
+expected to compete with the natural under peace conditions.</p>
+
+<p>The problem of synthetic rubber has then been solved scientifically but
+not industrially. It can be made but cannot be made to pay. The
+difficulty is to find a cheap enough material to start with. We can make
+rubber out of potatoes&mdash;but potatoes have other uses. It <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span>would require
+more land and more valuable land to raise the potatoes than to raise the
+rubber. We can get isoprene by the distillation of turpentine&mdash;but why
+not bleed a rubber tree as well as a pine tree? Turpentine is neither
+cheap nor abundant enough. Any kind of wood, sawdust for instance, can
+be utilized by converting the cellulose over into sugar and fermenting
+this to alcohol, but the process is not likely to prove profitable.
+Petroleum when cracked up to make gasoline gives isoprene or other
+double-bond compounds that go over into some form of rubber.</p>
+
+<p>But the most interesting and most promising of all is the complete
+inorganic synthesis that dispenses with the aid of vegetation and starts
+with coal and lime. These heated together in the electric furnace form
+calcium carbide and this, as every automobilist knows, gives acetylene
+by contact with water. From this gas isoprene can be made and the
+isoprene converted into rubber by sodium, or acid or alkali or simple
+heating. Acetone, which is also made from acetylene, can be converted
+directly into rubber by fuming sulfuric acid. This seems to have been
+the process chiefly used by the Germans during the war. Several carbide
+factories were devoted to it. But the intermediate and by-products of
+the process, such as alcohol, acetic acid and acetone, were in as much
+demand for war purposes as rubber. The Germans made some rubber from
+pitch imported from Sweden. They also found a useful substitute in
+aluminum naphthenate made from Baku petroleum, for it is elastic and
+plastic and can be vulcanized.</p>
+
+<p>So although rubber can be made in many different <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span>ways it is not
+profitable to make it in any of them. We have to rely still upon the
+natural product, but we can greatly improve upon the way nature produces
+it. When the call came for more rubber for the electrical and automobile
+industries the first attempt to increase the supply was to put pressure
+upon the natives to bring in more of the latex. As a consequence the
+trees were bled to death and sometimes also the natives. The Belgian
+atrocities in the Congo shocked the civilized world and at Putumayo on
+the upper Amazon the same cause produced the same horrible effects. But
+no matter what cruelty was practiced the tropical forests could not be
+made to yield a sufficient increase, so the cultivation of the rubber
+was begun by far-sighted men in Dutch Java, Sumatra and Borneo and in
+British Malaya and Ceylon.</p>
+
+<p>Brazil, feeling secure in the possession of a natural monopoly, made no
+effort to compete with these parvenus. It cost about as much to gather
+rubber from the Amazon forests as it did to raise it on a Malay
+plantation, that is, 25 cents a pound. The Brazilian Government clapped
+on another 25 cents export duty and spent the money lavishly. In 1911
+the treasury of Para took in $2,000,000 from the rubber tax and a good
+share of the money was spent on a magnificent new theater at Manaos&mdash;not
+on setting out rubber trees. The result of this rivalry between the
+collector and the cultivator is shown by the fact that in the decade
+1907-1917 the world's output of plantation rubber increased from 1000 to
+204,000 tons, while the output of wild rubber decreased from 68,000 to
+53,000. Besides this the plantation rubber is a cleaner and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span>more even
+product, carefully coagulated by acetic acid instead of being smoked
+over a forest fire. It comes in pale yellow sheets instead of big black
+balls loaded with the dirt or sticks and stones that the honest Indian
+sometimes adds to make a bigger lump. What's better, the man who milks
+the rubber trees on a plantation may live at home where he can be
+decently looked after. The agriculturist and the chemist may do what the
+philanthropist and statesman could not accomplish: put an end to the
+cruelties involved in the international struggle for "black gold."</p>
+
+<p>The United States uses three-fourths of the world's rubber output and
+grows none of it. What is the use of tropical possessions if we do not
+make use of them? The Philippines could grow all our rubber and keep a
+$300,000,000 business under our flag. Santo Domingo, where rubber was
+first discovered, is now under our supervision and could be enriched by
+the industry. The Guianas, where the rubber tree was first studied,
+might be purchased. It is chiefly for lack of a definite colonial policy
+that our rubber industry, by far the largest in the world, has to be
+dependent upon foreign sources for all its raw materials. Because the
+Philippines are likely to be cast off at any moment, American
+manufacturers are placing their plantations in the Dutch or British
+possessions. The Goodyear Company has secured a concession of 20,000
+acres near Medan in Dutch Sumatra.</p>
+
+<p>While the United States is planning to relinquish its Pacific
+possessions the British have more than doubled their holdings in New
+Guinea by the acquisition of Kaiser Wilhelm's Land, good rubber
+country.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span> The British Malay States in 1917 exported over $118,000,000
+worth of plantation-grown rubber and could have sold more if shipping
+had not been short and production restricted. Fully 90 per cent. of the
+cultivated rubber is now grown in British colonies or on British
+plantations in the Dutch East Indies. To protect this monopoly an act
+has been passed preventing foreigners from buying more land in the Malay
+Peninsula. The Japanese have acquired there 50,000 acres, on which they
+are growing more than a million dollars' worth of rubber a year. The
+British <i>Tropical Life</i> says of the American invasion: "As America is so
+extremely wealthy Uncle Sam can well afford to continue to buy our
+rubber as he has been doing instead of coming in to produce rubber to
+reduce his competition as a buyer in the world's market." The Malaya
+estates calculate to pay a dividend of 20 per cent. on the investment
+with rubber selling at 30 cents a pound and every two cents additional
+on the price brings a further 3-1/2 per cent. dividend. The output is
+restricted by the Rubber Growers' Association so as to keep the price up
+to 50-70 cents. When the plantations first came into bearing in 1910
+rubber was bringing nearly $3 a pound, and since it can be produced at
+less than 30 cents a pound we can imagine the profits of the early
+birds.</p>
+
+<p>The fact that the world's rubber trade was in the control of Great
+Britain caused America great anxiety and financial loss in the early
+part of the war when the British Government, suspecting&mdash;not without
+reason&mdash;that some American rubber goods were getting into Germany
+through neutral nations, suddenly shut <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span>off our supply. This threatened
+to kill the fourth largest of our industries and it was only by the
+submission of American rubber dealers to the closest supervision and
+restriction by the British authorities that they were allowed to
+continue their business. Sir Francis Hopwood, in laying down these
+regulations, gave emphatic warning "that in case any manufacturer,
+importer or dealer came under suspicion his permits should be
+immediately revoked. Reinstatement will be slow and difficult. The
+British Government will cancel first and investigate afterward." Of
+course the British had a right to say under what conditions they should
+sell their rubber and we cannot blame them for taking such precautions
+to prevent its getting to their enemies, but it placed the United States
+in a humiliating position and if we had not been in sympathy with their
+side it would have aroused more resentment than it did. But it made
+evident the desirability of having at least part of our supply under our
+own control and, if possible, within our own country. Rubber is not rare
+in nature, for it is contained in almost every milky juice. Every
+country boy knows that he can get a self-feeding mucilage brush by
+cutting off a milkweed stalk. The only native source so far utilized is
+the guayule, which grows wild on the deserts of the Mexican and the
+American border. The plant was discovered in 1852 by Dr. J.M. Bigelow
+near Escondido Creek, Texas. Professor Asa Gray described it and named
+it Parthenium argentatum, or the silver Pallas. When chopped up and
+macerated guayule gives a satisfactory quality of caoutchouc in
+profitable amounts. In 1911 seven thousand tons of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span>guayule were
+imported from Mexico; in 1917 only seventeen hundred tons. Why this
+falling off? Because the eager exploiters had killed the goose that laid
+the golden egg, or in plain language, pulled up the plant by the roots.
+Now guayule is being cultivated and is reaped instead of being uprooted.
+Experiments at the Tucson laboratory have recently removed the
+difficulty of getting the seed to germinate under cultivation. This
+seems the most promising of the home-grown plants and, until artificial
+rubber can be made profitable, gives us the only chance of being in part
+independent of oversea supply.</p>
+
+<p>There are various other gums found in nature that can for some purposes
+be substituted for caoutchouc. Gutta percha, for instance, is pliable
+and tough though not very elastic. It becomes plastic by heat so it can
+be molded, but unlike rubber it cannot be hardened by heating with
+sulfur. A lump of gutta percha was brought from Java in 1766 and placed
+in a British museum, where it lay for nearly a hundred years before it
+occurred to anybody to do anything with it except to look at it. But a
+German electrician, Siemens, discovered in 1847 that gutta percha was
+valuable for insulating telegraph lines and it found extensive
+employment in submarine cables as well as for golf balls, and the like.</p>
+
+<p>Balata, which is found in the forests of the Guianas, is between gutta
+percha and rubber, not so good for insulation but useful for shoe soles
+and machine belts. The bark of the tree is so thick that the latex does
+not run off like caoutchouc when the bark is cut. So the bark has to be
+cut off and squeezed in hand presses.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> Formerly this meant cutting down
+the tree, but now alternate strips of the bark are cut off and squeezed
+so the tree continues to live.</p>
+
+<p>When Columbus discovered Santo Domingo he found the natives playing with
+balls made from the gum of the caoutchouc tree. The soldiers of Pizarro,
+when they conquered Inca-Land, adopted the Peruvian custom of smearing
+caoutchouc over their coats to keep out the rain. A French scientist, M.
+de la Condamine, who went to South America to measure the earth, came
+back in 1745 with some specimens of caoutchouc from Para as well as
+quinine from Peru. The vessel on which he returned, the brig <i>Minerva</i>,
+had a narrow escape from capture by an English cruiser, for Great
+Britain was jealous of any trespassing on her American sphere of
+influence. The Old World need not have waited for the discovery of the
+New, for the rubber tree grows wild in Annam as well as Brazil, but none
+of the Asiatics seems to have discovered any of the many uses of the
+juice that exudes from breaks in the bark.</p>
+
+<p>The first practical use that was made of it gave it the name that has
+stuck to it in English ever since. Magellan announced in 1772 that it
+was good to remove pencil marks. A lump of it was sent over from France
+to Priestley, the clergyman chemist who discovered oxygen and was mobbed
+out of Manchester for being a republican and took refuge in
+Pennsylvania. He cut the lump into little cubes and gave them to his
+friends to eradicate their mistakes in writing or figuring. Then they
+asked him what the queer things were and he said that they were "India
+rubbers."</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="image_18" id="image_18"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 322px;">
+<img src="images/image191a.jpg" width="322" height="403" alt="FOREST RUBBER" title="" />
+<span class="caption">FOREST RUBBER</span>
+</div>
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p><b>Compare this tropical tangle and gnarled trunk with the straight tree
+and cleared ground of the plantation. At the foot of the trunk are cups
+collecting rubber juice.</b></p>
+</div>
+
+<p><a name="image_17" id="image_17"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 325px;">
+<img src="images/image191b.jpg" width="325" height="405" alt="PLANTATION RUBBER" title="" />
+<span class="caption">PLANTATION RUBBER</span>
+</div>
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p><b>This spiral cut draws off the milk as completely and quickly as possible
+without harming the tree. The man is pulling off a strip of coagulated
+rubber that clogs it.</b></p>
+</div>
+
+<p><a name="image_19" id="image_19"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 321px;">
+<img src="images/image192.jpg" width="321" height="419" alt="IN MAKING GARDEN HOSE THE RUBBER IS FORMED INTO A TUBE
+BY THE MACHINE ON THE RIGHT AND COILED ON THE TABLE TO THE LEFT" title="" />
+<span class="caption">IN MAKING GARDEN HOSE THE RUBBER IS FORMED INTO A TUBE
+BY THE MACHINE ON THE RIGHT AND COILED ON THE TABLE TO THE LEFT</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The Peruvian natives had used caoutchouc for water-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span>proof clothing,
+shoes, bottles and syringes, but Europe was slow to take it up, for the
+stuff was too sticky and smelled too bad in hot weather to become
+fashionable in fastidious circles. In 1825 Mackintosh made his name
+immortal by putting a layer of rubber between two cloths.</p>
+
+<p>A German chemist, Ludersdorf, discovered in 1832 that the gum could be
+hardened by treating it with sulfur dissolved in turpentine. But it was
+left to a Yankee inventor, Charles Goodyear, of Connecticut, to work out
+a practical solution of the problem. A friend of his, Hayward, told him
+that it had been revealed to him in a dream that sulfur would harden
+rubber, but unfortunately the angel or defunct chemist who inspired the
+vision failed to reveal the details of the process. So Hayward sold out
+his dream to Goodyear, who spent all his own money and all he could
+borrow from his friends trying to convert it into a reality. He worked
+for ten years on the problem before the "lucky accident" came to him.
+One day in 1839 he happened to drop on the hot stove of the kitchen that
+he used as a laboratory a mixture of caoutchouc and sulfur. To his
+surprise he saw the two substances fuse together into something new.
+Instead of the soft, tacky gum and the yellow, brittle brimstone he had
+the tough, stable, elastic solid that has done so much since to make our
+footing and wheeling safe, swift and noiseless. The gumshoes or galoshes
+that he was then enabled to make still go by the name of "rubbers" in
+this country, although we do not use them for pencil erasers.</p>
+
+<p>Goodyear found that he could vary this "vulcanized <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span>rubber" at will. By
+adding a little more sulfur he got a hard substance which, however,
+could be softened by heat so as to be molded into any form wanted. Out
+of this "hard rubber" "vulcanite" or "ebonite" were made combs,
+hairpins, penholders and the like, and it has not yet been superseded
+for some purposes by any of its recent rivals, the synthetic resins.</p>
+
+<p>The new form of rubber made by the Germans, methyl rubber, is said to be
+a superior substitute for the hard variety but not satisfactory for the
+soft. The electrical resistance of the synthetic product is 20 per cent,
+higher than the natural, so it is excellent for insulation, but it is
+inferior in elasticity. In the latter part of the war the methyl rubber
+was manufactured at the rate of 165 tons a month.</p>
+
+<p>The first pneumatic tires, known then as "patent aerial wheels," were
+invented by Robert William Thomson of London in 1846. On the following
+year a carriage equipped with them was seen in the streets of New York
+City. But the pneumatic tire did not come into use until after 1888,
+when an Irish horse-doctor, John Boyd Dunlop, of Belfast, tied a rubber
+tube around the wheels of his little son's velocipede. Within seven
+years after that a $25,000,000 corporation was manufacturing Dunlop
+tires. Later America took the lead in this business. In 1913 the United
+States exported $3,000,000 worth of tires and tubes. In 1917 the
+American exports rose to $13,000,000, not counting what went to the
+Allies. The number of pneumatic tires sold in 1917 is estimated at
+18,000,000, which at an average cost of $25 would amount to
+$450,000,000.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span>No matter how much synthetic rubber may be manufactured or how many
+rubber trees are set out there is no danger of glutting the market, for
+as the price falls the uses of rubber become more numerous. One can
+think of a thousand ways in which rubber could be used if it were only
+cheap enough. In the form of pads and springs and tires it would do much
+to render traffic noiseless. Even the elevated railroad and the subway
+might be opened to conversation, and the city made habitable for mild
+voiced and gentle folk. It would make one's step sure, noiseless and
+springy, whether it was used individualistically as rubber heels or
+collectivistically as carpeting and paving. In roofing and siding and
+paint it would make our buildings warmer and more durable. It would
+reduce the cost and permit the extension of electrical appliances of
+almost all kinds. In short, there is hardly any other material whose
+abundance would contribute more to our comfort and convenience. Noise is
+an automatic alarm indicating lost motion and wasted energy. Silence is
+economy and resiliency is superior to resistance. A gumshoe outlasts a
+hobnailed sole and a rubber tube full of air is better than a steel
+tire.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="IX" id="IX"></a>IX</h2>
+
+<h3>THE RIVAL SUGARS</h3>
+
+
+<p>The ancient Greeks, being an inquisitive and acquisitive people, were
+fond of collecting tales of strange lands. They did not care much
+whether the stories were true or not so long as they were interesting.
+Among the marvels that the Greeks heard from the Far East two of the
+strangest were that in India there were plants that bore wool without
+sheep and reeds that bore honey without bees. These incredible tales
+turned out to be true and in the course of time Europe began to get a
+little calico from Calicut and a kind of edible gravel that the Arabs
+who brought it called "sukkar." But of course only kings and queens
+could afford to dress in calico and have sugar prescribed for them when
+they were sick.</p>
+
+<p>Fortunately, however, in the course of time the Arabs invaded Spain and
+forced upon the unwilling inhabitants of Europe such instrumentalities
+of higher civilization as arithmetic and algebra, soap and sugar. Later
+the Spaniards by an act of equally unwarranted and beneficent aggression
+carried the sugar cane to the Caribbean, where it thrived amazingly. The
+West Indies then became a rival of the East Indies as a treasure-house
+of tropical wealth and for several centuries the Spanish, Portuguese,
+Dutch, English, Danes and French fought like wildcats to gain possession
+of this <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span>little nest of islands and the routes leading thereunto.</p>
+
+<p>The English finally overcame all these enemies, whether they fought her
+singly or combined. Great Britain became mistress of the seas and took
+such Caribbean lands as she wanted. But in the end her continental foes
+came out ahead, for they rendered her victory valueless. They were
+defeated in geography but they won in chemistry. Canning boasted that
+"the New World had been called into existence to redress the balance of
+the Old." Napoleon might have boasted that he had called in the sugar
+beet to balance the sugar cane. France was then, as Germany was a
+century later, threatening to dominate the world. England, then as in
+the Great War, shut off from the seas the shipping of the aggressive
+power. France then, like Germany later, felt most keenly the lack of
+tropical products, chief among which, then but not in the recent crisis,
+was sugar. The cause of this vital change is that in 1747 Marggraf, a
+Berlin chemist, discovered that it was possible to extract sugar from
+beets. There was only a little sugar in the beet root then, some six per
+cent., and what he got out was dirty and bitter. One of his pupils in
+1801 set up a beet sugar factory near Breslau under the patronage of the
+King of Prussia, but the industry was not a success until Napoleon took
+it up and in 1810 offered a prize of a million francs for a practical
+process. How the French did make fun of him for this crazy notion! In a
+comic paper of that day you will find a cartoon of Napoleon in the
+nursery beside the cradle of his son and heir, the King of Rome&mdash;known
+to the readers of Rostand as l'Aiglon. The Emperor is squeezing the
+juice of a beet into his <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span>coffee and the nurse has put a beet into the
+mouth of the infant King, saying: "Suck, dear, suck. Your father says
+it's sugar."</p>
+
+<p>In like manner did the wits ridicule Franklin for fooling with
+electricity, Rumford for trying to improve chimneys, Parmentier for
+thinking potatoes were fit to eat, and Jefferson for believing that
+something might be made of the country west of the Mississippi. In all
+ages ridicule has been the chief weapon of conservatism. If you want to
+know what line human progress will take in the future read the funny
+papers of today and see what they are fighting. The satire of every
+century from Aristophanes to the latest vaudeville has been directed
+against those who are trying to make the world wiser or better, against
+the teacher and the preacher, the scientist and the reformer.</p>
+
+<p>In spite of the ridicule showered upon it the despised beet year by year
+gained in sweetness of heart. The percentage of sugar rose from six to
+eighteen and by improved methods of extraction became finally as pure
+and palatable as the sugar of the cane. An acre of German beets produces
+more sugar than an acre of Louisiana cane. Continental Europe waxed
+wealthy while the British West Indies sank into decay. As the beets of
+Europe became sweeter the population of the islands became blacker.
+Before the war England was paying out $125,000,000 for sugar, and more
+than two-thirds of this money was going to Germany and Austria-Hungary.
+Fostered by scientific study, protected by tariff duties, and stimulated
+by export bounties, the beet sugar industry became one of the financial
+forces of the world. The English at home, especially the
+marmalade-makers, at <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span>first rejoiced at the idea of getting sugar for
+less than cost at the expense of her continental rivals. But the
+suffering colonies took another view of the situation. In 1888 a
+conference of the powers called at London agreed to stop competing by
+the pernicious practice of export bounties, but France and the United
+States refused to enter, so the agreement fell through. Another
+conference ten years later likewise failed, but when the parvenu beet
+sugar ventured to invade the historic home of the cane the limit of
+toleration had been reached. The Council of India put on countervailing
+duties to protect their homegrown cane from the bounty-fed beet. This
+forced the calling of a convention at Brussels in 1903 "to equalize the
+conditions of competition between beet sugar and cane sugar of the
+various countries," at which the powers agreed to a mutual suppression
+of bounties. Beet sugar then divided the world's market equally <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span>with
+cane sugar and the two rivals stayed substantially neck and neck until
+the Great War came. This shut out from England the product of Germany,
+Austria-Hungary, Belgium, northern France and Russia and took the
+farmers from their fields. The battle lines of the Central Powers
+enclosed the land which used to grow a third of the world's supply of
+sugar. In 1913 the beet and the cane each supplied about nine million
+tons of sugar. In 1917 the output of cane sugar was 11,200,000 and of
+beet sugar 5,300,000 tons. Consequently the Old World had to draw upon
+the New. Cuba, on which the United States used to depend for half its
+sugar supply, sent over 700,000 tons of raw sugar to England in 1916.
+The United States sent as much more refined sugar. The lack of shipping
+interfered with our getting sugar from our tropical dependencies,
+Hawaii, Porto Rico and the Philippines. The homegrown beets give us only
+a fifth and the cane of Louisiana and Texas only a fifteenth of the
+sugar we need. As a result we were obliged to file a claim in advance to
+get a pound of sugar from the corner grocery and then we were apt to be
+put off with rock candy, muscovado or honey. Lemon drops proved useful
+for Russian tea and the "long sweetening" of our forefathers came again
+into vogue in the form of various syrups. The United States was
+accustomed to consume almost a fifth of all the sugar produced in the
+world&mdash;and then we could not get it.</p>
+
+<h2></h2><div class="figcenter" style="width: 800px;">
+<img src="images/image199alt.jpg" width="800" height="471" alt="MAP SHOWING LOCATION OF EUROPEAN BEET SUGAR
+FACTORIES&mdash;ALSO BATTLE LINES AT CLOSE OF 1918 ESTIMATED THAT ONE-THIRD
+OF WORLDS PRODUCTION BEFORE THE WAR WAS PRODUCED WITHIN BATTLE LINES
+Courtesy American Sugar Refining Co." title="" />
+<span class="caption">MAP SHOWING LOCATION OF EUROPEAN BEET SUGAR
+FACTORIES&mdash;ALSO BATTLE LINES AT CLOSE OF 1918 ESTIMATED THAT ONE-THIRD
+OF WORLDS PRODUCTION BEFORE THE WAR WAS PRODUCED WITHIN BATTLE LINES
+Courtesy American Sugar Refining Co.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The shortage made us realize how dependent we have become upon sugar.
+Yet it was, as we have seen, practically unknown to the ancients and
+only within the present generation has it become an essential factor in
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span>our diet. As soon as the chemist made it possible to produce sugar at a
+reasonable price all nations began to buy it in proportion to their
+means. Americans, as the wealthiest people in the world, ate the most,
+ninety pounds a year on the average for every man, woman and child. In
+other words we ate our weight of sugar every year. The English consumed
+nearly as much as the Americans; the French and Germans about <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span>half as
+much; the Balkan peoples less than ten pounds per annum; and the African
+savages none.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 530px;">
+<img src="images/image201.jpg" width="530" height="600" alt="How the sugar beet has gained enormously in sugar content
+under chemical control" title="" />
+<span class="caption">How the sugar beet has gained enormously in sugar content
+under chemical control</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Pure white sugar is the first and greatest contribution of chemistry to
+the world's dietary. It is unique in being a single definite chemical
+compound, sucrose, C<sub>12</sub>H<sub>22</sub>O<sub>11</sub>. All natural nutriments are more
+or less complex mixtures. Many of them, like wheat or milk or fruit,
+contain in various proportions all of the three factors of foods, the
+fats, the proteids and the carbohydrates, as well as water and the
+minerals and other ingredients necessary to life. But sugar is a simple
+substance, like water or salt, and like them is incapable of sustaining
+life alone, although unlike them it is nutritious. In fact, except the
+fats there is no more nutritious food than sugar, pound for pound, for
+it contains no water and no waste. It is therefore the quickest and
+usually the cheapest means of supplying bodily energy. But as may be
+seen from its formula as given above it contains only three elements,
+carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, and omits nitrogen and other elements
+necessary to the body. An engine requires not only coal but also
+lubricating oil, water and bits of steel and brass to keep it in repair.
+But as a source of the energy needed in our strenuous life sugar has no
+equal and only one rival, alcohol. Alcohol is the offspring of sugar, a
+degenerate descendant that retains but few of the good qualities of its
+sire and has acquired some evil traits of its own. Alcohol, like sugar,
+may serve to furnish the energy of a steam engine or a human body. Used
+as a fuel alcohol has certain advantages, but used as a food it has the
+disqualification of deranging the bodily mechanism. Even a little
+alcohol will impair <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span>the accuracy and speed of thought and action, while
+a large quantity, as we all know from observation if not experience,
+will produce temporary incapacitation.</p>
+
+<p>When man feeds on sugar he splits it up by the aid of air into water and
+carbon dioxide in this fashion:</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">C<sub>12</sub>H<sub>22</sub>O<sub>11</sub> +&nbsp; 12O<sub>2</sub>&nbsp;  &#8594;&nbsp;  11H<sub>2</sub>O&nbsp; + 12CO<sub>2</sub></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">cane sugar&nbsp; &nbsp;  oxygen&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  water&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; carbon dioxide</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>When sugar is burned the reaction is just the same.</p>
+
+<p>But when the yeast plant feeds on sugar it carries the process only part
+way and instead of water the product is alcohol, a very different thing,
+so they say who have tried both as beverages. The yeast or fermentation
+reaction is this:</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">C<sub>12</sub>H<sub>22</sub>O<sub>11</sub> +&nbsp; H<sub>2</sub>O&nbsp;  &#8594;&nbsp; 4C<sub>2</sub>H<sub>6</sub>O&nbsp;  +&nbsp; 4CO<sub>2</sub></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">cane sugar&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; water&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  alcohol&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  carbon dioxide</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Alcohol then is the first product of the decomposition of sugar, a
+dangerous half-way house. The twin product, carbon dioxide or carbonic
+acid, is a gas of slightly sour taste which gives an attractive tang and
+effervescence to the beer, wine, cider or champagne. That is to say, one
+of these twins is a pestilential fellow and the other is decidedly
+agreeable. Yet for several thousand years mankind took to the first and
+let the second for the most part escape into the air. But when the
+chemist appeared on the scene he discovered a way of separating the two
+and bottling the harmless one for those who prefer it. An increasing
+number of people were found to prefer it, so the American soda-water
+fountain is gradually driving Demon Rum out of the civilized world. The
+brewer nowadays caters to two classes of customers. He bottles up the
+beer with <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span>the alcohol and a little carbonic acid in it for the saloon
+and he catches the rest of the carbonic acid that he used to waste and
+sells it to the drug stores for soda-water or uses it to charge some
+non-alcoholic beer of his own.</p>
+
+<p>This catering to rival trades is not an uncommon thing with the chemist.
+As we have seen, the synthetic perfumes are used to improve the natural
+perfumes. Cottonseed is separated into oil and meal; the oil going to
+make margarin and the meal going to feed the cows that produce butter.
+Some people have been drinking coffee, although they do not like the
+taste of it, because they want the stimulating effect of its alkaloid,
+caffein. Other people liked the warmth and flavor of coffee but find
+that caffein does not agree with them. Formerly one had to take the
+coffee whole or let it alone. Now one can have his choice, for the
+caffein is extracted for use in certain popular cold drinks and the rest
+of the bean sold as caffein-free coffee.</p>
+
+<p>Most of the "soft drinks" that are now gradually displacing the hard
+ones consist of sugar, water and carbonic acid, with various flavors,
+chiefly the esters of the fatty and aromatic acids, such as I described
+in a previous chapter. These are still usually made from fruits and
+spices and in some cases the law or public opinion requires this, but
+eventually, I presume, the synthetic flavors will displace the natural
+and then we shall get rid of such extraneous and indigestible matter as
+seeds, skins and bark. Suppose the world had always been used to
+synthetic and hence seedless figs, strawberries and blackberries.
+Suppose then some manufacturer of fig paste or strawberry jam should put
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span>in ten per cent. of little round hard wooden nodules, just the sort to
+get stuck between the teeth or caught in the vermiform appendix. How
+long would it be before he was sent to jail for adulterating food? But
+neither jail nor boycott has any reformatory effect on Nature.</p>
+
+<p>Nature is quite human in that respect. But you can reform Nature as you
+can human beings by looking out for heredity and culture. In this way
+Mother Nature has been quite cured of her bad habit of putting seeds in
+bananas and oranges. Figs she still persists in adulterating with
+particles of cellulose as nutritious as sawdust. But we can circumvent
+the old lady at this. I got on Christmas a package of figs from
+California without a seed in them. Somebody had taken out all the
+seeds&mdash;it must have been a big job&mdash;and then put the figs together again
+as natural looking as life and very much better tasting.</p>
+
+<p>Sugar and alcohol are both found in Nature; sugar in the ripe fruit,
+alcohol when it begins to decay. But it was the chemist who discovered
+how to extract them. He first worked with alcohol and unfortunately
+succeeded.</p>
+
+<p>Previous to the invention of the still by the Arabian chemists man could
+not get drunk as quickly as he wanted to because his liquors were
+limited to what the yeast plant could stand without intoxication. When
+the alcoholic content of wine or beer rose to seventeen per cent. at the
+most the process of fermentation stopped because the yeast plants got
+drunk and quit "working." That meant that a man confined to ordinary
+wine or beer had to drink ten or twenty <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span>quarts of water to get one
+quart of the stuff he was after, and he had no liking for water.</p>
+
+<p>So the chemist helped him out of this difficulty and got him into worse
+trouble by distilling the wine. The more volatile part that came over
+first contained the flavor and most of the alcohol. In this way he could
+get liquors like brandy and whisky, rum and gin, containing from thirty
+to eighty per cent. of alcohol. This was the origin of the modern liquor
+problem. The wine of the ancients was strong enough to knock out Noah
+and put the companions of Socrates under the table, but it was not until
+distilled liquors came in that alcoholism became chronic, epidemic and
+ruinous to whole populations.</p>
+
+<p>But the chemist later tried to undo the ruin he had quite inadvertently
+wrought by introducing alcohol into the world. One of his most
+successful measures was the production of cheap and pure sugar which, as
+we have seen, has become a large factor in the dietary of civilized
+countries. As a country sobers up it takes to sugar as a "self-starter"
+to provide the energy needed for the strenuous life. A five o'clock
+candy is a better restorative than a five o'clock highball or even a
+five o'clock tea, for it is a true nutrient instead of a mere stimulant.
+It is a matter of common observation that those who like sweets usually
+do not like alcohol. Women, for instance, are apt to eat candy but do
+not commonly take to alcoholic beverages. Look around you at a banquet
+table and you will generally find that those who turn down their wine
+glasses generally take two lumps in their demi-tasses. We often hear it
+said that whenever a candy store opens up a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span>saloon in the same block
+closes up. Our grandmothers used to warn their daughters: "Don't marry a
+man who does not want sugar in his tea. He is likely to take to drink."
+So, young man, when next you give a box of candy to your best girl and
+she offers you some, don't decline it. Eat it and pretend to like it, at
+least, for it is quite possible that she looked into a physiology and is
+trying you out. You never can tell what girls are up to.</p>
+
+<p>In the army and navy ration the same change has taken place as in the
+popular dietary. The ration of rum has been mostly replaced by an
+equivalent amount of candy or marmalade. Instead of the tippling trooper
+of former days we have "the chocolate soldier." No previous war in
+history has been fought so largely on sugar and so little on alcohol as
+the last one. When the war reduced the supply and increased the demand
+we all felt the sugar famine and it became a mark of patriotism to
+refuse candy and to drink coffee unsweetened. This, however, is not, as
+some think, the mere curtailment of a superfluous or harmful luxury, the
+sacrifice of a pleasant sensation. It is a real deprivation and a
+serious loss to national nutrition. For there is no reason to think the
+constantly rising curve of sugar consumption has yet reached its maximum
+or optimum. Individuals overeat, but not the population as a whole.
+According to experiments of the Department of Agriculture men doing
+heavy labor may add three-quarters of a pound of sugar to their daily
+diet without any deleterious effects. This is at the rate of 275 pounds
+a year, which is three times the average consumption of England and
+America. But <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span>the Department does not state how much a girl doing
+nothing ought to eat between meals.</p>
+
+<p>Of the 2500 to 3500 calories of energy required to keep a man going for
+a day the best source of supply is the carbohydrates, that is, the
+sugars and starches. The fats are more concentrated but are more
+expensive and less easily assimilable. The proteins are also more
+expensive and their decomposition products are more apt to clog up the
+system. Common sugar is almost an ideal food. Cheap, clean, white,
+portable, imperishable, unadulterated, pleasant-tasting, germ-free,
+highly nutritious, completely soluble, altogether digestible, easily
+assimilable, requires no cooking and leaves no residue. Its only fault
+is its perfection. It is so pure that a man cannot live on it. Four
+square lumps give one hundred calories of energy. But twenty-five or
+thirty-five times that amount would not constitute a day's ration, in
+fact one would ultimately starve on such fare. It would be like
+supplying an army with an abundance of powder but neglecting to provide
+any bullets, clothing or food. To make sugar the sole food is
+impossible. To make it the main food is unwise. It is quite proper for
+man to separate out the distinct ingredients of natural products&mdash;to
+extract the butter from the milk, the casein from the cheese, the sugar
+from the cane&mdash;but he must not forget to combine them again at each meal
+with the other essential foodstuffs in their proper proportion.</p>
+
+<p><a name="image_20" id="image_20"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 440px;">
+<img src="images/image209.jpg" width="440" height="290" alt="THE RIVAL SUGARS The sugar beet of the north has become
+a close rival of the sugar cane of the south" title="" />
+<span class="caption">THE RIVAL SUGARS The sugar beet of the north has become
+a close rival of the sugar cane of the south</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><a name="image_21" id="image_21"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 436px;">
+<img src="images/image210a.jpg" width="436" height="290" alt="INTERIOR OF A SUGAR MILL SHOWING THE MACHINERY FOR
+CRUSHING CANE TO EXTRACT THE JUICE" title="" />
+<span class="caption">INTERIOR OF A SUGAR MILL SHOWING THE MACHINERY FOR
+CRUSHING CANE TO EXTRACT THE JUICE</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><a name="image_22" id="image_22"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 372px;">
+<img src="images/image210b.jpg" width="372" height="320" alt="Courtesy of American Sugar Refinery Co." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Courtesy of American Sugar Refinery Co.</span>
+</div>
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p><b>VACUUM PANS OF THE AMERICAN SUGAR REFINERY COMPANY</b></p>
+
+<p><b>In these air-tight vats the water is boiled off from the cane juice
+under diminished atmospheric pressure until the sugar crystallizes out</b></p>
+</div>
+<p>Sugar is not a synthetic product and the business of the chemist has
+been merely to extract and purify it. But this is not so simple as it
+seems and every sugar <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span>factory has had to have its chemist. He has
+analyzed every mother beet for a hundred years. He has watched every
+step of the process from the cane to the crystal lest the sucrose should
+invert to the less sweet and non-crystallizable glucose. He has tested
+with polarized light every shipment of sugar that has passed through the
+custom house, much to the mystification of congressmen who have often
+wondered at the money and argumentation expended in a tariff discussion
+over the question of the precise angle of rotation of the plane of
+vibration of infinitesimal waves in a hypothetical ether.</p>
+
+<p>The reason for this painstaking is that there are dozens of different
+sugars, so much alike that they are difficult to separate. They are all
+composed of the same three elements, C, H and O, and often in the same
+proportion. Sometimes two sugars differ only in that one has a
+right-handed and the other a left-handed twist to its molecule. They
+bear the same resemblance to one another as the two gloves of a pair.
+Cane sugar and beet sugar are when completely purified the same
+substance, that is, sucrose, C<sub>12</sub>H<sub>22</sub>O<sub>11</sub>. The brown and
+straw-colored sugars, which our forefathers used and which we took to
+using during the war, are essentially the same but have not been so
+completely freed from moisture and the coloring and flavoring matter of
+the cane juice. Maple sugar is mostly sucrose. So partly is honey.
+Candies are made chiefly of sucrose with the addition of glucose, gums
+or starch, to give them the necessary consistency and of such colors and
+flavors, natural or synthetic, as may be desired. Practically all candy,
+even the cheapest, is nowadays free from deleterious <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span>ingredients in the
+manufacture, though it is liable to become contaminated in the handling.
+In fact sugar is about the only food that is never adulterated. It would
+be hard to find anything cheaper to add to it that would not be easily
+detected. "Sanding the sugar," the crime of which grocers are generally
+accused, is the one they are least likely to be guilty of.</p>
+
+<p>Besides the big family of sugars which are all more or less sweet,
+similar in structure and about equally nutritious, there are, very
+curiously, other chemical compounds of altogether different composition
+which taste like sugar but are not nutritious at all. One of these is a
+coal-tar derivative, discovered accidentally by an American student of
+chemistry, Ira Remsen, afterward president of Johns Hopkins University,
+and named by him "saccharin." This has the composition
+C<sub>6</sub>H<sub>4</sub>COSO<sub>2</sub>NH, and as you may observe from the symbol it contains
+sulfur (S) and nitrogen (N) and the benzene ring (C<sub>6</sub>H<sub>4</sub>) that are
+not found in any of the sugars. It is several hundred times sweeter than
+sugar, though it has also a slightly bitter aftertaste. A minute
+quantity of it can therefore take the place of a large amount of sugar
+in syrups, candies and preserves, so because it lends itself readily to
+deception its use in food has been prohibited in the United States and
+other countries. But during the war, on account of the shortage of
+sugar, it came again into use. The European governments encouraged what
+they formerly tried to prevent, and it became customary in Germany or
+Italy to carry about a package of saccharin tablets in the pocket and
+drop one or two into the tea or coffee. Such reversals of administrative
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span>attitude are not uncommon. When the use of hops in beer was new it was
+prohibited by British law. But hops became customary nevertheless and
+now the law requires hops to be used in beer. When workingmen first
+wanted to form unions, laws were passed to prevent them. But now, in
+Australia for instance, the laws require workingmen to form unions.
+Governments naturally tend to a conservative reaction against anything
+new.</p>
+
+<p>It is amusing to turn back to the pure food agitation of ten years ago
+and read the sensational articles in the newspapers about the poisonous
+nature of this dangerous drug, saccharin, in view of the fact that it is
+being used by millions of people in Europe in amounts greater than once
+seemed to upset the tender stomachs of the Washington "poison squads."
+But saccharin does not appear to be responsible for any fatalities yet,
+though people are said to be heartily sick of it. And well they may be,
+for it is not a substitute for sugar except to the sense of taste.
+Glucose may correctly be called a substitute for sucrose as margarin for
+butter, since they not only taste much the same but have about the same
+food value. But to serve saccharin in the place of sugar is like giving
+a rubber bone to a dog. It is reported from Europe that the constant use
+of saccharin gives one eventually a distaste for all sweets. This is
+quite likely, although it means the reversal within a few years of
+prehistoric food habits. Mankind has always associated sweetness with
+food value, for there are few sweet things found in nature except the
+sugars. We think we eat sugar because it is sweet. But we do not. We eat
+it because it is good for us.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span> The reason it tastes sweet to us is
+because it is good for us. So man makes a virtue out of necessity, a
+pleasure out of duty, which is the essence of ethics.</p>
+
+<p>In the ancient days of Ind the great Raja Trishanku possessed an earthly
+paradise that had been constructed for his delectation by a magician.
+Therein grew all manner of beautiful flowers, savory herbs and delicious
+fruits such as had never been known before outside heaven. Of them all
+the Raja and his harems liked none better than the reed from which they
+could suck honey. But Indra, being a jealous god, was wroth when he
+looked down and beheld mere mortals enjoying such delights. So he willed
+the destruction of the enchanted garden. With drought and tempest it was
+devastated, with fire and hail, until not a leaf was left of its
+luxuriant vegetation and the ground was bare as a threshing floor. But
+the roots of the sugar cane are not destroyed though the stalk be cut
+down; so when men ventured to enter the desert where once had been this
+garden of Eden, they found the cane had grown up again and they carried
+away cuttings of it and cultivated it in their gardens. Thus it happened
+that the nectar of the gods descended first to monarchs and their
+favorites, then was spread among the people and carried abroad to other
+lands until now any child with a penny in his hand may buy of the best
+of it. So it has been with many things. So may it be with all things.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="X" id="X"></a>X</h2>
+
+<h3>WHAT COMES FROM CORN</h3>
+
+
+<p>The discovery of America dowered mankind with a world of new flora. The
+early explorers in their haste to gather up gold paid little attention
+to the more valuable products of field and forest, but in the course of
+centuries their usefulness has become universally recognized. The potato
+and tomato, which Europe at first considered as unfit for food or even
+as poisonous, have now become indispensable among all classes. New World
+drugs like quinine and cocaine have been adopted into every
+pharmacopeia. Cocoa is proving a rival of tea and coffee, and even the
+banana has made its appearance in European markets. Tobacco and chicle
+occupy the nostrils and jaws of a large part of the human race. Maize
+and rubber are become the common property of mankind, but still may be
+called American. The United States alone raises four-fifths of the corn
+and uses three-fourths of the caoutchouc of the world.</p>
+
+<p>All flesh is grass. This may be taken in a dietary as well as a
+metaphorical sense. The graminaceae provide the greater part of the
+sustenance of man and beast; hay and cereals, wheat, oats, rye, barley,
+rice, sugar cane, sorghum and corn. From an American viewpoint the
+greatest of these, physically and financially, is corn. The corn crop of
+the United States for 1917, amounting to 3,159,000,000 bushels, brought
+in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span>more money than the wheat, cotton, potato and rye crops all
+together.</p>
+
+<p>When Columbus reached the West Indies he found the savages playing with
+rubber balls, smoking incense sticks of tobacco and eating cakes made of
+a new grain that they called <i>mahiz</i>. When Pizarro invaded Peru he found
+this same cereal used by the natives not only for food but also for
+making alcoholic liquor, in spite of the efforts of the Incas to enforce
+prohibition. When the Pilgrim Fathers penetrated into the woods back of
+Plymouth Harbor they discovered a cache of Indian corn. So throughout
+the three Americas, from Canada to Peru, corn was king and it has proved
+worthy to rank with the rival cereals of other continents, the wheat of
+Europe and the rice of Asia. But food habits are hard to change and for
+the most part the people of the Old World are still ignorant of the
+delights of hasty pudding and Indian pudding, of hoe-cake and hominy, of
+sweet corn and popcorn. I remember thirty years ago seeing on a London
+stand a heap of dejected popcorn balls labeled "Novel American
+Confection. Please Try One." But nobody complied with this pitiful
+appeal but me and I was sorry that I did. Americans used to respond with
+a shipload of corn whenever an appeal came from famine sufferers in
+Armenia, Russia, Ireland, India or Austria, but their generosity was
+chilled when they found that their gift was resented as an insult or as
+an attempt to poison the impoverished population, who declared that they
+would rather die than eat it&mdash;and some of them did. Our Department of
+Agriculture sent maize missionaries to Europe with <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span>farmers and millers
+as educators and expert cooks to serve free flapjacks and pones, but the
+propaganda made little impression and today Americans are urged to eat
+more of their own corn because the famished families of the war-stricken
+region will not touch it. Just so the beggars of Munich revolted at
+potato soup when the pioneer of American food chemists, Bumford,
+attempted to introduce this transatlantic dish.</p>
+
+<p>But here we are not so much concerned with corn foods as we are with its
+manufactured products. If you split a kernel in two you will find that
+it consists of three parts: a hard and horny hull on the outside, a
+small oily and nitrogenous germ at the point, and a white body
+consisting mostly of starch. Each of these is worked up into various
+products, as may be seen from the accompanying table. The hull forms
+bran and may be mixed with the gluten as a cattle food. The corn steeped
+for several days with sulfurous acid is disintegrated and on being
+ground the germs are floated off, the gluten or nitrogenous portion
+washed out, the starch grains settled down and the residue pressed
+together as oil cake fodder. The refined oil from the germ is marketed
+as a table or cooking oil under the name of "Mazola" and comes into
+competition with olive, peanut and cottonseed oil in the making of
+vegetable substitutes for lard and butter. Inferior grades may be used
+for soaps or for glycerin and perhaps nitroglycerin. A bushel of corn
+yields a pound or more of oil. From the corn germ also is extracted a
+gum called "paragol" that forms an acceptable substitute for rubber in
+certain uses. The "red rubber"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> sponges and the eraser tips to pencils
+may be made of it and it can contribute some twenty per cent. to the
+synthetic soles of shoes.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/image218.jpg" width="600" height="524" alt="CORN PRODUCTS" title="" />
+<span class="caption">CORN PRODUCTS</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Starch, which constitutes fifty-five per cent. of the corn kernel, can
+be converted into a variety of products for dietary and industrial uses.
+As found in corn, potatoes or any other vegetables starch consists of
+small, round, white, hard grains, tasteless, and insoluble in cold
+water. But hot water converts it into a soluble, sticky form which may
+serve for starching clothes or making cornstarch pudding. Carrying the
+process further with the aid of a little acid or other catalyst it takes
+up water and goes over into a sugar, dextrose, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span>commonly called
+"glucose." Expressed in chemical shorthand this reaction is</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">C<sub>6</sub>H<sub>10</sub>O<sub>5</sub> + H<sub>2</sub>O&nbsp;  &#8594;&nbsp; C<sub>6</sub>H<sub>12</sub>O<sub>6</sub></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">starch&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; water&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; dextrose</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>This reaction is carried out on forty million bushels of corn a year in
+the United States. The "starch milk," that is, the starch grains washed
+out from the disintegrated corn kernel by water, is digested in large
+pressure tanks under fifty pounds of steam with a few tenths of one per
+cent. of hydrochloric acid until the required degree of conversion is
+reached. Then the remaining acid is neutralized by caustic soda, and
+thereby converted into common salt, which in this small amount does not
+interfere but rather enhances the taste. The product is the commercial
+glucose or corn syrup, which may if desired be evaporated to a white
+powder. It is a mixture of three derivatives of starch in about this
+proportion:</p>
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td align='left'>Maltose</td><td align='left'>45 per cent.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Dextrose</td><td align='left'>20 per cent.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Dextrin</td><td align='left'>35 per cent.</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p>There are also present three- or four-tenths of one per cent. salt and
+as much of the corn protein and a variable amount of water. It will be
+noticed that the glucose (dextrose), which gives name to the whole, is
+the least of the three ingredients.</p>
+
+<p>Maltose, or malt sugar, has the same composition as cane sugar
+(C<sub>12</sub>H<sub>22</sub>O<sub>11</sub>), but is not nearly so sweet. Dextrin, or starch
+paste, is not sweet at all. Dextrose or glucose is otherwise known; as
+grape sugar, for it is commonly found in grapes and other ripe fruits.
+It <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span>forms half of honey and it is one of the two products into which
+cane sugar splits up when we take it into the mouth. It is not so sweet
+as cane sugar and cannot be so readily crystallized, which, however, is
+not altogether a disadvantage.</p>
+
+<p>The process of changing starch into dextrose that takes place in the
+great steam kettles of the glucose factory is essentially the same as
+that which takes place in the ripening of fruit and in the digestion of
+starch. A large part of our nutriment, therefore, consists of glucose
+either eaten as such in ripe fruits or produced in the mouth or stomach
+by the decomposition of the starch of unripe fruit, vegetables and
+cereals. Glucose may be regarded as a predigested food. In spite of this
+well-known fact we still sometimes read "poor food" articles in which
+glucose is denounced as a dangerous adulterant and even classed as a
+poison.</p>
+
+<p>The other ingredients of commercial glucose, the maltose and dextrin,
+have of course the same food value as the dextrose, since they are made
+over into dextrose in the process of digestion. Whether the glucose
+syrup is fit to eat depends, like anything else, on how it is made. If,
+as was formerly sometimes the case, sulfuric acid was used to effect the
+conversion of the starch or sulfurous acid to bleach the glucose and
+these acids were not altogether eliminated, the product might be
+unwholesome or worse. Some years ago in England there was a mysterious
+epidemic of arsenical poisoning among beer drinkers. On tracing it back
+it was found that the beer had been made from glucose which had been
+made from sulfuric acid which had been made from sulfur which had been
+made from a batch of iron <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span>pyrites which contained a little arsenic. The
+replacement of sulfuric acid by hydrochloric has done away with that
+danger and the glucose now produced is pure.</p>
+
+<p>The old recipe for home-made candy called for the addition of a little
+vinegar to the sugar syrup to prevent "graining." The purpose of the
+acid was of course to invert part of the cane sugar to glucose so as to
+keep it from crystallizing out again. The professional candy-maker now
+uses the corn glucose for that purpose, so if we accuse him of
+"adulteration" on that ground we must levy the same accusation against
+our grandmothers. The introduction of glucose into candy manufacture has
+not injured but greatly increased the sale of sugar for the same
+purpose. This is not an uncommon effect of scientific progress, for as
+we have observed, the introduction of synthetic perfumes has stimulated
+the production of odoriferous flowers and the price of butter has gone
+up with the introduction of margarin. So, too, there are more weavers
+employed and they get higher wages than in the days when they smashed up
+the first weaving machines, and the same is true of printers and
+typesetting machines. The popular animosity displayed toward any new
+achievement of applied science is never justified, for it benefits not
+only the world as a whole but usually even those interests with which it
+seems at first to conflict.</p>
+
+<p>The chemist is an economizer. It is his special business to hunt up
+waste products and make them useful. He was, for instance, worried over
+the waste of the cores and skins and scraps that were being thrown away
+when apples were put up. Apple pulp contains pectin, which is what makes
+jelly jell, and berries and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span>fruits that are short of it will refuse to
+"jell." But using these for their flavor he adds apple pulp for pectin
+and glucose for smoothness and sugar for sweetness and, if necessary,
+synthetic dyes for color, he is able to put on the market a variety of
+jellies, jams and marmalades at very low price. The same principle
+applies here as in the case of all compounded food products. If they are
+made in cleanly fashion, contain no harmful ingredients and are
+truthfully labeled there is no reason for objecting to them. But if the
+manufacturer goes so far as to put strawberry seeds&mdash;or hayseed&mdash;into
+his artificial "strawberry jam" I think that might properly be called
+adulteration, for it is imitating the imperfections of nature, and man
+ought to be too proud to do that.</p>
+
+<p>The old-fashioned open kettle molasses consisted mostly of glucose and
+other invert sugars together with such cane sugar as could not be
+crystallized out. But when the vacuum pan was introduced the molasses
+was impoverished of its sweetness and beet sugar does not yield any
+molasses. So we now have in its place the corn syrups consisting of
+about 85 per cent. of glucose and 15 per cent. of sugar flavored with
+maple or vanillin or whatever we like. It is encouraging to see the bill
+boards proclaiming the virtues of "Karo" syrup and "Mazola" oil when
+only a few years ago the products of our national cereal were without
+honor in their own country.</p>
+
+<p>Many other products besides foods are made from corn starch. Dextrin
+serves in place of the old "gum arabic" for the mucilage of our
+envelopes and stamps. Another form of dextrin sold as "Kordex" is used
+to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span>hold together the sand of the cores of castings. After the casting
+has been made the scorched core can be shaken out. Glucose is used in
+place of sugar as a filler for cheap soaps and for leather.</p>
+
+<p>Altogether more than a hundred different commercial products are now
+made from corn, not counting cob pipes. Every year the factories of the
+United States work up over 50,000,000 bushels of corn into 800,000,000
+pounds of corn syrup, 600,000,000 pounds of starch, 230,000,000 pounds
+of corn sugar, 625,000,000 pounds of gluten feed, 90,000,000 pounds of
+oil and 90,000,000 pounds of oil cake.</p>
+
+<p>Two million bushels of cobs are wasted every year in the United States.
+Can't something be made out of them? This is the question that is
+agitating the chemists of the Carbohydrate Laboratory of the Department
+of Agriculture at Washington. They have found it possible to work up the
+corn cobs into glucose and xylose by heating with acid. But glucose can
+be more cheaply obtained from other starchy or woody materials and they
+cannot find a market for the xylose. This is a sort of a sugar but only
+about half as sweet as that from cane. Who can invent a use for it! More
+promising is the discovery by this laboratory that by digesting the cobs
+with hot water there can be extracted about 30 per cent. of a gum
+suitable for bill posting and labeling.</p>
+
+<p>Since the starches and sugars belong to the same class of compounds as
+the celluloses they also can be acted upon by nitric acid with the
+production of explosives like guncotton. Nitro-sugar has not come into
+common use, but nitro-starch is found to be one of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span>safest of the high
+explosives. On account of the danger of decomposition and spontaneous
+explosion from the presence of foreign substances the materials in
+explosives must be of the purest possible. It was formerly thought that
+tapioca must be imported from Java for making nitro-starch. But during
+the war when shipping was short, the War Department found that it could
+be made better and cheaper from our home-grown corn starch. When the war
+closed the United States was making 1,720,000 pounds of nitro-starch a
+month for loading hand grenades. So, too, the Post Office Department
+discovered that it could use mucilage made of corn dextrin as well as
+that which used to be made from tapioca. This is progress in the right
+direction. It would be well to divert some of the energetic efforts now
+devoted to the increase of commerce to the discovery of ways of reducing
+the need for commerce by the development of home products. There is no
+merit in simply hauling things around the world.</p>
+
+<p>In the last chapter we saw how dextrose or glucose could be converted by
+fermentation into alcohol. Since corn starch, as we have seen, can be
+converted into dextrose, it can serve as a source of alcohol. This was,
+in fact, one of the earliest misuses to which corn was put, and before
+the war put a stop to it 34,000,000 bushels went into the making of
+whiskey in the United States every year, not counting the moonshiners'
+output. But even though we left off drinking whiskey the distillers
+could still thrive. Mars is more thirsty than Bacchus. The output of
+whiskey, denatured for industrial purposes, is more than three times
+what is was before the war, and the price has risen from 30 cents a
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span>gallon to 67 cents. This may make it profitable to utilize sugars,
+starches and cellulose that formerly were out of the question. According
+to the calculations of the Forest Products Laboratory of Madison it
+costs from 37 to 44 cents a gallon to make alcohol from corn, but it may
+be made from sawdust at a cost of from 14 to 20 cents. This is not "wood
+alcohol" (that is, methyl alcohol, CH<sub>4</sub>O) such as is made by the
+destructive distillation of wood, but genuine "grain alcohol" (ethyl
+alcohol, C<sub>2</sub>H<sub>6</sub>O), such as is made by the fermentation of glucose or
+other sugar. The first step in the process is to digest the sawdust or
+chips with dilute sulfuric acid under heat and pressure. This converts
+the cellulose (wood fiber) in large part into glucose ("corn sugar")
+which may be extracted by hot water in a diffusion battery as in
+extracting the sugar from beet chips. This glucose solution may then be
+fermented by yeast and the resulting alcohol distilled off. The process
+is perfectly practicable but has yet to be proved profitable. But the
+sulfite liquors of the paper mills are being worked up successfully into
+industrial alcohol.</p>
+
+<p>The rapidly approaching exhaustion of our oil fields which the war has
+accelerated leads us to look around to see what we can get to take the
+place of gasoline. One of the most promising of the suggested
+substitutes is alcohol. The United States is exceptionally rich in
+mineral oil, but some countries, for instance England, Germany, France
+and Australia, have little or none. The Australian Advisory Council of
+Science, called to consider the problem, recommends alcohol for
+stationary engines and motor cars. Alcohol has the disadvantage <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span>of
+being less volatile than gasoline so it is hard to start up the engine
+from the cold. But the lower volatility and ignition point of alcohol
+are an advantage in that it can be put under a pressure of 150 pounds to
+the square inch. A pound of gasoline contains fifty per cent. more
+potential energy than a pound of alcohol, but since the alcohol vapor
+can be put under twice the compression of the gasoline and requires only
+one-third the amount of air, the thermal efficiency of an alcohol engine
+may be fifty per cent. higher than that of a gasoline engine. Alcohol
+also has several other conveniences that can count in its favor. In the
+case of incomplete combustion the cylinders are less likely to be
+clogged with carbon and the escaping gases do not have the offensive
+odor of the gasoline smoke. Alcohol does not ignite so easily as
+gasoline and the fire is more readily put out, for water thrown upon
+blazing alcohol dilutes it and puts out the flame while gasoline floats
+on water and the fire is spread by it. It is possible to increase the
+inflammability of alcohol by mixing with it some hydrocarbon such as
+gasoline, benzene or acetylene. In the Taylor-White process the vapor
+from low-grade alcohol containing 17 per cent. water is passed over
+calcium carbide. This takes out the water and adds acetylene gas, making
+a suitable mixture for an internal combustion engine.</p>
+
+<p>Alcohol can be made from anything of a starchy, sugary or woody nature,
+that is, from the main substance of all vegetation. If we start with
+wood (cellulose) we convert it first into sugar (glucose) and, of
+course, we could stop here and use it for food instead <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span>of carrying it
+on into alcohol. This provides one factor of our food, the carbohydrate,
+but by growing the yeast plants on glucose and feeding them with
+nitrates made from the air we can get the protein and fat. So it is
+quite possible to live on sawdust, although it would be too expensive a
+diet for anybody but a millionaire, and he would not enjoy it. Glucose
+has been made from formaldehyde and this in turn made from carbon,
+hydrogen and oxygen, so the synthetic production of food from the
+elements is not such an absurdity as it was thought when Berthelot
+suggested it half a century ago.</p>
+
+<p>The first step in the making of alcohol is to change the starch over
+into sugar. This transformation is effected in the natural course of
+sprouting by which the insoluble starch stored up in the seed is
+converted into the soluble glucose for the sap of the growing plant.
+This malting process is that mainly made use of in the production of
+alcohol from grain. But there are other ways of effecting the change. It
+may be done by heating with acid as we have seen, or according to a
+method now being developed the final conversion may be accomplished by
+mold instead of malt. In applying this method, known as the amylo
+process, to corn, the meal is mixed with twice its weight of water,
+acidified with hydrochloric acid and steamed. The mash is then cooled
+down somewhat, diluted with sterilized water and innoculated with the
+mucor filaments. As the mash molds the starch is gradually changed over
+to glucose and if this is the product desired the process may be stopped
+at this point. But if alcohol is wanted <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span>yeast is added to ferment the
+sugar. By keeping it alkaline and treating with the proper bacteria a
+high yield of glycerin can be obtained.</p>
+
+<p>In the fermentation process for making alcoholic liquors a little
+glycerin is produced as a by-product. Glycerin, otherwise called
+glycerol, is intermediate between sugar and alcohol. Its molecule
+contains three carbon atoms, while glucose has six and alcohol two. It
+is possible to increase the yield of glycerin if desired by varying the
+form of fermentation. This was desired most earnestly in Germany during
+the war, for the British blockade shut off the importation of the fats
+and oils from which the Germans extracted the glycerin for their
+nitroglycerin. Under pressure of this necessity they worked out a
+process of getting glycerin in quantity from sugar and, news of this
+being brought to this country by Dr. Alonzo Taylor, the United States
+Treasury Department set up a special laboratory to work out this
+problem. John R. Eoff and other chemists working in this laboratory
+succeeded in getting a yield of twenty per cent. of glycerin by
+fermenting black strap molasses or other syrup with California wine
+yeast. During the fermentation it is necessary to neutralize the acetic
+acid formed with sodium or calcium carbonate. It was estimated that
+glycerin could be made from waste sugars at about a quarter of its
+war-time cost, but it is doubtful whether the process would be
+profitable at normal prices.</p>
+
+<p>We can, if we like, dispense with either yeast or bacteria in the
+production of glycerin. Glucose syrup suspended in oil under steam
+pressure with finely divided nickel as a catalyst and treated with
+nascent hydrogen <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span>will take up the hydrogen and be converted into
+glycerin. But the yield is poor and the process expensive.</p>
+
+<p>Food serves substantially the same purpose in the body as fuel in the
+engine. It provides the energy for work. The carbohydrates, that is the
+sugars, starches and celluloses, can all be used as fuels and can
+all&mdash;even, as we have seen, the cellulose&mdash;be used as foods. The final
+products, water and carbon dioxide, are in both cases the same and
+necessarily therefore the amount of energy produced is the same in the
+body as in the engine. Corn is a good example of the equivalence of the
+two sources of energy. There are few better foods and no better fuels. I
+can remember the good old days in Kansas when we had corn to burn. It
+was both an economy and a luxury, for&mdash;at ten cents a bushel&mdash;it was
+cheaper than coal or wood and preferable to either at any price. The
+long yellow ears, each wrapped in its own kindling, could be handled
+without crocking the fingers. Each kernel as it crackled sent out a
+blazing jet of oil and the cobs left a fine bed of coals for the corn
+popper to be shaken over. Driftwood and the pyrotechnic fuel they make
+now by soaking sticks in strontium and copper salts cannot compare with
+the old-fashioned corn-fed fire in beauty and the power of evoking
+visions. Doubtless such luxury would be condemned as wicked nowadays,
+but those who have known the calorific value of corn would find it hard
+to abandon it altogether, and I fancy that the Western farmer's wife,
+when she has an extra batch of baking to do, will still steal a few ears
+from the crib.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="XI" id="XI"></a>XI</h2>
+
+<h3>SOLIDIFIED SUNSHINE</h3>
+
+
+<p>All life and all that life accomplishes depend upon the supply of solar
+energy stored in the form of food. The chief sources of this vital
+energy are the fats and the sugars. The former contain two and a quarter
+times the potential energy of the latter. Both, when completely
+purified, consist of nothing but carbon, hydrogen and oxygen; elements
+that are to be found freely everywhere in air and water. So when the
+sunny southland exports fats and oils, starches and sugar, it is then
+sending away nothing material but what comes back to it in the next
+wind. What it is sending to the regions of more slanting sunshine is
+merely some of the surplus of the radiant energy it has received so
+abundantly, compacted for convenience into a portable and edible form.</p>
+
+<p>In previous chapters I have dealt with some of the uses of cotton, its
+employment for cloth, for paper, for artificial fibers, for explosives,
+and for plastics. But I have ignored the thing that cotton is attached
+to and for which, in the economy of nature, the fibers are formed; that
+is, the seed. It is as though I had described the aeroplane and ignored
+the aviator whom it was designed to carry. But in this neglect I am but
+following the example of the human race, which for three thousand years
+used the fiber but made no use of the seed except to plant the next
+crop.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span>Just as mankind is now divided into the two great classes, the
+wheat-eaters and the rice-eaters, so the ancient world was divided into
+the wool-wearers and the cotton-wearers. The people of India wore
+cotton; the Europeans wore wool. When the Greeks under Alexander fought
+their way to the Far East they were surprised to find wool growing on
+trees. Later travelers returning from Cathay told of the same marvel and
+travelers who stayed at home and wrote about what they had not seen,
+like Sir John Maundeville, misunderstood these reports and elaborated a
+legend of a tree that bore live lambs as fruit. Here, for instance, is
+how a French poetical botanist, Delacroix, described it in 1791, as
+translated from his Latin verse:</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Upon a stalk is fixed a living brute,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">A rooted plant bears quadruped for fruit;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">It has a fleece, nor does it want for eyes,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And from its brows two wooly horns arise.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The rude and simple country people say</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">It is an animal that sleeps by day</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And wakes at night, though rooted to the ground,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To feed on grass within its reach around.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>But modern commerce broke down the barrier between East and West. A new
+cotton country, the best in the world, was discovered in America. Cotton
+invaded England and after a hard fight, with fists as well as finance,
+wool was beaten in its chief stronghold. Cotton became King and the
+wool-sack in the House of Lords lost its symbolic significance.</p>
+
+<p>Still two-thirds of the cotton crop, the seed, was wasted and it is only
+within the last fifty years that <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span>methods of using it have been
+developed to any extent.</p>
+
+<p>The cotton crop of the United States for 1917 amounted to about
+11,000,000 bales of 500 pounds each. When the Great War broke out and no
+cotton could be exported to Germany and little to England the South was
+in despair, for cotton went down to five or six cents a pound. The
+national Government, regardless of states' rights, was called upon for
+aid and everybody was besought to "buy a bale." Those who responded to
+this patriotic appeal were well rewarded, for cotton <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span>rose as the war
+went on and sold at twenty-nine cents a pound.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/image233.jpg" width="600" height="554" alt="PRODUCTS AND USES OF COTTONSEED" title="" />
+<span class="caption">PRODUCTS AND USES OF COTTONSEED</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 700px;">
+<img src="images/image235.jpg" width="700" height="439" alt="PRODUCTS AND USES OF COTTONSEED&mdash;Continued" title="" />
+<span class="caption">PRODUCTS AND USES OF COTTONSEED&mdash;Continued</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span>But the chemist has added some $150,000,000 a year to the value of the
+crop by discovering ways of utilizing the cottonseed that used to be
+thrown away or burned as fuel. The genealogical table of the progeny of
+the cottonseed herewith printed will give some idea of their variety. If
+you will examine a cottonseed you will see first that there is a fine
+fuzz of cotton fiber sticking to it. These linters can be removed by
+machinery and used for any purpose where length of fiber is not
+essential. For instance, they may be nitrated as described in previous
+articles and used for making smokeless powder or celluloid.</p>
+
+<p>On cutting open the seed you will observe that it consists of an oily,
+mealy kernel encased in a thin brown hull. The hulls, amounting to 700
+or 900 pounds in a ton of seed, were formerly burned. Now, however, they
+bring from $4 to $10 a ton because they can be ground up into
+cattle-feed or paper stock or used as fertilizer.</p>
+
+<p>The kernel of the cottonseed on being pressed yields a yellow oil and
+leaves a mealy cake. This last, mixed with the hulls, makes a good
+fodder for fattening cattle. Also, adding twenty-five per cent. of the
+refined cottonseed meal to our war bread made it more nutritious and no
+less palatable. Cottonseed meal contains about forty per cent. of
+protein and is therefore a highly concentrated and very valuable feeding
+stuff. Before the war we were exporting nearly half a million tons of
+cottonseed meal to Europe, chiefly to Germany and Denmark, where it is
+used for dairy cows. The British yeoman, his country's pride, has not
+yet been won over to the use of any such newfangled fodder and
+conse<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span>quently the British manufacturer could not compete with his
+continental rivals in the seed-crushing business, for he could not
+dispose of his meal-cake by-product as did they.</p>
+
+<p><a name="image_23" id="image_23"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 294px;">
+<img src="images/image237.jpg" width="294" height="434" alt="Photo by Press Illustrating Service
+
+Cottonseed Oil As It Is Squeezed From The Seed By The Presses" title="" />
+<span class="caption">Photo by Press Illustrating Service
+
+Cottonseed Oil As It Is Squeezed From The Seed By The Presses</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><a name="image_24" id="image_24"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 436px;">
+<img src="images/image238.jpg" width="436" height="292" alt="Photo by Press Illustrating Service" title="" />
+<span class="caption">Photo by Press Illustrating Service</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p><b>Cottonseed Oil As It Comes From The Compressors Flowing Out Of The
+Faucets</b></p>
+
+<p><b>When cold it is firm and white like lard</b></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Let us now turn to the most valuable of the cottonseed products, the
+oil. The seed contains about twenty per cent. of oil, most of which can
+be squeezed out of the hot seeds by hydraulic pressure. It comes out as
+a red liquid of a disagreeable odor. This is decolorized, deodorized and
+otherwise purified in various ways: by treatment with alkalies or acids,
+by blowing air and steam through it, by shaking up with fuller's earth,
+by settling and filtering. The refined product is a yellow oil, suitable
+for table use. Formerly, on account of the popular prejudice against any
+novel food products, it used to masquerade as olive oil. Now, however,
+it boldly competes with its ancient rival in the lands of the olive tree
+and America ships some 700,000 barrels of cottonseed oil a year to the
+Mediterranean. The Turkish Government tried to check the spread of
+cottonseed oil by calling it an adulterant and prohibiting its mixture
+with olive oil. The result was that the sale of Turkish olive oil fell
+off because people found its flavor too strong when undiluted. Italy
+imports cottonseed oil and exports her olive oil. Denmark imports
+cottonseed meal and margarine and exports her butter.</p>
+
+<p>Northern nations are accustomed to hard fats and do not take to oils for
+cooking or table use as do the southerners. Butter and lard are
+preferred to olive oil and ghee. But this does not rule out cottonseed.
+It can be combined with the hard fats of animal or vegetable <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span>origin in
+margarine or it may itself be hardened by hydrogen.</p>
+
+<p>To understand this interesting reaction which is profoundly affecting
+international relations it will be necessary to dip into the chemistry
+of the subject. Here are the symbols of the chief ingredients of the
+fats and oils. Please look at them.</p>
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td align='left'>Linoleic acid</td><td align='left'>C<sub>18</sub>H<sub>32</sub>O<sub>2</sub></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Oleic acid</td><td align='left'>C<sub>18</sub>H<sub>34</sub>O<sub>2</sub></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Stearic acid</td><td align='left'>C<sub>18</sub>H<sub>36</sub>O<sub>2</sub></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+<p>Don't skip these because you have not studied chemistry. That's why I am
+giving them to you. If you had studied chemistry you would know them
+without my telling. Just examine them and you will discover the secret.
+You will see that all three are composed of the same elements, carbon,
+hydrogen, and oxygen. Notice next the number of atoms in each element as
+indicated by the little low figures on the right of each letter. You
+observe that all three contain the same number of atoms of carbon and
+oxygen but differ in the amount of hydrogen. This trifling difference in
+composition makes a great difference in behavior. The less the hydrogen
+the lower the melting point. Or to say the same thing in other words,
+fatty substances low in hydrogen are apt to be liquids and those with a
+full complement of hydrogen atoms are apt to be solids at the ordinary
+temperature of the air. It is common to call the former "oils" and the
+latter "fats," but that implies too great a dissimilarity, for the
+distinction depends on whether we are living in the tropics or the
+arctic. It is better, therefore, to lump them all together <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span>and call
+them "soft fats" and "hard fats," respectively.</p>
+
+<p>Fats of the third order, the stearic group, are called "saturated"
+because they have taken up all the hydrogen they can hold. Fats of the
+other two groups are called "unsaturated." The first, which have the
+least hydrogen, are the most eager for more. If hydrogen is not handy
+they will take up other things, for instance oxygen. Linseed oil, which
+consists largely, as the name implies, of linoleic acid, will absorb
+oxygen on exposure to the air and become hard. That is why it is used in
+painting. Such oils are called "drying" oils, although the hardening
+process is not really drying, since they contain no water, but is
+oxidation. The "semi-drying oils," those that will harden somewhat on
+exposure to the air, include the oils of cottonseed, corn, sesame, soy
+bean and castor bean. Olive oil and peanut oil are "non-drying" and
+contain oleic compounds (olein). The hard fats, such as stearin,
+palmitin and margarin, are mostly of animal origin, tallow and lard,
+though coconut and palm oil contain a large proportion of such saturated
+compounds.</p>
+
+<p>Though the chemist talks of the fatty "acids," nobody else would call
+them so because they are not sour. But they do behave like the acids in
+forming salts with bases. The alkali salts of the fatty acids are known
+to us as soaps. In the natural fats they exist not as free acids but as
+salts of an organic base, glycerin, as I explained in a previous
+chapter. The natural fats and oils consist of complex mixtures of the
+glycerin compounds of these acids (known as olein, stearin, etc.), as
+well as various others of a similar sort. If you will <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span>set a bottle of
+salad oil in the ice-box you will see it separate into two parts. The
+white, crystalline solid that separates out is largely stearin. The part
+that remains liquid is largely olein. You might separate them by
+filtering it cold and if then you tried to sell the two products you
+would find that the hard fat would bring a higher price than the oil,
+either for food or soap. If you tried to keep them you would find that
+the hard fat kept neutral and "sweet" longer than the other. You may
+remember that the perfumes (as well as their odorous opposites) were
+mostly unsaturated compounds. So we find that it is the free and
+unsaturated fatty acids that cause butter and oil to become rank and
+rancid.</p>
+
+<p>Obviously, then, we could make money if we could turn soft, unsaturated
+fats like olein into hard, saturated fats like stearin. Referring to the
+symbols we see that all that is needed to effect the change is to get
+the former to unite with hydrogen. This requires a little coaxing. The
+coaxer is called a catalyst. A catalyst, as I have previously explained,
+is a substance that by its mere presence causes the union of two other
+substances that might otherwise remain separate. For that reason the
+catalyst is referred to as "a chemical parson." Finely divided metals
+have a strong catalytic action. Platinum sponge is excellent but too
+expensive. So in this case nickel is used. A nickel salt mixed with
+charcoal or pumice is reduced to the metallic state by heating in a
+current of hydrogen. Then it is dropped into the tank of oil and
+hydrogen gas is blown through. The hydrogen may be obtained by splitting
+water into its two components, hydrogen and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span>oxygen, by means of the
+electrical current, or by passing steam over spongy iron which takes out
+the oxygen. The stream of hydrogen blown through the hot oil converts
+the linoleic acid to oleic and then the oleic into stearic. If you
+figured up the weights from the symbols given above you would find that
+it takes about one pound of hydrogen to convert a hundred pounds of
+olein to stearin and the cost is only about one cent a pound. The nickel
+is unchanged and is easily separated. A trace of nickel may remain in
+the product, but as it is very much less than the amount dissolved when
+food is cooked in nickel-plated vessels it cannot be regarded as
+harmful.</p>
+
+<p>Even more unsaturated fats may be hydrogenated. Fish oil has hitherto
+been almost unusable because of its powerful and persistent odor. This
+is chiefly due to a fatty acid which properly bears the uneuphonious
+name of clupanodonic acid and has the composition of C<sub>18</sub>H<sub>28</sub>O<sub>2</sub>.
+By comparing this with the symbol of the odorless stearic acid,
+C<sub>18</sub>H<sub>36</sub>O<sub>2</sub>, you will see that all the rank fish oil lacks to make
+it respectable is eight hydrogen atoms. A Japanese chemist, Tsujimoto,
+has discovered how to add them and now the reformed fish oil under the
+names of "talgol" and "candelite" serves for lubricant and even enters
+higher circles as a soap or food.</p>
+
+<p>This process of hardening fats by hydrogenation resulted from the
+experiments of a French chemist, Professor Sabatier of Toulouse, in the
+last years of the last century, but, as in many other cases, the Germans
+were the first to take it up and profit by it. Before the war the copra
+or coconut oil from the British Asiatic colonies <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span>of India, Ceylon and
+Malaya went to Germany at the rate of $15,000,000 a year. The palm
+kernels grown in British West Africa were shipped, not to Liverpool, but
+to Hamburg, $19,000,000 worth annually. Here the oil was pressed out and
+used for margarin and the residual cake used for feeding cows produced
+butter or for feeding hogs produced lard. Half of the copra raised in
+the British possessions was sent to Germany and half of the oil from it
+was resold to the British margarin candle and soap makers at a handsome
+profit. The British chemists were not blind to this, but they could do
+nothing, first because the English politician was wedded to free trade,
+second, because the English farmer would not use oil cake for his stock.
+France was in a similar situation. Marseilles produced 15,500,000
+gallons of oil from peanuts grown largely in the French African
+colonies&mdash;but shipped the oil-cake on to Hamburg. Meanwhile the Germans,
+in pursuit of their policy of attaining economic independence, were
+striving to develop their own tropical territory. The subjects of King
+George who because they had the misfortune to live in India were
+excluded from the British South African dominions or mistreated when
+they did come, were invited to come to German East Africa and set to
+raising peanuts in rivalry to French Senegal and British Coromandel.
+Before the war Germany got half of the Egyptian cottonseed and half of
+the Philippine copra. That is one of the reasons why German warships
+tried to check Dewey at Manila in 1898 and German troops tried to
+conquer Egypt in 1915.</p>
+
+<p>But the tide of war set the other way and the German plantations of
+palmnuts and peanuts in Africa have <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span>come into British possession and
+now the British Government is starting an educational campaign to teach
+their farmers to feed oil cake like the Germans and their people to eat
+peanuts like the Americans.</p>
+
+<p>The Germans shut off from the tropical fats supply were hard up for food
+and for soap, for lubricants and for munitions. Every person was given a
+fat card that reduced his weekly allowance to the minimum. Millers were
+required to remove the germs from their cereals and deliver them to the
+war department. Children were set to gathering horse-chestnuts,
+elderberries, linden-balls, grape seeds, cherry stones and sunflower
+heads, for these contain from six to twenty per cent. of oil. Even the
+blue-bottle fly&mdash;hitherto an idle creature for whom Beelzebub found
+mischief&mdash;was conscripted into the national service and set to laying
+eggs by the billion on fish refuse. Within a few days there is a crop of
+larvae which, to quote the "Chemische Zentralblatt," yields forty-five
+grams per kilogram of a yellow oil. This product, we should hope, is
+used for axle-grease and nitroglycerin, although properly purified it
+would be as nutritious as any other&mdash;to one who has no imagination.
+Driven to such straits Germany would have given a good deal for one of
+those tropical islands that we are so careless about.</p>
+
+<p>It might have been supposed that since the United States possessed the
+best land in the world for the production of cottonseed, coconuts,
+peanuts, and corn that it would have led all other countries in the
+utilization of vegetable oils for food. That this country has not so
+used its advantage is due to the fact that the new products have not
+merely had to overcome popular <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span>conservatism, ignorance and
+prejudice&mdash;hard things to fight in any case&mdash;but have been deliberately
+checked and hampered by the state and national governments in defense of
+vested interests. The farmer vote is a power that no politician likes to
+defy and the dairy business in every state was thoroughly organized. In
+New York the oleomargarin industry that in 1879 was turning out products
+valued at more than $5,000,000 a year was completely crushed out by
+state legislation.<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> The output of the United States, which in 1902 had
+risen to 126,000,000 pounds, was cut down to 43,000,000 pounds in 1909
+by federal legislation. According to the disingenuous custom of American
+lawmakers the Act of 1902 was passed through Congress as a "revenue
+measure," although it meant a loss to the Government of more than three
+million dollars a year over what might be produced by a straight two
+cents a pound tax. A wholesale dealer in oleomargarin was made to pay a
+higher license than a wholesale liquor dealer. The federal law put a tax
+of ten cents a pound on yellow oleomargarin and a quarter of a cent a
+pound on the uncolored. But people&mdash;doubtless from pure
+prejudice&mdash;prefer a yellow spread for their bread, so the economical
+housewife has to work over her oleomargarin with the annatto which is
+given to her when she buys a package or, if the law prohibits this,
+which she is permitted to steal from an open box on the grocer's
+counter. A plausible pretext for such legislation is afforded by the
+fact that the butter substitutes are so much like butter that they
+cannot be easily distinguished from it unless the use of annatto is
+permitted <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span>to butter and prohibited to its competitors. Fradulent sales
+of substitutes of any kind ought to be prevented, but the recent pure
+food legislation in America has shown that it is possible to secure
+truthful labeling without resorting to such drastic measures. In Europe
+the laws against substitution were very strict, but not devised to
+restrict the industry. Consequently the margarin output of Germany
+doubled in the five years preceding the war and the output of England
+tripled. In Denmark the consumption of margarin rose from 8.8 pounds per
+capita in 1890 to 32.6 pounds in 1912. Yet the butter business,
+Denmark's pride, was not injured, and Germany and England imported more
+butter than ever before. Now that the price of butter in America has
+gone over the seventy-five cent mark Congress may conclude that it no
+longer needs to be protected against competition.</p>
+
+<p>The "compound lards" or "lard compounds," consisting usually of
+cottonseed oil and oleo-stearin, although the latter may now be replaced
+by hardened oil, met with the same popular prejudice and attempted
+legislative interference, but succeeded more easily in coming into
+common use under such names as "Cottosuet," "Kream Krisp," "Kuxit,"
+"Korno," "Cottolene" and "Crisco."</p>
+
+<p>Oleomargarin, now generally abbreviated to margarin, originated, like
+many other inventions, in military necessity. The French Government in
+1869 offered a prize for a butter substitute for the army that should be
+cheaper and better than butter in that it did not spoil so easily. The
+prize was won by a French chemist, M&eacute;ge-Mouries, who found that by
+chilling beef <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span>fat the solid stearin could be separated from an oil
+(oleo) which was the substantially same as that in milk and hence in
+butter. Neutral lard acts the same.</p>
+
+<p>This discovery of how to separate the hard and soft fats was followed by
+improved methods for purifying them and later by the process for
+converting the soft into the hard fats by hydrogenation. The net result
+was to put into the hands of the chemist the ability to draw his
+materials at will from any land and from the vegetable and animal
+kingdoms and to combine them as he will to make new fat foods for every
+use; hard for summer, soft for winter; solid for the northerners and
+liquid for the southerners; white, yellow or any other color, and
+flavored to suit the taste. The Hindu can eat no fat from the sacred
+cow; the Mohammedan and the Jew can eat no fat from the abhorred pig;
+the vegetarian will touch neither; other people will take both. No
+matter, all can be accommodated.</p>
+
+<p>All the fats and oils, though they consist of scores of different
+compounds, have practically the same food value when freed from the
+extraneous matter that gives them their characteristic flavors. They are
+all practically tasteless and colorless. The various vegetable and
+animal oils and fats have about the same digestibility, 98 per cent.,<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a>
+and are all ordinarily completely utilized in the body, supplying it
+with two and a quarter times as much energy as any other food.</p>
+
+<p>It does not follow, however, that there is no difference in the
+products. The margarin men accuse butter of harboring tuberculosis germs
+from which their product, because it has been heated or is made from
+vegetable <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span>fats, is free. The butter men retort that margarin is lacking
+in vitamines, those mysterious substances which in minute amounts are
+necessary for life and especially for growth. Both the claim and the
+objection lose a large part of their force where the margarin, as is
+customarily the case, is mixed with butter or churned up with milk to
+give it the familiar flavor. But the difficulty can be easily overcome.
+The milk used for either butter or margarin should be free or freed from
+disease germs. If margarin is altogether substituted for butter, the
+necessary vitamines may be sufficiently provided by milk, eggs and
+greens.</p>
+
+<p>Owing to these new processes all the fatty substances of all lands have
+been brought into competition with each other. In such a contest the
+vegetable is likely to beat the animal and the southern to win over the
+northern zones. In Europe before the war the proportion of the various
+ingredients used to make butter substitutes was as follows:</p>
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td align='left'>AVERAGE COMPOSITION OF EUROPEAN MARGARIN</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='right'>Per Cent.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Animal hard fats</td><td align='right'>25</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Vegetable hard fats</td><td align='right'>35</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Copra</td><td align='right'>29</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Palm-kernel</td><td align='right'>6</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Vegetable soft fats</td><td align='right'>26</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Cottonseed</td><td align='right'>13</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Peanut</td><td align='right'>6</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Sesame</td><td align='right'>6</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Soya-bean</td><td align='right'>1</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Water, milk, salt</td><td align='right'>14</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='right'>___</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='right'>100</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span>This is not the composition of any particular brand but the average of
+them all. The use of a certain amount of the oil of the sesame seed is
+required by the laws of Germany and Denmark because it can be easily
+detected by a chemical color test and so serves to prevent the margarin
+containing it from being sold as butter. "Open sesame!" is the password
+to these markets. Remembering that margarin originally was made up
+entirely of animal fats, soft and hard, we can see from the above
+figures how rapidly they are being displaced by the vegetable fats. The
+cottonseed and peanut oils have replaced the original oleo oil and the
+tropical oils from the coconut (copra) and African palm are crowding out
+the animal hard fats. Since now we can harden at will any of the
+vegetable oils it is possible to get along altogether without animal
+fats. Such vegetable margarins were originally prepared for sale in
+India, but proved unexpectedly popular in Europe, and are now being
+introduced into America. They are sold under various trade names
+suggesting their origin, such as "palmira," "palmona," "milkonut,"
+"cocose," "coconut oleomargarin" and "nucoa nut margarin." The last
+named is stated to be made of coconut oil (for the hard fat) and peanut
+oil (for the soft fat), churned up with a culture of pasteurized milk
+(to impart the butter flavor). The law requires such a product to be
+branded "oleomargarine" although it is not. Such cases of compulsory
+mislabeling are not rare. You remember the "Pigs is Pigs" story.</p>
+
+<p>Peanut butter has won its way into the American menu without any
+camouflage whatever, and as a salad oil it is almost equally frank about
+its lowly origin.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span> This nut, which grows on a vine instead of a tree,
+and is dug from the ground like potatoes instead of being picked with a
+pole, goes by various names according to locality, peanuts, ground-nuts,
+monkey-nuts, arachides and goobers. As it takes the place of cotton oil
+in some of its products so it takes its place in the fields and oilmills
+of Texas left vacant by the bollweevil. The once despised peanut added
+some $56,000,000 to the wealth of the South in 1916. The peanut is rich
+in the richest of foods, some 50 per cent. of oil and 30 per cent. of
+protein. The latter can be worked up into meat substitutes that will
+make the vegetarian cease to envy his omnivorous neighbor. Thanks
+largely to the chemist who has opened these new fields of usefulness,
+the peanut-raiser got $1.25 a bushel in 1917 instead of the 30 cents
+that he got four years before.</p>
+
+<p>It would be impossible to enumerate all the available sources of
+vegetable oils, for all seeds and nuts contain more or less fatty matter
+and as we become more economical we shall utilize of what we now throw
+away. The germ of the corn kernel, once discarded in the manufacture of
+starch, now yields a popular table oil. From tomato seeds, one of the
+waste products of the canning factory, can be extracted 22 per cent. of
+an edible oil. Oats contain 7 per cent. of oil. From rape seed the
+Japanese get 20,000 tons of oil a year. To the sources previously
+mentioned may be added pumpkin seeds, poppy seeds, raspberry seeds,
+tobacco seeds, cockleburs, hazelnuts, walnuts, beechnuts and acorns.</p>
+
+<p>The oil-bearing seeds of the tropics are innumerable and will become
+increasingly essential to the inhabitants of northern lands. It was the
+realization of this <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span>that brought on the struggle of the great powers
+for the possession of tropical territory which, for years before, they
+did not think worth while raising a flag over. No country in the future
+can consider itself safe unless it has secure access to such sources. We
+had a sharp lesson in this during the war. Palm oil, it seems, is
+necessary for the manufacture of tinplate, an industry that was built up
+in the United States by the McKinley tariff. The British possessions in
+West Africa were the chief source of palm oil and the Germans had the
+handling of it. During the war the British Government assumed control of
+the palm oil products of the British and German colonies and prohibited
+their export to other countries than England. Americans protested and
+beseeched, but in vain. The British held, quite correctly, that they
+needed all the oil they could get for food and lubrication and
+nitroglycerin. But the British also needed canned meat from America for
+their soldiers and when it was at length brought to their attention that
+the packers could not ship meat unless they had cans and that cans could
+not be made without tin and that tin could not be made without palm oil
+the British Government consented to let us buy a little of their palm
+oil. The lesson is that of Voltaire's story, "Candide," "Let us
+cultivate our own garden"&mdash;and plant a few palm trees in it&mdash;also rubber
+trees, but that is another story.</p>
+
+<p>The international struggle for oil led to the partition of the Pacific
+as the struggle for rubber led to the partition of Africa. Theodor
+Weber, as Stevenson says, "harried the Samoans" to get copra much as
+King Leopold of Belgium harried the Congoese to get <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span>caoutchouc. It was
+Weber who first fully realized that the South Sea islands, formerly
+given over to cannibals, pirates and missionaries, might be made
+immensely valuable through the cultivation of the coconut palms. When
+the ripe coconut is split open and exposed to the sun the meat dries up
+and shrivels and in this form, called "copra," it can be cut out and
+shipped to the factory where the oil is extracted and refined. Weber
+while German Consul in Samoa was also manager of what was locally known
+as "the long-handled concern" (<i>Deutsche Handels und Plantagen
+Gesellschaft der S&uuml;dsee Inseln zu Hamburg</i>), a pioneer commercial and
+semi-official corporation that played a part in the Pacific somewhat
+like the British Hudson Bay Company in Canada or East India Company in
+Hindustan. Through the agency of this corporation on the start Germany
+acquired a virtual monopoly of the transportation and refining of
+coconut oil and would have become the dominant power in the Pacific if
+she had not been checked by force of arms. In Apia Bay in 1889 and again
+in Manila Bay in 1898 an American fleet faced a German fleet ready for
+action while a British warship lay between. So we rescued the
+Philippines and Samoa from German rule and in 1914 German power was
+eliminated from the Pacific. During the ten years before the war, the
+production of copra in the German islands more than doubled and this was
+only the beginning of the business. Now these islands have been divided
+up among Australia, New Zealand and Japan, and these countries are
+planning to take care of the copra.</p>
+
+<p>But although we get no extension of territory from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span> the war we still
+have the Philippines and some of the Samoan Islands, and these are
+capable of great development. From her share of the Samoan Islands
+Germany got a million dollars' worth of copra and we might get more from
+ours. The Philippines now lead the world in the production of copra, but
+Java is a close second and Ceylon not far behind. If we do not look out
+we will be beaten both by the Dutch and the British, for they are
+undertaking the cultivation of the coconut on a larger scale and in a
+more systematic way. According to an official bulletin of the Philippine
+Government a coconut plantation should bring in "dividends ranging from
+10 to 75 per cent. from the tenth to the hundredth year." And this being
+printed in 1913 figured the price of copra at 3-1/2 cents, whereas it
+brought 4-1/2 cents in 1918, so the prospect is still more encouraging.
+The copra is half fat and can be cheaply shipped to America, where it
+can be crushed in the southern oilmills when they are not busy on
+cottonseed or peanuts. But even this cost of transportation can be
+reduced by extracting the oil in the islands and shipping it in bulk
+like petroleum in tank steamers.</p>
+
+<p>In the year ending June, 1918, the United States imported from the
+Philippines 155,000,000 pounds of coconut oil worth $18,000,000 and
+220,000,000 pounds of copra worth $10,000,000. But this was about half
+our total importations; the rest of it we had to get from foreign
+countries. Panama palms may give us a little relief from this dependence
+on foreign sources. In 1917 we imported 19,000,000 whole coconuts from
+Panama valued at $700,000.</p>
+
+<p><a name="image_25" id="image_25"></a></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 435px;">
+<img src="images/image255.jpg" width="435" height="275" alt="SPLITTING COCONUTS ON THE ISLAND OF TAHITI
+
+After drying in the sun the meat is picked and the oil extracted for
+making coconut butter" title="" />
+<span class="caption">SPLITTING COCONUTS ON THE ISLAND OF TAHITI
+
+After drying in the sun the meat is picked and the oil extracted for
+making coconut butter</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><a name="image_26" id="image_26"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 437px;">
+<img src="images/image256.jpg" width="437" height="286" alt="From &quot;America&#39;s Munitions&quot;" title="" />
+<span class="caption">From &quot;America&#39;s Munitions&quot;</span>
+</div>
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p><b>THE ELECTRIC CURRENT PASSING THROUGH SALT WATER IN THESE CELLS
+DECOMPOSES THE SALT INTO CAUSTIC SODA AND CHLORINE GAS</b></p>
+
+<p><b>There were eight rooms like this in the Edgewood plant, capable of
+producing 200,000 pounds of chlorine a day</b></p>
+</div>
+<p>A new form of fat that has rapidly come into our<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span> market is the oil of
+the soya or soy bean. In 1918 we imported over 300,000,000 pounds of
+soy-bean oil, mostly from Manchuria. The oil is used in manufacture of
+substitutes for butter, lard, cheese, milk and cream, as well as for
+soap and paint. The soy-bean can be raised in the United States wherever
+corn can be grown and provides provender for man and beast. The soy meal
+left after the extraction of the oil makes a good cattle food and the
+fermented juice affords the shoya sauce made familiar to us through the
+popularity of the chop-suey restaurants.</p>
+
+<p>As meat and dairy products become scarcer and dearer we shall become
+increasingly dependent upon the vegetable fats. We should therefore
+devise means of saving what we now throw away, raise as much as we can
+under our own flag, keep open avenues for our foreign supply and
+encourage our cooks to make use of the new products invented by our
+chemists.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII</h2>
+
+<h3>FIGHTING WITH FUMES</h3>
+
+
+<p>The Germans opened the war using projectiles seventeen inches in
+diameter. They closed it using projectiles one one-hundred millionth of
+an inch in diameter. And the latter were more effective than the former.
+As the dimensions were reduced from molar to molecular the battle became
+more intense. For when the Big Bertha had shot its bolt, that was the
+end of it. Whomever it hit was hurt, but after that the steel fragments
+of the shell lay on the ground harmless and inert. The men in the
+dugouts could hear the shells whistle overhead without alarm. But the
+poison gas could penetrate where the rifle ball could not. The malignant
+molecules seemed to search out their victims. They crept through the
+crevices of the subterranean shelters. They hunted for the pinholes in
+the face masks. They lay in wait for days in the trenches for the
+soldiers' return as a cat watches at the hole of a mouse. The cannon
+ball could be seen and heard. The poison gas was invisible and
+inaudible, and sometimes even the chemical sense which nature has given
+man for his protection, the sense of smell, failed to give warning of
+the approach of the foe.</p>
+
+<p>The smaller the matter that man can deal with the more he can get out of
+it. So long as man was dependent for power upon wind and water his
+working capacity <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span>was very limited. But as soon as he passed over the
+border line from physics into chemistry and learned how to use the
+molecule, his efficiency in work and warfare was multiplied manifold.
+The molecular bombardment of the piston by steam or the gases of
+combustion runs his engines and propels his cars. The first man who
+wanted to kill another from a safe distance threw the stone by his arm's
+strength. David added to his arm the centrifugal force of a sling when
+he slew Goliath. The Romans improved on this by concentrating in a
+catapult the strength of a score of slaves and casting stone cannon
+balls to the top of the city wall. But finally man got closer to
+nature's secret and discovered that by loosing a swarm of gaseous
+molecules he could throw his projectile seventy-five miles and then by
+the same force burst it into flying fragments. There is no smaller
+projectile than the atom unless our belligerent chemists can find a way
+of using the electron stream of the cathode ray. But this so far has
+figured only in the pages of our scientific romancers and has not yet
+appeared on the battlefield. If, however, man could tap the reservoir of
+sub-atomic energy he need do no more work and would make no more war,
+for unlimited powers of construction and destruction would be at his
+command. The forces of the infinitesimal are infinite.</p>
+
+<p>The reason why a gas is so active is because it is so egoistic.
+Psychologically interpreted, a gas consists of particles having the
+utmost aversion to one another. Each tries to get as far away from every
+other as it can. There is no cohesive force; no attractive impulse;
+nothing to draw them together except the all too feeble <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span>power of
+gravitation. The hotter they get the more they try to disperse and so
+the gas expands. The gas represents the extreme of individualism as
+steel represents the extreme of collectivism. The combination of the two
+works wonders. A hot gas in a steel cylinder is the most powerful agency
+known to man, and by means of it he accomplishes his greatest
+achievements in peace or war time.</p>
+
+<p>The projectile is thrown from the gun by the expansive force of the
+gases released from the powder and when it reaches its destination it is
+blown to pieces by the same force. This is the end of it if it is a
+shell of the old-fashioned sort, for the gases of combustion mingle
+harmlessly with the air of which they are normal constituents. But if it
+is a poison gas shell each molecule as it is released goes off straight
+into the air with a speed twice that of the cannon ball and carries
+death with it. A man may be hit by a heavy piece of lead or iron and
+still survive, but an unweighable amount of lethal gas may be fatal to
+him.</p>
+
+<p>Most of the novelties of the war were merely extensions of what was
+already known. To increase the caliber of a cannon from 38 to 42
+centimeters or its range from 30 to 75 miles does indeed make necessary
+a decided change in tactics, but it is not comparable to the revolution
+effected by the introduction of new weapons of unprecedented power such
+as airplanes, submarines, tanks, high explosives or poison gas. If any
+army had been as well equipped with these in the beginning as all armies
+were at the end it might easily have won the war. That is to say, if the
+general staff of any of the powers had had the foresight and confidence
+to develop <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span>and practise these modes of warfare on a large scale in
+advance it would have been irresistible against an enemy unprepared to
+meet them. But no military genius appeared on either side with
+sufficient courage and imagination to work out such schemes in secret
+before trying them out on a small scale in the open. Consequently the
+enemy had fair warning and ample time to learn how to meet them and
+methods of defense developed concurrently with methods of attack. For
+instance, consider the motor fortresses to which Ludendorff ascribes his
+defeat. The British first sent out a few clumsy tanks against the German
+lines. Then they set about making a lot of stronger and livelier ones,
+but by the time these were ready the Germans had field guns to smash
+them and chain fences with concrete posts to stop them. On the other
+hand, if the Germans had followed up their advantage when they first set
+the cloud of chlorine floating over the battlefield of Ypres they might
+have won the war in the spring of 1915 instead of losing it in the fall
+of 1918. For the British were unprepared and unprotected against the
+silent death that swept down upon them on the 22nd of April, 1915. What
+happened then is best told by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in his "History of
+the Great War."</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>From the base of the German trenches over a considerable length
+there appeared jets of whitish vapor, which gathered and
+swirled until they settled into a definite low cloud-bank,
+greenish-brown below and yellow above, where it reflected the
+rays of the sinking sun. This ominous bank of vapor, impelled
+by a northern breeze, drifted swiftly across the space which
+separated the two lines. The French troops, staring over the
+top of their parapet at this curious screen which ensured <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span>them
+a temporary relief from fire, were observed suddenly to throw
+up their hands, to clutch at their throats, and to fall to the
+ground in the agonies of asphyxiation. Many lay where they had
+fallen, while their comrades, absolutely helpless against this
+diabolical agency, rushed madly out of the mephitic mist and
+made for the rear, over-running the lines of trenches behind
+them. Many of them never halted until they had reached Ypres,
+while others rushed westwards and put the canal between
+themselves and the enemy. The Germans, meanwhile, advanced, and
+took possession of the successive lines of trenches, tenanted
+only by the dead garrisons, whose blackened faces, contorted
+figures, and lips fringed with the blood and foam from their
+bursting lungs, showed the agonies in which they had died. Some
+thousands of stupefied prisoners, eight batteries of French
+field-guns, and four British 4.7's, which had been placed in a
+wood behind the French position, were the trophies won by this
+disgraceful victory.</p>
+
+<p>Under the shattering blow which they had received, a blow
+particularly demoralizing to African troops, with their fears
+of magic and the unknown, it was impossible to rally them
+effectually until the next day. It is to be remembered in
+explanation of this disorganization that it was the first
+experience of these poison tactics, and that the troops engaged
+received the gas in a very much more severe form than our own
+men on the right of Langemarck. For a time there was a gap five
+miles broad in the front of the position of the Allies, and
+there were many hours during which there was no substantial
+force between the Germans and Ypres. They wasted their time,
+however, in consolidating their ground, and the chance of a
+great coup passed forever. They had sold their souls as
+soldiers, but the Devil's price was a poor one. Had they had a
+corps of cavalry ready, and pushed them through the gap, it
+would have been the most dangerous moment of the war.</p></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span>A deserter had come over from the German side a week before and told
+them that cylinders of poison gas had been laid in the front trenches,
+but no one believed him or paid any attention to his tale. War was then,
+in the Englishman's opinion, a gentleman's game, the royal sport, and
+poison was prohibited by the Hague rules. But the Germans were not
+playing the game according to the rules, so the British soldiers were
+strangled in their own trenches and fell easy victims to the advancing
+foe. Within half an hour after the gas was turned on 80 per cent. of the
+opposing troops were knocked out. The Canadians, with wet handkerchiefs
+over their faces, closed in to stop the gap, but if the Germans had been
+prepared for such success they could have cleared the way to the coast.
+But after such trials the Germans stopped the use of free chlorine and
+began the preparation of more poisonous gases. In some way that may not
+be revealed till the secret history of the war is published, the British
+Intelligence Department obtained a copy of the lecture notes of the
+instructions to the German staff giving details of the new system of gas
+warfare to be started in December. Among the compounds named was
+phosgene, a gas so lethal that one part in ten thousand of air may be
+fatal. The antidote for it is hexamethylene tetramine. This is not
+something the soldier&mdash;or anybody else&mdash;is accustomed to carry around
+with him, but the British having had a chance to cram up in advance on
+the stolen lecture notes were ready with gas helmets soaked in the
+reagent with the long name.</p>
+
+<p>The Germans rejoiced when gas bombs took the place of bayonets because
+this was a field in which intelligence <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span>counted for more than brute
+force and in which therefore they expected to be supreme. As usual they
+were right in their major premise but wrong in their conclusion, owing
+to the egoism of their implicit minor premise. It does indeed give the
+advantage to skill and science, but the Germans were beaten at their own
+game, for by the end of the war the United States was able to turn out
+toxic gases at a rate of 200 tons a day, while the output of Germany or
+England was only about 30 tons. A gas plant was started at Edgewood,
+Maryland, in November, 1917. By March it was filling shell and before
+the war put a stop to its activities in the fall it was producing
+1,300,000 pounds of chlorine, 1,000,000 pounds of chlorpicrin, 1,300,000
+pounds of phosgene and 700,000 pounds of mustard gas a month.</p>
+
+<p>Chlorine, the first gas used, is unpleasantly familiar to every one who
+has entered a chemical laboratory or who has smelled the breath of
+bleaching powder. It is a greenish-yellow gas made from common salt. The
+Germans employed it at Ypres by laying cylinders of the liquefied gas in
+the trenches, about a yard apart, and running a lead discharge pipe over
+the parapet. When the stop cocks are turned the gas streams out and
+since it is two and a half times as heavy as air it rolls over the
+ground like a noisome mist. It works best when the ground slopes gently
+down toward the enemy and when the wind blows in that direction at a
+rate between four and twelve miles an hour. But the wind, being strictly
+neutral, may change its direction without warning and then the gases
+turn back in their flight and attack their own side, something that
+rifle bullets have never been known to do.</p>
+
+<p><a name="image_27" id="image_27"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 387px;">
+<img src="images/image265.jpg" width="387" height="328" alt="&copy; International Film Service" title="" />
+<span class="caption">&copy; International Film Service</span>
+</div>
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p><b>GERMANS STARTING A GAS ATTACK ON THE RUSSIAN LINES</b></p>
+
+<p><b>Behind the cylinders from which the gas streams are seen three lines of
+German troops waiting to attack. The photograph was taken from above by
+a Russian airman</b></p>
+</div>
+
+<p><a name="image_28" id="image_28"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 440px;">
+<img src="images/image266.jpg" width="440" height="275" alt="&copy; Press Illustrating Service" title="" />
+<span class="caption">&copy; Press Illustrating Service</span>
+</div>
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p><b>FILLING THE CANNISTERS OF GAS MASKS WITH CHARCOAL MADE FROM FRUIT PITS
+IN LONG ISLAND CITY</b></p>
+</div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span>Because free chlorine would not stay put and was dependent on the favor
+of the wind for its effect, it was later employed, not as an elemental
+gas, but in some volatile liquid that could be fired in a shell and so
+released at any particular point far back of the front trenches.</p>
+
+<p>The most commonly used of these compounds was phosgene, which, as the
+reader can see by inspection of its formula, COCl<sub>2</sub>, consists of
+chlorine (Cl) combined with carbon monoxide (CO), the cause of deaths
+from illuminating gas. These two poisonous gases, chlorine and carbon
+monoxide, when mixed together, will not readily unite, but if a ray of
+sunlight falls upon the mixture they combine at once. For this reason
+John Davy, who discovered the compound over a hundred years ago, named
+it phosgene, that is, "produced by light." The same roots recur in
+hydrogen, so named because it is "produced from water," and phosphorus,
+because it is a "light-bearer."</p>
+
+<p>In its modern manufacture the catalyzer or instigator of the combination
+is not sunlight but porous carbon. This is packed in iron boxes eight
+feet long, through which the mixture of the two gases was forced. Carbon
+monoxide may be made by burning coke with a supply of air insufficient
+for complete combustion, but in order to get the pure gas necessary for
+the phosgene common air was not used, but instead pure oxygen extracted
+from it by a liquid air plant.</p>
+
+<p>Phosgene is a gas that may be condensed easily to a liquid by cooling it
+down to 46 degrees Fahrenheit. A mixture of three-quarters chlorine with
+one-quarter phosgene has been found most effective. By itself <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span>phosgene
+has an inoffensive odor somewhat like green corn and so may fail to
+arouse apprehension until a toxic concentration is reached. But even
+small doses have such an effect upon the heart action for days afterward
+that a slight exertion may prove fatal.</p>
+
+<p>The compound manufactured in largest amount in America was chlorpicrin.
+This, like the others, is not so unfamiliar as it seems. As may be seen
+from its formula, CCl<sub>3</sub>NO<sub>2</sub>, it is formed by joining the nitric acid
+radical (NO<sub>2</sub>), found in all explosives, with the main part of
+chloroform (HCCl<sub>3</sub>). This is not quite so poisonous as phosgene, but
+it has the advantage that it causes nausea and vomiting. The soldier so
+affected is forced to take off his gas mask and then may fall victim to
+more toxic gases sent over simultaneously.</p>
+
+<p>Chlorpicrin is a liquid and is commonly loaded in a shell or bomb with
+20 per cent. of tin chloride, which produces dense white fumes that go
+through gas masks. It is made from picric acid (trinitrophenol), one of
+the best known of the high explosives, by treatment with chlorine. The
+chlorine is obtained, as it is in the household, from common bleaching
+powder, or "chloride of lime." This is mixed with water to form a cream
+in a steel still 18 feet high and 8 feet in diameter. A solution of
+calcium picrate, that is, the lime salt of picric acid, is pumped in and
+as the reaction begins the mixture heats up and the chlorpicrin distils
+over with the steam. When the distillate is condensed the chlorpicrin,
+being the heavier liquid, settles out under the layer of water and may
+be drawn off to fill the shell.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span>Much of what a student learns in the chemical laboratory he is apt to
+forget in later life if he does not follow it up. But there are two
+gases that he always remembers, chlorine and hydrogen sulfide. He is
+lucky if he has escaped being choked by the former or sickened by the
+latter. He can imagine what the effect would be if two offensive fumes
+could be combined without losing their offensive features. Now a
+combination something like this is the so-called mustard gas, which is
+not a gas and is not made from mustard. But it is easily gasified, and
+oil of mustard is about as near as Nature dare come to making such
+sinful stuff. It was first made by Guthrie, an Englishman, in 1860, and
+rediscovered by a German chemist, Victor Meyer, in 1886, but he found it
+so dangerous to work with that he abandoned the investigation. Nobody
+else cared to take it up, for nobody could see any use for it. So it
+remained in innocuous desuetude, a mere name in "Beilstein's
+Dictionary," together with the thousands of other organic compounds that
+have been invented and never utilized. But on July 12, 1917, the British
+holding the line at Ypres were besprinkled with this villainous
+substance. Its success was so great that the Germans henceforth made it
+their main reliance and soon the Allies followed suit. In one offensive
+of ten days the Germans are said to have used a million shells
+containing 2500 tons of mustard gas.</p>
+
+<p>The making of so dangerous a compound on a large scale was one of the
+most difficult tasks set before the chemists of this and other
+countries, yet it was successfully solved. The raw materials are
+chlorine, alcohol <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span>and sulfur. The alcohol is passed with steam through
+a vertical iron tube filled with kaolin and heated. This converts the
+alcohol into a gas known as ethylene (C<sub>2</sub>H<sub>4</sub>). Passing a stream of
+chlorine gas into a tank of melted sulfur produces sulfur monochloride
+and this treated with the ethylene makes the "mustard." The final
+reaction was carried on at the Edgewood Arsenal in seven airtight tanks
+or "reactors," each having a capacity of 30,000 pounds. The ethylene gas
+being led into the tank and distributed through the liquid sulfur
+chloride by porous blocks or fine nozzles, the two chemicals combined to
+form what is officially named "di-chlor-di-ethyl-sulfide"
+(ClC<sub>2</sub>H<sub>4</sub>SC<sub>2</sub>H<sub>4</sub>Cl). This, however, is too big a mouthful, so
+even the chemists were glad to fall in with the commonalty and call it
+"mustard gas."</p>
+
+<p>The effectiveness of "mustard" depends upon its persistence. It is a
+stable liquid, evaporating slowly and not easily decomposed. It lingers
+about trenches and dugouts and impregnates soil and cloth for days. Gas
+masks do not afford complete protection, for even if they are
+impenetrable they must be taken off some time and the gas lies in wait
+for that time. In some cases the masks were worn continuously for twelve
+hours after the attack, but when they were removed the soldiers were
+overpowered by the poison. A place may seem to be free from it but when
+the sun heats up the ground the liquid volatilizes and the vapor soaks
+through the clothing. As the men become warmed up by work their skin is
+blistered, especially under the armpits. The mustard acts like steam,
+producing burns that range from a mere reddening to serious
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span>ulcerations, always painful and incapacitating, but if treated promptly
+in the hospital rarely causing death or permanent scars. The gas attacks
+the eyes, throat, nose and lungs and may lead to bronchitis or
+pneumonia. It was found necessary at the front to put all the clothing
+of the soldiers into the sterilizing ovens every night to remove all
+traces of mustard. General Johnson and his staff in the 77th Division
+were poisoned in their dugouts because they tried to alleviate the
+discomfort of their camp cots by bedding taken from a neighboring
+village that had been shelled the day before.</p>
+
+<p>Of the 925 cases requiring medical attention at the Edgewood Arsenal 674
+were due to mustard. During the month of August 3-1/2 per cent. of the
+mustard plant force were sent to the hospital each day on the average.
+But the record of the Edgewood Arsenal is a striking demonstration of
+what can be done in the prevention of industrial accidents by the
+exercise of scientific prudence. In spite of the fact that from three to
+eleven thousand men were employed at the plant for the year 1918 and
+turned out some twenty thousand tons of the most poisonous gases known
+to man, there were only three fatalities and not a single case of
+blindness.</p>
+
+<p>Besides the four toxic gases previously described, chlorine, phosgene,
+chlorpicrin and mustard, various other compounds have been and many
+others might be made. A list of those employed in the present war
+enumerates thirty, among them compounds of bromine, arsenic and cyanogen
+that may prove more formidable than any so far used. American chemists
+kept very mum during the war but occasionally one could not <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span>refrain
+from saying: "If the Kaiser knew what I know he would surrender
+unconditionally by telegraph." No doubt the science of chemical warfare
+is in its infancy and every foresighted power has concealed weapons of
+its own in reserve. One deadly compound, whose identity has not yet been
+disclosed, is known as "Lewisite," from Professor Lewis of Northwestern,
+who was manufacturing it at the rate of ten tons a day in the "Mouse
+Trap" stockade near Cleveland.</p>
+
+<p>Throughout the history of warfare the art of defense has kept pace with
+the art of offense and the courage of man has never failed, no matter to
+what new danger he was exposed. As each new gas employed by the enemy
+was detected it became the business of our chemists to discover some
+method of absorbing or neutralizing it. Porous charcoal, best made from
+such dense wood as coconut shells, was packed in the respirator box
+together with layers of such chemicals as will catch the gases to be
+expected. Charcoal absorbs large quantities of any gas. Soda lime and
+potassium permanganate and nickel salts were among the neutralizers
+used.</p>
+
+<p>The mask is fitted tightly about the face or over the head with rubber.
+The nostrils are kept closed with a clip so breathing must be done
+through the mouth and no air can be inhaled except that passing through
+the absorbent cylinder. Men within five miles of the front were required
+to wear the masks slung on their chests so they could be put on within
+six seconds. A well-made mask with a fresh box afforded almost complete
+immunity for a time and the soldiers learned <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span>within a few days to
+handle their masks adroitly. So the problem of defense against this new
+offensive was solved satisfactorily, while no such adequate protection
+against the older weapons of bayonet and shrapnel has yet been devised.</p>
+
+<p>Then the problem of the offense was to catch the opponent with his mask
+off or to make him take it off. Here the lachrymators and the
+sternutators, the tear gases and the sneeze gases, came into play.
+Phenylcarbylamine chloride would make the bravest soldier weep on the
+battlefield with the abandonment of a Greek hero.
+Di-phenyl-chloro-arsine would set him sneezing. The Germans alternated
+these with diabolical ingenuity so as to catch us unawares. Some shells
+gave off voluminous smoke or a vile stench without doing much harm, but
+by the time our men got used to these and grew careless about their
+masks a few shells of some extremely poisonous gas were mixed with them.</p>
+
+<p>The ideal gas for belligerent purposes would be odorless, colorless and
+invisible, toxic even when diluted by a million parts of air, not set on
+fire or exploded by the detonator of the shell, not decomposed by water,
+not readily absorbed, stable enough to stand storage for six months and
+capable of being manufactured by the thousands of tons. No one gas will
+serve all aims. For instance, phosgene being very volatile and quickly
+dissipated is thrown into trenches that are soon to be taken while
+mustard gas being very tenacious could not be employed in such a case
+for the trenches could not be occupied if they were captured.</p>
+
+<p>The extensive use of poison gas in warfare by all the belligerents is a
+vindication of the American protest <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span>at the Hague Conference against its
+prohibition. At the First Conference of 1899 Captain Mahan argued very
+sensibly that gas shells were no worse than other projectiles and might
+indeed prove more merciful and that it was illogical to prohibit a
+weapon merely because of its novelty. The British delegates voted with
+the Americans in opposition to the clause "the contracting parties agree
+to abstain from the use of projectiles the sole object of which is the
+diffusion of asphyxiating or deleterious gases." But both Great Britain
+and Germany later agreed to the provision. The use of poison gas by
+Germany without warning was therefore an act of treachery and a
+violation of her pledge, but the United States has consistently refused
+to bind herself to any such restriction. The facts reported by General
+Amos A. Fries, in command of the overseas branch of the American
+Chemical Warfare Service, give ample support to the American contention
+at The Hague:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Out of 1000 gas casualties there are from 30 to 40 fatalities,
+while out of 1000 high explosive casualties the number of
+fatalities run from 200 to 250. While exact figures are as yet
+not available concerning the men permanently crippled or
+blinded by high explosives one has only to witness the
+debarkation of a shipload of troops to be convinced that the
+number is very large. On the other hand there is, so far as
+known at present, not a single case of permanent disability or
+blindness among our troops due to gas and this in face of the
+fact that the Germans used relatively large quantities of this
+material.</p>
+
+<p>In the light of these facts the prejudice against the use of
+gas must gradually give way; for the statement made to the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span>effect that its use is contrary to the principles of humanity
+will apply with far greater force to the use of high
+explosives. As a matter of fact, for certain purposes toxic gas
+is an ideal agent. For example, it is difficult to imagine any
+agent more effective or more humane that may be used to render
+an opposing battery ineffective or to protect retreating
+troops.</p></div>
+
+<p>Captain Mahan's argument at The Hague against the proposed prohibition
+of poison gas is so cogent and well expressed that it has been quoted in
+treatises on international law ever since. These reasons were, briefly:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>1. That no shell emitting such gases is as yet in practical use
+or has undergone adequate experiment; consequently, a vote
+taken now would be taken in ignorance of the facts as to
+whether the results would be of a decisive character or whether
+injury in excess of that necessary to attain the end of
+warfare&mdash;the immediate disabling of the enemy&mdash;would be
+inflicted.</p>
+
+<p>2. That the reproach of cruelty and perfidy, addressed against
+these supposed shells, was equally uttered formerly against
+firearms and torpedoes, both of which are now employed without
+scruple. Until we know the effects of such asphyxiating shells,
+there was no saying whether they would be more or less merciful
+than missiles now permitted. That it was illogical, and not
+demonstrably humane, to be tender about asphyxiating men with
+gas, when all are prepared to admit that it was allowable to
+blow the bottom out of an ironclad at midnight, throwing four
+or five hundred into the sea, to be choked by water, with
+scarcely the remotest chance of escape.</p></div>
+
+<p>As Captain Mahan says, the same objection has been raised at the
+introduction of each new weapon of war, even though it proved to be no
+more cruel than the old. The modern rifle ball, swift and small and
+sterilized <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span>by heat, does not make so bad a wound as the ancient sword
+and spear, but we all remember how gunpowder was regarded by the dandies
+of Hotspur's time:</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And it was great pity, so it was,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">This villainous saltpeter should be digg'd</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Out of the bowels of the harmless earth</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Which many a good tall fellow had destroy'd</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">So cowardly; and but for these vile guns</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">He would himself have been a soldier.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>The real reason for the instinctive aversion manifested against any new
+arm or mode of attack is that it reveals to us the intrinsic horror of
+war. We naturally revolt against premeditated homicide, but we have
+become so accustomed to the sword and latterly to the rifle that they do
+not shock us as they ought when we think of what they are made for. The
+Constitution of the United States prohibits the infliction of "cruel and
+unusual punishments." The two adjectives were apparently used almost
+synonymously, as though any "unusual" punishment were necessarily
+"cruel," and so indeed it strikes us. But our ingenious lawyers were
+able to persuade the courts that electrocution, though unknown to the
+Fathers and undeniably "unusual," was not unconstitutional. Dumdum
+bullets are rightfully ruled out because they inflict frightful and
+often incurable wounds, and the aim of humane warfare is to disable the
+enemy, not permanently to injure him.</p>
+
+<p><a name="image_29" id="image_29"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 439px;">
+<img src="images/image277.jpg" width="439" height="304" alt="From &quot;America&#39;s Munitions&quot;" title="" />
+<span class="caption">From &quot;America&#39;s Munitions&quot;</span>
+</div>
+
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><b>THE CHLORPICRIN PLANT AT THE EDGEWOOD ARSENAL</b></p>
+<p><b>From these stills, filled with a mixture of bleaching powder, lime, and
+picric acid, the poisonous gas, chlorpicrin, distills off. This plant
+produced 31 tons in one day</b></p>
+</div>
+
+<p><a name="image_30" id="image_30"></a></p>
+<h4></h4><div class="figcenter" style="width: 442px;">
+<img src="images/image278.jpg" width="442" height="273" alt="Courtesy of the Metal and Thermit Corporation, N.Y." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Courtesy of the Metal and Thermit Corporation, N.Y.</span>
+</div>
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p><b>REPAIRING THE BROKEN STERN POST OF THE U.S.S. NORTHERN PACIFIC, THE
+BIGGEST MARINE WELD IN THE WORLD</b></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>On the right the fractured stern post is shown. On the left it is being
+mended by means of thermit. Two crucibles each containing 700 pounds of
+the thermit mixture are seen on the sides of the vessel. From the bottom
+of these the melted steel flowed down to fill the fracture]</p>
+
+<p>In spite of the opposition of the American and British delegates the
+First Hague Conference adopted the clause, "The contracting powers agree
+to abstain from the use of projectiles the [sole] object of which is <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span>the
+diffusion of asphyxiating or deleterious gases." The word "sole"
+(<i>unique</i>) which appears in the original French text of The Hague
+convention is left out of the official English translation. This is a
+strange omission considering that the French and British defended their
+use of explosives which diffuse asphyxiating and deleterious gases on
+the ground that this was not the "sole" purpose of the bombs but merely
+an accidental effect of the nitric powder used.</p>
+
+<p>The Hague Congress of 1907 placed in its rules for war: "It is expressly
+forbidden to employ poisons or poisonous weapons." But such attempts to
+rule out new and more effective means of warfare are likely to prove
+futile in any serious conflict and the restriction gives the advantage
+to the most unscrupulous side. We Americans, if ever we give our assent
+to such an agreement, would of course keep it, but our enemy&mdash;whoever he
+may be in the future&mdash;will be, as he always has been, utterly without
+principle and will not hesitate to employ any weapon against us.
+Besides, as the Germans held, chemical warfare favors the army that is
+most intelligent, resourceful and disciplined and the nation that stands
+highest in science and industry. This advantage, let us hope, will be on
+our side.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII"></a>CHAPTER XIII</h2>
+
+<h3>PRODUCTS OF THE ELECTRIC FURNACE</h3>
+
+
+<p>The control of man over the materials of nature has been vastly enhanced
+by the recent extension of the range of temperature at his command. When
+Fahrenheit stuck the bulb of his thermometer into a mixture of snow and
+salt he thought he had reached the nadir of temperature, so he scratched
+a mark on the tube where the mercury stood and called it zero. But we
+know that absolute zero, the total absence of heat, is 459 of
+Fahrenheit's degrees lower than his zero point. The modern scientist can
+get close to that lowest limit by making use of the cooling by the
+expansion principle. He first liquefies air under pressure and then
+releasing the pressure allows it to boil off. A tube of hydrogen
+immersed in the liquid air as it evaporates is cooled down until it can
+be liquefied. Then the boiling hydrogen is used to liquefy helium, and
+as this boils off it lowers the temperature to within three or four
+degrees of absolute zero.</p>
+
+<p>The early metallurgist had no hotter a fire than he could make by
+blowing charcoal with a bellows. This was barely enough for the smelting
+of iron. But by the bringing of two carbon rods together, as in the
+electric arc light, we can get enough heat to volatilize the carbon at
+the tips, and this means over 7000 degrees Fahrenheit. By putting a
+pressure of twenty atmospheres onto the arc light we can raise it to
+perhaps<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span> 14,000 degrees, which is 3000 degrees hotter than the sun. This
+gives the modern man a working range of about 14,500 degrees, so it is
+no wonder that he can perform miracles.</p>
+
+<p>When a builder wants to make an old house over into a new one he takes
+it apart brick by brick and stone by stone, then he puts them together
+in such new fashion as he likes. The electric furnace enables the
+chemist to take his materials apart in the same way. As the temperature
+rises the chemical and physical forces that hold a body together
+gradually weaken. First the solid loosens up and becomes a liquid, then
+this breaks bonds and becomes a gas. Compounds break up into their
+elements. The elemental molecules break up into their component atoms
+and finally these begin to throw off corpuscles of negative electricity
+eighteen hundred times smaller than the smallest atom. These electrons
+appear to be the building stones of the universe. No indication of any
+smaller units has been discovered, although we need not assume that in
+the electron science has delivered, what has been called, its
+"ultim-atom." The Greeks called the elemental particles of matter
+"atoms" because they esteemed them "indivisible," but now in the light
+of the X-ray we can witness the disintegration of the atom into
+electrons. All the chemical and physical properties of matter, except
+perhaps weight, seem to depend upon the number and movement of the
+negative and positive electrons and by their rearrangement one element
+may be transformed into another.</p>
+
+<p>So the electric furnace, where the highest attainable <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span>temperature is
+combined with the divisive and directive force of the current, is a
+magical machine for accomplishment of the metamorphoses desired by the
+creative chemist. A hundred years ago Davy, by dipping the poles of his
+battery into melted soda lye, saw forming on one of them a shining
+globule like quicksilver. It was the metal sodium, never before seen by
+man. Nowadays this process of electrolysis (electric loosening) is
+carried out daily by the ton at Niagara.</p>
+
+<p>The reverse process, electro-synthesis (electric combining), is equally
+simple and even more important. By passing a strong electric current
+through a mixture of lime and coke the metal calcium disengages itself
+from the oxygen of the lime and attaches itself to the carbon. Or, to
+put it briefly,</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">CaO&nbsp; +&nbsp; 3C&nbsp;  &#8594;&nbsp;  CaC<sub>2</sub> + CO</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">lime&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp; coke&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  calcium&nbsp; &nbsp; carbon</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 7em;">carbide&nbsp; &nbsp; monoxide</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>This reaction is of peculiar importance because it bridges the gulf
+between the organic and inorganic worlds. It was formerly supposed that
+the substances found in plants and animals, mostly complex compounds of
+carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, could only be produced by "vital forces."
+If this were true it meant that chemistry was limited to the mineral
+kingdom and to the extraction of such carbon compounds as happened to
+exist ready formed in the vegetable and animal kingdoms. But fortunately
+this barrier to human achievement proved purely illusory. The organic
+field, once man had broken into it, proved easier to work in than the
+inorganic.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span>But it must be confessed that man is dreadfully clumsy about it yet. He
+takes a thousand horsepower engine and an electric furnace at several
+thousand degrees to get carbon into combination with hydrogen while the
+little green leaf in the sunshine does it quietly without getting hot
+about it. Evidently man is working as wastefully as when he used a
+thousand slaves to drag a stone to the pyramid or burned down a house to
+roast a pig. Not until his laboratory is as cool and calm and
+comfortable as the forest and the field can the chemist call himself
+completely successful.</p>
+
+<p>But in spite of his clumsiness the chemist is actually making things
+that he wants and cannot get elsewhere. The calcium carbide that he
+manufactures from inorganic material serves as the raw material for
+producing all sorts of organic compounds. The electric furnace was first
+employed on a large scale by the Cowles Electric Smelting and Aluminum
+Company at Cleveland in 1885. On the dump were found certain lumps of
+porous gray stone which, dropped into water, gave off a gas that
+exploded at touch of a match with a splendid bang and flare. This gas
+was acetylene, and we can represent the reaction thus:</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">CaC<sub>2</sub> + 2 H<sub>2</sub>O &#8594; C<sub>2</sub>H<sub>2</sub> + CaO<sub>2</sub>H<sub>2</sub></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">calcium carbide <i>added</i> to water <i>gives</i> acetylene <i>and</i> slaked lime</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>We are all familiar with this reaction now, for it is acetylene that
+gives the dazzling light of the automobiles and of the automatic signal
+buoys of the seacoast. When burned with pure oxygen instead of air it
+gives the hottest of chemical flames, hotter even than the oxy-hydrogen
+blowpipe. For although a given weight <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span>of hydrogen will give off more
+heat when it burns than carbon will, yet acetylene will give off more
+heat than either of its elements or both of them when they are separate.
+This is because acetylene has stored up heat in its formation instead of
+giving it off as in most reactions, or to put it in chemical language,
+acetylene is an endothermic compound. It has required energy to bring
+the H and the C together, therefore it does not require energy to
+separate them, but, on the contrary, energy is released when they are
+separated. That is to say, acetylene is explosive not only when mixed
+with air as coal gas is but by itself. Under a suitable impulse
+acetylene will break up into its original carbon and hydrogen with great
+violence. It explodes with twice as much force without air as ordinary
+coal gas with air. It forms an explosive compound with copper, so it has
+to be kept out of contact with brass tubes and stopcocks. But compressed
+in steel cylinders and dissolved in acetone, it is safe and commonly
+used for welding and melting. It is a marvelous though not an unusual
+sight on city streets to see a man with blue glasses on cutting down
+through a steel rail with an oxy-acetylene blowpipe as easily as a
+carpenter saws off a board. With such a flame he can carve out a pattern
+in a steel plate in a way that reminds me of the days when I used to
+make brackets with a scroll saw out of cigar boxes. The torch will
+travel through a steel plate an inch or two thick at a rate of six to
+ten inches a minute.</p>
+
+<p><a name="image_31" id="image_31"></a></p>
+<h4></h4><div class="figcenter" style="width: 435px;">
+<img src="images/image285.jpg" width="435" height="278" alt="Courtesy of the Carborundum Company, Niagara Falls" title="" />
+<span class="caption">Courtesy of the Carborundum Company, Niagara Falls</span>
+</div>
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p><b>MAKING ALOXITE IN THE ELECTRIC FURNACES BY FUSING COKE AND BAUXITE</b></p>
+
+<p><b>In the background are the circular furnaces. In the foreground are the
+fused masses of the product</b></p>
+</div>
+
+<p><a name="image_32" id="image_32"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 427px;">
+<img src="images/image286a.jpg" width="427" height="235" alt="Courtesy of the Carborundum Co., Niagara Falls
+
+A BLOCK OF CARBORUNDUM CRYSTALS" title="" />
+<span class="caption">Courtesy of the Carborundum Co., Niagara Falls
+
+A BLOCK OF CARBORUNDUM CRYSTALS</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><a name="image_33" id="image_33"></a></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 340px;">
+<img src="images/image286b.jpg" width="340" height="310" alt="Courtesy of the Carborundum Co., Niagara Falls" title="" />
+<span class="caption">Courtesy of the Carborundum Co., Niagara Falls</span>
+</div>
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p><b>MAKING CARBORUNDUM IN THE ELECTRIC FURNACE</b></p>
+
+<p><b>At the end may be seen the attachments for the wires carrying the
+electric current and on the side the flames from the burning carbon.</b></p></div>
+
+<p>The temperatures attainable with various fuels in the compound blowpipe
+are said to be:</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td align='left'>Acetylene with oxygen</td><td align='right'>7878&deg; F.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Hydrogen with oxygen</td><td align='right'>6785&deg; F.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Coal gas with oxygen</td><td align='right'>6575&deg; F.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Gasoline with oxygen</td><td align='right'>5788&deg; F.</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p>If we compare the formula of acetylene, C<sub>2</sub>H<sub>2</sub> with that of
+ethylene, C<sub>2</sub>H<sub>4</sub>, or with ethane, C<sub>2</sub>H<sub>6</sub>, we see that acetylene
+could take on two or four more atoms. It is evidently what the chemists
+call an "unsaturated" compound, one that has not reached its limit of
+hydrogenation. It is therefore a very active and energetic compound,
+ready to pick up on the slightest instigation hydrogen or oxygen or
+chlorine or any other elements that happen to be handy. This is why it
+is so useful as a starting point for synthetic chemistry.</p>
+
+<p>To build up from this simple substance, acetylene, the higher compounds
+of carbon and oxygen it is necessary to call in the aid of that
+mysterious agency, the catalyst. Acetylene is not always acted upon by
+water, as we know, for we see it bubbling up through the water when
+prepared from the carbide. But if to the water be added a little acid
+and a mercury salt, the acetylene gas will unite with the water forming
+a new compound, acetaldehyde. We can show the change most simply in this
+fashion:</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">C<sub>2</sub>H<sub>2</sub> + H<sub>2</sub>O &#8594; C<sub>2</sub>H<sub>4</sub>O</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">acetylene <i>added to</i> water <i>forms</i> acetaldehyde</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Acetaldehyde is not of much importance in itself, but is useful as a
+transition. If its vapor mixed with hydrogen is passed over finely
+divided nickel, serving as <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span>a catalyst, the two unite and we have
+alcohol, according to this reaction:</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">C<sub>2</sub>H<sub>4</sub>O + H<sub>2</sub> &#8594; C<sub>2</sub>H<sub>6</sub>O</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">acetaldehyde <i>added to</i> hydrogen <i>forms</i> alcohol</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Alcohol we are all familiar with&mdash;some of us too familiar, but the
+prohibition laws will correct that. The point to be noted is that the
+alcohol we have made from such unpromising materials as limestone and
+coal is exactly the same alcohol as is obtained by the fermentation of
+fruits and grains by the yeast plant as in wine and beer. It is not a
+substitute or imitation. It is not the wood spirits (methyl alcohol,
+CH<sub>4</sub>O), produced by the destructive distillation of wood, equally
+serviceable as a solvent or fuel, but undrinkable and poisonous.</p>
+
+<p>Now, as we all know, cider and wine when exposed to the air gradually
+turn into vinegar, that is, by the growth of bacteria the alcohol is
+oxidized to acetic acid. We can, if we like, dispense with the bacteria
+and speed up the process by employing a catalyst. Acetaldehyde, which is
+halfway between alcohol and acid, may also be easily oxidized to acetic
+acid. The relationship is readily seen by this:</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">C{2}H<sub>6</sub>O &#8594;&nbsp; CC<sub>2</sub>H<sub>4</sub>O &#8594; C<sub>2</sub>H<sub>4</sub>O<sub>3</sub></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">alcohol&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  acetaldehyde&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; acetic acid</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Acetic acid, familiar to us in a diluted and flavored form as vinegar,
+is when concentrated of great value in industry, especially as a
+solvent. I have already referred to its use in combination with
+cellulose as a "dope" for varnishing airplane canvas or making
+non-inflammable film for motion pictures. Its combination <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span>with lime,
+calcium acetate, when heated gives acetone, which, as may be seen from
+its formula (C<sub>3</sub>H<sub>6</sub>O) is closely related to the other compounds we
+have been considering, but it is neither an alcohol nor an acid. It is
+extensively employed as a solvent.</p>
+
+<p>Acetone is not only useful for dissolving solids but it will under
+pressure dissolve many times its volume of gaseous acetylene. This is a
+convenient way of transporting and handling acetylene for lighting or
+welding.</p>
+
+<p>If instead of simply mixing the acetone and acetylene in a solution we
+combine them chemically we can get isoprene, which is the mother
+substance of ordinary India rubber. From acetone also is made the "war
+rubber" of the Germans (methyl rubber), which I have mentioned in a
+previous chapter. The Germans had been getting about half their supply
+of acetone from American acetate of lime and this was of course shut
+off. That which was produced in Germany by the distillation of beech
+wood was not even enough for the high explosives needed at the front. So
+the Germans resorted to rotting potatoes&mdash;or rather let us say, since it
+sounds better&mdash;to the cultivation of <i>Bacillus macerans</i>. This
+particular bacillus converts the starch of the potato into two-thirds
+alcohol and one-third acetone. But soon potatoes got too scarce to be
+used up in this fashion, so the Germans turned to calcium carbide as a
+source of acetone and before the war ended they had a factory capable of
+manufacturing 2000 tons of methyl rubber a year. This shows the
+advantage of having several strings to a bow.</p>
+
+<p>The reason why acetylene is such an active and acquisitive <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span>thing the
+chemist explains, or rather expresses, by picturing its structure in
+this shape:</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">H-C&#8801;C-H</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Now the carbon atoms are holding each other's hands because they have
+nothing else to do. There are no other elements around to hitch on to.
+But the two carbons of acetylene readily loosen up and keeping the
+connection between them by a single bond reach out in this fashion with
+their two disengaged arms and grab whatever alien atoms happen to be in
+the vicinity:</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">&nbsp;&nbsp;| &nbsp;&nbsp;|</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">H-C-C-H</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">&nbsp;&nbsp;|&nbsp;&nbsp; |</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Carbon atoms belong to the quadrumani like the monkeys, so they are
+peculiarly fitted to forming chains and rings. This accounts for the
+variety and complexity of the carbon compounds.</p>
+
+<p>So when acetylene gas mixed with other gases is passed over a catalyst,
+such as a heated mass of iron ore or clay (hydrates or silicates of iron
+or aluminum), it forms all sorts of curious combinations. In the
+presence of steam we may get such simple compounds as acetic acid,
+acetone and the like. But when three acetylene molecules join to form a
+ring of six carbon atoms we get compounds of the benzene series such as
+were described in the chapter on the coal-tar colors. If ammonia is
+mixed with acetylene we may get rings with the nitrogen atom in place of
+one of the carbons, like the pyridins and quinolins, pungent bases such
+as are found in opium and tobacco. Or if hydrogen sulfide is mixed with
+the acetylene we may get thiophenes, which <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span>have sulfur in the ring. So,
+starting with the simple combination of two atoms of carbon with two of
+hydrogen, we can get directly by this single process some of the most
+complicated compounds of the organic world, as well as many others not
+found in nature.</p>
+
+<p>In the development of the electric furnace America played a pioneer
+part. Provost Smith of the University of Pennsylvania, who is the best
+authority on the history of chemistry in America, claims for Robert
+Hare, a Philadelphia chemist born in 1781, the honor of constructing the
+first electrical furnace. With this crude apparatus and with no greater
+electromotive force than could be attained from a voltaic pile, he
+converted charcoal into graphite, volatilized phosphorus from its
+compounds, isolated metallic calcium and synthesized calcium carbide. It
+is to Hare also that we owe the invention in 1801 of the oxy-hydrogen
+blowpipe, which nowadays is used with acetylene as well as hydrogen.
+With this instrument he was able to fuse strontia and volatilize
+platinum.</p>
+
+<p>But the electrical furnace could not be used on a commercial scale until
+the dynamo replaced the battery as a source of electricity. The
+industrial development of the electrical furnace centered about the
+search for a cheap method of preparing aluminum. This is the metallic
+base of clay and therefore is common enough. But clay, as we know from
+its use in making porcelain, is very infusible and difficult to
+decompose. Sixty years ago aluminum was priced at $140 a pound, but one
+would have had difficulty in buying such a large quantity as a pound at
+any price. At international expositions a small bar of it might be seen
+in a case <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span>labeled "silver from clay." Mechanics were anxious to get the
+new metal, for it was light and untarnishable, but the metallurgists
+could not furnish it to them at a low enough price. In order to extract
+it from clay a more active metal, sodium, was essential. But sodium also
+was rare and expensive. In those days a professor of chemistry used to
+keep a little stick of it in a bottle under kerosene and once a year he
+whittled off a piece the size of a pea and threw it into water to show
+the class how it sizzled and gave off hydrogen. The way to get cheaper
+aluminum was, it seemed, to get cheaper sodium and Hamilton Young
+Castner set himself at this problem. He was a Brooklyn boy, a student of
+Chandler's at Columbia. You can see the bronze tablet in his honor at
+the entrance of Havemeyer Hall. In 1886 he produced metallic sodium by
+mixing caustic soda with iron and charcoal in an iron pot and heating in
+a gas furnace. Before this experiment sodium sold at $2 a pound; after
+it sodium sold at twenty cents a pound.</p>
+
+<p>But although Castner had succeeded in his experiment he was defeated in
+his object. For while he was perfecting the sodium process for making
+aluminum the electrolytic process for getting aluminum directly was
+discovered in Oberlin. So the $250,000 plant of the "Aluminium Company
+Ltd." that Castner had got erected at Birmingham, England, did not make
+aluminum at all, but produced sodium for other purposes instead. Castner
+then turned his attention to the electrolytic method of producing sodium
+by the use of the power of Niagara Falls, electric power. Here in 1894
+he succeeded in separating common salt into its component <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span>elements,
+chlorine and sodium, by passing the electric current through brine and
+collecting the sodium in the mercury floor of the cell. The sodium by
+the action of water goes into caustic soda. Nowadays sodium and chlorine
+and their components are made in enormous quantities by the
+decomposition of salt. The United States Government in 1918 procured
+nearly 4,000,000 pounds of chlorine for gas warfare.</p>
+
+<p>The discovery of the electrical process of making aluminum that
+displaced the sodium method was due to Charles M. Hall. He was the son
+of a Congregational minister and as a boy took a fancy to chemistry
+through happening upon an old text-book of that science in his father's
+library. He never knew who the author was, for the cover and title page
+had been torn off. The obstacle in the way of the electrolytic
+production of aluminum was, as I have said, because its compounds were
+so hard to melt that the current could not pass through. In 1886, when
+Hall was twenty-two, he solved the problem in the laboratory of Oberlin
+College with no other apparatus than a small crucible, a gasoline burner
+to heat it with and a galvanic battery to supply the electricity. He
+found that a Greenland mineral, known as cryolite (a double fluoride of
+sodium and aluminum), was readily fused and would dissolve alumina
+(aluminum oxide). When an electric current was passed through the melted
+mass the metal aluminum would collect at one of the poles.</p>
+
+<p>In working out the process and defending his claims Hall used up all his
+own money, his brother's and his uncle's, but he won out in the end and
+Judge Taft held that his patent had priority over the French claim of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span>
+H&eacute;rault. On his death, a few years ago, Hall left his large fortune to
+his Alma Mater, Oberlin.</p>
+
+<p>Two other young men from Ohio, Alfred and Eugene Cowles, with whom Hall
+was for a time associated, wore the first to develop the wide
+possibilities of the electric furnace on a commercial scale. In 1885
+they started the Cowles Electric Smelting and Aluminum Company at
+Lockport, New York, using Niagara power. The various aluminum bronzes
+made by absorbing the electrolyzed aluminum in copper attracted
+immediate attention by their beauty and usefulness in electrical work
+and later the company turned out other products besides aluminum, such
+as calcium carbide, phosphorus, and carborundum. They got carborundum as
+early as 1885 but miscalled it "crystallized silicon," so its
+introduction was left to E.A. Acheson, who was a graduate of Edison's
+laboratory. In 1891 he packed clay and charcoal into an iron bowl,
+connected it to a dynamo and stuck into the mixture an electric light
+carbon connected to the other pole of the dynamo. When he pulled out the
+rod he found its end encrusted with glittering crystals of an unknown
+substance. They were blue and black and iridescent, exceedingly hard and
+very beautiful. He sold them at first by the carat at a rate that would
+amount to $560 a pound. They were as well worth buying as diamond dust,
+but those who purchased them must have regretted it, for much finer
+crystals were soon on sale at ten cents a pound. The mysterious
+substance turned out to be a compound of carbon and silicon, the
+simplest possible compound, one atom of each, CSi. Acheson set up a
+factory at Niagara, where he made it in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span>ten-ton batches. The furnace
+consisted simply of a brick box fifteen feet long and seven feet wide
+and deep, with big carbon electrodes at the ends. Between them was
+packed a mixture of coke to supply the carbon, sand to supply the
+silicon, sawdust to make the mass porous and salt to make it fusible.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 310px;">
+<img src="images/image295.jpg" width="310" height="436" alt="The first American electric furnace, constructed by
+Robert Hare of Philadelphia. From &quot;Chemistry in America,&quot; by Edgar Fahs
+Smith" title="" />
+<span class="caption">The first American electric furnace, constructed by
+Robert Hare of Philadelphia. From &quot;Chemistry in America,&quot; by Edgar Fahs
+Smith</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The substance thus produced at Niagara Falls is known as "carborundum"
+south of the American-Canadian boundary and as "crystolon" north of this
+line, as "carbolon" by another firm, and as "silicon carbide" by
+chemists the world over. Since it is next to the diamond in hardness it
+takes off metal faster than emery (aluminum oxide), using less power and
+wasting <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span>less heat in futile fireworks. It is used for grindstones of
+all sizes, including those the dentist uses on your teeth. It has
+revolutionized shop-practice, for articles can be ground into shape
+better and quicker than they can be cut. What is more, the artificial
+abrasives do not injure the lungs of the operatives like sandstone. The
+output of artificial abrasives in the United States and Canada for 1917
+was:</p>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'>Tons</td><td align='right'>Value</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Silicon carbide</td><td align='right'>8,323</td><td align='right'>$1,074,152</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Aluminum oxide</td><td align='right'>48,463</td><td align='right'>6,969,387</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+<p>A new use for carborundum was found during the war when Uncle Sam
+assumed the r&ocirc;le of Jove as "cloud-compeller." Acting on carborundum
+with chlorine&mdash;also, you remember, a product of electrical
+dissolution&mdash;the chlorine displaces the carbon, forming silicon
+tetra-chloride (SiCl<sub>4</sub>), a colorless liquid resembling chloroform.
+When this comes in contact with moist air it gives off thick, white
+fumes, for water decomposes it, giving a white powder (silicon
+hydroxide) and hydrochloric acid. If ammonia is present the acid will
+unite with it, giving further white fumes of the salt, ammonium
+chloride. So a mixture of two parts of silicon chloride with one part of
+dry ammonia was used in the war to produce smoke-screens for the
+concealment of the movements of troops, batteries and vessels or put in
+shells so the outlook could see where they burst and so get the range.
+Titanium tetra-chloride, a similar substance, proved 50 per cent. better
+than silicon, but phosphorus&mdash;which also we get from the electric
+furnace&mdash;was the most effective mistifier of all.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span>Before the introduction of the artificial abrasives fine grinding was
+mostly done by emery, which is an impure form of aluminum oxide found in
+nature. A purer form is made from the mineral bauxite by driving off its
+combined water. Bauxite is the ore from which is made the pure aluminum
+oxide used in the electric furnace for the production of metallic
+aluminum. Formerly we imported a large part of our bauxite from France,
+but when the war shut off this source we developed our domestic fields
+in Arkansas, Alabama and Georgia, and these are now producing half a
+million tons a year. Bauxite simply fused in the electric furnace makes
+a better abrasive than the natural emery or corundum, and it is sold for
+this purpose under the name of "aloxite," "alundum," "exolon," "lionite"
+or "coralox." When the fused bauxite is worked up with a bonding
+material into crucibles or muffles and baked in a kiln it forms the
+alundum refractory ware. Since alundum is porous and not attacked by
+acids it is used for filtering hot and corrosive liquids that would eat
+up filter-paper. Carborundum or crystolon is also made up into
+refractory ware for high temperature work. When the fused mass of the
+carborundum furnace is broken up there is found surrounding the
+carborundum core a similar substance though not quite so hard and
+infusible, known as "carborundum sand" or "siloxicon." This is mixed
+with fireclay and used for furnace linings.</p>
+
+<p>Many new forms of refractories have come into use to meet the demands of
+the new high temperature work. The essentials are that it should not
+melt or crumble at high heat and should not expand and contract greatly
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span>under changes of temperature (low coefficient of thermal expansion).
+Whether it is desirable that it should heat through readily or slowly
+(coefficient of thermal conductivity) depends on whether it is wanted as
+a crucible or as a furnace lining. Lime (calcium oxide) fuses only at
+the highest heat of the electric furnace, but it breaks down into dust.
+Magnesia (magnesium oxide) is better and is most extensively employed.
+For every ton of steel produced five pounds of magnesite is needed.
+Formerly we imported 90 per cent. of our supply from Austria, but now we
+get it from California and Washington. In 1913 the American production
+of magnesite was only 9600 tons. In 1918 it was 225,000. Zirconia
+(zirconium oxide) is still more refractory and in spite of its greater
+cost zirkite is coming into use as a lining for electric furnaces.</p>
+
+<p>Silicon is next to oxygen the commonest element in the world. It forms a
+quarter of the earth's crust, yet it is unfamiliar to most of us. That
+is because it is always found combined with oxygen in the form of silica
+as quartz crystal or sand. This used to be considered too refractory to
+be blown but is found to be easily manipulable at the high temperatures
+now at the command of the glass-blower. So the chemist rejoices in
+flasks that he can heat red hot in the Bunsen burner and then plunge
+into ice water without breaking, and the cook can bake and serve in a
+dish of "pyrex," which is 80 per cent. silica.</p>
+
+<p>At the beginning of the twentieth century minute specimens of silicon
+were sold as laboratory curiosities at the price of $100 an ounce. Two
+years later it was turned out by the barrelful at Niagara as an
+accidental <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span>by-product and could not find a market at ten cents a pound.
+Silicon from the electric furnace appears in the form of hard,
+glittering metallic crystals.</p>
+
+<p>An alloy of iron and silicon, ferro-silicon, made by heating a mixture
+of iron ore, sand and coke in the electrical furnace, is used as a
+deoxidizing agent in the manufacture of steel.</p>
+
+<p>Since silicon has been robbed with difficulty of its oxygen it takes it
+on again with great avidity. This has been made use of in the making of
+hydrogen. A mixture of silicon (or of the ferro-silicon alloy containing
+90 per cent. of silicon) with soda and slaked lime is inert, compact and
+can be transported to any point where hydrogen is needed, say at a
+battle front. Then the "hydrogenite," as the mixture is named, is
+ignited by a hot iron ball and goes off like thermit with the production
+of great heat and the evolution of a vast volume of hydrogen gas. Or the
+ferro-silicon may be simply burned in an atmosphere of steam in a closed
+tank after ignition with a pinch of gunpowder. The iron and the silicon
+revert to their oxides while the hydrogen of the water is set free. The
+French "silikol" method consists in treating silicon with a 40 per cent.
+solution of soda.</p>
+
+<p>Another source of hydrogen originating with the electric furnace is
+"hydrolith," which consists of calcium hydride. Metallic calcium is
+prepared from lime in the electric furnace. Then pieces of the calcium
+are spread out in an oven heated by electricity and a current of dry
+hydrogen passed through. The gas is absorbed by the metal, forming the
+hydride (CaH<sub>2</sub>). This is packed up in cans and when hydrogen is
+desired <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span>it is simply dropped into water, when it gives off the gas just
+as calcium carbide gives off acetylene.</p>
+
+<p>This last reaction was also used in Germany for filling Zeppelins. For
+calcium carbide is convenient and portable and acetylene, when it is
+once started, as by an electric shock, decomposes spontaneously by its
+own internal heat into hydrogen and carbon. The latter is left as a
+fine, pure lampblack, suitable for printer's ink.</p>
+
+<p>Napoleon, who was always on the lookout for new inventions that could be
+utilized for military purposes, seized immediately upon the balloon as
+an observation station. Within a few years after the first ascent had
+been made in Paris Napoleon took balloons and apparatus for generating
+hydrogen with him on his "archeological expedition" to Egypt in which he
+hoped to conquer Asia. But the British fleet in the Mediterranean put a
+stop to this experiment by intercepting the ship, and military aviation
+waited until the Great War for its full development. This caused a
+sudden demand for immense quantities of hydrogen and all manner of means
+was taken to get it. Water is easily decomposed into hydrogen and oxygen
+by passing an electric current through it. In various electrolytical
+processes hydrogen has been a wasted by-product since the balloon demand
+was slight and it was more bother than it was worth to collect and
+purify the hydrogen. Another way of getting hydrogen in quantity is by
+passing steam over red-hot coke. This produces the blue water-gas, which
+contains about 50 per cent. hydrogen, 40 per cent. carbon monoxide and
+the rest nitrogen and carbon dioxide. The last is removed by running the
+mixed gases through lime. Then the nitrogen and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span>carbon monoxide are
+frozen out in an air-liquefying apparatus and the hydrogen escapes to
+the storage tank. The liquefied carbon monoxide, allowed to regain its
+gaseous form, is used in an internal combustion engine to run the plant.</p>
+
+<p>There are then many ways of producing hydrogen, but it is so light and
+bulky that it is difficult to get it where it is wanted. The American
+Government in the war made use of steel cylinders each holding 161 cubic
+feet of the gas under a pressure of 2000 pounds per square inch. Even
+the hydrogen used by the troops in France was shipped from America in
+this form. For field use the ferro-silicon and soda process was adopted.
+A portable generator of this type was capable of producing 10,000 cubic
+feet of the gas per hour.</p>
+
+<p>The discovery by a Kansas chemist of natural sources of helium may make
+it possible to free ballooning of its great danger, for helium is
+non-inflammable and almost as light as hydrogen.</p>
+
+<p>Other uses of hydrogen besides ballooning have already been referred to
+in other chapters. It is combined with nitrogen to form synthetic
+ammonia. It is combined with oxygen in the oxy-hydrogen blowpipe to
+produce heat. It is combined with vegetable and animal oils to convert
+them into solid fats. There is also the possibility of using it as a
+fuel in the internal combustion engine in place of gasoline, but for
+this purpose we must find some way of getting hydrogen portable or
+producible in a compact form.</p>
+
+<p>Aluminum, like silicon, sodium and calcium, has been rescued by violence
+from its attachment to oxygen and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span>like these metals it reverts with
+readiness to its former affinity. Dr. Goldschmidt made use of this
+reaction in his thermit process. Powdered aluminum is mixed with iron
+oxide (rust). If the mixture is heated at any point a furious struggle
+takes place throughout the whole mass between the iron and the aluminum
+as to which metal shall get the oxygen, and the aluminum always comes
+out ahead. The temperature runs up to some 6000 degrees Fahrenheit
+within thirty seconds and the freed iron, completely liquefied, runs
+down into the bottom of the crucible, where it may be drawn off by
+opening a trap door. The newly formed aluminum oxide (alumina) floats as
+slag on top. The applications of the thermit process are innumerable.
+If, for instance, it is desired to mend a broken rail or crank shaft
+without moving it from its place, the two ends are brought together or
+fixed at the proper distance apart. A crucible filled with the thermit
+mixture is set up above the joint and the thermit ignited with a priming
+of aluminum and barium peroxide to start it off. The barium peroxide
+having a superabundance of oxygen gives it up readily and the aluminum
+thus encouraged attacks the iron oxide and robs it of its oxygen. As
+soon as the iron is melted it is run off through the bottom of the
+crucible and fills the space between the rail ends, being kept from
+spreading by a mold of refractory material such as magnesite. The two
+ends of the rail are therefore joined by a section of the same size,
+shape, substance and strength as themselves. The same process can be
+used for mending a fracture or supplying a missing fragment of a steel
+casting of any size, such as a ship's propeller or a cogwheel.</p>
+
+<p><a name="image_34" id="image_34"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 435px;">
+<img src="images/image303.jpg" width="435" height="256" alt="TYPES OF GAS MASK USED BY AMERICA, THE ALLIES, AND
+GERMANY DURING THE WAR" title="" />
+<span class="caption">TYPES OF GAS MASK USED BY AMERICA, THE ALLIES, AND
+GERMANY DURING THE WAR</span>
+</div>
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p><b>In the top row are the American masks, chronologically, from left to
+right: U.S. Navy mask (obsolete), U.S. Navy mask (final type), U.S. Army
+box respirator (used throughout the war), U.S.R.F.K. respirator,
+U.S.A.T. respirator (an all-rubber mask), U.S.K.T. respirator (a sewed
+fabric mask), and U.S. "Model 1919," ready for production when the
+armistice was signed. In the middle row, left to right, are: British
+veil (the original emergency mask used in April, 1915), British P.H.
+helmet (the next emergency mask), British box respirator (standard
+British army type), French M2 mask (original type), French Tissot
+artillery mask, and French A.R.S. mask (latest type). In the front row:
+the latest German mask, the Russian mask, Italian mask, British motor
+corps mask, U.S. rear area emergency respirator, and U.S. Connell mask</b></p>
+</div>
+
+<p><a name="image_35" id="image_35"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 423px;">
+<img src="images/image304a.jpg" width="423" height="310" alt="PUMPING MELTED WHITE PHOSPHORUS INTO HAND GRENADES
+FILLED WITH WATER&mdash;EDGEWOOD ARSENAL" title="" />
+<span class="caption">PUMPING MELTED WHITE PHOSPHORUS INTO HAND GRENADES
+FILLED WITH WATER&mdash;EDGEWOOD ARSENAL</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><a name="image_36" id="image_36"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 432px;">
+<img src="images/image304b.jpg" width="432" height="317" alt="FILLING SHELL WITH &quot;MUSTARD GAS&quot;" title="" />
+<span class="caption">FILLING SHELL WITH &quot;MUSTARD GAS&quot;</span>
+</div>
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p><b>Empty shells are being placed on small trucks to be run into the filling
+chamber. The large truck in the foreground contains loaded shell</b></p></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span>For smaller work thermit has two rivals, the oxy-acetylene torch and
+electric welding. The former has been described and the latter is rather
+out of the range of this volume, although I may mention that in the
+latter part of 1918 there was launched from a British shipyard the first
+rivotless steel vessel. In this the steel plates forming the shell,
+bulkheads and floors are welded instead of being fastened together by
+rivets. There are three methods of doing this depending upon the
+thickness of the plates and the sort of strain they are subject to. The
+plates may be overlapped and tacked together at intervals by pressing
+the two electrodes on opposite sides of the same point until the spot is
+sufficiently heated to fuse together the plates here. Or roller
+electrodes may be drawn slowly along the line of the desired weld,
+fusing the plates together continuously as they go. Or, thirdly, the
+plates may be butt-welded by being pushed together edge to edge without
+overlapping and the electric current being passed from one plate to the
+other heats up the joint where the conductivity is interrupted.</p>
+
+<p>It will be observed that the thermit process is essentially like the
+ordinary blast furnace process of smelting iron and other metals except
+that aluminum is used instead of carbon to take the oxygen away from the
+metal in the ore. This has an advantage in case carbon-free metals are
+desired and the process is used for producing manganese, tungsten,
+titanium, molybdenum, vanadium and their allows with iron and copper.</p>
+
+<p>During the war thermit found a new and terrible employment, as it was
+used by the airmen for setting buildings on fire and exploding
+ammunition dumps.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span> The German incendiary bombs consisted of a perforated
+steel nose-piece, a tail to keep it falling straight and a cylindrical
+body which contained a tube of thermit packed around with mineral wax
+containing potassium perchlorate. The fuse was ignited as the missile
+was released and the thermit, as it heated up, melted the wax and
+allowed it to flow out together with the liquid iron through the holes
+in the nose-piece. The American incendiary bombs were of a still more
+malignant type. They weighed about forty pounds apiece and were charged
+with oil emulsion, thermit and metallic sodium. Sodium decomposes water
+so that if any attempt were made to put out with a hose a fire started
+by one of these bombs the stream of water would be instantaneously
+changed into a jet of blazing hydrogen.</p>
+
+<p>Besides its use in combining and separating different elements the
+electric furnace is able to change a single element into its various
+forms. Carbon, for instance, is found in three very distinct forms: in
+hard, transparent and colorless crystals as the diamond, in black,
+opaque, metallic scales as graphite, and in shapeless masses and powder
+as charcoal, coke, lampblack, and the like. In the intense heat of the
+electric arc these forms are convertible one into the other according to
+the conditions. Since the third form is the cheapest the object is to
+change it into one of the other two. Graphite, plumbago or "blacklead,"
+as it is still sometimes called, is not found in many places and more
+rarely found pure. The supply was not equal to the demand until Acheson
+worked out the process of making it by packing powdered anthracite
+between the electrodes <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span>of his furnace. In this way graphite can be
+cheaply produced in any desired quantity and quality.</p>
+
+<p>Since graphite is infusible and incombustible except at exceedingly high
+temperatures, it is extensively used for crucibles and electrodes. These
+electrodes are made in all sizes for the various forms of electric lamps
+and furnaces from rods one-sixteenth of an inch in diameter to bars a
+foot thick and six feet long. It is graphite mixed with fine clay to
+give it the desired degree of hardness that forms the filling of our
+"lead" pencils. Finely ground and flocculent graphite treated with
+tannin may be held in suspension in liquids and even pass through
+filter-paper. The mixture with water is sold under the name of
+"aquadag," with oil as "oildag" and with grease as "gredag," for
+lubrication. The smooth, slippery scales of graphite in suspension slide
+over each other easily and keep the bearings from rubbing against each
+other.</p>
+
+<p>The other and more difficult metamorphosis of carbon, the transformation
+of charcoal into diamond, was successfully accomplished by Moissan in
+1894. Henri Moissan was a toxicologist, that is to say, a Professor of
+Poisoning, in the Paris School of Pharmacy, who took to experimenting
+with the electric furnace in his leisure hours and did more to
+demonstrate its possibilities than any other man. With it he isolated
+fluorine, most active of the elements, and he prepared for the first
+time in their purity many of the rare metals that have since found
+industrial employment. He also made the carbides of the various metals,
+including the now common calcium carbide. Among the problems that he
+undertook and solved was the manufacture of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span>artificial diamonds. He
+first made pure charcoal by burning sugar. This was packed with iron in
+the hollow of a block of lime into which extended from opposite sides
+the carbon rods connected to the dynamo. When the iron had melted and
+dissolved all the carbon it could, Moissan dumped it into water or
+better into melted lead or into a hole in a copper block, for this
+cooled it most rapidly. After a crust was formed it was left to solidify
+slowly. The sudden cooling of the iron on the outside subjected the
+carbon, which was held in solution, to intense pressure and when the bit
+of iron was dissolved in acid some of the carbon was found to be
+crystallized as diamond, although most of it was graphite. To be sure,
+the diamonds were hardly big enough to be seen with the naked eye, but
+since Moissan's aim was to make diamonds, not big diamonds, he ceased
+his efforts at this point.</p>
+
+<p>To produce large diamonds the carbon would have to be liquefied in
+considerable quantity and kept in that state while it slowly
+crystallized. But that could only be accomplished at a temperature and
+pressure and duration unattainable as yet. Under ordinary atmospheric
+pressure carbon passes over from the solid to the gaseous phase without
+passing through the liquid, just as snow on a cold, clear day will
+evaporate without melting.</p>
+
+<p>Probably some one in the future will take up the problem where Moissan
+dropped it and find out how to make diamonds of any size. But it is not
+a question that greatly interests either the scientist or the
+industrialist because there is not much to be learned from it and not
+much to be made out of it. If the inventor <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span>of a process for making
+cheap diamonds could keep his electric furnace secretly in his cellar
+and market his diamonds cautiously he might get rich out of it, but he
+would not dare to turn out very large stones or too many of them, for if
+a suspicion got around that he was making them the price would fall to
+almost nothing even if he did sell another one. For the high price of
+the diamond is purely fictitious. It is in the first place kept up by
+limiting the output of the natural stone by the combination of dealers
+and, further, the diamond is valued not for its usefulness or beauty but
+by its real or supposed rarity. Chesterton says: "All is gold that
+glitters, for the glitter is the gold." This is not so true of gold, for
+if gold were as cheap as nickel it would be very valuable, since we
+should gold-plate our machinery, our ships, our bridges and our roofs.
+But if diamonds were cheap they would be good for nothing except
+grindstones and drills. An imitation diamond made of heavy glass (paste)
+cannot be distinguished from the genuine gem except by an expert. It
+sparkles about as brilliantly, for its refractive index is nearly as
+high. The reason why it is not priced so highly is because the natural
+stone has presumably been obtained through the toil and sweat of
+hundreds of negroes searching in the blue ground of the Transvaal for
+many months. It is valued exclusively by its cost. To wear a diamond
+necklace is the same as hanging a certified check for $100,000 by a
+string around the neck.</p>
+
+<p>Real values are enhanced by reduction in the cost of the price of
+production. Fictitious values are destroyed by it. Aluminum at
+twenty-five cents a pound <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span>is immensely more valuable to the world than
+when it is a curiosity in the chemist's cabinet and priced at $160 a
+pound.</p>
+
+<p>So the scope of the electric furnace reaches from the costly but
+comparatively valueless diamond to the cheap but indispensable steel. As
+F.J. Tone says, if the automobile manufacturers were deprived of Niagara
+products, the abrasives, aluminum, acetylene for welding and high-speed
+tool steel, a factory now turning out five hundred cars a day would be
+reduced to one hundred. I have here been chiefly concerned with
+electricity as effecting chemical changes in combining or separating
+elements, but I must not omit to mention its rapidly extending use as a
+source of heat, as in the production and casting of steel. In 1908 there
+were only fifty-five tons of steel produced by the electric furnace in
+the United States, but by 1918 this had risen to 511,364 tons. And
+besides ordinary steel the electric furnace has given us alloys of iron
+with the once "rare metals" that have created a new science of
+metallurgy.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV"></a>CHAPTER XIV</h2>
+
+<h3>METALS, OLD AND NEW</h3>
+
+
+<p>The primitive metallurgist could only make use of such metals as he
+found free in nature, that is, such as had not been attacked and
+corroded by the ubiquitous oxygen. These were primarily gold or copper,
+though possibly some original genius may have happened upon a bit of
+meteoric iron and pounded it out into a sword. But when man found that
+the red ocher he had hitherto used only as a cosmetic could be made to
+yield iron by melting it with charcoal he opened a new era in
+civilization, though doubtless the ocher artists of that day denounced
+him as a utilitarian and deplored the decadence of the times.</p>
+
+<p>Iron is one of the most timid of metals. It has a great disinclination
+to be alone. It is also one of the most altruistic of the elements. It
+likes almost every other element better than itself. It has an especial
+affection for oxygen, and, since this is in both air and water, and
+these are everywhere, iron is not long without a mate. The result of
+this union goes by various names in the mineralogical and chemical
+worlds, but in common language, which is quite good enough for our
+purpose, it is called iron rust.</p>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 254px;">
+<img src="images/image312.jpg" width="254" height="430" alt="By courtesy Mineral Foote-Notes." title="" />
+<span class="caption">By courtesy Mineral Foote-Notes.</span>
+</div>
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p><b>From Agricola's "De Re Metallica 1550." Primitive furnace for smelting
+iron ore.</b></p>
+</div>
+<p>Not many of us have ever seen iron, the pure metal, soft, ductile and
+white like silver. As soon as it is exposed to the air it veils itself
+with a thin film of rust and becomes black and then red. For that reason
+there is practically no iron in the world except what man has made. It
+is rarer than gold, than diamonds; we find in the earth no nuggets or
+crystals of it the size of the fist as we find of these. But
+occasionally there fall down upon us out of the clear sky great chunks
+of it weighing tons. These meteorites are the mavericks of the universe.
+We do not know where they come from or what sun or planet they belonged
+to. They are our only visitors from space, and if all the other spheres
+are like these fragments we know <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span>we are alone in the universe. For they
+contain rustless iron, and where iron does not rust man cannot live, nor
+can any other animal or any plant.</p>
+
+<p>Iron rusts for the same reason that a stone rolls down hill, because it
+gets rid of its energy that way. All things in the universe are
+constantly trying to get rid of energy except man, who is always trying
+to get more of it. Or, on second thought, we see that man is the
+greatest spendthrift of all, for he wants to expend so much more energy
+than he has that he borrows from the winds, the streams and the coal in
+the rocks. He robs minerals and plants of the energy which they have
+stored up to spend for their own purposes, just as he robs the bee of
+its honey and the silk worm of its cocoon.</p>
+
+<p>Man's chief business is in reversing the processes of nature. That is
+the way he gets his living. And one of his greatest triumphs was when he
+discovered how to undo iron rust and get the metal out of it. In the
+four thousand years since he first did this he has accomplished more
+than in the millions of years before. Without knowing the value of iron
+rust man could attain only to the culture of the Aztecs and Incas, the
+ancient Egyptians and Assyrians.</p>
+
+<p>The prosperity of modern states is dependent on the amount of iron rust
+which they possess and utilize. England, United States, Germany, all
+nations are competing to see which can dig the most iron rust out of the
+ground and make out of it railroads, bridges, buildings, machinery,
+battleships and such other tools and toys and then let them relapse into
+rust again. Civilization can be measured by the amount of iron rusted
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span>per capita, or better, by the amount rescued from rust.</p>
+
+<p>But we are devoting so much space to the consideration of the material
+aspects of iron that we are like to neglect its esthetic and ethical
+uses. The beauty of nature is very largely dependent upon the fact that
+iron rust and, in fact, all the common compounds of iron are colored.
+Few elements can assume so many tints. Look at the paint pot ca&ntilde;ons of
+the Yellowstone. Cheap glass bottles turn out brown, green, blue, yellow
+or black, according to the amount and kind of iron they contain. We
+build a house of cream-colored brick, varied with speckled brick and
+adorned with terra cotta ornaments of red, yellow and green, all due to
+iron. Iron rusts, therefore it must be painted; but what is there better
+to paint it with than iron rust itself? It is cheap and durable, for it
+cannot rust any more than a dead man can die. And what is also of
+importance, it is a good, strong, clean looking, endurable color.
+Whenever we take a trip on the railroad and see the miles of cars, the
+acres of roofing and wall, the towns full of brick buildings, we rejoice
+that iron rust is red, not white or some leas satisfying color.</p>
+
+<p>We do not know why it is so. Zinc and aluminum are metals very much like
+iron in chemical properties, but all their salts are colorless. Why is
+it that the most useful of the metals forms the most beautiful
+compounds? Some say, Providence; some say, chance; some say nothing. But
+if it had not been so we would have lost most of the beauty of rocks and
+trees and human beings. For the leaves and the flowers would all be
+white, and all the men and women would look like walking corpses.
+Without color in the flower what <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span>would the bees and painters do? If all
+the grass and trees were white, it would be like winter all the year
+round. If we had white blood in our veins like some of the insects it
+would be hard lines for our poets. And what would become of our morality
+if we could not blush?</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"As for me, I thrill to see</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">The bloom a velvet cheek discloses!</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Made of dust! I well believe it,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">So are lilies, so are roses."</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>An etiolated earth would be hardly worth living in.</p>
+
+<p>The chlorophyll of the leaves and the hemoglobin of the blood are
+similar in constitution. Chlorophyll contains magnesium in place of iron
+but iron is necessary to its formation. We all know how pale a plant
+gets if its soil is short of iron. It is the iron in the leaves that
+enables the plants to store up the energy of the sunshine for their own
+use and ours. It is the iron in our blood that enables us to get the
+iron out of iron rust and make it into machines to supplement our feeble
+hands. Iron is for us internally the carrier of energy, just as in the
+form of a trolley wire or of a third rail it conveys power to the
+electric car. Withdraw the iron from the blood as indicated by the
+pallor of the cheeks, and we become weak, faint and finally die. If the
+amount of iron in the blood gets too small the disease germs that are
+always attacking us are no longer destroyed, but multiply without check
+and conquer us. When the iron ceases to work efficiently we are killed
+by the poison we ourselves generate.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span>Counting the number of iron-bearing corpuscles in the blood is now a
+common method of determining disease. It might also be useful in moral
+diagnosis. A microscopical and chemical laboratory attached to the
+courtroom would give information of more value than some of the evidence
+now obtained. For the anemic and the florid vices need very different
+treatment. An excess or a deficiency of iron in the body is liable to
+result in criminality. A chemical system of morals might be developed on
+this basis. Among the ferruginous sins would be placed murder, violence
+and licentiousness. Among the non-ferruginous, cowardice, sloth and
+lying. The former would be mostly sins of commission, the latter, sins
+of omission. The virtues could, of course, be similarly classified; the
+ferruginous virtues would include courage, self-reliance and
+hopefulness; the non-ferruginous, peaceableness, meekness and chastity.
+According to this ethical criterion the moral man would be defined as
+one whose conduct is better than we should expect from the per cent. of
+iron in his blood.</p>
+
+<p>The reason why iron is able to serve this unique purpose of conveying
+life-giving air to all parts of the body is because it rusts so readily.
+Oxidation and de-oxidation proceed so quietly that the tenderest cells
+are fed without injury. The blood changes from red to blue and <i>vice
+versa</i> with greater ease and rapidity than in the corresponding
+alternations of social status in a democracy. It is because iron is so
+rustable that it is so useful. The factories with big scrap-heaps of
+rusting machinery are making the most money. The pyramids are the most
+enduring structures raised by <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span>the hand of man, but they have not
+sheltered so many people in their forty centuries as our skyscrapers
+that are already rusting.</p>
+
+<p>We have to carry on this eternal conflict against rust because oxygen is
+the most ubiquitous of the elements and iron can only escape its ardent
+embraces by hiding away in the center of the earth. The united elements,
+known to the chemist as iron oxide and to the outside world as rust, are
+among the commonest of compounds and their colors, yellow and red like
+the Spanish flag, are displayed on every mountainside. From the time of
+Tubal Cain man has ceaselessly labored to divorce these elements and,
+having once separated them, to keep them apart so that the iron may be
+retained in his service. But here, as usual, man is fighting against
+nature and his gains, as always, are only temporary. Sooner or later his
+vigilance is circumvented and the metal that he has extricated by the
+fiery furnace returns to its natural affinity. The flint arrowheads, the
+bronze spearpoints, the gold ornaments, the wooden idols of prehistoric
+man are still to be seen in our museums, but his earliest steel swords
+have long since crumbled into dust.</p>
+
+<p>Every year the blast furnaces of the world release 72,000,000 tons of
+iron from its oxides and every year a large part, said to be a quarter
+of that amount, reverts to its primeval forms. If so, then man after
+five thousand years of metallurgical industry has barely got three years
+ahead of nature, and should he cease his efforts for a generation there
+would be little left to show that man had ever learned to extract iron
+from its ores. The old question, "What becomes of all the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span>pins?" may be
+as well asked of rails, pipes and threshing machines. The end of all
+iron is the same. However many may be its metamorphoses while in the
+service of man it relapses at last into its original state of oxidation.
+To save a pound of iron from corrosion is then as much a benefit to the
+world as to produce another pound from the ore. In fact it is of much
+greater benefit, for it takes four pounds of coal to produce one pound
+of steel, so whenever a piece of iron is allowed to oxidize it means
+that four times as much coal must be oxidized in order to replace it.
+And the beds of coal will be exhausted before the beds of iron ore.</p>
+
+<p>If we are ever to get ahead, if we are to gain any respite from this
+enormous waste of labor and natural resources, we must find ways of
+preventing the iron which we have obtained and fashioned into useful
+tools from being lost through oxidation. Now there is only one way of
+keeping iron and oxygen from uniting and that is to keep them apart. A
+very thin dividing wall will serve for the purpose, for instance, a film
+of oil. But ordinary oil will rub off, so it is better to cover the
+surface with an oil-like linseed which oxidizes to a hard elastic and
+adhesive coating. If with linseed oil we mix iron oxide or some other
+pigment we have a paint that will protect iron perfectly so long as it
+is unbroken. But let the paint wear off or crack so that air can get at
+the iron, then rust will form and spread underneath the paint on all
+sides. The same is true of the porcelain-like enamel with which our
+kitchen iron ware is nowadays coated. So long as the enamel holds it is
+all right but once it is broken through at any point it begins to scale
+off and gets into our food.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span>Obviously it would be better for some purposes if we could coat our
+iron with another and less easily oxidized metal than with such
+dissimilar substances as paint or porcelain. Now the nearest relative to
+iron is nickel, and a layer of this of any desired thickness may be
+easily deposited by electricity upon any surface however irregular.
+Nickel takes a bright polish and keeps it well, so nickel plating has
+become the favorite method of protection for small objects where the
+expense is not prohibitive. Copper plating is used for fine wires. A
+sheet of iron dipped in melted tin comes out coated with a thin adhesive
+layer of the latter metal. Such tinned plate commonly known as "tin" has
+become the favorite material for pans and cans. But if the tin is
+scratched the iron beneath rusts more rapidly than if the tin were not
+there, for an electrolytic action is set up and the iron, being the
+negative element of the couple, suffers at the expense of the tin.</p>
+
+<p>With zinc it is quite the opposite. Zinc is negative toward iron, so
+when the two are in contact and exposed to the weather the zinc is
+oxidized first. A zinc plating affords the protection of a Swiss Guard,
+it holds out as long as possible and when broken it perishes to the last
+atom before it lets the oxygen get at the iron. The zinc may be applied
+in four different ways. (1) It may be deposited by electrolysis as in
+nickel plating, but the zinc coating is more apt to be porous. (2) The
+sheets or articles may be dipped in a bath of melted zinc. This gives us
+the familiar "galvanized iron," the most useful and when well done the
+most effective of rust preventives. Besides these older methods of
+applying zinc there are now two new ones. (3) One <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span>is the Schoop process
+by which a wire of zinc or other metal is fed into an oxy-hydrogen air
+blast of such heat and power that it is projected as a spray of minute
+drops with the speed of bullets and any object subjected to the
+bombardment of this metallic mist receives a coating as thick as
+desired. The zinc spray is so fine and cool that it may be received on
+cloth, lace, or the bare hand. The Schoop metallizing process has
+recently been improved by the use of the electric current instead of the
+blowpipe for melting the metal. Two zinc wires connected with any
+electric system, preferably the direct, are fed into the "pistol." Where
+the wires meet an electric arc is set up and the melted zinc is sprayed
+out by a jet of compressed air. (4) In the Sherardizing process the
+articles are put into a tight drum with zinc dust and heated to 800&deg; F.
+The zinc at this temperature attacks the iron and forms a series of
+alloys ranging from pure zinc on the top to pure iron at the bottom of
+the coating. Even if this cracks in part the iron is more or less
+protected from corrosion so long as any zinc remains. Aluminum is used
+similarly in the calorizing process for coating iron, copper or brass.
+First a surface alloy is formed by heating the metal with aluminum
+powder. Then the temperature is raised to a high degree so as to cause
+the aluminum on the surface to diffuse into the metal and afterwards it
+is again baked in contact with aluminum dust which puts upon it a
+protective plating of the pure aluminum which does not oxidize.</p>
+
+<p><a name="image_37" id="image_37"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 436px;">
+<img src="images/image321.jpg" width="436" height="275" alt="PHOTOMICROGRAPHS SHOWING THE STRUCTURE OF STEEL MADE BY
+PROFESSOR E.G. MARTIN OF PURDUE UNIVERSITY" title="" />
+<span class="caption">PHOTOMICROGRAPHS SHOWING THE STRUCTURE OF STEEL MADE BY
+PROFESSOR E.G. MARTIN OF PURDUE UNIVERSITY</span>
+</div>
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p><b>1. Cold-worked steel showing ferrite and sorbite (enlarged 500 times)</b></p>
+
+<p><b>2. Steel showing pearlite crystals (enlarged 500 times)</b></p>
+
+<p><b>3. Structure characteristic of air-cooled steel (enlarged 50 times)</b></p>
+
+<p><b>4. The triangular structure characteristic of cast steel showing ferrite
+and pearlite (enlarged 50 times)</b></p>
+</div>
+
+<p><a name="image_38" id="image_38"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 440px;">
+<img src="images/image322.jpg" width="440" height="280" alt="Courtesy of E.G. Mahin" title="" />
+<span class="caption">Courtesy of E.G. Mahin</span>
+</div>
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p><b>THE MICROSCOPIC STRUCTURE OF METALS</b></p>
+
+<p><b>1. Malleabilized casting; temper carbon in ferrite (enlarged 50 times)</b></p>
+
+<p><b>2. Type metal; lead-antimony alloy in matrix of lead (enlarged 100
+times)</b></p>
+
+<p><b>3. Gray cast iron; carbon as graphite (enlarged 500 times)</b></p>
+
+<p><b>4. Steel composed of cementite (white) and pearlite (black) (enlarged 50
+times)</b></p></div>
+
+<p>Another way of protecting iron ware from rusting is to rust it. This is
+a sort of prophylactic method like that adopted by modern medicine where
+inoculation<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span> with a mild culture prevents a serious attack of the
+disease. The action of air and water on iron forms a series of compounds
+and mixtures of them. Those that contain least oxygen are hard, black
+and magnetic like iron itself. Those that have most oxygen are red and
+yellow powders. By putting on a tight coating of the black oxide we can
+prevent or hinder the oxidation from going on into the pulverulent
+stage. This is done in several ways. In the Bower-Barff process the
+articles to be treated are put into a closed retort and a current of
+superheated steam passed through for twenty minutes followed by a
+current of producer gas (carbon monoxide), to reduce any higher oxides
+that may have been formed. In the Gesner process a current of gasoline
+vapor is used as the reducing agent. The blueing of watch hands, buckles
+and the like may be done by dipping them into an oxidizing bath such as
+melted saltpeter. But in order to afford complete protection the layer
+of black oxide must be thickened by repeating the process which adds to
+the time and expense. This causes a slight enlargement and the high
+temperature often warps the ware so it is not suitable for nicely
+adjusted parts of machinery and of course tools would lose their temper
+by the heat.</p>
+
+<p>A new method of rust proofing which is free from these disadvantages is
+the phosphate process invented by Thomas Watts Coslett, an English
+chemist, in 1907, and developed in America by the Parker Company of
+Detroit. This consists simply in dipping the sheet iron or articles into
+a tank filled with a dilute solution of iron phosphate heated nearly to
+the boiling point by steam pipes. Bubbles of hydrogen stream off rapidly
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span>at first, then slower, and at the end of half an hour or longer the
+action ceases, and the process is complete. What has happened is that
+the iron has been converted into a basic iron phosphate to a depth
+depending upon the density of articles processed. Any one who has
+studied elementary qualitative analysis will remember that when he added
+ammonia to his "unknown" solution, iron and phosphoric acid, if present,
+were precipitated together, or in other words, iron phosphate is
+insoluble except in acids. Therefore a superficial film of such
+phosphate will protect the iron underneath except from acids. This film
+is not a coating added on the outside like paint and enamel or tin and
+nickel plate. It is therefore not apt to scale off and it does not
+increase the size of the article. No high heat is required as in the
+Sherardizing and Bower-Barff processes, so steel tools can be treated
+without losing their temper or edge.</p>
+
+<p>The deposit consisting of ferrous and ferric phosphates mixed with black
+iron oxide may be varied in composition, texture and color. It is
+ordinarily a dull gray and oiling gives a soft mat black more in
+accordance with modern taste than the shiny nickel plating that
+delighted our fathers. Even the military nowadays show more quiet taste
+than formerly and have abandoned their glittering accoutrements.</p>
+
+<p>The phosphate bath is not expensive and can be used continuously for
+months by adding more of the concentrated solution to keep up the
+strength and removing the sludge that is precipitated. Besides the iron
+the solution contains the phosphates of other metals such as calcium or
+strontium, manganese, molybdenum, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span>or tungsten, according to the
+particular purpose. Since the phosphating solution does not act on
+nickel it may be used on articles that have been partly nickel-plated so
+there may be produced, for instance, a bright raised design against a
+dull black background. Then, too, the surface left by the Parker process
+is finely etched so it affords a good attachment for paint or enamel if
+further protection is needed. Even if the enamel does crack, the iron
+beneath is not so apt to rust and scale off the coating.</p>
+
+<p>These, then, are some of the methods which are now being used to combat
+our eternal enemy, the rust that doth corrupt. All of them are useful in
+their several ways. No one of them is best for all purposes. The claim
+of "rust-proof" is no more to be taken seriously than "fire-proof." We
+should rather, if we were finical, have to speak of "rust-resisting"
+coatings as we do of "slow-burning" buildings. Nature is insidious and
+unceasing in her efforts to bring to ruin the achievements of mankind
+and we need all the weapons we can find to frustrate her destructive
+determination.</p>
+
+<p>But it is not enough for us to make iron superficially resistant to rust
+from the atmosphere. We should like also to make it so that it would
+withstand corrosion by acids, then it could be used in place of the
+large and expensive platinum or porcelain evaporating pans and similar
+utensils employed in chemical works. This requirement also has been met
+in the non-corrosive forms of iron, which have come into use within the
+last five years. One of these, "tantiron," invented by a British
+metallurgist, Robert N. Lennox, in 1912, contains<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span> 15 per cent. of
+silicon. Similar products are known as "duriron" and "Buflokast" in
+America, "metilure" in France, "ileanite" in Italy and "neutraleisen" in
+Germany. It is a silvery-white close-grained iron, very hard and rather
+brittle, somewhat like cast iron but with silicon as the main additional
+ingredient in place of carbon. It is difficult to cut or drill but may
+be ground into shape by the new abrasives. It is rustproof and is not
+attacked by sulfuric, nitric or acetic acid, hot or cold, diluted or
+concentrated. It does not resist so well hydrochloric acid or sulfur
+dioxide or alkalies.</p>
+
+<p>The value of iron lies in its versatility. It is a dozen metals in one.
+It can be made hard or soft, brittle or malleable, tough or weak,
+resistant or flexible, elastic or pliant, magnetic or non-magnetic, more
+or less conductive to electricity, by slight changes of composition or
+mere differences of treatment. No wonder that the medieval mind ascribed
+these mysterious transformations to witchcraft. But the modern
+micrometallurgist, by etching the surface of steel and photographing it,
+shows it up as composite as a block of granite. He is then able to pick
+out its component minerals, ferrite, austenite, martensite, pearlite,
+graphite, cementite, and to show how their abundance, shape and
+arrangement contribute to the strength or weakness of the specimen. The
+last of these constituents, cementite, is a definite chemical compound,
+an iron carbide, Fe<sub>3</sub>C, containing 6.6 per cent. of carbon, so hard as
+to scratch glass, very brittle, and imparting these properties to
+hardened steel and cast iron.</p>
+
+<p>With this knowledge at his disposal the iron-maker <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span>can work with his
+eyes open and so regulate his melt as to cause these various
+constituents to crystallize out as he wants them to. Besides, he is no
+longer confined to the alloys of iron and carbon. He has ransacked the
+chemical dictionary to find new elements to add to his alloys, and some
+of these rarities have proved to possess great practical value.
+Vanadium, for instance, used to be put into a fine print paragraph in
+the back of the chemistry book, where the class did not get to it until
+the term closed. Yet if it had not been for vanadium steel we should
+have no Ford cars. Tungsten, too, was relegated to the rear, and if the
+student remembered it at all it was because it bothered him to
+understand why its symbol should be W instead of T. But the student of
+today studies his lesson in the light of a tungsten wire and relieves
+his mind by listening to a phonograph record played with a "tungs-tone"
+stylus. When I was assistant in chemistry an "analysis" of steel
+consisted merely in the determination of its percentage of carbon, and I
+used to take Saturday for it so I could have time enough to complete the
+combustion. Now the chemists of a steel works' laboratory may have to
+determine also the tungsten, chromium, vanadium, titanium, nickel,
+cobalt, phosphorus, molybdenum, manganese, silicon and sulfur, any or
+all of them, and be spry about it, because if they do not get the report
+out within fifteen minutes while the steel is melting in the electrical
+furnace the whole batch of 75 tons may go wrong. I'm glad I quit the
+laboratory before they got to speeding up chemists so.</p>
+
+<p>The quality of the steel depends upon the presence and the relative
+proportions of these ingredients, and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span>a variation of a tenth of 1 per
+cent. in certain of them will make a different metal out of it. For
+instance, the steel becomes stronger and tougher as the proportion of
+nicked is increased up to about 15 per cent. Raising the percentage to
+25 we get an alloy that does not rust or corrode and is non-magnetic,
+although both its component metals, iron and nickel, are by themselves
+attracted by the magnet. With 36 per cent. nickel and 5 per cent.
+manganese we get the alloy known as "invar," because it expands and
+contracts very little with changes of temperature. A bar of the best
+form of invar will expand less than one-millionth part of its length for
+a rise of one degree Centigrade at ordinary atmospheric temperature. For
+this reason it is used in watches and measuring instruments. The alloy
+of iron with 46 per cent. nickel is called "platinite" because its rate
+of expansion and contraction is the same as platinum and glass, and so
+it can be used to replace the platinum wire passing through the glass of
+an electric light bulb.</p>
+
+<p>A manganese steel of 11 to 14 per cent. is too hard to be machined. It
+has to be cast or ground into shape and is used for burglar-proof safes
+and armor plate. Chrome steel is also hard and tough and finds use in
+files, ball bearings and projectiles. Titanium, which the iron-maker
+used to regard as his implacable enemy, has been drafted into service as
+a deoxidizer, increasing the strength and elasticity of the steel. It is
+reported from France that the addition of three-tenths of 1 per cent. of
+zirconium to nickel steel has made it more resistant to the German
+perforating bullets than <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span>any steel hitherto known. The new "stainless"
+cutlery contains 12 to 14 per cent. of chromium.</p>
+
+<p>With the introduction of harder steels came the need of tougher tools to
+work them. Now the virtue of a good tool steel is the same as of a good
+man. It must be able to get hot without losing its temper. Steel of the
+old-fashioned sort, as everybody knows, gets its temper by being heated
+to redness and suddenly cooled by quenching or plunging it into water or
+oil. But when the point gets heated up again, as it does by friction in
+a lathe, it softens and loses its cutting edge. So the necessity of
+keeping the tool cool limited the speed of the machine.</p>
+
+<p>But about 1868 a Sheffield metallurgist, Robert F. Mushet, found that a
+piece of steel he was working with did not require quenching to harden
+it. He had it analyzed to discover the meaning of this peculiarity and
+learned that it contained tungsten, a rare metal unrecognized in the
+metallurgy of that day. Further investigation showed that steel to which
+tungsten and manganese or chromium had been added was tougher and
+retained its temper at high temperature better than ordinary carbon
+steel. Tools made from it could be worked up to a white heat without
+losing their cutting power. The new tools of this type invented by
+"Efficiency" Taylor at the Bethlehem Steel Works in the nineties have
+revolutionized shop practice the world over. A tool of the old sort
+could not cut at a rate faster than thirty feet a minute without
+overheating, but the new tungsten tools will plow through steel ten
+times as fast and can cut away a ton of the material in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span>an hour. By
+means of these high-speed tools the United States was able to turn out
+five times the munitions that it could otherwise have done in the same
+time. On the other hand, if Germany alone had possessed the secret of
+the modern steels no power could have withstood her. A slight
+superiority in metallurgy has been the deciding factor in many a battle.
+Those of my readers who have had the advantages of Sunday school
+training will recall the case described in I Samuel 13:19-22.</p>
+
+<p>By means of these new metals armor plate has been made
+invulnerable&mdash;except to projectiles pointed with similar material.
+Flying has been made possible through engines weighing no more than two
+pounds per horse power. The cylinders of combustion engines and the
+casing of cannon have been made to withstand the unprecedented pressure
+and corrosive action of the fiery gases evolved within. Castings are
+made so hard that they cannot be cut&mdash;save with tools of the same sort.
+In the high-speed tools now used 20 or 30 per cent, of the iron is
+displaced by other ingredients; for example, tungsten from 14 to 25 per
+cent., chromium from 2 to 7 per cent., vanadium from 1/2 to 1-1/2 per
+cent., carbon from 6 to 8 per cent., with perhaps cobalt up to 4 per
+cent. Molybdenum or uranium may replace part of the tungsten.</p>
+
+<p>Some of the newer alloys for high-speed tools contain no iron at all.
+That which bears the poetic name of star-stone, stellite, is composed of
+chromium, cobalt and tungsten in varying proportions. Stellite keeps a
+hard cutting edge and gets tougher as it gets hotter. It is very hard
+and as good for jewelry as platinum <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span>except that it is not so expensive.
+Cooperite, its rival, is an alloy of nickel and zirconium, stronger,
+lighter and cheaper than stellite.</p>
+
+<p>Before the war nearly half of the world's supply of tungsten ore
+(wolframite) came from Burma. But although Burma had belonged to the
+British for a hundred years they had not developed its mineral resources
+and the tungsten trade was monopolized by the Germans. All the ore was
+shipped to Germany and the British Admiralty was content to buy from the
+Germans what tungsten was needed for armor plate and heavy guns. When
+the war broke out the British had the ore supply, but were unable at
+first to work it because they were not familiar with the processes.
+Germany, being short of tungsten, had to sneak over a little from
+Baltimore in the submarine <i>Deutschland</i>. In the United States before
+the war tungsten ore was selling at $6.50 a unit, but by the beginning
+of 1916 it had jumped to $85 a unit. A unit is 1 per cent. of tungsten
+trioxide to the ton, that is, twenty pounds. Boulder County, Colorado,
+and San Bernardino, California, then had mining booms, reminding one of
+older times. Between May and December, 1918, there was manufactured in
+the United States more than 45,500,000 pounds of tungsten steel
+containing some 8,000,000 pounds of tungsten.</p>
+
+<p>If tungsten ores were more abundant and the metal more easily
+manipulated, it would displace steel for many purposes. It is harder
+than steel or even quartz. It never rusts and is insoluble in acids. Its
+expansion by heat is one-third that of iron. It is more than twice as
+heavy as iron and its melting point is twice as high.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span> Its electrical
+resistance is half that of iron and its tensile strength is a third
+greater than the strongest steel. It can be worked into wire .0002 of an
+inch in diameter, almost too thin to be seen, but as strong as copper
+wire ten times the size.</p>
+
+<p>The tungsten wires in the electric lamps are about .03 of an inch in
+diameter, and they give three times the light for the same consumption
+of electricity as the old carbon filament. The American manufacturers of
+the tungsten bulb have very appropriately named their lamp "Mazda" after
+the light god of the Zoroastrians. To get the tungsten into wire form
+was a problem that long baffled the inventors of the world, for it was
+too refractory to be melted in mass and too brittle to be drawn. Dr.
+W.D. Coolidge succeeded in accomplishing the feat in 1912 by reducing
+the tungstic acid by hydrogen and molding the metallic powder into a bar
+by pressure. This is raised to a white heat in the electric furnace,
+taken out and rolled down, and the process repeated some fifty times,
+until the wire is small enough so it can be drawn at a red heat through
+diamond dies of successively smaller apertures.</p>
+
+<p>The German method of making the lamp filaments is to squirt a mixture of
+tungsten powder and thorium oxide through a perforated diamond of the
+desired diameter. The filament so produced is drawn through a chamber
+heated to 2500&deg; C. at a velocity of eight feet an hour, which
+crystallizes the tungsten into a continuous thread.</p>
+
+<p>The first metallic filament used in the electric light on a commercial
+scale was made of tantalum, the metal of Tantalus. In the period
+1905-1911 over 100,000,000 <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span>tantalus lamps were sold, but tungsten
+displaced them as soon as that metal could be drawn into wire.</p>
+
+<p>A recent rival of tungsten both as a filament for lamps and hardener for
+steel is molybdenum. One pound of this metal will impart more resiliency
+to steel than three or four pounds of tungsten. The molybdenum steel,
+because it does not easily crack, is said to be serviceable for
+armor-piercing shells, gun linings, air-plane struts, automobile axles
+and propeller shafts. In combination with its rival as a
+tungsten-molybdenum alloy it is capable of taking the place of the
+intolerably expensive platinum, for it resists corrosion when used for
+spark plugs and tooth plugs. European steel men have taken to molybdenum
+more than Americans. The salts of this metal can be used in dyeing and
+photography.</p>
+
+<p>Calcium, magnesium and aluminum, common enough in their compounds, have
+only come into use as metals since the invention of the electric
+furnace. Now the photographer uses magnesium powder for his flashlight
+when he wants to take a picture of his friends inside the house, and the
+aviator uses it when he wants to take a picture of his enemies on the
+open field. The flares prepared by our Government for the war consist of
+a sheet iron cylinder, four feet long and six inches thick, containing a
+stick of magnesium attached to a tightly rolled silk parachute twenty
+feet in diameter when expanded. The whole weighed 32 pounds. On being
+dropped from the plane by pressing a button, the rush of air set
+spinning a pinwheel at the bottom which ignited the magnesium stick and
+detonated a charge of black powder sufficient to throw off the case and
+release <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span>the parachute. The burning flare gave off a light of 320,000
+candle power lasting for ten minutes as the parachute slowly descended.
+This illuminated the ground on the darkest night sufficiently for the
+airman to aim his bombs or to take photographs.</p>
+
+<p>The addition of 5 or 10 per cent. of magnesium to aluminum gives an
+alloy (magnalium) that is almost as light as aluminum and almost as
+strong as steel. An alloy of 90 per cent. aluminum and 10 per cent.
+calcium is lighter and harder than aluminum and more resistant to
+corrosion. The latest German airplane, the "Junker," was made entirely
+of duralumin. Even the wings were formed of corrugated sheets of this
+alloy instead of the usual doped cotton-cloth. Duralumin is composed of
+about 85 per cent. of aluminum, 5 per cent. of copper, 5 per cent. of
+zinc and 2 per cent. of tin.</p>
+
+<p>When platinum was first discovered it was so cheap that ingots of it
+were gilded and sold as gold bricks to unwary purchasers. The Russian
+Government used it as we use nickel, for making small coins. But this is
+an exception to the rule that the demand creates the supply. Platinum is
+really a "rare metal," not merely an unfamiliar one. Nowhere except in
+the Urals is it found in quantity, and since it seems indispensable in
+chemical and electrical appliances, the price has continually gone up.
+Russia collapsed into chaos just when the war work made the heaviest
+demand for platinum, so the governments had to put a stop to its use for
+jewelry and photography. The "gold brick" scheme would now have to be
+reversed, for gold is used as a cheaper metal to "adulterate" platinum.
+All the members <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span>of the platinum family, formerly ignored, were pressed
+into service, palladium, rhodium, osmium, iridium, and these, alloyed
+with gold or silver, were employed more or less satisfactorily by the
+dentist, chemist and electrician as substitutes for the platinum of
+which they had been deprived. One of these alloys, composed of 20 per
+cent. palladium and 80 per cent. gold, and bearing the telescoped name
+of "palau" (palladium au-rum) makes very acceptable crucibles for the
+laboratory and only costs half as much as platinum. "Rhotanium" is a
+similar alloy recently introduced. The points of our gold pens are
+tipped with an osmium-iridium alloy. It is a pity that this family of
+noble metals is so restricted, for they are unsurpassed in tenacity and
+incorruptibility. They could be of great service to the world in war and
+peace. As the "Bad Child" says in his "Book of Beasts":</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I shoot the hippopotamus with bullets made of platinum,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Because if I use leaden ones, his hide is sure to flatten 'em.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Along in the latter half of the last century chemists had begun to
+perceive certain regularities and relationships among the various
+elements, so they conceived the idea that some sort of a pigeon-hole
+scheme might be devised in which the elements could be filed away in the
+order of their atomic weights so that one could see just how a certain
+element, known or unknown, would behave from merely observing its
+position in the series. Mendel&eacute;ef, a Russian chemist, devised the most
+ingenious of such systems called the "periodic law" and gave proof that
+there was something in his theory by <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span>predicting the properties of three
+metallic elements, then unknown but for which his arrangement showed
+three empty pigeon-holes. Sixteen years later all three of these
+predicted elements had been discovered, one by a Frenchman, one by a
+German and one by a Scandinavian, and named from patriotic impulse,
+gallium, germanium and scandium. This was a triumph of scientific
+prescience as striking as the mathematical proof of the existence of the
+planet Neptune by Leverrier before it had been found by the telescope.</p>
+
+<p>But although Mendel&eacute;ef's law told "the truth," it gradually became
+evident that it did not tell "the whole truth and nothing but the
+truth," as the lawyers put it. As usually happens in the history of
+science the hypothesis was found not to explain things so simply and
+completely as was at first assumed. The anomalies in the arrangement did
+not disappear on closer study, but stuck out more conspicuously. Though
+Mendel&eacute;ef had pointed out three missing links, he had failed to make
+provision for a whole group of elements since discovered, the inert
+gases of the helium-argon group. As we now know, the scheme was built
+upon the false assumptions that the elements are immutable and that
+their atomic weights are invariable.</p>
+
+<p>The elements that the chemists had most difficulty in sorting out and
+identifying were the heavy metals found in the "rare earths." There were
+about twenty of them so mixed up together and so much alike as to baffle
+all ordinary means of separating them. For a hundred years chemists
+worked over them and quarreled over them before they discovered that
+they had a commercial value. It was a problem as remote from
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span>practicality as any that could be conceived. The man in the street did
+not see why chemists should care whether there were two didymiums any
+more than why theologians should care whether there were two Isaiahs.
+But all of a sudden, in 1885, the chemical puzzle became a business
+proposition. The rare earths became household utensils and it made a big
+difference with our monthly gas bills whether the ceria and the thoria
+in the burner mantles were absolutely pure or contained traces of some
+of the other elements that were so difficult to separate.</p>
+
+<p>This sudden change of venue from pure to applied science came about
+through a Viennese chemist, Dr. Carl Auer, later and in consequence
+known as Baron Auer von Welsbach. He was trying to sort out the rare
+earths by means of the spectroscopic method, which consists ordinarily
+in dipping a platinum wire into a solution of the unknown substance and
+holding it in a colorless gas flame. As it burns off, each element gives
+a characteristic color to the flame, which is seen as a series of lines
+when looked at through the spectroscope. But the flash of the flame from
+the platinum wire was too brief to be studied, so Dr. Auer hit upon the
+plan of soaking a thread in the liquid and putting this in the gas jet.
+The cotton of course burned off at once, but the earths held together
+and when heated gave off a brilliant white light, very much like the
+calcium or limelight which is produced by heating a stick of quicklime
+in the oxy-hydrogen flame. But these rare earths do not require any such
+intense heat as that, for they will glow in an ordinary gas jet.</p>
+
+<p>So the Welsbach mantle burner came into use everywhere <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span>and rescued the
+coal gas business from the destruction threatened by the electric light.
+It was no longer necessary to enrich the gas with oil to make its flame
+luminous, for a cheaper fuel gas such as is used for a gas stove will
+give, with a mantle, a fine white light of much higher candle power than
+the ordinary gas jet. The mantles are knit in narrow cylinders on
+machines, cut off at suitable lengths, soaked in a solution of the salts
+of the rare earths and dried. Artificial silk (viscose) has been found
+better than cotton thread for the mantles, for it is solid, not hollow,
+more uniform in quality and continuous instead of being broken up into
+one-inch fibers. There is a great deal of difference in the quality of
+these mantles, as every one who has used them knows. Some that give a
+bright glow at first with the gas-cock only half open will soon break up
+or grow dull and require more gas to get any kind of a light out of
+them. Others will last long and grow better to the last. Slight
+impurities in the earths or the gas will speedily spoil the light. The
+best results are obtained from a mixture of 99 parts thoria and 1 part
+ceria. It is the ceria that gives the light, yet a little more of it
+will lower the luminosity.</p>
+
+<p>The non-chemical reader is apt to be confused by the strange names and
+their varied terminations, but he need not be when he learns that the
+new metals are given names ending in <i>-um</i>, such as sodium, cerium,
+thorium, and that their oxides (compounds with oxygen, the earths) are
+given the termination <i>-a</i>, like soda, ceria, thoria. So when he sees a
+name ending in <i>-um</i> let him picture to himself a metal, any metal since
+they mostly look alike, lead or silver, for example. And when he <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span>comes
+across a name ending in <i>-a</i> he may imagine a white powder like lime.
+Thorium, for instance, is, as its name implies, a metal named after the
+thunder god Thor, to whom we dedicate one day in each week, Thursday.
+Cerium gets its name from the Roman goddess of agriculture by way of the
+asteroid.</p>
+
+<p>The chief sources of the material for the Welsbach burners is monazite,
+a glittering yellow sand composed of phosphate of cerium with some 5 per
+cent. of thorium. In 1916 the United States imported 2,500,000 pounds of
+monazite from Brazil and India, most of which used to go to Germany. In
+1895 we got over a million and a half pounds from the Carolinas, but the
+foreign sand is richer and cheaper. The price of the salts of the rare
+metals fluctuates wildly. In 1895 thorium nitrate sold at $200 a pound;
+in 1913 it fell to $2.60, and in 1916 it rose to $8.</p>
+
+<p>Since the monazite contains more cerium than thorium and the mantles
+made from it contain more thorium than cerium, there is a superfluity of
+cerium. The manufacturers give away a pound of cerium salts with every
+purchase of a hundred pounds of thorium salts. It annoyed Welsbach to
+see the cerium residues thrown away and accumulating around his mantle
+factory, so he set out to find some use for it. He reduced the mixed
+earths to a metallic form and found that it gave off a shower of sparks
+when scratched. An alloy of cerium with 30 or 35 per cent. of iron
+proved the best and was put on the market in the form of automatic
+lighters. A big business was soon built up in Austria on the basis of
+this obscure chemical element rescued from the dump-heap. The sale of
+the cerite lighters <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span>in France threatened to upset the finances of the
+republic, which derived large revenue from its monopoly of match-making,
+so the French Government imposed a tax upon every man who carried one.
+American tourists who bought these lighters in Germany used to be much
+annoyed at being held up on the French frontier and compelled to take
+out a license. During the war the cerium sparklers were much used in the
+trenches for lighting cigarettes, but&mdash;as those who have seen "The
+Better 'Ole" will know&mdash;they sometimes fail to strike fire. Auer-metal
+or cerium-iron alloy was used in munitions to ignite hand grenades and
+to blazon the flight of trailer shells. There are many other pyrophoric
+(light-producing) alloys, including steel, which our ancestors used with
+flint before matches and percussion caps were invented.</p>
+
+<p>There are more than fifty metals known and not half of them have come
+into common use, so there is still plenty of room for the expansion of
+the science of metallurgy. If the reader has not forgotten his
+arithmetic of permutations he can calculate how many different alloys
+may be formed by varying the combinations and proportions of these
+fifty. We have seen how quickly elements formerly known only to
+chemists&mdash;and to some of them known only by name&mdash;have become
+indispensable in our daily life. Any one of those still unutilized may
+be found to have peculiar properties that fit it for filling a long
+unfelt want in modern civilization.</p>
+
+<p>Who, for instance, will find a use for gallium, the metal of France? It
+was described in 1869 by Mendel&eacute;ef in advance of its advent and has been
+known in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span>person since 1875, but has not yet been set to work. It is
+such a remarkable metal that it must be good for something. If you saw
+it in a museum case on a cold day you might take it to be a piece of
+aluminum, but if the curator let you hold it in your hand&mdash;which he
+won't&mdash;it would melt and run over the floor like mercury. The melting
+point is 87&deg; Fahr. It might be used in thermometers for measuring
+temperatures above the boiling point of mercury were it not for the
+peculiar fact that gallium wets glass so it sticks to the side of the
+tube instead of forming a clear convex curve on top like mercury.</p>
+
+<p>Then there is columbium, the American metal. It is strange that an
+element named after Columbia should prove so impractical. Columbium is a
+metal closely resembling tantalum and tantalum found a use as electric
+light filaments. A columbium lamp should appeal to our patriotism.</p>
+
+<p>The so-called "rare elements" are really abundant enough considering the
+earth's crust as a whole, though they are so thinly scattered that they
+are usually overlooked and hard to extract. But whenever one of them is
+found valuable it is soon found available. A systematic search generally
+reveals it somewhere in sufficient quantity to be worked. Who, then,
+will be the first to discover a use for indium, germanium, terbium,
+thulium, lanthanum, neodymium, scandium, samarium and others as unknown
+to us as tungsten was to our fathers?</p>
+
+<p>As evidence of the statement that it does not matter how rare an element
+may be it will come into common use if it is found to be commonly
+useful, we may refer <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span>to radium. A good rich specimen of radium ore,
+pitchblende, may contain as much, as one part in 4,000,000. Madame
+Curie, the brilliant Polish Parisian, had to work for years before she
+could prove to the world that such an element existed and for years
+afterwards before she could get the metal out. Yet now we can all afford
+a bit of radium to light up our watch dials in the dark. The amount
+needed for this is infinitesimal. If it were more it would scorch our
+skins, for radium is an element in eruption. The atom throws off
+corpuscles at intervals as a Roman candle throws off blazing balls. Some
+of these particles, the alpha rays, are atoms of another element,
+helium, charged with positive electricity and are ejected with a
+velocity of 18,000 miles a second. Some of them, the beta rays, are
+negative electrons, only about one seven-thousandth the size of the
+others, but are ejected with almost the speed of light, 186,000 miles a
+second. If one of the alpha projectiles strikes a slice of zinc sulfide
+it makes a splash of light big enough to be seen with a microscope, so
+we can now follow the flight of a single atom. The luminous watch dials
+consist of a coating of zinc sulfide under continual bombardment by the
+radium projectiles. Sir William Crookes invented this radium light
+apparatus and called it a "spinthariscope," which is Greek for
+"spark-seer."</p>
+
+<p>Evidently if radium is so wasteful of its substance it cannot last
+forever nor could it have forever existed. The elements then ate not
+necessarily eternal and immutable, as used to be supposed. They have a
+natural length of life; they are born and die and propagate, at least
+some of them do. Radium, for instance, is the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span>offspring of ionium,
+which is the great-great-grandson of uranium, the heaviest of known
+elements. Putting this chemical genealogy into biblical language we
+might say: Uranium lived 5,000,000,000 years and begot Uranium X1, which
+lived 24.6 days and begot Uranium X2, which lived 69 seconds and begot
+Uranium 2, which lived 2,000,000 years and begot Ionium, which lived
+200,000 years and begot Radium, which lived 1850 years and begot Niton,
+which lived 3.85 days and begot Radium A, which lived 3 minutes and
+begot Radium B, which lived 26.8 minutes and begot Radium C, which lived
+19.5 minutes and begot Radium D, which lived 12 years and begot Radium
+E, which lived 5 days and begot Polonium, which lived 136 days and begot
+Lead.</p>
+
+<p>The figures I have given are the times when half the parent substance
+has gone over into the next generation. It will be seen that the chemist
+is even more liberal in his allowance of longevity than was Moses with
+the patriarchs. It appears from the above that half of the radium in any
+given specimen will be transformed in about 2000 years. Half of what is
+left will disappear in the next 2000 years, half of that in the next
+2000 and so on. The reader can figure out for himself when it will all
+be gone. He will then have the answer to the old Eleatic conundrum of
+when Achilles will overtake the tortoise. But we may say that after
+100,000 years there would not be left any radium worth mentioning, or in
+other words practically all the radium now in existence is younger than
+the human race. The lead that is found in uranium and has presumably
+descended from uranium, behaves like other lead but is lighter. Its
+atomic weight is only 206, while ordinary lead <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span>weighs 207. It appears
+then that the same chemical element may have different atomic weights
+according to its ancestry, while on the other hand different chemical
+elements may have the same atomic weight. This would have seemed
+shocking heresy to the chemists of the last century, who prided
+themselves on the immutability of the elements and did not take into
+consideration their past life or heredity. The study of these
+radioactive elements has led to a new atomic theory. I suppose most of
+us in our youth used to imagine the atom as a little round hard ball,
+but now it is conceived as a sort of solar system with an
+electropositive nucleus acting as the sun and negative electrons
+revolving around it like the planets. The number of free positive
+electrons in the nucleus varies from one in hydrogen to 92 in uranium.
+This leaves room for 92 possible elements and of these all but six are
+more or less certainly known and definitely placed in the scheme. The
+atom of uranium, weighing 238 times the atom of hydrogen, is the
+heaviest known and therefore the ultimate limit of the elements, though
+it is possible that elements may be found beyond it just as the planet
+Neptune was discovered outside the orbit of Uranus. Considering the
+position of uranium and its numerous progeny as mentioned above, it is
+quite appropriate that this element should bear the name of the father
+of all the gods.</p>
+
+<p>In these radioactive elements we have come upon sources of energy such
+as was never dreamed of in our philosophy. The most striking peculiarity
+of radium is that it is always a little warmer than its surroundings, no
+matter how warm these may be. Slowly, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span>spontaneously and continuously,
+it decomposes and we know no way of hastening or of checking it. Whether
+it is cooled in liquefied air or heated to its melting point the change
+goes on just the same. An ounce of radium salt will give out enough heat
+in one hour to melt an ounce of ice and in the next hour will raise this
+water to the boiling point, and so on again and again without cessation
+for years, a fire without fuel, a realization of the philosopher's lamp
+that the alchemists sought in vain. The total energy so emitted is
+millions of times greater than that produced by any chemical combination
+such as the union of oxygen and hydrogen to form water. From the heavy
+white salt there is continually rising a faint fire-mist like the
+will-o'-the-wisp over a swamp. This gas is known as the emanation or
+niton, "the shining one." A pound of niton would give off energy at the
+rate of 23,000 horsepower; fine stuff to run a steamer, one would think,
+but we must remember that it does not last. By the sixth day the power
+would have fallen off by half. Besides, no one would dare to serve as
+engineer, for the radiation will rot away the flesh of a living man who
+comes near it, causing gnawing ulcers or curing them. It will not only
+break down the complex and delicate molecules of organic matter but will
+attack the atom itself, changing, it is believed, one element into
+another, again the fulfilment of a dream of the alchemists. And its
+rays, unseen and unfelt by us, are yet strong enough to penetrate an
+armorplate and photograph what is behind it.</p>
+
+<p>But radium is not the most mysterious of the elements but the least so.
+It is giving out the secret that <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span>the other elements have kept. It
+suggests to us that all the other elements in proportion to their weight
+have concealed within them similar stores of energy. Astronomers have
+long dazzled our imaginations by calculating the horsepower of the
+world, making us feel cheap in talking about our steam engines and
+dynamos when a minutest fraction of the waste dynamic energy of the
+solar system would make us all as rich as millionaires. But the heavenly
+bodies are too big for us to utilize in this practical fashion.</p>
+
+<p>And now the chemists have become as exasperating as the astronomers, for
+they give us a glimpse of incalculable wealth in the meanest substance.
+For wealth is measured by the available energy of the world, and if a
+few ounces of anything would drive an engine or manufacture nitrogenous
+fertilizer from the air all our troubles would be over. Kipling in his
+sketch, "With the Night Mail," and Wells in his novel, "The World Set
+Free," stretched their imaginations in trying to tell us what it would
+mean to have command of this power, but they are a little hazy in their
+descriptions of the machinery by which it is utilized. The atom is as
+much beyond our reach as the moon. We cannot rob its vault of the
+treasure.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="READING_REFERENCES" id="READING_REFERENCES"></a>READING REFERENCES</h2>
+
+
+<p>The foregoing pages will not have achieved their aim unless their
+readers have become sufficiently interested in the developments of
+industrial chemistry to desire to pursue the subject further in some of
+its branches. Assuming such interest has been aroused, I am giving below
+a few references to books and articles which may serve to set the reader
+upon the right track for additional information. To follow the rapid
+progress of applied science it is necessary to read continuously such
+periodicals as the <i>Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry</i>
+(New York), <i>Metallurgical and Chemical Engineering</i> (New York),
+<i>Journal of the Society of Chemical Industry</i> (London), <i>Chemical
+Abstracts</i> (published by the American Chemical Society, Easton, Pa.),
+and the various journals devoted to special trades. The reader may need
+to be reminded that the United States Government publishes for free
+distribution or at low price annual volumes or special reports dealing
+with science and industry. Among these may be mentioned "Yearbook of the
+Department of Agriculture"; "Mineral Resources of the United States,"
+published by the United States Geological Survey in two annual volumes,
+Vol. I on the metals and Vol. II on the non-metals; the "Annual Report
+of the Smithsonian Institution," containing selected articles on pure
+and applied science; the daily "Commerce Reports" and special bulletins
+of Department of Commerce. Write for lists of publications of these
+departments.</p>
+
+<p>The following books on industrial chemistry in general are recommended
+for reading and reference: "The Chemistry of Commerce" and "Some
+Chemical Problems of To-Day" by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span> Robert Kennedy Duncan (Harpers, N.Y.),
+"Modern Chemistry and Its Wonders" by Martin (Van Nostrand), "Chemical
+Discovery and Invention in the Twentieth Century" by Sir William A.
+Tilden (Dutton, N.Y.), "Discoveries and Inventions of the Twentieth
+Century" by Edward Cressy (Dutton), "Industrial Chemistry" by Allen
+Rogers (Van Nostrand).</p>
+
+<p>"Everyman's Chemistry" by Ellwood Hendrick (Harpers, Modern Science
+Series) is written in a lively style and assumes no previous knowledge
+of chemistry from the reader. The chapters on cellulose, gums, sugars
+and oils are particularly interesting. "Chemistry of Familiar Things" by
+S.S. Sadtler (Lippincott) is both comprehensive and comprehensible.</p>
+
+<p>The following are intended for young readers but are not to be despised
+by their elders who may wish to start in on an easy up-grade: "Chemistry
+of Common Things" (Allyn &amp; Bacon, Boston) is a popular high school
+text-book but differing from most text-books in being readable and
+attractive. Its descriptions of industrial processes are brief but
+clear. The "Achievements of Chemical Science" by James C. Philip
+(Macmillan) is a handy little book, easy reading for pupils.
+"Introduction to the Study of Science" by W.P. Smith and E.G. Jewett
+(Macmillan) touches upon chemical topics in a simple way.</p>
+
+<p>On the history of commerce and the effect of inventions on society the
+following titles may be suggested: "Outlines of Industrial History" by
+E. Cressy (Macmillan); "The Origin of Invention," a study of primitive
+industry, by O.T. Mason (Scribner); "The Romance of Commerce" by Gordon
+Selbridge (Lane); "Industrial and Commercial Geography" or "Commerce and
+Industry" by J. Russell Smith (Holt); "Handbook of Commercial Geography"
+by G.G. Chisholm (Longmans).</p>
+
+<p>The newer theories of chemistry and the constitution of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span>atom are
+explained in "The Realities of Modern Science" by John Mills
+(Macmillan), and "The Electron" by R.A. Millikan (University of Chicago
+Press), but both require a knowledge of mathematics. The little book on
+"Matter and Energy" by Frederick Soddy (Holt) is better adapted to the
+general reader. The most recent text-book is the "Introduction to
+General Chemistry" by H.N. McCoy and E.M. Terry. (Chicago, 1919.)</p>
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER II</h3>
+
+<p>The reader who may be interested in following up this subject will find
+references to all the literature in the summary by Helen R. Hosmer, of
+the Research Laboratory of the General Electric Company, in the <i>Journal
+of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry</i>, New York, for April, 1917.
+Bucher's paper may be found in the same journal for March, and the issue
+for September contains a full report of the action of U.S. Government
+and a comparison of the various processes. Send fifteen cents to the
+U.S. Department of Commerce (or to the nearest custom house) for
+Bulletin No. 52, Special Agents Series on "Utilization of Atmospheric
+Nitrogen" by T.H. Norton. The Smithsonian Institution of Washington has
+issued a pamphlet on "Sources of Nitrogen Compounds in the United
+States." In the 1913 report of the Smithsonian Institution there are two
+fine articles on this subject: "The Manufacture of Nitrates from the
+Atmosphere" and "The Distribution of Mankind," which discusses Sir
+William Crookes' prediction of the exhaustion of wheat land. The D. Van
+Nostrand Co., New York, publishes a monograph on "Fixation of
+Atmospheric Nitrogen" by J. Knox, also "TNT and Other Nitrotoluenes" by
+G.C. Smith. The American Cyanamid Company, New York, gives out some
+attractive literature on their process.</p>
+
+<p>"American Munitions 1917-1918," the report of Benedict Crowell, Director
+of Munitions, to the Secretary of War, gives <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span>a fully illustrated
+account of the manufacture of arms, explosives and toxic gases. Our war
+experience in the "Oxidation of Ammonia" is told by C.L. Parsons in
+<i>Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry</i>, June, 1919, and
+various other articles on the government munition work appeared in the
+same journal in the first half of 1919. "The Muscle Shoals Nitrate
+Plant" in <i>Chemical and Metallurgical Engineering</i>, January, 1919.</p>
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER III</h3>
+
+<p>The Department of Agriculture or your congressman will send you
+literature on the production and use of fertilizers. From your state
+agricultural experiment station you can procure information as to local
+needs and products. Consult the articles on potash salts and phosphate
+rock in the latest volume of "Mineral Resources of the United States,"
+Part II Non-Metals (published free by the U.S. Geological Survey). Also
+consult the latest Yearbook of the Department of Agriculture. For
+self-instruction, problems and experiments get "Extension Course in
+Soils," Bulletin No. 355, U.S. Dept. of Agric. A list of all government
+publications on "Soil and Fertilizers" is sent free by Superintendent of
+Documents, Washington. The <i>Journal of Industrial and Engineering
+Chemistry</i> for July, 1917, publishes an article by W.C. Ebaugh on
+"Potash and a World Emergency," and various articles on American sources
+of potash appeared in the same <i>Journal</i> October, 1918, and February,
+1918. Bulletin 102, Part 2, of the United States National Museum
+contains an interpretation of the fertilizer situation in 1917 by J.E.
+Poque. On new potash deposits in Alsace and elsewhere see <i>Scientific
+American Supplement</i>, September 14, 1918.</p>
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER IV</h3>
+
+<p>Send ten cents to the Department of Commerce, Washington, for "Dyestuffs
+for American Textile and Other Industries,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span> by Thomas H. Norton,
+Special Agents' Series, No. 96. A more technical bulletin by the same
+author is "Artificial Dyestuffs Used in the United States," Special
+Agents' Series, No. 121, thirty cents. "Dyestuff Situation in U.S.,"
+Special Agents' Series, No. 111, five cents. "Coal-Tar Products," by
+H.G. Porter, Technical Paper 89, Bureau of Mines, Department of the
+Interior, five cents. "Wealth in Waste," by Waldemar Kaempfert,
+<i>McClure's</i>, April, 1917. "The Evolution of Artificial Dyestuffs," by
+Thomas H. Norton, <i>Scientific American</i>, July 21, 1917. "Germany's
+Commercial Preparedness for Peace," by James Armstrong, <i>Scientific
+American</i>, January 29, 1916. "The Conquest of Commerce" and "American
+Made," by Edwin E. Slosson in <i>The Independent</i> of September 6 and
+October 11, 1915. The H. Koppers Company, Pittsburgh, give out an
+illustrated pamphlet on their "By-Product Coke and Gas Ovens." The
+addresses delivered during the war on "The Aniline Color, Dyestuff and
+Chemical Conditions," by I.F. Stone, president of the National Aniline
+and Chemical Company, have been collected in a volume by the author. For
+"Dyestuffs as Medicinal Agents" by G. Heyl, see <i>Color Trade Journal</i>,
+vol. 4, p. 73, 1919. "The Chemistry of Synthetic Drugs" by Percy May,
+and "Color in Relation to Chemical Constitution" by E.R. Watson are
+published in Longmans' "Monographs on Industrial Chemistry." "Enemy
+Property in the United States" by A. Mitchell Palmer in <i>Saturday
+Evening Post</i>, July 19, 1919, tells of how Germany monopolized chemical
+industry. "The Carbonization of Coal" by V.B. Lewis (Van Nostrand,
+1912). "Research in the Tar Dye Industry" by B.C. Hesse in <i>Journal of
+Industrial and Engineering Chemistry</i>, September, 1916.</p>
+
+<p>Kekul&eacute; tells how he discovered the constitution of benzene in the
+<i>Berichte der Deutschen chemischen Gesellschaft</i>, V. XXIII, I, p. 1306.
+I have quoted it with some other instances of dream discoveries in <i>The
+Independent</i> of Jan. 26,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span> 1918. Even this innocent scientific vision has
+not escaped the foul touch of the Freudians. Dr. Alfred Robitsek in
+"Symbolisches Denken in der chemischen Forschung," <i>Imago</i>, V. I, p. 83,
+has deduced from it that Kekul&eacute; was morally guilty of the crime of
+&#338;dipus as well as minor misdemeanors.</p>
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER V</h3>
+
+<p>Read up on the methods of extracting perfumes from flowers in any
+encyclopedia or in Duncan's "Chemistry of Commerce" or Tilden's
+"Chemical Discovery in the Twentieth Century" or Rogers' "Industrial
+Chemistry."</p>
+
+<p>The pamphlet containing a synopsis of the lectures by the late Alois von
+Isakovics on "Synthetic Perfumes and Flavors," published by the Synfleur
+Scientific Laboratories, Monticello, New York, is immensely interesting.
+Van Dyk &amp; Co., New York, issue a pamphlet on the composition of oil of
+rose. Gildemeister's "The Volatile Oils" is excellent on the history of
+the subject. Walter's "Manual for the Essence Industry" (Wiley) gives
+methods and recipes. Parry's "Chemistry of Essential Oils and Artificial
+Perfumes," 1918 edition. "Chemistry and Odoriferous Bodies Since 1914"
+by G. Satie in <i>Chemie et Industrie</i>, vol. II, p. 271, 393. "Odor and
+Chemical Constitution," <i>Chemical Abstracts</i>, 1917, p. 3171 and <i>Journal
+of Society for Chemical Industry</i>, v. 36, p. 942.</p>
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER VI</h3>
+
+<p>The bulletin on "By-Products of the Lumber Industry" by H.K. Benson
+(published by Department of Commerce, Washington, 10 cents) contains a
+description of paper-making and wood distillation. There is a good
+article on cellulose products by H.S. Mork in <i>Journal of the Franklin
+Institute</i>, September, 1917, and in <i>Paper</i>, September 26, 1917. The
+Government Forest Products Laboratory at Madison, Wisconsin, publishes
+technical papers on distillation of wood, etc. The Forest Service of the
+U.S. Department of Agriculture is the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span>chief source of information on
+forestry. The standard authority is Cross and Bevans' "Cellulose." For
+the acetates see the eighth volume of Worden's "Technology of the
+Cellulose Esters."</p>
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER VII</h3>
+
+<p>The speeches made when Hyatt was awarded the Perkin medal by the
+American Chemical Society for the discovery of celluloid may be found in
+the <i>Journal of the Society of Chemical Industry</i> for 1914, p. 225. In
+1916 Baekeland received the same medal, and the proceedings are reported
+in the same <i>Journal</i>, v. 35, p. 285.</p>
+
+<p>A comprehensive technical paper with bibliography on "Synthetic Resins"
+by L.V. Redman appeared in the <i>Journal of Industrial and Engineering
+Chemistry</i>, January, 1914. The controversy over patent rights may be
+followed in the same <i>Journal</i>, v. 8 (1915), p. 1171, and v. 9 (1916),
+p. 207. The "Effects of Heat on Celluloid" have been examined by the
+Bureau of Standards, Washington (Technological Paper No. 98), abstract
+in <i>Scientific American Supplement</i>, June 29, 1918.</p>
+
+<p>For casein see Tague's article in Rogers' "Industrial Chemistry" (Van
+Nostrand). See also Worden's "Nitrocellulose Industry" and "Technology
+of the Cellulose Esters" (Van Nostrand); Hodgson's "Celluloid" and Cross
+and Bevan's "Cellulose."</p>
+
+<p>For references to recent research and new patent specifications on
+artificial plastics, resins, rubber, leather, wood, etc., see the
+current numbers of <i>Chemical Abstracts</i> (Easton, Pa.) and such journals
+as the <i>India Rubber Journal, Paper, Textile World, Leather World</i> and
+<i>Journal of American Leather Chemical Association.</i></p>
+
+<p>The General Bakelite Company, New York, the Redmanol Products Company,
+Chicago, the Condensite Company, Bloomfield, N.J., the Arlington
+Company, New York (handling <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span>pyralin), give out advertising literature
+regarding their respective products.</p>
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER VIII</h3>
+
+<p>Sir William Tilden's "Chemical Discovery and Invention in the Twentieth
+Century" (E.P. Dutton &amp; Co.) contains a readable chapter on rubber with
+references to his own discovery. The "Wonder Book of Rubber," issued by
+the B.F. Goodrich Rubber Company, Akron, Ohio, gives an interesting
+account of their industry. Iles: "Leading American Inventors" (Henry
+Holt &amp; Co.) contains a life of Goodyear, the discoverer of
+vulcanization. Potts: "Chemistry of the Rubber Industry, 1912." The
+Rubber Industry: Report of the International Rubber Congress, 1914.
+Pond: "Review of Pioneer Work in Rubber Synthesis" in <i>Journal of the
+American Chemical Society</i>, 1914. Bang: "Synthetic Rubber" in
+<i>Metallurgical and Chemical Engineering</i>, May 1, 1917. Castellan:
+"L'Industrie caoutchouci&egrave;re," doctor's thesis, University of Paris,
+1915. The <i>India Rubber World</i>, New York, all numbers, especially "What
+I Saw in the Philippines," by the Editor, 1917. Pearson: "Production of
+Guayule Rubber," <i>Commerce Reports</i>, 1918, and <i>India Rubber World</i>,
+1919. "Historical Sketch of Chemistry of Rubber" by S.C. Bradford in
+<i>Science Progress</i>, v. II, p. 1.</p>
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER IX</h3>
+
+<p>"The Cane Sugar Industry" (Bulletin No. 53, Miscellaneous Series,
+Department of Commerce, 50 cents) gives agricultural and manufacturing
+costs in Hawaii, Porto Rico, Louisiana and Cuba.</p>
+
+<p>"Sugar and Its Value as Food," by Mary Hinman Abel. (Farmer's Bulletin
+No. 535, Department of Agriculture, free.)</p>
+
+<p>"Production of Sugar in the United States and Foreign<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span> Countries," by
+Perry Elliott. (Department of Agriculture, 10 cents.)</p>
+
+<p>"Conditions in the Sugar Market January to October, 1917," a pamphlet
+published by the American Sugar Refining Company, 117 Wall Street, New
+York, gives an admirable survey of the present situation as seen by the
+refiners.</p>
+
+<p>"Cuban Cane Sugar," by Robert Wiles, 1916 (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill
+Co., 75 cents), an attractive little book in simple language.</p>
+
+<p>"The World's Cane Sugar Industry, Past and Present," by H.C.P. Geering.</p>
+
+<p>"The Story of Sugar," by Prof. G.T. Surface of Yale (Appleton, 1910). A
+very interesting and reliable book.</p>
+
+<p>The "Digestibility of Glucose" is discussed in <i>Journal of Industrial
+and Engineering Chemistry</i>, August, 1917. "Utilization of Beet Molasses"
+in <i>Metallurgical and Chemical Engineering</i>, April 5, 1917.</p>
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER X</h3>
+
+<p>"Maize," by Edward Alber (Bulletin of the Pan-American Union, January,
+1915).</p>
+
+<p>"Glucose," by Geo. W. Rolfe <i>(Scientific American Supplement</i>, May 15 or
+November 6, 1915, and in Boger's "Industrial Chemistry").</p>
+
+<p>On making ethyl alcohol from wood, see Bulletin No. 110, Special Agents'
+Series, Department of Commerce (10 cents), and an article by F.W.
+Kressmann in <i>Metallurgical and Chemical Engineering</i>, July 15, 1916. On
+the manufacture and uses of industrial alcohol the Department of
+Agriculture has issued for free distribution Farmer's Bulletin 269 and
+424, and Department Bulletin 182.</p>
+
+<p>On the "Utilization of Corn Cobs," see <i>Journal of Industrial and
+Engineering Chemistry</i>, Nov., 1918. For John Winthrop's experiment, see
+the same <i>Journal</i>, Jan., 1919.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER XI</h3>
+
+<p>President Scherer's "Cotton as a World Power" (Stokes, 1916) is a
+fascinating volume that combines the history, science and politics of
+the plant and does not ignore the poetry and legend.</p>
+
+<p>In the Yearbook of the Department of Agriculture for 1916 will be found
+an interesting article by H.S. Bailey on "Some American Vegetable Oils"
+(sold separate for five cents), also "The Peanut: A Great American Food"
+by same author in the Yearbook of 1917. "The Soy Bean Industry" is
+discussed in the same volume. See also: Thompson's "Cottonseed Products
+and Their Competitors in Northern Europe" (Part I, Cake and Meal; Part
+II, Edible Oils. Department of Commerce, 10 cents each). "Production and
+Conservation of Fats and Oils in the United States" (Bulletin No. 769,
+1919, U.S. Dept. of Agriculture). "Cottonseed Meal for Feeding Cattle"
+(U.S. Department of Agriculture, Farmer's Bulletin 655, free).
+"Cottonseed Industry in Foreign Countries," by T.H. Norton, 1915
+(Department of Commerce, 10 cents). "Cottonseed Products" in <i>Journal of
+the Society of Chemical Industry</i>, July 16, 1917, and Baskerville's
+article in the same journal (1915, vol. 7, p. 277). Dunstan's "Oil Seeds
+and Feeding Cakes," a volume on British problems since the war. Ellis's
+"The Hydrogenation of Oils" (Van Nostrand, 1914). Copeland's "The
+Coconut" (Macmillan). Barrett's "The Philippine Coconut Industry"
+(Bulletin No. 25, Philippine Bureau of Agriculture). "Coconuts, the
+Consols of the East" by Smith and Pope (London). "All About Coconuts" by
+Belfort and Hoyer (London). Numerous articles on copra and other oils
+appear in <i>U.S. Commerce Reports</i> and <i>Philippine Journal of Science</i>.
+"The World Wide Search for Oils" in <i>The Americas</i> (National City Bank,
+N.Y.). "Modern Margarine Technology" by W. Clayton in <i>Journal Society
+of Chemical Industry</i>, Dec. 5, 1917; also see <i>Scientific</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span> <i>American
+Supplement</i>, Sept. 21, 1918. A court decision on the patent rights of
+hydrogenation is given in <i>Journal of Industrial and Engineering
+Chemistry</i> for December, 1917. The standard work on the whole subject is
+Lewkowitsch's "Chemical Technology of Oils, Fats and Waxes" (3 vols.,
+Macmillan, 1915).</p>
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER XII</h3>
+
+<p>A full account of the development of the American Warfare Service has
+been published in the <i>Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry</i>
+in the monthly issues from January to August, 1919, and an article on
+the British service in the issue of April, 1918. See also Crowell's
+Report on "America's Munitions," published by War Department.
+<i>Scientific American</i>, March 29, 1919, contains several articles. A.
+Russell Bond's "Inventions of the Great War" (Century) contains chapters
+on poison gas and explosives.</p>
+
+<p>Lieutenant Colonel S.J.M. Auld, Chief Gas Officer of Sir Julian Byng's
+army and a member of the British Military Mission to the United States,
+has published a volume on "Gas and Flame in Modern Warfare" (George H.
+Doran Co.).</p>
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER XIII</h3>
+
+<p>See chapter in Cressy's "Discoveries and Inventions of Twentieth
+Century." "Oxy-Acetylene Welders," Bulletin No. 11, Federal Board of
+Vocational Education, Washington, June, 1918, gives practical directions
+for welding. <i>Reactions</i>, a quarterly published by Goldschmidt Thermit
+Company, N.Y., reports latest achievements of aluminothermics. Provost
+Smith's "Chemistry in America" (Appleton) tells of the experiments of
+Robert Hare and other pioneers. "Applications of Electrolysis in
+Chemical Industry" by A.F. Hall (Longmans). For recent work on
+artificial diamonds see <i>Scientific American Supplement</i>, Dec. 8, 1917,
+and August 24, 1918. On acetylene see "A Storehouse of Sleeping Energy"
+by J.M. Morehead in <i>Scientific American</i>, January 27, 1917.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER XIV</h3>
+
+<p>Spring's "Non-Technical Talks on Iron and Steel" (Stokes) is a model of
+popular science writing, clear, comprehensive and abundantly
+illustrated. Tilden's "Chemical Discovery in the Twentieth Century" must
+here again be referred to. The Encyclopedia Britannica is convenient for
+reference on the various metals mentioned; see the article on "Lighting"
+for the Welsbach burner. The annual "Mineral Resources of the United
+States, Part I," contains articles on the newer metals by Frank W. Hess;
+see "Tungsten" in the volume for 1914, also Bulletin No. 652, U.S.
+Geological Survey, by same author. <i>Foote-Notes</i>, the house organ of the
+Foote Mineral Company, Philadelphia, gives information on the rare
+elements. Interesting advertising literature may be obtained from the
+Titantium Alloy Manufacturing Company, Niagara Falls, N.Y.; Duriron
+Castings Company, Dayton, O.; Buffalo Foundry and Machine Company,
+Buffalo, N.Y., manufacturers of "Buflokast" acid-proof apparatus, and
+similar concerns. The following additional references may be useful:
+Stellite alloys in <i>Jour. Ind. &amp; Eng. Chem.</i>, v. 9, p. 974; Rossi's work
+on titantium in same journal, Feb., 1918; Welsbach mantles in <i>Journal
+Franklin Institute</i>, v. 14, p. 401, 585; pure alloys in <i>Trans. Amer.
+Electro-Chemical Society</i>, v. 32, p. 269; molybdenum in <i>Engineering</i>,
+1917, or <i>Scientific American Supplement</i>, Oct. 20, 1917; acid-resisting
+iron in <i>Sc. Amer. Sup.</i>, May 31, 1919; ferro-alloys in <i>Jour. Ind. &amp;
+Eng. Chem.</i>, v. 10, p. 831; influence of vanadium, etc., on iron, in
+<i>Met. Chem. Eng.</i>, v. 15, p. 530; tungsten in <i>Engineering</i>, v. 104, p.
+214.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="INDEX" id="INDEX"></a>INDEX</h2>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Abrasives, <a href='#Page_249'>249</a>-251</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Acetanilid, <a href='#Page_87'>87</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Acetone, <a href='#Page_125'>125</a>, <a href='#Page_154'>154</a>, <a href='#Page_243'>243</a>, <a href='#Page_245'>245</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Acetylene, <a href='#Page_30'>30</a>, <a href='#Page_154'>154</a>, <a href='#Page_240'>240</a>-248, <a href='#Page_257'>257</a>, <a href='#Page_307'>307</a>, <a href='#Page_308'>308</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Acheson, <a href='#Page_249'>249</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Air, liquefied, <a href='#Page_33'>33</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Alcohol, ethyl, <a href='#Page_101'>101</a>, <a href='#Page_102'>102</a>, <a href='#Page_127'>127</a>, <a href='#Page_174'>174</a>, <a href='#Page_190'>190</a>-194, <a href='#Page_242'>242</a>-244, <a href='#Page_305'>305</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">methyl, <a href='#Page_101'>101</a>, <a href='#Page_102'>102</a>, <a href='#Page_127'>127</a>, <a href='#Page_191'>191</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Aluminum, <a href='#Page_31'>31</a>, <a href='#Page_246'>246</a>-248, <a href='#Page_255'>255</a>, <a href='#Page_272'>272</a>, <a href='#Page_284'>284</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Ammonia, <a href='#Page_27'>27</a>, <a href='#Page_29'>29</a>, <a href='#Page_31'>31</a>, <a href='#Page_33'>33</a>, <a href='#Page_56'>56</a>, <a href='#Page_64'>64</a>, <a href='#Page_250'>250</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">American dye industry, <a href='#Page_82'>82</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Aniline dyes, <a href='#Page_60'>60</a>-92</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Antiseptics, <a href='#Page_86'>86</a>, <a href='#Page_87'>87</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Argon, <a href='#Page_16'>16</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Art and nature, <a href='#Page_8'>8</a>, <a href='#Page_9'>9</a>, <a href='#Page_170'>170</a>, <a href='#Page_173'>173</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Artificial silk, <a href='#Page_116'>116</a>, <a href='#Page_118'>118</a>, <a href='#Page_119'>119</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Aspirin, <a href='#Page_84'>84</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Atomic theory, <a href='#Page_293'>293</a>-296, <a href='#Page_299'>299</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Aylesworth, <a href='#Page_140'>140</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Baekeland, <a href='#Page_137'>137</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Baeyer, Adolf von, <a href='#Page_77'>77</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Bakelite, <a href='#Page_138'>138</a>, <a href='#Page_303'>303</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Balata, <a href='#Page_159'>159</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Bauxite, <a href='#Page_31'>31</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Beet sugar, <a href='#Page_165'>165</a>, <a href='#Page_169'>169</a>, <a href='#Page_305'>305</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Benzene formula, <a href='#Page_67'>67</a>, <a href='#Page_301'>301</a>, <a href='#Page_101'>101</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Berkeley, <a href='#Page_61'>61</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Berthelot, <a href='#Page_7'>7</a>, <a href='#Page_94'>94</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Birkeland-Eyde process, <a href='#Page_26'>26</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Bucher process, <a href='#Page_32'>32</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Butter, <a href='#Page_201'>201</a>, <a href='#Page_208'>208</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Calcium, <a href='#Page_246'>246</a>, <a href='#Page_253'>253</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Calcium carbide, <a href='#Page_30'>30</a>, <a href='#Page_239'>239</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Camphor, <a href='#Page_100'>100</a>, <a href='#Page_131'>131</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Cane sugar, <a href='#Page_164'>164</a>, <a href='#Page_167'>167</a>, <a href='#Page_177'>177</a>, <a href='#Page_180'>180</a>, <a href='#Page_305'>305</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Carbolic acid, <a href='#Page_18'>18</a>, <a href='#Page_64'>64</a>, <a href='#Page_84'>84</a>, <a href='#Page_101'>101</a>, <a href='#Page_102'>102</a>, <a href='#Page_137'>137</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Carborundum, <a href='#Page_249'>249</a>-251</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Caro and Frank process, <a href='#Page_30'>30</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Casein, <a href='#Page_142'>142</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Castner, <a href='#Page_246'>246</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Catalyst, <a href='#Page_28'>28</a>, <a href='#Page_204'>204</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Celluloid, <a href='#Page_128'>128</a>-135, <a href='#Page_302'>302</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Cellulose, <a href='#Page_110'>110</a>-127, <a href='#Page_129'>129</a>, <a href='#Page_137'>137</a>, <a href='#Page_302'>302</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Cellulose acetate, <a href='#Page_118'>118</a>, <a href='#Page_120'>120</a>, <a href='#Page_302'>302</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Cerium, <a href='#Page_288'>288</a>-290</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Chemical warfare, <a href='#Page_218'>218</a>-235, <a href='#Page_307'>307</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Chlorin, <a href='#Page_224'>224</a>, <a href='#Page_226'>226</a>, <a href='#Page_250'>250</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Chlorophyll, <a href='#Page_267'>267</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Chlorpicrin, <a href='#Page_224'>224</a>, <a href='#Page_226'>226</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Chromicum, <a href='#Page_278'>278</a>, <a href='#Page_280'>280</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Coal, distillation of, <a href='#Page_60'>60</a>, <a href='#Page_64'>64</a>, <a href='#Page_70'>70</a>, <a href='#Page_84'>84</a>, <a href='#Page_301'>301</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Coal tar colors, <a href='#Page_60'>60</a>-92</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Cochineal, <a href='#Page_79'>79</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Coconut oil, <a href='#Page_203'>203</a>, <a href='#Page_211'>211</a>-215, <a href='#Page_306'>306</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Collodion, <a href='#Page_117'>117</a>, <a href='#Page_123'>123</a>, <a href='#Page_130'>130</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Cologne, eau de, <a href='#Page_107'>107</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Copra, <a href='#Page_203'>203</a>, <a href='#Page_211'>211</a>-215, <a href='#Page_306'>306</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Corn oil, <a href='#Page_183'>183</a>, <a href='#Page_305'>305</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Cotton, <a href='#Page_112'>112</a>, <a href='#Page_120'>120</a>, <a href='#Page_129'>129</a>, <a href='#Page_197'>197</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Cocain, <a href='#Page_88'>88</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Condensite, <a href='#Page_141'>141</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Cordite, <a href='#Page_18'>18</a>, <a href='#Page_19'>19</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Corn products, <a href='#Page_181'>181</a>-195, <a href='#Page_305'>305</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Coslett process, <a href='#Page_273'>273</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Cottonseed oil, <a href='#Page_201'>201</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Cowles, <a href='#Page_248'>248</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Creative chemistry, <a href='#Page_7'>7</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Crookes, Sir William, <a href='#Page_292'>292</a>, <a href='#Page_299'>299</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Curie, Madame, <a href='#Page_292'>292</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Cyanamid, <a href='#Page_30'>30</a>, <a href='#Page_35'>35</a>, <a href='#Page_299'>299</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Cyanides, <a href='#Page_32'>32</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Diamond, <a href='#Page_259'>259</a>-261, <a href='#Page_308'>308</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan, <a href='#Page_221'>221</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Drugs, synthetic, <a href='#Page_6'>6</a>, <a href='#Page_84'>84</a>, <a href='#Page_301'>301</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Duisberg, <a href='#Page_151'>151</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Dyestuffs, <a href='#Page_60'>60</a>-92</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Edison, <a href='#Page_84'>84</a>, <a href='#Page_141'>141</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Ehrlich, <a href='#Page_86'>86</a>, <a href='#Page_87'>87</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Electric furnace, <a href='#Page_236'>236</a>-262, <a href='#Page_307'>307</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Fats, <a href='#Page_196'>196</a>-217, <a href='#Page_306'>306</a></span><br /><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg310]</a></span>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Fertilizers, <a href='#Page_37'>37</a>, <a href='#Page_41'>41</a>, <a href='#Page_43'>43</a>, <a href='#Page_46'>46</a>, <a href='#Page_300'>300</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Flavors, synthetic, <a href='#Page_93'>93</a>-109</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Food, synthetic, <a href='#Page_94'>94</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Formaldehyde, <a href='#Page_136'>136</a>, <a href='#Page_142'>142</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Fruit flavors, synthetic, <a href='#Page_99'>99</a>, <a href='#Page_101'>101</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Galalith, <a href='#Page_142'>142</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Gas masks, <a href='#Page_223'>223</a>, <a href='#Page_226'>226</a>, <a href='#Page_230'>230</a>, <a href='#Page_231'>231</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Gerhardt, <a href='#Page_6'>6</a>, <a href='#Page_7'>7</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Glucose, <a href='#Page_137'>137</a>, <a href='#Page_184'>184</a>-189, <a href='#Page_194'>194</a>, <a href='#Page_305'>305</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Glycerin, <a href='#Page_194'>194</a>, <a href='#Page_203'>203</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Goldschmidt, <a href='#Page_256'>256</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Goodyear, <a href='#Page_161'>161</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Graphite, <a href='#Page_258'>258</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Guayule, <a href='#Page_159'>159</a>, <a href='#Page_304'>304</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Guncotton, <a href='#Page_17'>17</a>, <a href='#Page_117'>117</a>, <a href='#Page_125'>125</a>, <a href='#Page_130'>130</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Gunpowder, <a href='#Page_14'>14</a>, <a href='#Page_15'>15</a>, <a href='#Page_22'>22</a>, <a href='#Page_234'>234</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Gutta percha, <a href='#Page_159'>159</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Haber process, <a href='#Page_27'>27</a>, <a href='#Page_28'>28</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Hall, C.H., <a href='#Page_247'>247</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Hare, Robert, <a href='#Page_237'>237</a>, <a href='#Page_245'>245</a>, <a href='#Page_307'>307</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Harries, <a href='#Page_149'>149</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Helium, <a href='#Page_236'>236</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Hesse, <a href='#Page_70'>70</a>, <a href='#Page_72'>72</a>, <a href='#Page_90'>90</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Hofmann, <a href='#Page_72'>72</a>, <a href='#Page_80'>80</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Huxley, <a href='#Page_10'>10</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Hyatt, <a href='#Page_128'>128</a>, <a href='#Page_129'>129</a>, <a href='#Page_303'>303</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Hydrogen, <a href='#Page_253'>253</a>-255</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Hydrogenation of oils, <a href='#Page_202'>202</a>-205, <a href='#Page_306'>306</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Indigo, <a href='#Page_76'>76</a>, <a href='#Page_79'>79</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Iron, <a href='#Page_236'>236</a>, <a href='#Page_253'>253</a>, <a href='#Page_262'>262</a>-270, <a href='#Page_308'>308</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Isoprene, <a href='#Page_136'>136</a>, <a href='#Page_146'>146</a>, <a href='#Page_149'>149</a>, <a href='#Page_150'>150</a>, <a href='#Page_154'>154</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Kelp products, <a href='#Page_53'>53</a>, <a href='#Page_142'>142</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Kekul&eacute;'s dream, <a href='#Page_66'>66</a>, <a href='#Page_301'>301</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Lard substitutes, <a href='#Page_209'>209</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Lavoisier, <a href='#Page_6'>6</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Leather substitutes, <a href='#Page_124'>124</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Leucite, <a href='#Page_53'>53</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Liebig, <a href='#Page_38'>38</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Linseed oil, <a href='#Page_202'>202</a>, <a href='#Page_205'>205</a>, <a href='#Page_270'>270</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Magnesium, <a href='#Page_283'>283</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Maize products, <a href='#Page_181'>181</a>-196, <a href='#Page_305'>305</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Manganese, <a href='#Page_278'>278</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Margarin, <a href='#Page_207'>207</a>-212, <a href='#Page_307'>307</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Mauve, discovery of, <a href='#Page_74'>74</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Mendel&eacute;ef, <a href='#Page_285'>285</a>, <a href='#Page_291'>291</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Mercerized cotton, <a href='#Page_115'>115</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Moissan, <a href='#Page_259'>259</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Molybdenum, <a href='#Page_283'>283</a>, <a href='#Page_308'>308</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Munition manufacture in U.S., <a href='#Page_33'>33</a>, <a href='#Page_224'>224</a>, <a href='#Page_299'>299</a>, <a href='#Page_307'>307</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Mushet, <a href='#Page_279'>279</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Musk, synthetic, <a href='#Page_96'>96</a>, <a href='#Page_97'>97</a>, <a href='#Page_106'>106</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Mustard gas, <a href='#Page_224'>224</a>, <a href='#Page_227'>227</a>-229</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Naphthalene, <a href='#Page_4'>4</a>, <a href='#Page_142'>142</a>, <a href='#Page_154'>154</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Nature and art, <a href='#Page_8'>8</a>-13, <a href='#Page_118'>118</a>, <a href='#Page_122'>122</a>, <a href='#Page_133'>133</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Nitrates, Chilean, <a href='#Page_22'>22</a>, <a href='#Page_24'>24</a>, <a href='#Page_30'>30</a>, <a href='#Page_36'>36</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Nitric acid derivatives, <a href='#Page_20'>20</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Nitrocellulose, <a href='#Page_17'>17</a>, <a href='#Page_117'>117</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Nitrogen, in explosives, <a href='#Page_14'>14</a>, <a href='#Page_16'>16</a>, <a href='#Page_117'>117</a>, <a href='#Page_299'>299</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">fixation, <a href='#Page_24'>24</a>, <a href='#Page_25'>25</a>, <a href='#Page_29'>29</a>, <a href='#Page_299'>299</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Nitro-glycerin, <a href='#Page_18'>18</a>, <a href='#Page_117'>117</a>, <a href='#Page_214'>214</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Nobel, <a href='#Page_18'>18</a>, <a href='#Page_117'>117</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Oils, <a href='#Page_196'>196</a>-217, <a href='#Page_306'>306</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Oleomargarin, <a href='#Page_207'>207</a>-212, <a href='#Page_307'>307</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Orange blossoms, <a href='#Page_99'>99</a>, <a href='#Page_100'>100</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Osmium, <a href='#Page_28'>28</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Ostwald, <a href='#Page_29'>29</a>, <a href='#Page_55'>55</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Oxy-hydrogen blowpipe, <a href='#Page_246'>246</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Paper, <a href='#Page_111'>111</a>, <a href='#Page_132'>132</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Parker process, <a href='#Page_273'>273</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Peanut oil, <a href='#Page_206'>206</a>, <a href='#Page_211'>211</a>, <a href='#Page_214'>214</a>, <a href='#Page_306'>306</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Perfumery, Art of, <a href='#Page_103'>103</a>-108</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Perfumes, synthetic, <a href='#Page_93'>93</a>-109, <a href='#Page_302'>302</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Perkin, W.H., <a href='#Page_148'>148</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Perkin, Sir William, <a href='#Page_72'>72</a>, <a href='#Page_80'>80</a>, <a href='#Page_102'>102</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Pharmaceutical chemistry, <a href='#Page_6'>6</a>, <a href='#Page_85'>85</a>-88</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Phenol, <a href='#Page_18'>18</a>, <a href='#Page_64'>64</a>, <a href='#Page_84'>84</a>, <a href='#Page_101'>101</a>, <a href='#Page_102'>102</a>, <a href='#Page_137'>137</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Phonograph records, <a href='#Page_84'>84</a>, <a href='#Page_141'>141</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Phosphates, <a href='#Page_56'>56</a>-59</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Phosgene, <a href='#Page_224'>224</a>, <a href='#Page_225'>225</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Photographic developers, <a href='#Page_88'>88</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Picric acid, <a href='#Page_18'>18</a>, <a href='#Page_84'>84</a>, <a href='#Page_85'>85</a>, <a href='#Page_226'>226</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Platinum, <a href='#Page_28'>28</a>, <a href='#Page_278'>278</a>, <a href='#Page_280'>280</a>, <a href='#Page_284'>284</a>, <a href='#Page_286'>286</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Plastics, synthetic, <a href='#Page_128'>128</a>-143</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Pneumatic tires, <a href='#Page_162'>162</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Poisonous gases in warfare, <a href='#Page_218'>218</a>-235, <a href='#Page_307'>307</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Potash, <a href='#Page_37'>37</a>, <a href='#Page_45'>45</a>-56, <a href='#Page_300'>300</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Priestley, <a href='#Page_150'>150</a>, <a href='#Page_160'>160</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Purple, royal, <a href='#Page_75'>75</a>, <a href='#Page_79'>79</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Pyralin, <a href='#Page_132'>132</a>, <a href='#Page_133'>133</a></span><br /><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Pyrophoric alloys, <a href='#Page_290'>290</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Pyroxylin, <a href='#Page_17'>17</a>, <a href='#Page_127'>127</a>, <a href='#Page_125'>125</a>, <a href='#Page_130'>130</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Radium, <a href='#Page_291'>291</a>, <a href='#Page_295'>295</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Rare earths, <a href='#Page_286'>286</a>-288, <a href='#Page_308'>308</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Redmanol, <a href='#Page_140'>140</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Remsen, Ira, <a href='#Page_178'>178</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Refractories, <a href='#Page_251'>251</a>-252</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Resins, synthetic, <a href='#Page_135'>135</a>-143</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Rose perfume, <a href='#Page_93'>93</a>, <a href='#Page_96'>96</a>, <a href='#Page_97'>97</a>, <a href='#Page_99'>99</a>, <a href='#Page_105'>105</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Rubber, natural, <a href='#Page_155'>155</a>-161, <a href='#Page_304'>304</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">synthetic, <a href='#Page_136'>136</a>, <a href='#Page_145'>145</a>-163, <a href='#Page_304'>304</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Rumford, Count, <a href='#Page_160'>160</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Rust, protection from, <a href='#Page_262'>262</a>-275</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Saccharin, <a href='#Page_178'>178</a>, <a href='#Page_179'>179</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Salicylic acid, <a href='#Page_88'>88</a>, <a href='#Page_101'>101</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Saltpeter, Chilean, <a href='#Page_22'>22</a>, <a href='#Page_30'>30</a>, <a href='#Page_36'>36</a>, <a href='#Page_42'>42</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Schoop process, <a href='#Page_272'>272</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Serpek process, <a href='#Page_31'>31</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Silicon, <a href='#Page_249'>249</a>, <a href='#Page_253'>253</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Smell, sense of, <a href='#Page_97'>97</a>, <a href='#Page_98'>98</a>, <a href='#Page_103'>103</a>, <a href='#Page_109'>109</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Smith, Provost, <a href='#Page_237'>237</a>, <a href='#Page_245'>245</a>, <a href='#Page_307'>307</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Smokeless powder, <a href='#Page_15'>15</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Sodium, <a href='#Page_148'>148</a>, <a href='#Page_238'>238</a>, <a href='#Page_247'>247</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Soil chemistry, <a href='#Page_38'>38</a>, <a href='#Page_39'>39</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Soy bean, <a href='#Page_142'>142</a>, <a href='#Page_211'>211</a>, <a href='#Page_217'>217</a>, <a href='#Page_306'>306</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Starch, <a href='#Page_137'>137</a>, <a href='#Page_184'>184</a>, <a href='#Page_189'>189</a>, <a href='#Page_190'>190</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Stassfort salts, <a href='#Page_47'>47</a>, <a href='#Page_49'>49</a>, <a href='#Page_55'>55</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Stellites, <a href='#Page_280'>280</a>, <a href='#Page_308'>308</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Sugar, <a href='#Page_164'>164</a>-180, <a href='#Page_304'>304</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Sulfuric acid, <a href='#Page_57'>57</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Tantalum, <a href='#Page_282'>282</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Terpenes, <a href='#Page_100'>100</a>, <a href='#Page_154'>154</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Textile industry, <a href='#Page_5'>5</a>, <a href='#Page_112'>112</a>, <a href='#Page_121'>121</a>, <a href='#Page_300'>300</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Thermit, <a href='#Page_256'>256</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Thermodynamics, Second law of, <a href='#Page_145'>145</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Three periods of progress, <a href='#Page_3'>3</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Tin plating, <a href='#Page_271'>271</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Tilden, <a href='#Page_146'>146</a>, <a href='#Page_298'>298</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Titanium, <a href='#Page_278'>278</a>, <a href='#Page_308'>308</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">TNT, <a href='#Page_19'>19</a>, <a href='#Page_21'>21</a>, <a href='#Page_84'>84</a>, <a href='#Page_299'>299</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Trinitrotoluol, <a href='#Page_19'>19</a>, <a href='#Page_21'>21</a>, <a href='#Page_84'>84</a>, <a href='#Page_299'>299</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Tropics, value of, <a href='#Page_96'>96</a>, <a href='#Page_156'>156</a>, <a href='#Page_165'>165</a>, <a href='#Page_196'>196</a>, <a href='#Page_206'>206</a>, <a href='#Page_213'>213</a>, <a href='#Page_216'>216</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Tungsten, <a href='#Page_257'>257</a>, <a href='#Page_277'>277</a>, <a href='#Page_281'>281</a>, <a href='#Page_308'>308</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Uranium, <a href='#Page_28'>28</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Vanadium, <a href='#Page_277'>277</a>, <a href='#Page_280'>280</a>, <a href='#Page_308'>308</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Vanillin, <a href='#Page_103'>103</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Violet perfume, <a href='#Page_100'>100</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Viscose, <a href='#Page_116'>116</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Vitamines, <a href='#Page_211'>211</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Vulcanization, <a href='#Page_161'>161</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Welding, <a href='#Page_256'>256</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Welsbach burner, <a href='#Page_287'>287</a>-289, <a href='#Page_308'>308</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Wheat problem, <a href='#Page_43'>43</a>, <a href='#Page_299'>299</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Wood, distillation of, <a href='#Page_126'>126</a>, <a href='#Page_127'>127</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Wood pulp, <a href='#Page_112'>112</a>, <a href='#Page_120'>120</a>, <a href='#Page_303'>303</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Ypres, Use of gases at, <a href='#Page_221'>221</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Zinc plating, <a href='#Page_271'>271</a></span><br />
+</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="Once_a_Slosson_Reader" id="Once_a_Slosson_Reader"></a><span class="u"><i>Once a Slosson Reader</i></span></h2>
+
+<h2><span class="u"><i>Always a Slosson Fan</i></span></h2>
+
+<h4><span class="u">JUST PUBLISHED</span></h4>
+
+<h2>CHATS ON SCIENCE</h2>
+
+<h4>By E.E. SLOSSON</h4>
+
+<h5>Author of "Creative Chemistry," etc.</h5>
+
+
+<p>Dr. Slosson is nothing short of a prodigy. He is a triple-starred
+scientist man who can bring down the highest flying scientific fact and
+tame it so that any of us can live with it and sometimes even love it.
+He can make a fairy tale out of coal-tar dyes and a laboratory into a
+joyful playhouse while it continues functioning gloriously as a
+laboratory. But to readers of "Creative Chemistry" it is wasting time to
+talk about Dr. Slosson's style.</p>
+
+<p>"Chats On Science," which has just been published, is made up of
+eighty-five brief chapters or sections or periods, each complete in
+itself, dealing with a gorgeous variety of subjects. They go from
+Popover Stars to Soda Water, from How Old Is Disease to Einstein in
+Words of One Syllable. The reader can begin anywhere, but when he begins
+he will ultimately read the entire series. It is good science and good
+reading. It contains some of the best writing Dr. Slosson has ever done.</p>
+
+<p>The Boston Transcript says: "These 'Chats' are even more fascinating,
+were that possible, than 'Creative Chemistry.' They are more marvelous
+than the most marvelous of fairy tales ... Even an adequate review could
+give little idea of the treasures of modern scientific knowledge 'Chats
+on Science' contains ... Dr. Slosson has, besides rare scientific
+knowledge, that gift of the gods&mdash;imagination."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>("Chats on Science" by E.E. Slosson is published by The Century Company,
+353 Fourth Avenue, New York City. It is sold for $2.00 at all
+bookstores, or it may be ordered from the publisher.)</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 65%;' />
+<h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> I am quoting mostly Unstead's figures from the
+<i>Geographical Journal</i> of 1913. See also Dickson's "The Distribution of
+Mankind," in Smithsonian Report, 1913.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> United States Abstract of Census of Manufactures, 1914, p.
+34.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> United States Department of Agriculture, Bulletin No. 505.</p></div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<table><tr><td>
+Transcriber's notes:<br />
+<br />
+Footnotes moved to end of book.<br />
+<br />
+The book starts using the word "CHAPTER" only after its chapter
+number XI. I have left it the same in this text.
+</td></tr></table>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CREATIVE CHEMISTRY***</p>
+<p>******* This file should be named 17149-h.txt or 17149-h.zip *******</p>
+<p>This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:<br />
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+</pre>
+</body>
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@@ -0,0 +1,9364 @@
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Creative Chemistry, by Edwin E. Slosson
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Creative Chemistry
+       Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries
+
+
+Author: Edwin E. Slosson
+
+
+
+Release Date: November 24, 2005  [eBook #17149]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CREATIVE CHEMISTRY***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Kevin Handy, John Hagerson, Josephine Paolucci, and the
+Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+(https://www.pgdp.net/)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 17149-h.htm or 17149-h.zip:
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/7/1/4/17149/17149-h/17149-h.htm)
+      or
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/7/1/4/17149/17149-h.zip)
+
+
+Transcriber's notes:
+
+   Underscores before and after words denote italics.
+
+   Underscore and {} denote subscripts.
+
+   Footnotes moved to end of book.
+
+   The book starts using the word "CHAPTER" only after its chapter
+   number XI. I have left it the same in this text.
+
+
+
+
+
+The Century Books of Useful Science
+
+CREATIVE CHEMISTRY
+
+Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries
+
+by
+
+EDWIN E. SLOSSON, M.S., PH.D.
+
+Literary Editor of _The Independent_, Associate in Columbia School of
+Journalism
+
+Author of "Great American Universities," "Major Prophets of Today," "Six
+Major Prophets," "On Acylhalogenamine Derivatives and the Beckmann
+Rearrangement," "Composition of Wyoming Petroleum," etc.
+
+With Many Illustrations
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration (Decorative)]
+
+
+
+New York
+The Century Co.
+Copyright, 1919, by
+The Century Co.
+Copyright, 1917, 1918, 1919, by
+The Independent Corporation
+Published, October, 1919
+
+
+
+[Illustration: From "America's Munitions"
+
+
+
+THE PRODUCTION OF NEW AND STRONGER FORMS OF STEEL IS ONE OF THE GREATEST
+TRIUMPHS OF MODERN CHEMISTRY
+
+The photograph shows the manufacture of a 12-inch gun at the plant of
+the Midvale Steel Company during the late war. The gun tube, 41 feet
+long, has just been drawn from the furnace where it was tempered at
+white heat and is now ready for quenching.]
+
+
+
+
+TO MY FIRST TEACHER
+
+PROFESSOR E.H.S. BAILEY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS
+
+AND MY LAST TEACHER
+
+PROFESSOR JULIUS STIEGLITZ OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
+
+THIS VOLUME IS GRATEFULLY DEDICATED
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+I THREE PERIODS OF PROGRESS                    3
+
+II NITROGEN                                   14
+
+III FEEDING THE SOIL                          37
+
+IV COAL-TAR COLORS                            60
+
+V SYNTHETIC PERFUMES AND FLAVORS              93
+
+VI CELLULOSE                                 110
+
+VII SYNTHETIC PLASTICS                       128
+
+VIII THE RACE FOR RUBBER                     145
+
+IX THE RIVAL SUGARS                          164
+
+X WHAT COMES FROM CORN                       181
+
+XI SOLIDIFIED SUNSHINE                       196
+
+XII FIGHTING WITH FUMES                      218
+
+XIII PRODUCTS OF THE ELECTRIC FURNACE        236
+
+XIV METALS, OLD AND NEW                      263
+
+READING REFERENCES                           297
+
+INDEX                                        309
+
+
+
+
+A CARD OF THANKS
+
+
+This book originated in a series of articles prepared for _The
+Independent_ in 1917-18 for the purpose of interesting the general
+reader in the recent achievements of industrial chemistry and providing
+supplementary reading for students of chemistry in colleges and high
+schools. I am indebted to Hamilton Holt, editor of _The Independent_,
+and to Karl V.S. Howland, its publisher, for stimulus and opportunity to
+undertake the writing of these pages and for the privilege of reprinting
+them in this form.
+
+In gathering the material for this volume I have received the kindly aid
+of so many companies and individuals that it is impossible to thank them
+all but I must at least mention as those to whom I am especially
+grateful for information, advice and criticism: Thomas H. Norton of the
+Department of Commerce; Dr. Bernhard C. Hesse; H.S. Bailey of the
+Department of Agriculture; Professor Julius Stieglitz of the University
+of Chicago; L.E. Edgar of the Du Pont de Nemours Company; Milton Whitney
+of the U.S. Bureau of Soils; Dr. H.N. McCoy; K.F. Kellerman of the
+Bureau of Plant Industry.
+
+E.E.S.
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+The production of new and stronger forms of steel is one
+of the greatest triumphs of modern chemistry      _Frontispiece_
+
+                                                    FACING PAGE
+
+The hand grenades contain potential chemical energy
+capable of causing a vast amount of destruction
+when released                                             16
+
+Women in a munition plant engaged in the manufacture
+of tri-nitro-toluol                                       17
+
+A chemical reaction on a large scale                      32
+
+Burning air in a Birkeland-Eyde furnace at the DuPont
+plant                                                     33
+
+A battery of Birkeland-Eyde furnaces for the fixation of
+nitrogen at the DuPont plant                              33
+
+Fixing nitrogen by calcium carbide                        40
+
+A barrow full of potash salts extracted from six tons of
+green kelp by the government chemists                     41
+
+Nature's silent method of nitrogen fixation               41
+
+In order to secure a new supply of potash salts the United
+States Government set up an experimental plant at
+Sutherland, California, for utilization of kelp           52
+
+Overhead suction at the San Diego wharf pumping kelp
+from the barge to the digestion tanks                     53
+
+The kelp harvester gathering the seaweed from the Pacific
+Ocean                                                     53
+
+A battery of Koppers by-product coke-ovens at the plant
+of the Bethlehem Steel Company, Sparrows Point,
+Maryland                                                  60
+
+In these mixing vats at the Buffalo Works, aniline dyes
+are prepared                                              61
+
+A paper mill in action                                   120
+
+Cellulose from wood pulp is now made into a large variety
+of useful articles of which a few examples are here
+pictured                                                 121
+
+Plantation rubber                                        160
+
+Forest rubber                                            160
+
+In making garden hose the rubber is formed into a tube
+by the machine on the right and coiled on the table
+to the left                                              161
+
+The rival sugars                                         176
+
+Interior of a sugar mill showing the machinery for crushing
+cane to extract the juice                                177
+
+Vacuum pans of the American Sugar Refinery Company       177
+
+Cotton seed oil as it is squeezed from the seed
+by the presses                                           200
+
+Cotton seed oil as it comes from the compressors flowing
+out of the faucets                                       201
+
+Splitting coconuts on the island of Tahiti               216
+
+The electric current passing through salt water in these
+cells decomposes the salt into caustic soda and
+chlorine gas                                             217
+
+Germans starting a gas attack on the Russian lines       224
+
+Filling the cannisters of gas masks with charcoal made
+from fruit pits--Long Island City                        225
+
+The chlorpicrin plant at the Bdgewood Arsenal            234
+
+Repairing the broken stern post of the _U.S.S. Northern
+Pacific_, the biggest marine weld in the world           235
+
+Making aloxite in the electric furnaces by fusing coke
+and bauxite                                              240
+
+A block of carborundum crystals                          241
+
+Making carborundum in the electric furnace               241
+
+Types of gas mask used by America, the Allies and Germany
+during the war                                           256
+
+Pumping melted white phosphorus into hand grenades
+filled with water--Edgewood Arsenal                      257
+
+Filling shell with "mustard gas"                         257
+
+Photomicrographs showing the structure of steel made by
+Professor E.G. Mahin of Purdue University                272
+
+The microscopic structure of metals                      273
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+BY JULIUS STIEGLITZ
+
+Formerly President of the American Chemical Society, Professor of
+Chemistry in The University of Chicago
+
+
+The recent war as never before in the history of the world brought to
+the nations of the earth a realization of the vital place which the
+science of chemistry holds in the development of the resources of a
+nation. Some of the most picturesque features of this awakening reached
+the great public through the press. Thus, the adventurous trips of the
+_Deutschland_ with its cargoes of concentrated aniline dyes, valued at
+millions of dollars, emphasized as no other incident our former
+dependence upon Germany for these products of her chemical industries.
+
+The public read, too, that her chemists saved Germany from an early
+disastrous defeat, both in the field of military operations and in the
+matter of economic supplies: unquestionably, without the tremendous
+expansion of her plants for the production of nitrates and ammonia from
+the air by the processes of Haber, Ostwald and others of her great
+chemists, the war would have ended in 1915, or early in 1916, from
+exhaustion of Germany's supplies of nitrate explosives, if not indeed
+from exhaustion of her food supplies as a consequence of the lack of
+nitrate and ammonia fertilizer for her fields. Inventions of substitutes
+for cotton, copper, rubber, wool and many other basic needs have been
+reported.
+
+These feats of chemistry, performed under the stress of dire necessity,
+have, no doubt, excited the wonder and interest of our public. It is far
+more important at this time, however, when both for war and for peace
+needs, the resources of our country are strained to the utmost, that the
+public should awaken to a clear realization of what this science of
+chemistry really means for mankind, to the realization that its wizardry
+permeates the whole life of the nation as a vitalizing, protective and
+constructive agent very much in the same way as our blood, coursing
+through our veins and arteries, carries the constructive, defensive and
+life-bringing materials to every organ in the body.
+
+If the layman will but understand that chemistry is the fundamental
+_science of the transformation of matter_, he will readily accept the
+validity of this sweeping assertion: he will realize, for instance, why
+exactly the same fundamental laws of the science apply to, and make
+possible scientific control of, such widely divergent national
+industries as agriculture and steel manufacturing. It governs the
+transformation of the salts, minerals and humus of our fields and the
+components of the air into corn, wheat, cotton and the innumerable other
+products of the soil; it governs no less the transformation of crude
+ores into steel and alloys, which, with the cunning born of chemical
+knowledge, may be given practically any conceivable quality of hardness,
+elasticity, toughness or strength. And exactly the same thing may be
+said of the hundreds of national activities that lie between the two
+extremes of agriculture and steel manufacture!
+
+Moreover, the domain of the science of the transformation of matter
+includes even life itself as its loftiest phase: from our birth to our
+return to dust the laws of chemistry are the controlling laws of life,
+health, disease and death, and the ever clearer recognition of this
+relation is the strongest force that is raising medicine from the
+uncertain realm of an art to the safer sphere of an exact science. To
+many scientific minds it has even become evident that those most
+wonderful facts of life, heredity and character, must find their final
+explanation in the chemical composition of the components of life
+producing, germinal protoplasm: mere form and shape are no longer
+supreme but are relegated to their proper place as the housing only of
+the living matter which functions chemically.
+
+It must be quite obvious now why thoughtful men are insisting that the
+public should be awakened to a broad realization of the significance of
+the science of chemistry for its national life.
+
+It is a difficult science in its details, because it has found that it
+can best interpret the visible phenomena of the material world on the
+basis of the conception of invisible minute material atoms and
+molecules, each a world in itself, whose properties may be nevertheless
+accurately deduced by a rigorous logic controlling the highest type of
+scientific imagination. But a layman is interested in the wonders of
+great bridges and of monumental buildings without feeling the need of
+inquiring into the painfully minute and extended calculations of the
+engineer and architect of the strains and stresses to which every pin
+and every bar of the great bridge and every bit of stone, every foot of
+arch in a monumental edifice, will be exposed. So the public may
+understand and appreciate with the keenest interest the results of
+chemical effort without the need of instruction in the intricacies of
+our logic, of our dealings with our minute, invisible particles.
+
+The whole nation's welfare demands, indeed, that our public be
+enlightened in the matter of the relation of chemistry to our national
+life. Thus, if our commerce and our industries are to survive the
+terrific competition that must follow the reestablishment of peace, our
+public must insist that its representatives in Congress preserve that
+independence in chemical manufacturing which the war has forced upon us
+in the matter of dyes, of numberless invaluable remedies to cure and
+relieve suffering; in the matter, too, of hundreds of chemicals, which
+our industries need for their successful existence.
+
+Unless we are independent in these fields, how easily might an
+unscrupulous competing nation do us untold harm by the mere device, for
+instance, of delaying supplies, or by sending inferior materials to this
+country or by underselling our chemical manufacturers and, after the
+destruction of our chemical independence, handicapping our industries as
+they were in the first year or two of the great war! This is not a mere
+possibility created by the imagination, for our economic history
+contains instance after instance of the purposeful undermining and
+destruction of our industries in finer chemicals, dyes and drugs by
+foreign interests bent on preserving their monopoly. If one recalls that
+through control, for instance, of dyes by a competing nation, control is
+in fact also established over products, valued in the hundreds of
+millions of dollars, in which dyes enter as an essential factor, one
+may realize indeed the tremendous industrial and commercial power which
+is controlled by the single lever--chemical dyes. Of even more vital
+moment is chemistry in the domain of health: the pitiful calls of our
+hospitals for local anesthetics to alleviate suffering on the operating
+table, the frantic appeals for the hypnotic that soothes the epileptic
+and staves off his seizure, the almost furious demands for remedy after
+remedy, that came in the early years of the war, are still ringing in
+the hearts of many of us. No wonder that our small army of chemists is
+grimly determined not to give up the independence in chemistry which war
+has achieved for us! Only a widely enlightened public, however, can
+insure the permanence of what farseeing men have started to accomplish
+in developing the power of chemistry through research in every domain
+which chemistry touches.
+
+The general public should realize that in the support of great chemical
+research laboratories of universities and technical schools it will be
+sustaining important centers from which the science which improves
+products, abolishes waste, establishes new industries and preserves
+life, may reach out helpfully into all the activities of our great
+nation, that are dependent on the transformation of matter.
+
+The public is to be congratulated upon the fact that the writer of the
+present volume is better qualified than any other man in the country to
+bring home to his readers some of the great results of modern chemical
+activity as well as some of the big problems which must continue to
+engage the attention of our chemists. Dr. Slosson has indeed the unique
+quality of combining an exact and intimate knowledge of chemistry with
+the exquisite clarity and pointedness of expression of a born writer.
+
+We have here an exposition by a master mind, an exposition shorn of the
+terrifying and obscuring technicalities of the lecture room, that will
+be as absorbing reading as any thrilling romance. For the story of
+scientific achievement is the greatest epic the world has ever known,
+and like the great national epics of bygone ages, should quicken the
+life of the nation by a realization of its powers and a picture of its
+possibilities.
+
+
+
+
+CREATIVE CHEMISTRY
+
+     La Chimie possede cette faculte creatrice a un degre plus
+     eminent que les autres sciences, parce qu'elle penetre plus
+     profondement et atteint jusqu'aux elements naturels des etres.
+
+     --_Berthelot_.
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+THREE PERIODS OF PROGRESS
+
+
+The story of Robinson Crusoe is an allegory of human history. Man is a
+castaway upon a desert planet, isolated from other inhabited worlds--if
+there be any such--by millions of miles of untraversable space. He is
+absolutely dependent upon his own exertions, for this world of his, as
+Wells says, has no imports except meteorites and no exports of any kind.
+Man has no wrecked ship from a former civilization to draw upon for
+tools and weapons, but must utilize as best he may such raw materials as
+he can find. In this conquest of nature by man there are three stages
+distinguishable:
+
+  1. The Appropriative Period
+  2. The Adaptive Period
+  3. The Creative Period
+
+These eras overlap, and the human race, or rather its vanguard,
+civilized man, may be passing into the third stage in one field of human
+endeavor while still lingering in the second or first in some other
+respect. But in any particular line this sequence is followed. The
+primitive man picks up whatever he can find available for his use. His
+successor in the next stage of culture shapes and develops this crude
+instrument until it becomes more suitable for his purpose. But in the
+course of time man often finds that he can make something new which is
+better than anything in nature or naturally produced. The savage
+discovers. The barbarian improves. The civilized man invents. The first
+finds. The second fashions. The third fabricates.
+
+The primitive man was a troglodyte. He sought shelter in any cave or
+crevice that he could find. Later he dug it out to make it more roomy
+and piled up stones at the entrance to keep out the wild beasts. This
+artificial barricade, this false facade, was gradually extended and
+solidified until finally man could build a cave for himself anywhere in
+the open field from stones he quarried out of the hill. But man was not
+content with such materials and now puts up a building which may be
+composed of steel, brick, terra cotta, glass, concrete and plaster, none
+of which materials are to be found in nature.
+
+The untutored savage might cross a stream astride a floating tree trunk.
+By and by it occurred to him to sit inside the log instead of on it, so
+he hollowed it out with fire or flint. Later, much later, he constructed
+an ocean liner.
+
+Cain, or whoever it was first slew his brother man, made use of a stone
+or stick. Afterward it was found a better weapon could be made by tying
+the stone to the end of the stick, and as murder developed into a fine
+art the stick was converted into the bow and this into the catapult and
+finally into the cannon, while the stone was developed into the high
+explosive projectile. The first music to soothe the savage breast was
+the soughing of the wind through the trees. Then strings were stretched
+across a crevice for the wind to play upon and there was the AEolian
+harp. The second stage was entered when Hermes strung the tortoise shell
+and plucked it with his fingers and when Athena, raising the wind from
+her own lungs, forced it through a hollow reed. From these beginnings we
+have the organ and the orchestra, producing such sounds as nothing in
+nature can equal.
+
+The first idol was doubtless a meteorite fallen from heaven or a
+fulgurite or concretion picked up from the sand, bearing some slight
+resemblance to a human being. Later man made gods in his own image, and
+so sculpture and painting grew until now the creations of futuristic art
+could be worshiped--if one wanted to--without violation of the second
+commandment, for they are not the likeness of anything that is in heaven
+above or that is in the earth beneath or that is in the water under the
+earth.
+
+In the textile industry the same development is observable. The
+primitive man used the skins of animals he had slain to protect his own
+skin. In the course of time he--or more probably his wife, for it is to
+the women rather than to the men that we owe the early steps in the arts
+and sciences--fastened leaves together or pounded out bark to make
+garments. Later fibers were plucked from the sheepskin, the cocoon and
+the cotton-ball, twisted together and woven into cloth. Nowadays it is
+possible to make a complete suit of clothes, from hat to shoes, of any
+desirable texture, form and color, and not include any substance to be
+found in nature. The first metals available were those found free in
+nature such as gold and copper. In a later age it was found possible to
+extract iron from its ores and today we have artificial alloys made of
+multifarious combinations of rare metals. The medicine man dosed his
+patients with decoctions of such roots and herbs as had a bad taste or
+queer look. The pharmacist discovered how to extract from these their
+medicinal principle such as morphine, quinine and cocaine, and the
+creative chemist has discovered how to make innumerable drugs adapted to
+specific diseases and individual idiosyncrasies.
+
+In the later or creative stages we enter the domain of chemistry, for it
+is the chemist alone who possesses the power of reducing a substance to
+its constituent atoms and from them producing substances entirely new.
+But the chemist has been slow to realize his unique power and the world
+has been still slower to utilize his invaluable services. Until recently
+indeed the leaders of chemical science expressly disclaimed what should
+have been their proudest boast. The French chemist Lavoisier in 1793
+defined chemistry as "the science of analysis." The German chemist
+Gerhardt in 1844 said: "I have demonstrated that the chemist works in
+opposition to living nature, that he burns, destroys, analyzes, that the
+vital force alone operates by synthesis, that it reconstructs the
+edifice torn down by the chemical forces."
+
+It is quite true that chemists up to the middle of the last century were
+so absorbed in the destructive side of their science that they were
+blind to the constructive side of it. In this respect they were less
+prescient than their contemned predecessors, the alchemists, who,
+foolish and pretentious as they were, aspired at least to the formation
+of something new.
+
+It was, I think, the French chemist Berthelot who first clearly
+perceived the double aspect of chemistry, for he defined it as "the
+science of analysis _and synthesis_," of taking apart and of putting
+together. The motto of chemistry, as of all the empirical sciences, is
+_savoir c'est pouvoir_, to know in order to do. This is the pragmatic
+test of all useful knowledge. Berthelot goes on to say:
+
+     Chemistry creates its object. This creative faculty, comparable
+     to that of art itself, distinguishes it essentially from the
+     natural and historical sciences.... These sciences do not
+     control their object. Thus they are too often condemned to an
+     eternal impotence in the search for truth of which they must
+     content themselves with possessing some few and often uncertain
+     fragments. On the contrary, the experimental sciences have the
+     power to realize their conjectures.... What they dream of that
+     they can manifest in actuality....
+
+     Chemistry possesses this creative faculty to a more eminent
+     degree than the other sciences because it penetrates more
+     profoundly and attains even to the natural elements of
+     existences.
+
+Since Berthelot's time, that is, within the last fifty years, chemistry
+has won its chief triumphs in the field of synthesis. Organic chemistry,
+that is, the chemistry of the carbon compounds, so called because it was
+formerly assumed, as Gerhardt says, that they could only be formed by
+"vital force" of organized plants and animals, has taken a development
+far overshadowing inorganic chemistry, or the chemistry of mineral
+substances. Chemists have prepared or know how to prepare hundreds of
+thousands of such "organic compounds," few of which occur in the natural
+world.
+
+But this conception of chemistry is yet far from having been accepted by
+the world at large. This was brought forcibly to my attention during the
+publication of these chapters in "The Independent" by various letters,
+raising such objections as the following:
+
+     When you say in your article on "What Comes from Coal Tar" that
+     "Art can go ahead of nature in the dyestuff business" you have
+     doubtless for the moment allowed your enthusiasm to sweep you
+     away from the moorings of reason. Shakespeare, anticipating you
+     and your "Creative Chemistry," has shown the utter
+     untenableness of your position:
+
+            Nature is made better by no mean,
+            But nature makes that mean: so o'er that art,
+            Which, you say, adds to nature, is an art
+            That nature makes.
+
+     How can you say that art surpasses nature when you know very
+     well that nothing man is able to make can in any way equal the
+     perfection of all nature's products?
+
+     It is blasphemous of you to claim that man can improve the
+     works of God as they appear in nature. Only the Creator can
+     create. Man only imitates, destroys or defiles God's handiwork.
+
+No, it was not in momentary absence of mind that I claimed that man
+could improve upon nature in the making of dyes. I not only said it, but
+I proved it. I not only proved it, but I can back it up. I will give a
+million dollars to anybody finding in nature dyestuffs as numerous,
+varied, brilliant, pure and cheap as those that are manufactured in the
+laboratory. I haven't that amount of money with me at the moment, but
+the dyers would be glad to put it up for the discovery of a satisfactory
+natural source for their tinctorial materials. This is not an opinion of
+mine but a matter of fact, not to be decided by Shakespeare, who was not
+acquainted with the aniline products.
+
+Shakespeare in the passage quoted is indulging in his favorite amusement
+of a play upon words. There is a possible and a proper sense of the word
+"nature" that makes it include everything except the supernatural.
+Therefore man and all his works belong to the realm of nature. A
+tenement house in this sense is as "natural" as a bird's nest, a peapod
+or a crystal.
+
+But such a wide extension of the term destroys its distinctive value. It
+is more convenient and quite as correct to use "nature" as I have used
+it, in contradistinction to "art," meaning by the former the products of
+the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms, excluding the designs,
+inventions and constructions of man which we call "art."
+
+We cannot, in a general and abstract fashion, say which is superior, art
+or nature, because it all depends on the point of view. The worm loves a
+rotten log into which he can bore. Man prefers a steel cabinet into
+which the worm cannot bore. If man cannot improve Upon nature he has no
+motive for making anything. Artificial products are therefore superior
+to natural products as measured by man's convenience, otherwise they
+would have no reason for existence.
+
+Science and Christianity are at one in abhorring the natural man and
+calling upon the civilized man to fight and subdue him. The conquest of
+nature, not the imitation of nature, is the whole duty of man.
+Metchnikoff and St. Paul unite in criticizing the body we were born
+with. St. Augustine and Huxley are in agreement as to the eternal
+conflict between man and nature. In his Romanes lecture on "Evolution
+and Ethics" Huxley said: "The ethical progress of society depends, not
+on imitating the cosmic process, still less on running away from it, but
+on combating it," and again: "The history of civilization details the
+steps by which man has succeeded in building up an artificial world
+within the cosmos."
+
+There speaks the true evolutionist, whose one desire is to get away from
+nature as fast and far as possible. Imitate Nature? Yes, when we cannot
+improve upon her. Admire Nature? Possibly, but be not blinded to her
+defects. Learn from Nature? We should sit humbly at her feet until we
+can stand erect and go our own way. Love Nature? Never! She is our
+treacherous and unsleeping foe, ever to be feared and watched and
+circumvented, for at any moment and in spite of all our vigilance she
+may wipe out the human race by famine, pestilence or earthquake and
+within a few centuries obliterate every trace of its achievement. The
+wild beasts that man has kept at bay for a few centuries will in the end
+invade his palaces: the moss will envelop his walls and the lichen
+disrupt them. The clam may survive man by as many millennia as it
+preceded him. In the ultimate devolution of the world animal life will
+disappear before vegetable, the higher plants will be killed off before
+the lower, and finally the three kingdoms of nature will be reduced to
+one, the mineral. Civilized man, enthroned in his citadel and defended
+by all the forces of nature that he has brought under his control, is
+after all in the same situation as a savage, shivering in the darkness
+beside his fire, listening to the pad of predatory feet, the rustle of
+serpents and the cry of birds of prey, knowing that only the fire keeps
+his enemies off, but knowing too that every stick he lays on the fire
+lessens his fuel supply and hastens the inevitable time when the beasts
+of the jungle will make their fatal rush.
+
+Chaos is the "natural" state of the universe. Cosmos is the rare and
+temporary exception. Of all the million spheres this is apparently the
+only one habitable and of this only a small part--the reader may draw
+the boundaries to suit himself--can be called civilized. Anarchy is the
+natural state of the human race. It prevailed exclusively all over the
+world up to some five thousand years ago, since which a few peoples have
+for a time succeeded in establishing a certain degree of peace and
+order. This, however, can be maintained only by strenuous and persistent
+efforts, for society tends naturally to sink into the chaos out of which
+it has arisen.
+
+It is only by overcoming nature that man can rise. The sole salvation
+for the human race lies in the removal of the primal curse, the sentence
+of hard labor for life that was imposed on man as he left Paradise. Some
+folks are trying to elevate the laboring classes; some are trying to
+keep them down. The scientist has a more radical remedy; he wants to
+annihilate the laboring classes by abolishing labor. There is no longer
+any need for human labor in the sense of personal toil, for the physical
+energy necessary to accomplish all kinds of work may be obtained from
+external sources and it can be directed and controlled without extreme
+exertion. Man's first effort in this direction was to throw part of his
+burden upon the horse and ox or upon other men. But within the last
+century it has been discovered that neither human nor animal servitude
+is necessary to give man leisure for the higher life, for by means of
+the machine he can do the work of giants without exhaustion. But the
+introduction of machines, like every other step of human progress, met
+with the most violent opposition from those it was to benefit. "Smash
+'em!" cried the workingman. "Smash 'em!" cried the poet. "Smash 'em!"
+cried the artist. "Smash 'em!" cried the theologian. "Smash 'em!" cried
+the magistrate. This opposition yet lingers and every new invention,
+especially in chemistry, is greeted with general distrust and often with
+legislative prohibition.
+
+Man is the tool-using animal, and the machine, that is, the power-driven
+tool, is his peculiar achievement. It is purely a creation of the human
+mind. The wheel, its essential feature, does not exist in nature. The
+lever, with its to-and-fro motion, we find in the limbs of all animals,
+but the continuous and revolving lever, the wheel, cannot be formed of
+bone and flesh. Man as a motive power is a poor thing. He can only
+convert three or four thousand calories of energy a day and he does that
+very inefficiently. But he can make an engine that will handle a hundred
+thousand times that, twice as efficiently and three times as long. In
+this way only can he get rid of pain and toil and gain the wealth he
+wants.
+
+Gradually then he will substitute for the natural world an artificial
+world, molded nearer to his heart's desire. Man the Artifex will
+ultimately master Nature and reign supreme over his own creation until
+chaos shall come again. In the ancient drama it was _deus ex machina_
+that came in at the end to solve the problems of the play. It is to the
+same supernatural agency, the divinity in machinery, that we must look
+for the salvation of society. It is by means of applied science that the
+earth can be made habitable and a decent human life made possible.
+Creative evolution is at last becoming conscious.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+NITROGEN
+
+PRESERVER AND DESTROYER OF LIFE
+
+
+In the eyes of the chemist the Great War was essentially a series of
+explosive reactions resulting in the liberation of nitrogen. Nothing
+like it has been seen in any previous wars. The first battles were
+fought with cellulose, mostly in the form of clubs. The next were fought
+with silica, mostly in the form of flint arrowheads and spear-points.
+Then came the metals, bronze to begin with and later iron. The
+nitrogenous era in warfare began when Friar Roger Bacon or Friar
+Schwartz--whichever it was--ground together in his mortar saltpeter,
+charcoal and sulfur. The Chinese, to be sure, had invented gunpowder
+long before, but they--poor innocents--did not know of anything worse to
+do with it than to make it into fire-crackers. With the introduction of
+"villainous saltpeter" war ceased to be the vocation of the nobleman and
+since the nobleman had no other vocation he began to become extinct. A
+bullet fired from a mile away is no respecter of persons. It is just as
+likely to kill a knight as a peasant, and a brave man as a coward. You
+cannot fence with a cannon ball nor overawe it with a plumed hat. The
+only thing you can do is to hide and shoot back. Now you cannot hide if
+you send up a column of smoke by day and a pillar of fire by night--the
+most conspicuous of signals--every time you shoot. So the next step was
+the invention of a smokeless powder. In this the oxygen necessary for
+the combustion is already in such close combination with its fuel, the
+carbon and hydrogen, that no black particles of carbon can get away
+unburnt. In the old-fashioned gunpowder the oxygen necessary for the
+combustion of the carbon and sulfur was in a separate package, in the
+molecule of potassium nitrate, and however finely the mixture was
+ground, some of the atoms, in the excitement of the explosion, failed to
+find their proper partners at the moment of dispersal. The new gunpowder
+besides being smokeless is ashless. There is no black sticky mass of
+potassium salts left to foul the gun barrel.
+
+The gunpowder period of warfare was actively initiated at the battle of
+Cressy, in which, as a contemporary historian says, "The English guns
+made noise like thunder and caused much loss in men and horses."
+Smokeless powder as invented by Paul Vieille was adopted by the French
+Government in 1887. This, then, might be called the beginning of the
+guncotton or nitrocellulose period--or, perhaps in deference to the
+caveman's club, the second cellulose period of human warfare. Better,
+doubtless, to call it the "high explosive period," for various other
+nitro-compounds besides guncotton are being used.
+
+The important thing to note is that all the explosives from gunpowder
+down contain nitrogen as the essential element. It is customary to call
+nitrogen "an inert element" because it was hard to get it into
+combination with other elements. It might, on the other hand, be looked
+upon as an active element because it acts so energetically in getting
+out of its compounds. We can dodge the question by saying that nitrogen
+is a most unreliable and unsociable element. Like Kipling's cat it walks
+by its wild lone.
+
+It is not so bad as Argon the Lazy and the other celibate gases of that
+family, where each individual atom goes off by itself and absolutely
+refuses to unite even temporarily with any other atom. The nitrogen
+atoms will pair off with each other and stick together, but they are
+reluctant to associate with other elements and when they do the
+combination is likely to break up any moment. You all know people like
+that, good enough when by themselves but sure to break up any club,
+church or society they get into. Now, the value of nitrogen in warfare
+is due to the fact that all the atoms desert in a body on the field of
+battle. Millions of them may be lying packed in a gun cartridge, as
+quiet as you please, but let a little disturbance start in the
+neighborhood--say a grain of mercury fulminate flares up--and all the
+nitrogen atoms get to trembling so violently that they cannot be
+restrained. The shock spreads rapidly through the whole mass. The
+hydrogen and carbon atoms catch up the oxygen and in an instant they are
+off on a stampede, crowding in every direction to find an exit, and
+getting more heated up all the time. The only movable side is the cannon
+ball in front, so they all pound against that and give it such a shove
+that it goes ten miles before it stops. The external bombardment by the
+cannon ball is, therefore, preceded by an internal bombardment on the
+cannon ball by the molecules of the hot gases, whose speed is about as
+great as the speed of the projectile that they propel.
+
+[Illustration: (C) Underwood & Underwood
+
+THE HAND GRENADES WHICH THESE WOMEN ARE BORING will contain potential
+chemical energy capable of causing a vast amount of destruction when
+released. During the war the American Government placed orders for
+68,000,000 such grenades as are here shown.]
+
+[Illustration: (C) International Film Service, Inc.
+
+WOMEN IN A MUNITION PLANT ENGAGED IN THE MANUFACTURE OF
+TRI-NITRO-TOLUOL, THE MOST IMPORTANT OF MODERN HIGH EXPLOSIVES]
+
+The active agent in all these explosives is the nitrogen atom in
+combination with two oxygen atoms, which the chemist calls the "nitro
+group" and which he represents by NO_{2}. This group was, as I have
+said, originally used in the form of saltpeter or potassium nitrate, but
+since the chemist did not want the potassium part of it--for it fouled
+his guns--he took the nitro group out of the nitrate by means of
+sulfuric acid and by the same means hooked it on to some compound of
+carbon and hydrogen that would burn without leaving any residue, and
+give nothing but gases. One of the simplest of these hydrocarbon
+derivatives is glycerin, the same as you use for sunburn. This mixed
+with nitric and sulfuric acids gives nitroglycerin, an easy thing to
+make, though I should not advise anybody to try making it unless he has
+his life insured. But nitroglycerin is uncertain stuff to keep and being
+a liquid is awkward to handle. So it was mixed with sawdust or porous
+earth or something else that would soak it up. This molded into sticks
+is our ordinary dynamite.
+
+If instead of glycerin we take cellulose in the form of wood pulp or
+cotton and treat this with nitric acid in the presence of sulfuric we
+get nitrocellulose or guncotton, which is the chief ingredient of
+smokeless powder.
+
+Now guncotton looks like common cotton. It is too light and loose to
+pack well into a gun. So it is dissolved with ether and alcohol or
+acetone to make a plastic mass that can be molded into rods and cut into
+grains of suitable shape and size to burn at the proper speed.
+
+Here, then, we have a liquid explosive, nitroglycerin, that has to be
+soaked up in some porous solid, and a porous solid, guncotton, that has
+to soak up some liquid. Why not solve both difficulties together by
+dissolving the guncotton in the nitroglycerin and so get a double
+explosive? This is a simple idea. Any of us can see the sense of
+it--once it is suggested to us. But Alfred Nobel, the Swedish chemist,
+who thought it out first in 1878, made millions out of it. Then,
+apparently alarmed at the possible consequences of his invention, he
+bequeathed the fortune he had made by it to found international prizes
+for medical, chemical and physical discoveries, idealistic literature
+and the promotion of peace. But his posthumous efforts for the
+advancement of civilization and the abolition of war did not amount to
+much and his high explosives were later employed to blow into pieces the
+doctors, chemists, authors and pacifists he wished to reward.
+
+Nobel's invention, "cordite," is composed of nitroglycerin and
+nitrocellulose with a little mineral jelly or vaseline. Besides cordite
+and similar mixtures of nitroglycerin and nitrocellulose there are two
+other classes of high explosives in common use.
+
+One is made from carbolic acid, which is familiar to us all by its use
+as a disinfectant. If this is treated with nitric and sulfuric acids we
+get from it picric acid, a yellow crystalline solid. Every government
+has its own secret formula for this type of explosive. The British call
+theirs "lyddite," the French "melinite" and the Japanese "shimose."
+
+The third kind of high explosives uses as its base toluol. This is not
+so familiar to us as glycerin, cotton or carbolic acid. It is one of the
+coal tar products, an inflammable liquid, resembling benzene. When
+treated with nitric acid in the usual way it takes up like the others
+three nitro groups and so becomes tri-nitro-toluol. Realizing that
+people could not be expected to use such a mouthful of a word, the
+chemists have suggested various pretty nicknames, trotyl, tritol,
+trinol, tolite and trilit, but the public, with the wilfulness it always
+shows in the matter of names, persists in calling it TNT, as though it
+were an author like G.B.S., or G.K.C, or F.P.A. TNT is the latest of
+these high explosives and in some ways the best of them. Picric acid has
+the bad habit of attacking the metals with which it rests in contact
+forming sensitive picrates that are easily set off, but TNT is inert
+toward metals and keeps well. TNT melts far below the boiling point of
+water so can be readily liquefied and poured into shells. It is
+insensitive to ordinary shocks. A rifle bullet can be fired through a
+case of it without setting it off, and if lighted with a match it burns
+quietly. The amazing thing about these modern explosives, the organic
+nitrates, is the way they will stand banging about and burning, yet the
+terrific violence with which they blow up when shaken by an explosive
+wave of a particular velocity like that of a fulminating cap. Like
+picric acid, TNT stains the skin yellow and causes soreness and
+sometimes serious cases of poisoning among the employees, mostly girls,
+in the munition factories. On the other hand, the girls working with
+cordite get to using it as chewing gum; a harmful habit, not because of
+any danger of being blown up by it, but because nitroglycerin is a heart
+stimulant and they do not need that.
+
+[Illustration: The Genealogical Tree of Nitric Acid From W.Q. Whitman's
+"The Story of Nitrates in the War," _General Science Quarterly_]
+
+TNT is by no means smokeless. The German shells that exploded with a
+cloud of black smoke and which British soldiers called "Black Marias,"
+"coal-boxes" or "Jack Johnsons" were loaded with it. But it is an
+advantage to have a shell show where it strikes, although a disadvantage
+to have it show where it starts.
+
+It is these high explosives that have revolutionized warfare. As soon as
+the first German shell packed with these new nitrates burst inside the
+Gruson cupola at Liege and tore out its steel and concrete by the roots
+the world knew that the day of the fixed fortress was gone. The armies
+deserted their expensively prepared fortifications and took to the
+trenches. The British troops in France found their weapons futile and
+sent across the Channel the cry of "Send us high explosives or we
+perish!" The home Government was slow to heed the appeal, but no
+progress was made against the Germans until the Allies had the means to
+blast them out of their entrenchments by shells loaded with five hundred
+pounds of TNT.
+
+All these explosives are made from nitric acid and this used to be made
+from nitrates such as potassium nitrate or saltpeter. But nitrates are
+rarely found in large quantities. Napoleon and Lee had a hard time to
+scrape up enough saltpeter from the compost heaps, cellars and caves for
+their gunpowder, and they did not use as much nitrogen in a whole
+campaign as was freed in a few days' cannonading on the Somme. Now there
+is one place in the world--and so far as we know one only--where
+nitrates are to be found abundantly. This is in a desert on the western
+slope of the Andes where ancient guano deposits have decomposed and
+there was not enough rain to wash away their salts. Here is a bed two
+miles wide, two hundred miles long and five feet deep yielding some
+twenty to fifty per cent. of sodium nitrate. The deposit originally
+belonged to Peru, but Chile fought her for it and got it in 1881. Here
+all countries came to get their nitrates for agriculture and powder
+making. Germany was the largest customer and imported 750,000 tons of
+Chilean nitrate in 1913, besides using 100,000 tons of other nitrogen
+salts. By this means her old, wornout fields were made to yield greater
+harvests than our fresh land. Germany and England were like two duelists
+buying powder at the same shop. The Chilean Government, pocketing an
+export duty that aggregated half a billion dollars, permitted the
+saltpeter to be shoveled impartially into British and German ships, and
+so two nitrogen atoms, torn from their Pacific home and parted, like
+Evangeline and Gabriel, by transportation oversea, may have found
+themselves flung into each other's arms from the mouths of opposing
+howitzers in the air of Flanders. Goethe could write a romance on such a
+theme.
+
+Now the moment war broke out this source of supply was shut off to both
+parties, for they blockaded each other. The British fleet closed up the
+German ports while the German cruisers in the Pacific took up a position
+off the coast of Chile in order to intercept the ships carrying nitrates
+to England and France. The Panama Canal, designed to afford relief in
+such an emergency, caved in most inopportunely. The British sent a fleet
+to the Pacific to clear the nitrate route, but it was outranged and
+defeated on November 1, 1914. Then a stronger British fleet was sent
+out and smashed the Germans off the Falkland Islands on December 8. But
+for seven weeks the nitrate route had been closed while the chemical
+reactions on the Marne and Yser were decomposing nitrogen-compounds at
+an unheard of rate.
+
+England was now free to get nitrates for her munition factories, but
+Germany was still bottled up. She had stored up Chilean nitrates in
+anticipation of the war and as soon as it was seen to be coming she
+bought all she could get in Europe. But this supply was altogether
+inadequate and the war would have come to an end in the first winter if
+German chemists had not provided for such a contingency in advance by
+working out methods of getting nitrogen from the air. Long ago it was
+said that the British ruled the sea and the French the land so that left
+nothing to the German but the air. The Germans seem to have taken this
+jibe seriously and to have set themselves to make the most of the aerial
+realm in order to challenge the British and French in the fields they
+had appropriated. They had succeeded so far that the Kaiser when he
+declared war might well have considered himself the Prince of the Power
+of the Air. He had a fleet of Zeppelins and he had means for the
+fixation of nitrogen such as no other nation possessed. The Zeppelins
+burst like wind bags, but the nitrogen plants worked and made Germany
+independent of Chile not only during the war, but in the time of peace.
+
+Germany during the war used 200,000 tons of nitric acid a year in
+explosives, yet her supply of nitrogen is exhaustless.
+
+[Illustration: World production and consumption of fixed inorganic
+nitrogen expressed in tons nitrogen
+
+From _The Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry_, March,
+1919.]
+
+
+Nitrogen is free as air. That is the trouble; it is too free. It is
+fixed nitrogen that we want and that we are willing to pay for; nitrogen
+in combination with some other elements in the form of food or
+fertilizer so we can make use of it as we set it free. Fixed nitrogen in
+its cheapest form, Chile saltpeter, rose to $250 during the war. Free
+nitrogen costs nothing and is good for nothing. If a land-owner has a
+right to an expanding pyramid of air above him to the limits of the
+atmosphere--as, I believe, the courts have decided in the eaves-dropping
+cases--then for every square foot of his ground he owns as much
+nitrogen as he could buy for $2500. The air is four-fifths free nitrogen
+and if we could absorb it in our lungs as we do the oxygen of the other
+fifth a few minutes breathing would give us a full meal. But we let this
+free nitrogen all out again through our noses and then go and pay 35
+cents a pound for steak or 60 cents a dozen for eggs in order to get
+enough combined nitrogen to live on. Though man is immersed in an ocean
+of nitrogen, yet he cannot make use of it. He is like Coleridge's
+"Ancient Mariner" with "water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to
+drink."
+
+Nitrogen is, as Hood said not so truly about gold, "hard to get and hard
+to hold." The bacteria that form the nodules on the roots of peas and
+beans have the power that man has not of utilizing free nitrogen.
+Instead of this quiet inconspicuous process man has to call upon the
+lightning when he wants to fix nitrogen. The air contains the oxygen and
+nitrogen which it is desired to combine to form nitrates but the atoms
+are paired, like to like. Passing an electric spark through the air
+breaks up some of these pairs and in the confusion of the shock the
+lonely atoms seize on their nearest neighbor and so may get partners of
+the other sort. I have seen this same thing happen in a square dance
+where somebody made a blunder. It is easy to understand the reaction if
+we represent the atoms of oxygen and nitrogen by the initials of their
+names in this fashion:
+
+      NN  +  OO   -->   NO + NO
+  nitrogen  oxygen    nitric oxide
+
+The --> represents Jove's thunderbolt, a stroke of artificial
+lightning. We see on the left the molecules of oxygen and nitrogen,
+before taking the electric treatment, as separate elemental pairs, and
+then to the right of the arrow we find them as compound molecules of
+nitric oxide. This takes up another atom of oxygen from the air and
+becomes NOO, or using a subscript figure to indicate the number of atoms
+and so avoid repeating the letter, NO_{2} which is the familiar nitro
+group of nitric acid (HO--NO_{2}) and of its salts, the nitrates, and of
+its organic compounds, the high explosives. The NO_{2} is a brown and
+evil-smelling gas which when dissolved in water (HOH) and further
+oxidized is completely converted into nitric acid.
+
+The apparatus which effects this transformation is essentially a
+gigantic arc light in a chimney through which a current of hot air is
+blown. The more thoroughly the air comes under the action of the
+electric arc the more molecules of nitrogen and oxygen will be broken up
+and rearranged, but on the other hand if the mixture of gases remains in
+the path of the discharge the NO molecules are also broken up and go
+back into their original form of NN and OO. So the object is to spread
+out the electric arc as widely as possible and then run the air through
+it rapidly. In the Schoenherr process the electric arc is a spiral flame
+twenty-three feet long through which the air streams with a vortex
+motion. In the Birkeland-Eyde furnace there is a series of semi-circular
+arcs spread out by the repellent force of a powerful electric magnet in
+a flaming disc seven feet in diameter with a temperature of 6300 deg. F. In
+the Pauling furnace the electrodes between which the current strikes
+are two cast iron tubes curving upward and outward like the horns of a
+Texas steer and cooled by a stream of water passing through them. These
+electric furnaces produce two or three ounces of nitric acid for each
+kilowatt-hour of current consumed. Whether they can compete with the
+natural nitrates and the products of other processes depends upon how
+cheaply they can get their electricity. Before the war there were
+several large installations in Norway and elsewhere where abundant water
+power was available and now the Norwegians are using half a million
+horse power continuously in the fixation of nitrogen and the rest of the
+world as much again. The Germans had invested largely in these foreign
+oxidation plants, but shortly before the war they had sold out and
+turned their attention to other processes not requiring so much
+electrical energy, for their country is poorly provided with water
+power. The Haber process, that they made most of, is based upon as
+simple a reaction as that we have been considering, for it consists in
+uniting two elemental gases to make a compound, but the elements in this
+case are not nitrogen and oxygen, but nitrogen and hydrogen. This gives
+ammonia instead of nitric acid, but ammonia is useful for its own
+purposes and it can be converted into nitric acid if this is desired.
+The reaction is:
+
+  NN   +   HH + HH + HH --> NHHH + NHHH
+  Nitrogen  hydrogen         ammonia
+
+The animals go in two by two, but they come out four by four. Four
+molecules of the mixed elements are turned into two molecules and so the
+gas shrinks to half its volume. At the same time it acquires an
+odor--familiar to us when we are curing a cold--that neither of the
+original gases had. The agent that effects the transformation in this
+case is not the electric spark--for this would tend to work the reaction
+backwards--but uranium, a rare metal, which has the peculiar property of
+helping along a reaction while seeming to take no part in it. Such a
+substance is called a catalyst. The action of a catalyst is rather
+mysterious and whenever we have a mystery we need an analogy. We may,
+then, compare the catalyst to what is known as "a good mixer" in
+society. You know the sort of man I mean. He may not be brilliant or
+especially talkative, but somehow there is always "something doing" at a
+picnic or house-party when he is along. The tactful hostess, the salon
+leader, is a social catalyst. The trouble with catalysts, either human
+or metallic, is that they are rare and that sometimes they get sulky and
+won't work if the ingredients they are supposed to mix are unsuitable.
+
+But the uranium, osmium, platinum or whatever metal is used as a
+catalyzing agent is expensive and although it is not used up it is
+easily "poisoned," as the chemists say, by impurities in the gases. The
+nitrogen and the hydrogen for the Haber process must then be prepared
+and purified before trying to combine them into ammonia. The nitrogen is
+obtained by liquefying air by cold and pressure and then boiling off the
+nitrogen at 194 deg. C. The oxygen left is useful for other purposes. The
+hydrogen needed is extracted by a similar process of fractional
+distillation from "water-gas," the blue-flame burning gas used for
+heating. Then the nitrogen and hydrogen, mixed in the proportion of one
+to three, as shown in the reaction given above, are compressed to two
+hundred atmospheres, heated to 1300 deg. F. and passed over the finely
+divided uranium. The stream of gas that comes out contains about four
+per cent. of ammonia, which is condensed to a liquid by cooling and the
+uncombined hydrogen and nitrogen passed again through the apparatus.
+
+The ammonia can be employed in refrigeration and other ways but if it is
+desired to get the nitrogen into the form of nitric acid it has to be
+oxidized by the so-called Ostwald process. This is the reaction:
+
+  NH_{3}  +  4O   -->   HNO_{3} + H_{2}O
+  ammonia  oxygen    nitric acid  water
+
+The catalyst used to effect this combination is the metal platinum in
+the form of fine wire gauze, since the action takes place only on the
+surface. The ammonia gas is mixed with air which supplies the oxygen and
+the heated mixture run through the platinum gauze at the rate of several
+yards a second. Although the gases come in contact with the platinum
+only a five-hundredth part of a second yet eighty-five per cent. is
+converted into nitric acid.
+
+The Haber process for the making of ammonia by direct synthesis from its
+constituent elements and the supplemental Ostwald process for the
+conversion of the ammonia into nitric acid were the salvation of
+Germany. As soon as the Germans saw that their dash toward Paris had
+been stopped at the Marne they knew that they were in for a long war and
+at once made plans for a supply of fixed nitrogen. The chief German dye
+factories, the Badische Anilin and Soda-Fabrik, promptly put
+$100,000,000 into enlarging its plant and raised its production of
+ammonium sulfate from 30,000 to 300,000 tons. One German electrical firm
+with aid from the city of Berlin contracted to provide 66,000,000 pounds
+of fixed nitrogen a year at a cost of three cents a pound for the next
+twenty-five years. The 750,000 tons of Chilean nitrate imported annually
+by Germany contained about 116,000 tons of the essential element
+nitrogen. The fourteen large plants erected during the war can fix in
+the form of nitrates 500,000 tons of nitrogen a year, which is more than
+twice the amount needed for internal consumption. So Germany is now not
+only independent of the outside world but will have a surplus of
+nitrogen products which could be sold even in America at about half what
+the farmer has been paying for South American saltpeter.
+
+Besides the Haber or direct process there are other methods of making
+ammonia which are, at least outside of Germany, of more importance. Most
+prominent of these is the cyanamid process. This requires electrical
+power since it starts with a product of the electrical furnace, calcium
+carbide, familiar to us all as a source of acetylene gas.
+
+If a stream of nitrogen is passed over hot calcium carbide it is taken
+up by the carbide according to the following equation:
+
+       CaC_{2}  +  N_{2}    -->    CaCN_{2}  +  C
+  calcium carbide nitrogen   calcium cyanamid  carbon
+
+Calcium cyanamid was discovered in 1895 by Caro and Franke when they
+were trying to work out a new process for making cyanide to use in
+extracting gold. It looks like stone and, under the name of
+lime-nitrogen, or Kalkstickstoff, or nitrolim, is sold as a fertilizer.
+If it is desired to get ammonia, it is treated with superheated steam.
+The reaction produces heat and pressure, so it is necessary to carry it
+on in stout autoclaves or enclosed kettles. The cyanamid is completely
+and quickly converted into pure ammonia and calcium carbonate, which is
+the same as the limestone from which carbide was made. The reaction is:
+
+      CaCN_{2}  +  3H_{2}O   -->   CaCO_{3}  +  2NH_{3}
+  calcium cyanamid  water   calcium carbonate  ammonia
+
+Another electrical furnace method, the Serpek process, uses aluminum
+instead of calcium for the fixation of nitrogen. Bauxite, or impure
+aluminum oxide, the ordinary mineral used in the manufacture of metallic
+aluminum, is mixed with coal and heated in a revolving electrical
+furnace through which nitrogen is passing. The equation is:
+
+  Al_{2}O_{3} + 3C + N_{2}   -->   2AlN  +  3CO
+  aluminum   carbon nitrogen    aluminum  carbon
+   oxide                         nitride   monoxide
+
+Then the aluminum nitride is treated with steam under pressure, which
+produces ammonia and gives back the original aluminum oxide, but in a
+purer form than the mineral from which was made
+
+  2AlN  +  3H_{2}O --> 2NH_{3} + Al_{2}O_{3}
+  Aluminum  water     ammonia   aluminum oxide
+   nitride
+
+The Serpek process is employed to some extent in France in connection
+with the aluminum industry. These are the principal processes for the
+fixation of nitrogen now in use, but they by no means exhaust the
+possibilities. For instance, Professor John C. Bucher, of Brown
+University, created a sensation in 1917 by announcing a new process
+which he had worked out with admirable completeness and which has some
+very attractive features. It needs no electric power or high pressure
+retorts or liquid air apparatus. He simply fills a twenty-foot tube with
+briquets made out of soda ash, iron and coke and passes producer gas
+through the heated tube. Producer gas contains nitrogen since it is made
+by passing air over hot coal. The reaction is:
+
+  2Na_{2}CO_{3} + 4C + N_{2}   =   2NaCN + 3CO
+  sodium       carbon  nitrogen    sodium   carbon
+   carbonate                        cyanide   monoxide
+
+The iron here acts as the catalyst and converts two harmless substances,
+sodium carbonate, which is common washing soda, and carbon, into two of
+the most deadly compounds known to man, cyanide and carbon monoxide,
+which is what kills you when you blow out the gas. Sodium cyanide is a
+salt of hydrocyanic acid, which for, some curious reason is called
+"Prussic acid." It is so violent a poison that, as the freshman said in
+a chemistry recitation, "a single drop of it placed on the tongue of a
+dog will kill a man."
+
+But sodium cyanide is not only useful in itself, for the extraction of
+gold and cleaning of silver, but can be converted into ammonia, and a
+variety of other compounds such as urea and oxamid, which are good
+fertilizers; sodium ferrocyanide, that makes Prussian blue; and oxalic
+acid used in dyeing. Professor Bucher claimed that his furnace could be
+set up in a day at a cost of less than $100 and could turn out 150
+pounds of sodium cyanide in twenty-four hours. This process was placed
+freely at the disposal of the United States Government for the war and a
+10-ton plant was built at Saltville, Va., by the Ordnance Department.
+But the armistice put a stop to its operations and left the future of
+the process undetermined.
+
+[Illustration: A CHEMICAL REACTION ON A LARGE SCALE
+
+From the chemist's standpoint modern warfare consists in the rapid
+liberation of nitrogen from its compounds]
+
+[Illustration: Courtesy of E.I. du Pont de Nemours Co.
+
+BURNING AIR IN A BIRKELAND-EYDE FURNACE AT THE DU PONT PLANT
+
+An electric arc consuming about 4000 horse-power of energy is passing
+between the U-shaped electrodes which are made of copper tube cooled by
+an internal current of water. On the sides of the chamber are seen the
+openings through which the air passes impinging directly on both sides
+of the surface of the disk of flame. This flame is approximately seven
+feet in diameter and appears to be continuous although an alternating
+current of fifty cycles a second is used. The electric arc is spread
+into this disk flame by the repellent power of an electro-magnet the
+pointed pole of which is seen at bottom of the picture. Under this
+intense heat a part of the nitrogen and oxygen of the air combine to
+form oxides of nitrogen which when dissolved in water form the nitric
+acid used in explosives.]
+
+[Illustration: Courtesy of E.I. du Pont de Nemours Co.
+
+A BATTERY OF BIRKELAND-EYDE FURNACES FOR THE FIXATION OF NITROGEN AT THE
+DU PONT PLANT]
+
+We might have expected that the fixation of nitrogen by passing an
+electrical spark through hot air would have been an American invention,
+since it was Franklin who snatched the lightning from the heavens as
+well as the scepter from the tyrant and since our output of hot air is
+unequaled by any other nation. But little attention was paid to the
+nitrogen problem until 1916 when it became evident that we should soon
+be drawn into a war "with a first class power." On June 3, 1916,
+Congress placed $20,000,000 at the disposal of the president for
+investigation of "the best, cheapest and most available means for the
+production of nitrate and other products for munitions of war and useful
+in the manufacture of fertilizers and other useful products by water
+power or any other power." But by the time war was declared on April 6,
+1917, no definite program had been approved and by the time the
+armistice was signed on November 11, 1918, no plants were in active
+operation. But five plants had been started and two of them were nearly
+ready to begin work when they were closed by the ending of the war.
+United States Nitrate Plant No. 1 was located at Sheffield, Alabama, and
+was designed for the production of ammonia by "direct action" from
+nitrogen and hydrogen according to the plans of the American Chemical
+Company. Its capacity was calculated at 60,000 pounds of anhydrous
+ammonia a day, half of which was to be oxidized to nitric acid. Plant
+No. 2 was erected at Muscle Shoals, Alabama, to use the process of the
+American Cyanamid Company. This was contracted to produce 110,000 tons
+of ammonium nitrate a year and later two other cyanamid plants of half
+that capacity were started at Toledo and Ancor, Ohio.
+
+At Muscle Shoals a mushroom city of 20,000 sprang up on an Alabama
+cotton field in six months. The raw material, air, was as abundant there
+as anywhere and the power, water, could be obtained from the Government
+hydro-electric plant on the Tennessee River, but this was not available
+during the war, so steam was employed instead. The heat of the coal was
+used to cool the air down to the liquefying point. The principle of this
+process is simple. Everybody knows that heat expands and cold contracts,
+but not everybody has realized the converse of this rule, that expansion
+cools and compression heats. If air is forced into smaller space, as in
+a tire pump, it heats up and if allowed to expand to ordinary pressure
+it cools off again. But if the air while compressed is cooled and then
+allowed to expand it must get still colder and the process can go on
+till it becomes cold enough to congeal. That is, by expanding a great
+deal of air, a little of it can be reduced to the liquefying point. At
+Muscle Shoals the plant for liquefying air, in order to get the nitrogen
+out of it, consisted of two dozen towers each capable of producing 1765
+cubic feet of pure nitrogen per hour. The air was drawn in through two
+pipes, a yard across, and passed through scrubbing towers to remove
+impurities. The air was then compressed to 600 pounds per square inch.
+Nine tenths of the air was permitted to expand to 50 pounds and this
+expansion cooled down the other tenth, still under high pressure, to the
+liquefying point. Rectifying towers 24 feet high were stacked with trays
+of liquid air from which the nitrogen was continually bubbling off since
+its boiling point is twelve degrees centigrade lower than that of
+oxygen. Pure nitrogen gas collected at the top of the tower and the
+residual liquid air, now about half oxygen, was allowed to escape at the
+bottom.
+
+The nitrogen was then run through pipes into the lime-nitrogen ovens.
+There were 1536 of these about four feet square and each holding 1600
+pounds of pulverized calcium carbide. This is at first heated by an
+electrical current to start the reaction which afterwards produces
+enough heat to keep it going. As the stream of nitrogen gas passes over
+the finely divided carbide it is absorbed to form calcium cyanamid as
+described on a previous page. This product is cooled, powdered and wet
+to destroy any quicklime or carbide left unchanged. Then it is charged
+into autoclaves and steam at high temperature and pressure is admitted.
+The steam acting on the cyanamid sets free ammonia gas which is carried
+to towers down which cold water is sprayed, giving the ammonia water,
+familiar to the kitchen and the bathroom.
+
+But since nitric acid rather than ammonia was needed for munitions, the
+oxygen of the air had to be called into play. This process, as already
+explained, is carried on by aid of a catalyzer, in this case platinum
+wire. At Muscle Shoals there were 696 of these catalyzer boxes. The
+ammonia gas, mixed with air to provide the necessary oxygen, was
+admitted at the top and passed down through a sheet of platinum gauze of
+80 mesh to the inch, heated to incandescence by electricity. In contact
+with this the ammonia is converted into gaseous oxides of nitrogen (the
+familiar red fumes of the laboratory) which, carried off in pipes,
+cooled and dissolved in water, form nitric acid.
+
+But since none of the national plants could be got into action during
+the war, the United States was compelled to draw upon South America for
+its supply. The imports of Chilean saltpeter rose from half a million
+tons in 1914 to a million and a half in 1917. After peace was made the
+Department of War turned over to the Department of Agriculture its
+surplus of saltpeter, 150,000 tons, and it was sold to American farmers
+at cost, $81 a ton.
+
+For nitrogen plays a double role in human economy. It appears like
+Brahma in two aspects, Vishnu the Preserver and Siva the Destroyer. Here
+I have been considering nitrogen in its maleficent aspect, its use in
+war. We now turn to its beneficent aspect, its use in peace.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+FEEDING THE SOIL
+
+
+The Great War not only starved people: it starved the land. Enough
+nitrogen was thrown away in some indecisive battle on the Aisne to save
+India from a famine. The population of Europe as a whole has not been
+lessened by the war, but the soil has been robbed of its power to
+support the population. A plant requires certain chemical elements for
+its growth and all of these must be within reach of its rootlets, for it
+will accept no substitutes. A wheat stalk in France before the war had
+placed at its feet nitrates from Chile, phosphates from Florida and
+potash from Germany. All these were shut off by the firing line and the
+shortage of shipping.
+
+Out of the eighty elements only thirteen are necessary for crops. Four
+of these are gases: hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and chlorine. Five are
+metals: potassium, magnesium, calcium, iron and sodium. Four are
+non-metallic solids: carbon, sulfur, phosphorus and silicon. Three of
+these, hydrogen, oxygen and carbon, making up the bulk of the plant, are
+obtainable _ad libitum_ from the air and water. The other ten in the
+form of salts are dissolved in the water that is sucked up from the
+soil. The quantity needed by the plant is so small and the quantity
+contained in the soil is so great that ordinarily we need not bother
+about the supply except in case of three of them. They are nitrogen,
+potassium and phosphorus. These would be useless or fatal to plant life
+in the elemental form, but fixed in neutral salt they are essential
+plant foods. A ton of wheat takes away from the soil about 47 pounds of
+nitrogen, 18 pounds of phosphoric acid and 12 pounds of potash. If then
+the farmer does not restore this much to his field every year he is
+drawing upon his capital and this must lead to bankruptcy in the long
+run.
+
+So much is easy to see, but actually the question is extremely
+complicated. When the German chemist, Justus von Liebig, pointed out in
+1840 the possibility of maintaining soil fertility by the application of
+chemicals it seemed at first as though the question were practically
+solved. Chemists assumed that all they had to do was to analyze the soil
+and analyze the crop and from this figure out, as easily as balancing a
+bank book, just how much of each ingredient would have to be restored to
+the soil every year. But somehow it did not work out that way and the
+practical agriculturist, finding that the formulas did not fit his farm,
+sneered at the professors and whenever they cited Liebig to him he
+irreverently transposed the syllables of the name. The chemist when he
+went deeper into the subject saw that he had to deal with the colloids,
+damp, unpleasant, gummy bodies that he had hitherto fought shy of
+because they would not crystallize or filter. So the chemist called to
+his aid the physicist on the one hand and the biologist on the other and
+then they both had their hands full. The physicist found that he had to
+deal with a polyvariant system of solids, liquids and gases mutually
+miscible in phases too numerous to be handled by Gibbs's Rule. The
+biologist found that he had to deal with the invisible flora and fauna
+of a new world.
+
+Plants obey the injunction of Tennyson and rise on the stepping stones
+of their dead selves to higher things. Each successive generation lives
+on what is left of the last in the soil plus what it adds from the air
+and sunshine. As soon as a leaf or tree trunk falls to the ground it is
+taken in charge by a wrecking crew composed of a myriad of microscopic
+organisms who proceed to break it up into its component parts so these
+can be used for building a new edifice. The process is called "rotting"
+and the product, the black, gummy stuff of a fertile soil, is called
+"humus." The plants, that is, the higher plants, are not able to live on
+their own proteids as the animals are. But there are lower plants,
+certain kinds of bacteria, that can break up the big complicated proteid
+molecules into their component parts and reduce the nitrogen in them to
+ammonia or ammonia-like compounds. Having done this they stop and turn
+over the job to another set of bacteria to be carried through the next
+step. For you must know that soil society is as complex and specialized
+as that above ground and the tiniest bacterium would die rather than
+violate the union rules. The second set of bacteria change the ammonia
+over to nitrites and then a third set, the Amalgamated Union of Nitrate
+Workers, steps in and completes the process of oxidation with an
+efficiency that Ostwald might envy, for ninety-six per cent. of the
+ammonia of the soil is converted into nitrates. But if the conditions
+are not just right, if the food is insufficient or unwholesome or if
+the air that circulates through the soil is contaminated with poison
+gases, the bacteria go on a strike. The farmer, not seeing the thing
+from the standpoint of the bacteria, says the soil is "sick" and he
+proceeds to doctor it according to his own notion of what ails it. First
+perhaps he tries running in strike breakers. He goes to one of the firms
+that makes a business of supplying nitrogen-fixing bacteria from the
+scabs or nodules of the clover roots and scatters these colonies over
+the field. But if the living conditions remain bad the newcomers will
+soon quit work too and the farmer loses his money. If he is wise, then,
+he will remedy the conditions, putting a better ventilation system in
+his soil perhaps or neutralizing the sourness by means of lime or
+killing off the ameboid banditti that prey upon the peaceful bacteria
+engaged in the nitrogen industry. It is not an easy job that the farmer
+has in keeping billions of billions of subterranean servants contented
+and working together, but if he does not succeed at this he wastes his
+seed and labor.
+
+The layman regards the soil as a platform or anchoring place on which to
+set plants. He measures its value by its superficial area without
+considering its contents, which is as absurd as to estimate a man's
+wealth by the size of his safe. The difference in point of view is well
+illustrated by the old story of the city chap who was showing his farmer
+uncle the sights of New York. When he took him to Central Park he tried
+to astonish him by saying "This land is worth $500,000 an acre." The old
+farmer dug his toe into the ground, kicked out a clod, broke it open,
+looked at it, spit on it and squeezed it in his hand and then said,
+"Don't you believe it; 'tain't worth ten dollars an acre. Mighty poor
+soil I call it." Both were right.
+
+[Illustration: Courtesy of American Cyanamid Co.
+
+FIXING NITROGEN BY CALCIUM CARBIDE
+
+A view of the oven room in the plant of the American Cyanamid Company.
+The steel cylinders standing in the background are packed with the
+carbide and then put into the ovens sunk in the floor. When these are
+heated internally by electricity to 2000 degrees Fahrenheit pure
+nitrogen is let in and absorbed by the carbide, making cyanamid, which
+may be used as a fertilizer or for ammonia.]
+
+[Illustration: Photo by International Film Service
+
+A BARROW FULL OF POTASH SALTS EXTRACTED FROM SIX TONS OF GREEN KELP BY
+THE GOVERNMENT CHEMISTS]
+
+[Illustration: NATURE'S SILENT METHOD OF NITROGEN FIXATION
+
+The nodules on the vetch roots contain colonies of bacteria which have
+the power of taking the free nitrogen out of the air and putting it in
+compounds suitable for plant food.]
+
+The modern agriculturist realizes that the soil is a laboratory for the
+production of plant food and he ordinarily takes more pains to provide a
+balanced ration for it than he does for his family. Of course the
+necessity of feeding the soil has been known ever since man began to
+settle down and the ancient methods of maintaining its fertility, though
+discovered accidentally and followed blindly, were sound and
+efficacious. Virgil, who like Liberty Hyde Bailey was fond of publishing
+agricultural bulletins in poetry, wrote two thousand years ago:
+
+  But sweet vicissitudes of rest and toil
+  Make easy labor and renew the soil
+  Yet sprinkle sordid ashes all around
+  And load with fatt'ning dung thy fallow soil.
+
+The ashes supplied the potash and the dung the nitrate and phosphate.
+Long before the discovery of the nitrogen-fixing bacteria, the custom
+prevailed of sowing pea-like plants every third year and then plowing
+them under to enrich the soil. But such local supplies were always
+inadequate and as soon as deposits of fertilizers were discovered
+anywhere in the world they were drawn upon. The richest of these was the
+Chincha Islands off the coast of Peru, where millions of penguins and
+pelicans had lived in a most untidy manner for untold centuries. The
+guano composed of the excrement of the birds mixed with the remains of
+dead birds and the fishes they fed upon was piled up to a depth of 120
+feet. From this Isle of Penguins--which is not that described by Anatole
+France--a billion dollars' worth of guano was taken and the deposit was
+soon exhausted.
+
+Then the attention of the world was directed to the mainland of Peru and
+Chile, where similar guano deposits had been accumulated and, not being
+washed away on account of the lack of rain, had been deposited as sodium
+nitrate, or "saltpeter." These beds were discovered by a German, Taddeo
+Haenke, in 1809, but it was not until the last quarter of the century
+that the nitrates came into common use as a fertilizer. Since then more
+than 53,000,000 tons have been taken out of these beds and the
+exportation has risen to a rate of 2,500,000 to 3,000,000 tons a year.
+How much longer they will last is a matter of opinion and opinion is
+largely influenced by whether you have your money invested in Chilean
+nitrate stock or in one of the new synthetic processes for making
+nitrates. The United States Department of Agriculture says the nitrate
+beds will be exhausted in a few years. On the other hand the Chilean
+Inspector General of Nitrate Deposits in his latest official report says
+that they will last for two hundred years at the present rate and that
+then there are incalculable areas of low grade deposits, containing less
+than eleven per cent., to be drawn upon.
+
+Anyhow, the South American beds cannot long supply the world's need of
+nitrates and we shall some time be starving unless creative chemistry
+comes to the rescue. In 1898 Sir William Crookes--the discoverer of the
+"Crookes tubes," the radiometer and radiant matter--startled the British
+Association for the Advancement of Science by declaring that the world
+was nearing the limit of wheat production and that by 1931 the
+bread-eaters, the Caucasians, would have to turn to other grains or
+restrict their population while the rice and millet eaters of Asia would
+continue to increase. Sir William was laughed at then as a
+sensationalist. He was, but his sensations were apt to prove true and it
+is already evident that he was too near right for comfort. Before we
+were half way to the date he set we had two wheatless days a week,
+though that was because we persisted in shooting nitrates into the air.
+The area producing wheat was by decades:[1]
+
+THE WHEAT FIELDS OF THE WORLD
+
+                      Acres
+
+1881-90             192,000,000
+1890-1900           211,000,000
+1900-10             242,000,000
+Probable limit      300,000,000
+
+If 300,000,000 acres can be brought under cultivation for wheat and the
+average yield raised to twenty bushels to the acre, that will give
+enough to feed a billion people if they eat six bushels a year as do the
+English. Whether this maximum is correct or not there is evidently some
+limit to the area which has suitable soil and climate for growing wheat,
+so we are ultimately thrown back upon Crookes's solution of the problem;
+that is, we must increase the yield per acre and this can only be done
+by the use of fertilizers and especially by the fixation of atmospheric
+nitrogen. Crookes estimated the average yield of wheat at 12.7 bushels
+to the acre, which is more than it is in the new lands of the United
+States, Australia and Russia, but less than in Europe, where the soil is
+well fed. What can be done to increase the yield may be seen from these
+figures:
+
+  GAIN IN THE YIELD OF WHEAT IN BUSHELS PER ACRE
+
+                     1889-90  1913
+
+  Germany              19      35
+  Belgium              30      35
+  France               17      20
+  United Kingdom       28      32
+  United States        12      15
+
+The greatest gain was made in Germany and we see a reason for it in the
+fact that the German importation of Chilean saltpeter was 55,000 tons in
+1880 and 747,000 tons in 1913. In potatoes, too, Germany gets twice as
+big a crop from the same ground as we do, 223 bushels per acre instead
+of our 113 bushels. But the United States uses on the average only 28
+pounds of fertilizer per acre, while Europe uses 200.
+
+It is clear that we cannot rely upon Chile, but make nitrates for
+ourselves as Germany had to in war time. In the first chapter we
+considered the new methods of fixing the free nitrogen from the air. But
+the fixation of nitrogen is a new business in this country and our chief
+reliance so far has been the coke ovens. When coal is heated in retorts
+or ovens for making coke or gas a lot of ammonia comes off with the
+other products of decomposition and is caught in the sulfuric acid used
+to wash the gas as ammonium sulfate. Our American coke-makers have been
+in the habit of letting this escape into the air and consequently we
+have been losing some 700,000 tons of ammonium salts every year, enough
+to keep our land rich and give us all the explosives we should need. But
+now they are reforming and putting in ovens that save the by-products
+such as ammonia and coal tar, so in 1916 we got from this source 325,000
+tons a year.
+
+[Illustration: Courtesy of _Scientific American_.
+
+Consumption of potash for agricultural purposes in different countries]
+
+Germany had a natural monopoly of potash as Chile had a natural monopoly
+of nitrates. The agriculture of Europe and America has been virtually
+dependent upon these two sources of plant foods. Now when the world was
+cleft in twain by the shock of August, 1914, the Allied Powers had the
+nitrates and the Central Powers had the potash. If Germany had not had
+up her sleeve a new process for making nitrates she could not long have
+carried on a war and doubtless would not have ventured upon it. But the
+outside world had no such substitute for the German potash salts and
+has not yet discovered one. Consequently the price of potash in the
+United States jumped from $40 to $400 and the cost of food went up with
+it. Even under the stimulus of prices ten times the normal and with
+chemists searching furnace crannies and bad lands the United States was
+able to scrape up less than 10,000 tons of potash in 1916, and this was
+barely enough to satisfy our needs for two weeks!
+
+[Illustration: What happened to potash when the war broke out. This
+diagram from the _Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry_ of
+July, 1917, shows how the supply of potassium muriate from Germany was
+shut off in 1914 and how its price rose.]
+
+Yet potash compounds are as cheap as dirt. Pick up a handful of gravel
+and you will be able to find much of it feldspar or other mineral
+containing some ten per cent. of potash. Unfortunately it is in
+combination with silica, which is harder to break up than a trust.
+
+But "constant washing wears away stones" and the potash that the
+metallurgist finds too hard to extract in his hottest furnace is washed
+out in the course of time through the dropping of the gentle rain from
+heaven. "All rivers run to the sea" and so the sea gets salt, all sorts
+of salts, principally sodium chloride (our table salt) and next
+magnesium, calcium and potassium chlorides or sulfates in this order of
+abundance. But if we evaporate sea-water down to dryness all these are
+left in a mix together and it is hard to sort them out. Only patient
+Nature has time for it and she only did on a large scale in one place,
+that is at Stassfurt, Germany. It seems that in the days when
+northwestern Prussia was undetermined whether it should be sea or land
+it was flooded annually by sea-water. As this slowly evaporated the
+dissolved salts crystallized out at the critical points, leaving beds of
+various combinations. Each year there would be deposited three to five
+inches of salts with a thin layer of calcium sulfate or gypsum on top.
+Counting these annual layers, like the rings on a stump, we find that
+the Stassfurt beds were ten thousand years in the making. They were
+first worked for their salt, common salt, alone, but in 1837 the
+Prussian Government began prospecting for new and deeper deposits and
+found, not the clean rock salt that they wanted, but bittern, largely
+magnesium sulfate or Epsom salt, which is not at all nice for table use.
+This stuff was first thrown away until it was realized that it was much
+more valuable for the potash it contains than was the rock salt they
+were after. Then the Germans began to purify the Stassfurt salts and
+market them throughout the world. They contain from fifteen to
+twenty-five per cent. of magnesium chloride mixed with magnesium
+chloride in "carnallite," with magnesium sulfate in "kainite" and sodium
+chloride in "sylvinite." More than thirty thousand miners and workmen
+are employed in the Stassfurt works. There are some seventy distinct
+establishments engaged in the business, but they are in combination. In
+fact they are compelled to be, for the German Government is as anxious
+to promote trusts as the American Government is to prevent them. Once
+the Stassfurt firms had a falling out and began a cutthroat competition.
+But the German Government objects to its people cutting each other's
+throats. American dealers were getting unheard of bargains when the
+German Government stepped in and compelled the competing corporations to
+recombine under threat of putting on an export duty that would eat up
+their profits.
+
+The advantages of such business cooeperation are specially shown in
+opening up a new market for an unknown product as in the case of the
+introduction of the Stassfurt salts into American agriculture. The
+farmer in any country is apt to be set in his ways and when it comes to
+inducing him to spend his hard-earned money for chemicals that he never
+heard of and could not pronounce he--quite rightly--has to be shown.
+Well, he was shown. It was, if I remember right, early in the nineties
+that the German Kali Syndikat began operations in America and the United
+States Government became its chief advertising agent. In every state
+there was an agricultural experiment station and these were provided
+liberally with illustrated literature on Stassfurt salts with colored
+wall charts and sets of samples and free sacks of salts for field
+experiments. The station men, finding that they could rely upon the
+scientific accuracy of the information supplied by Kali and that the
+experiments worked out well, became enthusiastic advocates of potash
+fertilizers. The station bulletins--which Uncle Sam was kind enough to
+carry free to all the farmers of the state--sometimes were worded so
+like the Kali Company advertising that the company might have raised a
+complaint of plagiarizing, but they never did. The Chilean nitrates,
+which are under British control, were later introduced by similar
+methods through the agency of the state agricultural experiment
+stations.
+
+As a result of all this missionary work, which cost the Kali Company
+$50,000 a year, the attention of a large proportion of American farmers
+was turned toward intensive farming and they began to realize the
+necessity of feeding the soil that was feeding them. They grew dependent
+upon these two foreign and widely separated sources of supply. In the
+year before the war the United States imported a million tons of
+Stassfurt salts, for which the farmers paid more than $20,000,000. Then
+a declaration of American independence--the German embargo of 1915--cut
+us off from Stassfurt and for five years we had to rely upon our own
+resources. We have seen how Germany--shut off from Chile--solved the
+nitrogen problem for her fields and munition plants. It was not so easy
+for us--shut off from Germany--to solve the potash problem.
+
+There is no more lack of potash in the rocks than there is of nitrogen
+in the air, but the nitrogen is free and has only to be caught and
+combined, while the potash is shut up in a granite prison from which it
+is hard to get it free. It is not the percentage in the soil but the
+percentage in the soil water that counts. A farmer with his potash
+locked up in silicates is like the merchant who has left the key of his
+safe at home in his other trousers. He may be solvent, but he cannot
+meet a sight draft. It is only solvent potash that passes current.
+
+In the days of our grandfathers we had not only national independence
+but household independence. Every homestead had its own potash plant and
+soap factory. The frugal housewife dumped the maple wood ashes of the
+fireplace into a hollow log set up on end in the backyard. Water poured
+over the ashes leached out the lye, which drained into a bucket beneath.
+This gave her a solution of pearl ash or potassium carbonate whose
+concentration she tested with an egg as a hydrometer. In the meantime
+she had been saving up all the waste grease from the frying pan and pork
+rinds from the plate and by trying out these she got her soap fat. Then
+on a day set apart for this disagreeable process in chemical technology
+she boiled the fat and the lye together and got "soft soap," or as the
+chemist would call it, potassium stearate. If she wanted hard soap she
+"salted it out" with brine. The sodium stearate being less soluble was
+precipitated to the top and cooled into a solid cake that could be cut
+into bars by pack thread. But the frugal housewife threw away in the
+waste water what we now consider the most valuable ingredients, the
+potash and the glycerin.
+
+But the old lye-leach is only to be found in ruins on an abandoned farm
+and we no longer burn wood at the rate of a log a night. In 1916 even
+under the stimulus of tenfold prices the amount of potash produced as
+pearl ash was only 412 tons--and we need 300,000 tons in some form. It
+would, of course, be very desirable as a conservation measure if all the
+sawdust and waste wood were utilized by charring it in retorts. The gas
+makes a handy fuel. The tar washed from the gas contains a lot of
+valuable products. And potash can be leached out of the charcoal or from
+its ashes whenever it is burned. But this at best would not go far
+toward solving the problem of our national supply.
+
+There are other potash-bearing wastes that might be utilized. The cement
+mills which use feldspar in combination with limestone give off a potash
+dust, very much to the annoyance of their neighbors. This can be
+collected by running the furnace clouds into large settling chambers or
+long flues, where the dust may be caught in bags, or washed out by water
+sprays or thrown down by electricity. The blast furnaces for iron also
+throw off potash-bearing fumes.
+
+Our six-million-ton crop of sugar beets contains some 12,000 tons of
+nitrogen, 4000 tons of phosphoric acid and 18,000 tons of potash, all of
+which is lost except where the waste liquors from the sugar factory are
+used in irrigating the beet land. The beet molasses, after extracting
+all the sugar possible by means of lime, leaves a waste liquor from
+which the potash can be recovered by evaporation and charring and
+leaching the residue. The Germans get 5000 tons of potassium cyanide and
+as much ammonium sulfate annually from the waste liquor of their beet
+sugar factories and if it pays them to save this it ought to pay us
+where potash is dearer. Various other industries can put in a bit when
+Uncle Sam passes around the contribution basket marked "Potash for the
+Poor." Wool wastes and fish refuse make valuable fertilizers, although
+they will not go far toward solving the problem. If we saved all our
+potash by-products they would not supply more than fifteen per cent. of
+our needs.
+
+Though no potash beds comparable to those of Stassfurt have yet been
+discovered in the United States, yet in Nebraska, Utah, California and
+other western states there are a number of alkali lakes, wet or dry,
+containing a considerable amount of potash mixed with soda salts. Of
+these deposits the largest is Searles Lake, California. Here there are
+some twelve square miles of salt crust some seventy feet deep and the
+brine as pumped out contains about four per cent. of potassium chloride.
+The quantity is sufficient to supply the country for over twenty years,
+but it is not an easy or cheap job to separate the potassium from the
+sodium salts which are five times more abundant. These being less
+soluble than the potassium salts crystallize out first when the brine is
+evaporated. The final crystallization is done in vacuum pans as in
+getting sugar from the cane juice. In this way the American Trona
+Corporation is producing some 4500 tons of potash salts a month besides
+a thousand tons of borax. The borax which is contained in the brine to
+the extent of 1-1/2 per cent. is removed from the fertilizer for a
+double reason. It is salable by itself and it is detrimental to plant
+life.
+
+Another mineral source of potash is alunite, which is a sort of natural
+alum, or double sulfate of potassium and aluminum, with about ten per
+cent. of potash. It contains a lot of extra alumina, but after roasting
+in a kiln the potassium sulfate can be leached out. The alunite beds
+near Marysville, Utah, were worked for all they were worth during the
+war, but the process does not give potash cheap enough for our needs in
+ordinary times.
+
+[Illustration: Photo by International Film Service
+
+IN ORDER TO SECURE A NEW SUPPLY OF POTASH SALTS
+
+The United States Government set up an experimental plant at Sutherland,
+California, for the utilization of kelp. The harvester cuts 40 tons of
+kelp at a load]
+
+[Illustration: THE KELP HARVESTER GATHERING THE SEAWEED FROM THE
+PACIFIC OCEAN]
+
+[Illustration: Courtesy of Hercules Powder Co.
+
+OVERHEAD SUCTION AT THE SAN DIEGO WHARF PUMPING KELP FROM THE BARGE TO
+THE DIGESTION TANKS]
+
+The tourist going through Wyoming on the Union Pacific will have to the
+north of him what is marked on the map as the "Leucite Hills." If he
+looks up the word in the Unabridged that he carries in his satchel he
+will find that leucite is a kind of lava and that it contains potash.
+But he will also observe that the potash is combined with alumina and
+silica, which are hard to get out and useless when you get them out. One
+of the lavas of the Leucite Hills, that named from its native state
+"Wyomingite," gives fifty-seven per cent. of its potash in a soluble
+form on roasting with alunite--but this costs too much. The same may be
+said of all the potash feldspars and mica. They are abundant enough, but
+until we find a way of utilizing the by-products, say the silica in
+cement and the aluminum as a metal, they cannot solve our problem.
+
+Since it is so hard to get potash from the land it has been suggested
+that we harvest the sea. The experts of the United States Department of
+Agriculture have placed high hopes in the kelp or giant seaweed which
+floats in great masses in the Pacific Ocean not far off from the
+California coast. This is harvested with ocean reapers run by gasoline
+engines and brought in barges to the shore, where it may be dried and
+used locally as a fertilizer or burned and the potassium chloride
+leached out of the charcoal ashes. But it is hard to handle the bulky,
+slimy seaweed cheaply enough to get out of it the small amount of potash
+it contains. So efforts are now being made to get more out of the kelp
+than the potash. Instead of burning the seaweed it is fermented in vats
+producing acetic acid (vinegar). From the resulting liquid can be
+obtained lime acetate, potassium chloride, potassium iodide, acetone,
+ethyl acetate (used as a solvent for guncotton) and algin, a
+gelatin-like gum.
+
+
+PRODUCTION OF POTASH IN THE UNITED STATES
+
+__________________________________________________________________________
+                    |                          |
+                    |           1916           |           1917
+       Source       | Tons K_{2}O | Per cent.  | Tons K_{2}O | Per cent.
+                    |             |  of total  |             |  of total
+                    |             | production |             | production
+____________________|_____________|____________|_____________|____________
+                    |             |            |             |
+Mineral sources:    |             |            |             |
+  Natural brines    |    3,994    |    41.1    |   20,652    |    63.4
+  Altmite           |    1,850    |    19.0    |    2,402    |     7.3
+  Dust from cement  |             |            |             |
+    mills           |             |            |    1,621    |     5.0
+  Dust from blast   |             |            |             |
+    furnaces        |             |            |      185    |     0.6
+Organic Sources:    |             |            |             |
+  Kelp              |    1,556    |    16.0    |    3,752    |    10.9
+  Molasses residue  |             |            |             |
+    from distillers |    1,845    |    19.0    |    2,846    |     8.8
+  Wood ashes        |      412    |     4.2    |      621    |     1.9
+  Waste liquors     |             |            |             |
+    from beet-sugar |             |            |             |
+    refineries      |             |            |      369    |     1.1
+  Miscellaneous     |             |            |             |
+    industrial      |             |            |             |
+    wastes          |       63    |       .7   |      305    |     1.0
+                    | ___________ | __________ | ___________ | __________
+                    |             |            |             |
+Total               |    9,720    |    100.0   |   32,573    |   100.0
+
+    --From U S. Bureau of Mines Report, 1918.
+
+
+This table shows how inadequate was the reaction of the United States to
+the war demand for potassium salts. The minimum yearly requirements of
+the United States are estimated to be 250,000 tons of potash.
+
+This completes our survey of the visible sources of potash in America.
+In 1917 under the pressure of the embargo and unprecedented prices the
+output of potash (K_{2}O) in various forms was raised to 32,573 tons,
+but this is only about a tenth as much as we needed. In 1918 potash
+production was further raised to 52,135 tons, chiefly through the
+increase of the output from natural brines to 39,255 tons, nearly twice
+what it was the year before. The rust in cotton and the resulting
+decrease in yield during the war are laid to lack of potash. Truck crops
+grown in soils deficient in potash do not stand transportation well. The
+Bureau of Animal Industry has shown in experiments in Aroostook County,
+Maine, that the addition of moderate amounts of potash doubled the yield
+of potatoes.
+
+Professor Ostwald, the great Leipzig chemist, boasted in the war:
+
+     America went into the war like a man with a rope round his neck
+     which is in his enemy's hands and is pretty tightly drawn. With
+     its tremendous deposits Germany has a world monopoly in potash,
+     a point of immense value which cannot be reckoned too highly
+     when once this war is going to be settled. It is in Germany's
+     power to dictate which of the nations shall have plenty of food
+     and which shall starve.
+
+If, indeed, some mineralogist or metallurgist will cut that rope by
+showing us a supply of cheap potash we will erect him a monument as big
+as Washington's. But Ostwald is wrong in supposing that America is as
+dependent as Germany upon potash. The bulk of our food crops are at
+present raised without the use of any fertilizers whatever.
+
+As the cession of Lorraine in 1871 gave Germany the phosphates she
+needed for fertilizers so the retrocession of Alsace in 1919 gives
+France the potash she needed for fertilizers. Ten years before the war a
+bed of potash was discovered in the Forest of Monnebruck, near
+Hartmannsweilerkopf, the peak for which French and Germans contested so
+fiercely and so long. The layer of potassium salts is 16-1/2 feet thick
+and the total deposit is estimated to be 275,000,000 tons of potash. At
+any rate it is a formidable rival of Stassfurt and its acquisition by
+France breaks the German monopoly.
+
+When we turn to the consideration of the third plant food we feel
+better. While the United States has no such monopoly of phosphates as
+Germany had of potash and Chile had of nitrates we have an abundance and
+to spare. Whereas we formerly _imported_ about $17,000,000 worth of
+potash from Germany and $20,000,000 worth of nitrates from Chile a year
+we _exported_ $7,000,000 worth of phosphates.
+
+Whoever it was who first noticed that the grass grew thicker around a
+buried bone he lived so long ago that we cannot do honor to his powers
+of observation, but ever since then--whenever it was--old bones have
+been used as a fertilizer. But we long ago used up all the buffalo bones
+we could find on the prairies and our packing houses could not give us
+enough bone-meal to go around, so we have had to draw upon the old
+bone-yards of prehistoric animals. Deposits of lime phosphate of such
+origin were found in South Carolina in 1870 and in Florida in 1888.
+Since then the industry has developed with amazing rapidity until in
+1913 the United States produced over three million tons of phosphates,
+nearly half of which was sent abroad. The chief source at present is the
+Florida pebbles, which are dredged up from the bottoms of lakes and
+rivers or washed out from the banks of streams by a hydraulic jet. The
+gravel is washed free from the sand and clay, screened and dried, and
+then is ready for shipment. The rock deposits of Florida and South
+Carolina are more limited than the pebble beds and may be exhausted in
+twenty-five or thirty years, but Tennessee and Kentucky have a lot in
+reserve and behind them are Idaho, Wyoming and other western states with
+millions of acres of phosphate land, so in this respect we are
+independent.
+
+But even here the war hit us hard. For the calcium phosphate as it comes
+from the ground is not altogether available because it is not very
+soluble and the plants can only use what they can get in the water that
+they suck up from the soil. But if the phosphate is treated with
+sulfuric acid it becomes more soluble and this product is sold as
+"superphosphate." The sulfuric acid is made mostly from iron pyrite and
+this we have been content to import, over 800,000 tons of it a year,
+largely from Spain, although we have an abundance at home. Since the
+shortage of shipping shut off the foreign supply we are using more of
+our own pyrite and also our deposits of native sulfur along the Gulf
+coast. But as a consequence of this sulfuric acid during the war went up
+from $5 to $25 a ton and acidulated phosphates rose correspondingly.
+
+Germany is short on natural phosphates as she is long on natural potash.
+But she has made up for it by utilizing a by-product of her steelworks.
+When phosphorus occurs in iron ore, even in minute amounts, it makes the
+steel brittle. Much of the iron ores of Alsace-Lorraine were formerly
+considered unworkable because of this impurity, but shortly after
+Germany took these provinces from France in 1871 a method was discovered
+by two British metallurgists, Thomas and Gilchrist, by which the
+phosphorus is removed from the iron in the process of converting it into
+steel. This consists in lining the crucible or converter with lime and
+magnesia, which takes up the phosphorus from the melted iron. This slag
+lining, now rich in phosphates, can be taken out and ground up for
+fertilizer. So the phosphorus which used to be a detriment is now an
+additional source of profit and this British invention has enabled
+Germany to make use of the territory she stole from France to outstrip
+England in the steel business. In 1910 Germany produced 2,000,000 tons
+of Thomas slag while only 160,000 tons were produced in the United
+Kingdom. The open hearth process now chiefly used in the United States
+gives an acid instead of a basic phosphate slag, not suitable as a
+fertilizer. The iron ore of America, with the exception of some of the
+southern ores, carries so small a percentage of phosphorus as to make a
+basic process inadvisable.
+
+Recently the Germans have been experimenting with a combined fertilizer,
+Schroeder's potassium phosphate, which is said to be as good as Thomas
+slag for phosphates and as good as Stassfurt salts for potash. The
+American Cyanamid Company is just putting out a similar product,
+"Ammo-Phos," in which the ammonia can be varied from thirteen to twenty
+per cent. and the phosphoric acid from twenty to forty-seven per cent.
+so as to give the proportions desired for any crop. We have then the
+possibility of getting the three essential plant foods altogether in
+one compound with the elimination of most of the extraneous elements
+such as lime and magnesia, chlorids and sulfates.
+
+For the last three hundred years the American people have been living on
+the unearned increment of the unoccupied land. But now that all our land
+has been staked out in homesteads and we cannot turn to new soil when we
+have used up the old, we must learn, as the older races have learned,
+how to keep up the supply of plant food. Only in this way can our
+population increase and prosper. As we have seen, the phosphate question
+need not bother us and we can see our way clear toward solving the
+nitrate question. We gave the Government $20,000,000 to experiment on
+the production of nitrates from the air and the results will serve for
+fields as well as firearms. But the question of an independent supply of
+cheap potash is still unsolved.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+COAL-TAR COLORS
+
+
+If you put a bit of soft coal into a test tube (or, if you haven't a
+test tube, into a clay tobacco pipe and lute it over with clay) and heat
+it you will find a gas coming out of the end of the tube that will burn
+with a yellow smoky flame. After all the gas comes off you will find in
+the bottom of the test tube a chunk of dry, porous coke. These, then,
+are the two main products of the destructive distillation of coal. But
+if you are an unusually observant person, that is, if you are a born
+chemist with an eye to by-products, you will notice along in the middle
+of the tube where it is neither too hot nor too cold some dirty drops of
+water and some black sticky stuff. If you are just an ordinary person,
+you won't pay any attention to this because there is only a little of it
+and because what you are after is the coke and gas. You regard the
+nasty, smelly mess that comes in between as merely a nuisance because it
+clogs up and spoils your nice, clean tube.
+
+Now that is the way the gas-makers and coke-makers--being for the most
+part ordinary persons and not born chemists--used to regard the water
+and tar that got into their pipes. They washed it out so as to have the
+gas clean and then ran it into the creek. But the neighbors--especially
+those who fished in the stream below the gas-works--made a fuss about
+spoiling the water, so the gas-men gave away the tar to the boys for use
+in celebrating the Fourth of July and election night or sold it for
+roofing.
+
+[Illustration: THE PRODUCTION OF COAL TAR
+
+A battery of Koppers by-product coke-ovens at the plant of the Bethlehem
+Steel Company, Sparrows Point, Maryland. The coke is being pushed out of
+one of the ovens into the waiting car. The vapors given off from the
+coal contain ammonia and the benzene compound used to make dyes and
+explosives]
+
+[Illustration: IN THESE MIXING VATS AT THE BUFFALO WORKS, ANILINE DYES
+ARE PREPARED]
+
+But this same tar, which for a hundred years was thrown away and nearly
+half of which is thrown away yet in the United States, turns out to be
+one of the most useful things in the world. It is one of the strategic
+points in war and commerce. It wounds and heals. It supplies munitions
+and medicines. It is like the magic purse of Fortunatus from which
+anything wished for could be drawn. The chemist puts his hand into the
+black mass and draws out all the colors of the rainbow. This
+evil-smelling substance beats the rose in the production of perfume and
+surpasses the honey-comb in sweetness.
+
+Bishop Berkeley, after having proved that all matter was in your mind,
+wrote a book to prove that wood tar would cure all diseases. Nobody
+reads it now. The name is enough to frighten them off: "Siris: A Chain
+of Philosophical Reflections and Inquiries Concerning the Virtues of Tar
+Water." He had a sort of mystical idea that tar contained the
+quintessence of the forest, the purified spirit of the trees, which
+could somehow revive the spirit of man. People said he was crazy on the
+subject, and doubtless he was, but the interesting thing about it is
+that not even his active and ingenious imagination could begin to
+suggest all of the strange things that can be got out of tar, whether
+wood or coal.
+
+The reason why tar supplies all sorts of useful material is because it
+is indeed the quintessence of the forest, of the forests of untold
+millenniums if it is coal tar. If you are acquainted with a village
+tinker, one of those all-round mechanics who still survive in this age
+of specialization and can mend anything from a baby-carriage to an
+automobile, you will know that he has on the floor of his back shop a
+heap of broken machinery from which he can get almost anything he wants,
+a copper wire, a zinc plate, a brass screw or a steel rod. Now coal tar
+is the scrap-heap of the vegetable kingdom. It contains a little of
+almost everything that makes up trees. But you must not imagine that all
+that comes out of coal tar is contained in it. There are only about a
+dozen primary products extracted from coal tar, but from these the
+chemist is able to build up hundreds of thousands of new substances.
+This is true creative chemistry, for most of these compounds are not to
+be found in plants and never existed before they were made in the
+laboratory. It used to be thought that organic compounds, the products
+of vegetable and animal life, could only be produced by organized
+beings, that they were created out of inorganic matter by the magic
+touch of some "vital principle." But since the chemist has learned how,
+he finds it easier to make organic than inorganic substances and he is
+confident that he can reproduce any compound that he can analyze. He
+cannot only imitate the manufacturing processes of the plants and
+animals, but he can often beat them at their own game.
+
+When coal is heated in the open air it is burned up and nothing but the
+ashes is left. But heat the coal in an enclosed vessel, say a big
+fireclay retort, and it cannot burn up because the oxygen of the air
+cannot get to it. So it breaks up. All parts of it that can be volatized
+at a high heat pass off through the outlet pipe and nothing is left in
+the retort but coke, that is carbon with the ash it contains. When the
+escaping vapors reach a cool part of the outlet pipe the oily and tarry
+matter condenses out. Then the gas is passed up through a tower down
+which water spray is falling and thus is washed free from ammonia and
+everything else that is soluble in water.
+
+This process is called "destructive distillation." What products come
+off depends not only upon the composition of the particular variety of
+coal used, but upon the heat, pressure and rapidity of distillation. The
+way you run it depends upon what you are most anxious to have. If you
+want illuminating gas you will leave in it the benzene. If you are after
+the greatest yield of tar products, you impoverish the gas by taking out
+the benzene and get a blue instead of a bright yellow flame. If all you
+are after is cheap coke, you do not bother about the by-products, but
+let them escape and burn as they please. The tourist passing across the
+coal region at night could see through his car window the flames of
+hundreds of old-fashioned bee-hive coke-ovens and if he were of
+economical mind he might reflect that this display of fireworks was
+costing the country $75,000,000 a year besides consuming the
+irreplaceable fuel supply of the future. But since the gas was not
+needed outside of the cities and since the coal tar, if it could be sold
+at all, brought only a cent or two a gallon, how could the coke-makers
+be expected to throw out their old bee-hive ovens and put in the
+expensive retorts and towers necessary to the recovery of the
+by-products? But within the last ten years the by-product ovens have
+come into use and now nearly half our coke is made in them.
+
+Although the products of destructive distillation vary within wide
+limits, yet the following table may serve to give an approximate idea of
+what may be got from a ton of soft coal:
+
+  1 ton of coal may give
+      Gas, 12,000 cubic feet
+      Liquor (Washings) ammonium sulfate (7-25 pounds)
+      Tar (120 pounds)  benzene (10-20 pounds)
+                        toluene (3 pounds)
+                        xylene  (1-1/2 pounds)
+                        phenol  (1/2 pound)
+                        naphthalene (3/8 pound)
+                        anthracene  (1/4 pound)
+                        pitch (80 pounds)
+      Coke (1200-1500 pounds)
+
+When the tar is redistilled we get, among other things, the ten "crudes"
+which are fundamental material for making dyes. Their names are:
+benzene, toluene, xylene, phenol, cresol, naphthalene, anthracene,
+methyl anthracene, phenanthrene and carbazol.
+
+There! I had to introduce you to the whole receiving line, but now that
+that ceremony is over we are at liberty to do as we do at a reception,
+meet our old friends, get acquainted with one or two more and turn our
+backs on the rest. Two of them, I am sure, you've met before, phenol,
+which is common carbolic acid, and naphthalene, which we use for
+mothballs. But notice one thing in passing, that not one of them is a
+dye. They are all colorless liquids or white solids. Also they all have
+an indescribable odor--all odors that you don't know are
+indescribable--which gives them and their progeny, even when odorless,
+the name of "aromatic compounds."
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 8. Diagram of the products obtained from coal and
+some of their uses.]
+
+The most important of the ten because he is the father of the family is
+benzene, otherwise called benzol, but must not be confused with
+"benzine" spelled with an _i_ which we used to burn and clean our
+clothes with. "Benzine" is a kind of gasoline, but benzene _alias_
+benzol has quite another constitution, although it looks and burns the
+same. Now the search for the constitution of benzene is one of the most
+exciting chapters in chemistry; also one of the most intricate chapters,
+but, in spite of that, I believe I can make the main point of it clear
+even to those who have never studied chemistry--provided they retain
+their childish liking for puzzles. It is really much like putting
+together the old six-block Chinese puzzle. The chemist can work better
+if he has a picture of what he is working with. Now his unit is the
+molecule, which is too small even to analyze with the microscope, no
+matter how high powered. So he makes up a sort of diagram of the
+molecule, and since he knows the number of atoms and that they are
+somehow attached to one another, he represents each atom by the first
+letter of its name and the points of attachment or bonds by straight
+lines connecting the atoms of the different elements. Now it is one of
+the rules of the game that all the bonds must be connected or hooked up
+with atoms at both ends, that there shall be no free hands reaching out
+into empty space. Carbon, for instance, has four bonds and hydrogen only
+one. They unite, therefore, in the proportion of one atom of carbon to
+four of hydrogen, or CH_{4}, which is methane or marsh gas and obviously
+the simplest of the hydrocarbons. But we have more complex hydrocarbons
+such as C_{6}H_{14}, known as hexane. Now if you try to draw the
+diagrams or structural formulas of these two compounds you will easily
+get
+
+    H        H H H H H H
+    |        | | | | | |
+  H-C-H    H-C-C-C-C-C-C-H
+    |        | | | | | |
+    H        H H H H H H
+  methane      hexane
+
+Each carbon atom, you see, has its four hands outstretched and duly
+grasped by one-handed hydrogen atoms or by neighboring carbon atoms in
+the chain. We can have such chains as long as you please, thirty or more
+in a chain; they are all contained in kerosene and paraffin.
+
+So far the chemist found it east to construct diagrams that would
+satisfy his sense of the fitness of things, but when he found that
+benzene had the compostion C_{6}H_{6} he was puzzled. If you try to draw
+the picture of C_{6}H_{6} you will get something like this:
+
+   | | | | | |
+  -C-C-C-C-C-C-
+   | | | | | |
+   H H H H H H
+
+which is an absurdity because more than half of the carbon hands are
+waving wildly around asking to be held by something. Benzene,
+C_{6}H_{6}, evidently is like hexane, C_{6}H_{14}, in having a chain of
+six carbon atoms, but it has dropped its H's like an Englishman. Eight
+of the H's are missing.
+
+Now one of the men who was worried over this benzene puzzle was the
+German chemist, Kekule. One evening after working over the problem all
+day he was sitting by the fire trying to rest, but he could not throw
+it off his mind. The carbon and the hydrogen atoms danced like imps on
+the carpet and as he watched them through his half-closed eyes he
+suddenly saw that the chain of six carbon atoms had joined at the ends
+and formed a ring while the six hydrogen atoms were holding on to the
+outside hands, in this fashion:
+
+      H
+      |
+      C
+     / \\
+  H-C   C-H
+    ||  |
+  H-C   C-H
+     \ //
+      C
+      |
+      H
+
+Professor Kekule saw at once that the demons of his subconscious self
+had furnished him with a clue to the labyrinth, and so it proved. We
+need not suppose that the benzene molecule if we could see it would look
+anything like this diagram of it, but the theory works and that is all
+the scientist asks of any theory. By its use thousands of new compounds
+have been constructed which have proved of inestimable value to man. The
+modern chemist is not a discoverer, he is an inventor. He sits down at
+his desk and draws a "Kekule ring" or rather hexagon. Then he rubs out
+an H and hooks a nitro group (NO_{2}) on to the carbon in place of it;
+next he rubs out the O_{2} of the nitro group and puts in H_{2}; then he
+hitches on such other elements, or carbon chains and rings as he likes.
+He works like an architect designing a house and when he gets a picture
+of the proposed compounds to suit him he goes into the laboratory to
+make it. First he takes down the bottle of benzene and boils up some of
+this with nitric acid and sulfuric acid. This he puts in the nitro group
+and makes nitro-benzene, C_{6}H_{5}NO_{2}. He treats this with hydrogen,
+which displaces the oxygen and gives C_{6}H_{5}NH_{2} or aniline, which
+is the basis of so many of these compounds that they are all commonly
+called "the aniline dyes." But aniline itself is not a dye. It is a
+colorless or brownish oil.
+
+It is not necessary to follow our chemist any farther now that we have
+seen how he works, but before we pass on we will just look at one of his
+products, not one of the most complicated but still complicated enough.
+
+[Illustration: A molecule of a coal-tar dye]
+
+The name of this is sodium ditolyl-disazo-beta-naphthylamine-
+6-sulfonic-beta-naphthylamine-3.6-disulfonate.
+
+These chemical names of organic compounds are discouraging to the
+beginner and amusing to the layman, but that is because neither of them
+realizes that they are not really words but formulas. They are
+hyphenated because they come from Germany. The name given above is no
+more of a mouthful than "a-square-plus-two-a-b-plus-b-square" or "Third
+Assistant Secretary of War to the President of the United States of
+America." The trade name of this dye is Brilliant Congo, but while that
+is handier to say it does not mean anything. Nobody but an expert in
+dyes would know what it was, while from the formula name any chemist
+familiar with such compounds could draw its picture, tell how it would
+behave and what it was made from, or even make it. The old alchemist was
+a secretive and pretentious person and used to invent queer names for
+the purpose of mystifying and awing the ignorant. But the chemist in
+dropping the al- has dropped the idea of secrecy and his names, though
+equally appalling to the layman, are designed to reveal and not to
+conceal.
+
+From this brief explanation the reader who has not studied chemistry
+will, I think, be able to get some idea of how these very intricate
+compounds are built up step by step. A completed house is hard to
+understand, but when we see the mason laying one brick on top of another
+it does not seem so difficult, although if we tried to do it we should
+not find it so easy as we think. Anyhow, let me give you a hint. If you
+want to make a good impression on a chemist don't tell him that he
+seems to you a sort of magician, master of a black art, and all that
+nonsense. The chemist has been trying for three hundred years to live
+down the reputation of being inspired of the devil and it makes him mad
+to have his past thrown up at him in this fashion. If his tactless
+admirers would stop saying "it is all a mystery and a miracle to me,
+and I cannot understand it" and pay attention to what he is telling them
+they would understand it and would find that it is no more of a mystery
+or a miracle than anything else. You can make an electrician mad in the
+same way by interrupting his explanation of a dynamo by asking: "But you
+cannot tell me what electricity really is." The electrician does not
+care a rap what electricity "really is"--if there really is any meaning
+to that phrase. All he wants to know is what he can do with it.
+
+[Illustration: COMPARISON OF COAL AND ITS DISTILLATION PRODUCTS From
+Hesse's "The Industry of the Coal Tar Dyes," _Journal of Industrial and
+Engineering Chemistry_, December, 1914]
+
+The tar obtained from the gas plant or the coke plant has now to be
+redistilled, giving off the ten "crudes" already mentioned and leaving
+in the still sixty-five per cent. of pitch, which may be used for
+roofing, paving and the like. The ten primary products or crudes are
+then converted into secondary products or "intermediates" by processes
+like that for the conversion of benzene into aniline. There are some
+three hundred of these intermediates in use and from them are built up
+more than three times as many dyes. The year before the war the American
+custom house listed 5674 distinct brands of synthetic dyes imported,
+chiefly from Germany, but some of these were trade names for the same
+product made by different firms or represented by different degrees of
+purity or form of preparation. Although the number of possible products
+is unlimited and over five thousand dyes are known, yet only about nine
+hundred are in use. We can summarize the situation so:
+
+  Coal-tar --> 10 crudes --> 300 intermediates --> 900 dyes --> 5000 brands.
+
+Or, to borrow the neat simile used by Dr. Bernhard C. Hesse, it is like
+cloth-making where "ten fibers make 300 yarns which are woven into 900
+patterns."
+
+The advantage of the artificial dyestuffs over those found in nature
+lies in their variety and adaptability. Practically any desired tint or
+shade can be made for any particular fabric. If my lady wants a new kind
+of green for her stockings or her hair she can have it. Candies and
+jellies and drinks can be made more attractive and therefore more
+appetizing by varied colors. Easter eggs and Easter bonnets take on new
+and brighter hues.
+
+More and more the chemist is becoming the architect of his own fortunes.
+He does not make discoveries by picking up a beaker and pouring into it
+a little from each bottle on the shelf to see what happens. He generally
+knows what he is after, and he generally gets it, although he is still
+often baffled and occasionally happens on something quite unexpected and
+perhaps more valuable than what he was looking for. Columbus was looking
+for India when he ran into an obstacle that proved to be America.
+William Henry Perkin was looking for quinine when he blundered into that
+rich and undiscovered country, the aniline dyes. William Henry was a
+queer boy. He had rather listen to a chemistry lecture than eat. When he
+was attending the City of London School at the age of thirteen there was
+an extra course of lectures on chemistry given at the noon recess, so he
+skipped his lunch to take them in. Hearing that a German chemist named
+Hofmann had opened a laboratory in the Royal College of London he headed
+for that. Hofmann obviously had no fear of forcing the young intellect
+prematurely. He perhaps had never heard that "the tender petals of the
+adolescent mind must be allowed to open slowly." He admitted young
+Perkin at the age of fifteen and started him on research at the end of
+his second year. An American student nowadays thinks he is lucky if he
+gets started on his research five years older than Perkin. Now if
+Hofmann had studied pedagogical psychology he would have been informed
+that nothing chills the ardor of the adolescent mind like being set at
+tasks too great for its powers. If he had heard this and believed it, he
+would not have allowed Perkin to spend two years in fruitless endeavors
+to isolate phenanthrene from coal tar and to prepare artificial
+quinine--and in that case Perkin would never have discovered the aniline
+dyes. But Perkin, so far from being discouraged, set up a private
+laboratory so he could work over-time. While working here during the
+Easter vacation of 1856--the date is as well worth remembering as
+1066--he was oxidizing some aniline oil when he got what chemists most
+detest, a black, tarry mass instead of nice, clean crystals. When he
+went to wash this out with alcohol he was surprised to find that it gave
+a beautiful purple solution. This was "mauve," the first of the aniline
+dyes.
+
+The funny thing about it was that when Perkin tried to repeat the
+experiment with purer aniline he could not get his color. It was because
+he was working with impure chemicals, with aniline containing a little
+toluidine, that he discovered mauve. It was, as I said, a lucky
+accident. But it was not accidental that the accident happened to the
+young fellow who spent his noonings and vacations at the study of
+chemistry. A man may not find what he is looking for, but he never
+finds anything unless he is looking for something.
+
+Mauve was a product of creative chemistry, for it was a substance that
+had never existed before. Perkin's next great triumph, ten years later,
+was in rivaling Nature in the manufacture of one of her own choice
+products. This is alizarin, the coloring matter contained in the madder
+root. It was an ancient and oriental dyestuff, known as "Turkey red" or
+by its Arabic name of "alizari." When madder was introduced into France
+it became a profitable crop and at one time half a million tons a year
+were raised. A couple of French chemists, Robiquet and Colin, extracted
+from madder its active principle, alizarin, in 1828, but it was not
+until forty years later that it was discovered that alizarin had for its
+base one of the coal-tar products, anthracene. Then came a neck-and-neck
+race between Perkin and his German rivals to see which could discover a
+cheap process for making alizarin from anthracene. The German chemists
+beat him to the patent office by one day! Graebe and Liebermann filed
+their application for a patent on the sulfuric acid process as No. 1936
+on June 25, 1869. Perkin filed his for the same process as No. 1948 on
+June 26. It had required twenty years to determine the constitution of
+alizarin, but within six months from its first synthesis the commercial
+process was developed and within a few years the sale of artificial
+alizarin reached $8,000,000 annually. The madder fields of France were
+put to other uses and even the French soldiers became dependent on
+made-in-Germany dyes for their red trousers. The British soldiers were
+placed in a similar situation as regards their red coats when after
+1878 the azo scarlets put the cochineal bug out of business.
+
+The modern chemist has robbed royalty of its most distinctive insignia,
+Tyrian purple. In ancient times to be "porphyrogene," that is "born to
+the purple," was like admission to the Almanach de Gotha at the present
+time, for only princes or their wealthy rivals could afford to pay $600
+a pound for crimsoned linen. The precious dye is secreted by a
+snail-like shellfish of the eastern coast of the Mediterranean. From a
+tiny sac behind the head a drop of thick whitish liquid, smelling like
+garlic, can be extracted. If this is spread upon cloth of any kind and
+exposed to air and sunlight it turns first green, next blue and then
+purple. If the cloth is washed with soap--that is, set by alkali--it
+becomes a fast crimson, such as Catholic cardinals still wear as princes
+of the church. The Phoenician merchants made fortunes out of their
+monopoly, but after the fall of Tyre it became one of "the lost
+arts"--and accordingly considered by those whose faces are set toward
+the past as much more wonderful than any of the new arts. But in 1909
+Friedlander put an end to the superstition by analyzing Tyrian purple
+and finding that it was already known. It was the same as a dye that had
+been prepared five years before by Sachs but had not come into
+commercial use because of its inferiority to others in the market. It
+required 12,000 of the mollusks to supply the little material needed for
+analysis, but once the chemist had identified it he did not need to
+bother the Murex further, for he could make it by the ton if he had
+wanted to. The coloring principle turned out to be a di-brom indigo,
+that is the same as the substance extracted from the Indian plant, but
+with the addition of two atoms of bromine. Why a particular kind of a
+shellfish should have got the habit of extracting this rare element from
+sea water and stowing it away in this peculiar form is "one of those
+things no fellow can find out." But according to the chemist the Murex
+mollusk made a mistake in hitching the bromine to the wrong carbon
+atoms. He finds as he would word it that the 6:6' di-brom indigo
+secreted by the shellfish is not so good as the 5:5' di-brom indigo now
+manufactured at a cheap rate and in unlimited quantity. But we must not
+expect too much of a mollusk's mind. In their cheapness lies the offense
+of the aniline dyes in the minds of some people. Our modern aristocrats
+would delight to be entitled "porphyrogeniti" and to wear exclusive
+gowns of "purple and scarlet from the isles of Elishah" as was done in
+Ezekiel's time, but when any shopgirl or sailor can wear the royal color
+it spoils its beauty in their eyes. Applied science accomplishes a real
+democracy such as legislation has ever failed to establish.
+
+Any kind of dye found in nature can be made in the laboratory whenever
+its composition is understood and usually it can be made cheaper and
+purer than it can be extracted from the plant. But to work out a
+profitable process for making it synthetically is sometimes a task
+requiring high skill, persistent labor and heavy expenditure. One of the
+latest and most striking of these achievements of synthetic chemistry is
+the manufacture of indigo.
+
+Indigo is one of the oldest and fastest of the dyestuffs. To see that it
+is both ancient and lasting look at the unfaded blue cloths that enwrap
+an Egyptian mummy. When Caesar conquered our British ancestors he found
+them tattooed with woad, the native indigo. But the chief source of
+indigo was, as its name implies, India. In 1897 nearly a million acres
+in India were growing the indigo plant and the annual value of the crop
+was $20,000,000. Then the fall began and by 1914 India was producing
+only $300,000 worth! What had happened to destroy this profitable
+industry? Some blight or insect? No, it was simply that the Badische
+Anilin-und-Soda Fabrik had worked out a practical process for making
+artificial indigo.
+
+That indigo on breaking up gave off aniline was discovered as early as
+1840. In fact that was how aniline got its name, for when Fritzsche
+distilled indigo with caustic soda he called the colorless distillate
+"aniline," from the Arabic name for indigo, "anil" or "al-nil," that is,
+"the blue-stuff." But how to reverse the process and get indigo from
+aniline puzzled chemists for more than forty years until finally it was
+solved by Adolf von Baeyer of Munich, who died in 1917 at the age of
+eighty-four. He worked on the problem of the constitution of indigo for
+fifteen years and discovered several ways of making it. It is possible
+to start from benzene, toluene or naphthalene. The first process was the
+easiest, but if you will refer to the products of the distillation of
+tar you will find that the amount of toluene produced is less than the
+naphthalene, which is hard to dispose of. That is, if a dye factory had
+worked out a process for making indigo from toluene it would not be
+practicable because there was not enough toluene produced to supply the
+demand for indigo. So the more complicated napthalene process was
+chosen in preference to the others in order to utilize this by-product.
+
+The Badische Anilin-und-Soda Fabrik spent $5,000,000 and seventeen years
+in chemical research before they could make indigo, but they gained a
+monopoly (or, to be exact, ninety-six per cent.) of the world's
+production. A hundred years ago indigo cost as much as $4 a pound. In
+1914 we were paying fifteen cents a pound for it. Even the pauper labor
+of India could not compete with the German chemists at that price. At
+the beginning of the present century Germany was paying more than
+$3,000,000 a year for indigo. Fourteen years later Germany was _selling_
+indigo to the amount of $12,600,000. Besides its cheapness, artificial
+indigo is preferable because it is of uniform quality and greater
+purity. Vegetable indigo contains from forty to eighty per cent. of
+impurities, among them various other tinctorial substances. Artificial
+indigo is made pure and of any desired strength, so the dyers can depend
+on it.
+
+The value of the aniline colors lies in their infinite variety. Some are
+fast, some will fade, some will stand wear and weather as long as the
+fabric, some will wash out on the spot. Dyes can be made that will
+attach themselves to wool, to silk or to cotton, and give it any shade
+of any color. The period of discovery by accident has long gone by. The
+chemist nowadays decides first just what kind of a dye he wants, and
+then goes to work systematically to make it. He begins by drawing a
+diagram of the molecule, double-linking nitrogen or carbon and oxygen
+atoms to give the required intensity, putting in acid or basic radicals
+to fasten it to the fiber, shifting the color back and forth along the
+spectrum at will by introducing methyl groups, until he gets it just to
+his liking.
+
+Art can go ahead of nature in the dyestuff business. Before man found
+that he could make all the dyes he wanted from the tar he had been
+burning up at home he searched the wide world over to find colors by
+which he could make himself--or his wife--garments as beautiful as those
+that arrayed the flower, the bird and the butterfly. He sent divers down
+into the Mediterranean to rob the murex of his purple. He sent ships to
+the new world to get Brazil wood and to the oldest world for indigo. He
+robbed the lady cochineal of her scarlet coat. Why these peculiar
+substances were formed only by these particular plants, mussels and
+insects it is hard to understand. I don't know that Mrs. Cacti Coccus
+derived any benefit from her scarlet uniform when khaki would be safer,
+and I can't imagine that to a shellfish it was of advantage to turn red
+as it rots or to an indigo plant that its leaves in decomposing should
+turn blue. But anyhow, it was man that took advantage of them until he
+learned how to make his own dyestuffs.
+
+Our independent ancestors got along so far as possible with what grew in
+the neighborhood. Sweetapple bark gave a fine saffron yellow. Ribbons
+were given the hue of the rose by poke berry juice. The Confederates in
+their butternut-colored uniform were almost as invisible as if in khaki
+or _feldgrau_. Madder was cultivated in the kitchen garden. Only logwood
+from Jamaica and indigo from India had to be imported. That we are not
+so independent today is our own fault, for we waste enough coal tar to
+supply ourselves and other countries with all the new dyes needed. It is
+essentially a question of economy and organization. We have forgotten
+how to economize, but we have learned how to organize.
+
+The British Government gave the discoverer of mauve a title, but it did
+not give him any support in his endeavors to develop the industry,
+although England led the world in textiles and needed more dyes than any
+other country. So in 1874 Sir William Perkin relinquished the attempt to
+manufacture the dyes he had discovered because, as he said, Oxford and
+Cambridge refused to educate chemists or to carry on research. Their
+students, trained in the classics for the profession of being a
+gentleman, showed a decided repugnance to the laboratory on account of
+its bad smells. So when Hofmann went home he virtually took the infant
+industry along with him to Germany, where Ph.D.'s were cheap and
+plentiful and not afraid of bad smells. There the business throve
+amazingly, and by 1914 the Germans were manufacturing more than
+three-fourths of all the coal-tar products of the world and supplying
+material for most of the rest. The British cursed the universities for
+thus imperiling the nation through their narrowness and neglect; but
+this accusation, though natural, was not altogether fair, for at least
+half the blame should go to the British dyer, who did not care where his
+colors came from, so long as they were cheap. When finally the
+universities did turn over a new leaf and began to educate chemists, the
+manufacturers would not employ them. Before the war six English
+factories producing dyestuffs employed only 35 chemists altogether,
+while one German color works, the Hoechster Farbwerke, employed 307
+expert chemists and 74 technologists.
+
+This firm united with the six other leading dye companies of Germany on
+January 1, 1916, to form a trust to last for fifty years. During this
+time they will maintain uniform prices and uniform wage scales and hours
+of labor, and exchange patents and secrets. They will divide the foreign
+business _pro rata_ and share the profits. The German chemical works
+made big profits during the war, mostly from munitions and medicines,
+and will be, through this new combination, in a stronger position than
+ever to push the export trade.
+
+As a consequence of letting the dye business get away from her, England
+found herself in a fix when war broke out. She did not have dyes for her
+uniforms and flags, and she did not have drugs for her wounded. She
+could not take advantage of the blockade to capture the German trade in
+Asia and South America, because she could not color her textiles. A blue
+cotton dyestuff that sold before the war at sixty cents a pound, brought
+$34 a pound. A bright pink rhodamine formerly quoted at a dollar a pound
+jumped to $48. When one keg of dye ordinarily worth $15 was put up at
+forced auction sale in 1915 it was knocked down at $1500. The
+Highlanders could not get the colors for their kilts until some German
+dyes were smuggled into England. The textile industries of Great
+Britain, that brought in a billion dollars a year and employed one and a
+half million workers, were crippled for lack of dyes. The demand for
+high explosives from the front could not be met because these also are
+largely coal-tar products. Picric acid is both a dye and an explosive.
+It is made from carbolic acid and the famous trinitrotoluene is made
+from toluene, both of which you will find in the list of the ten
+fundamental "crudes."
+
+Both Great Britain and the United States realized the danger of allowing
+Germany to recover her former monopoly, and both have shown a readiness
+to cast overboard their traditional policies to meet this emergency. The
+British Government has discovered that a country without a tariff is a
+land without walls. The American Government has discovered that an
+industry is not benefited by being cut up into small pieces. Both
+governments are now doing all they can to build up big concerns and to
+provide them with protection. The British Government assisted in the
+formation of a national company for the manufacture of synthetic dyes by
+taking one-sixth of the stock and providing $500,000 for a research
+laboratory. But this effort is now reported to be "a great failure"
+because the Government put it in charge of the politicians instead of
+the chemists.
+
+The United States, like England, had become dependent upon Germany for
+its dyestuffs. We imported nine-tenths of what we used and most of those
+that were produced here were made from imported intermediates. When the
+war broke out there were only seven firms and 528 persons employed in
+the manufacture of dyes in the United States. One of these, the
+Schoelkopf Aniline and Chemical Works, of Buffalo, deserves mention, for
+it had stuck it out ever since 1879, and in 1914 was making 106 dyes. In
+June, 1917, this firm, with the encouragement of the Government Bureau
+of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, joined with some of the other American
+producers to form a trade combination, the National Aniline and Chemical
+Company. The Du Pont Company also entered the field on an extensive
+scale and soon there were 118 concerns engaged in it with great profit.
+During the war $200,000,000 was invested in the domestic dyestuff
+industry. To protect this industry Congress put on a specific duty of
+five cents a pound and an ad valorem duty of 30 per cent. on imported
+dyestuffs; but if, after five years, American manufacturers are not
+producing 60 per cent. in value of the domestic consumption, the
+protection is to be removed. For some reason, not clearly understood and
+therefore hotly discussed, Congress at the last moment struck off the
+specific duty from two of the most important of the dyestuffs, indigo
+and alizarin, as well as from all medicinals and flavors.
+
+The manufacture of dyes is not a big business, but it is a strategic
+business. Heligoland is not a big island, but England would have been
+glad to buy it back during the war at a high price per square yard.
+American industries employing over two million men and women and
+producing over three billion dollars' worth of products a year are
+dependent upon dyes. Chief of these is of course textiles, using more
+than half the dyes; next come leather, paper, paint and ink. We have
+been importing more than $12,000,000 worth of coal-tar products a year,
+but the cottonseed oil we exported in 1912 would alone suffice to pay
+that bill twice over. But although the manufacture of dyes cannot be
+called a big business, in comparison with some others, it is a paying
+business when well managed. The German concerns paid on an average 22
+per cent. dividends on their capital and sometimes as high as 50 per
+cent. Most of the standard dyes have been so long in use that the
+patents are off and the processes are well enough known. We have the
+coal tar and we have the chemists, so there seems no good reason why we
+should not make our own dyes, at least enough of them so we will not be
+caught napping as we were in 1914. It was decidedly humiliating for our
+Government to have to beg Germany to sell us enough colors to print our
+stamps and greenbacks and then have to beg Great Britain for permission
+to bring them over by Dutch ships.
+
+The raw material for the production of coal-tar products we have in
+abundance if we will only take the trouble to save it. In 1914 the crude
+light oil collected from the coke-ovens would have produced only about
+4,500,000 gallons of benzol and 1,500,000 gallons of toluol, but in 1917
+this output was raised to 40,200,000 gallons of benzol and 10,200,000 of
+toluol. The toluol was used mostly in the manufacture of trinitrotoluol
+for use in Europe. When the war broke out in 1914 it shut off our supply
+of phenol (carbolic acid) for which we were dependent upon foreign
+sources. This threatened not only to afflict us with headaches by
+depriving us of aspirin but also to removed the consolation of music,
+for phenol is used in making phonographic records. Mr. Edison with his
+accustomed energy put up a factory within a few weeks for the
+manufacture of synthetic phenol. When we entered the war the need for
+phenol became yet more imperative, for it was needed to make picric
+acid for filling bombs. This demand was met, and in 1917 there were
+fifteen new plants turning out 64,146,499 pounds of phenol valued at
+$23,719,805.
+
+Some of the coal-tar products, as we see, serve many purposes. For
+instance, picric acid appears in three places in this book. It is a high
+explosive. It is a powerful and permanent yellow dye as any one who has
+touched it knows. Thirdly it is used as an antiseptic to cover burned
+skin. Other coal-tar dyes are used for the same purpose, "malachite
+green," "brilliant green," "crystal violet," "ethyl violet" and
+"Victoria blue," so a patient in a military hospital is decorated like
+an Easter egg. During the last five years surgeons have unfortunately
+had unprecedented opportunities for the study of wounds and fortunately
+they have been unprecedentedly successful in finding improved methods of
+treating them. In former wars a serious wound meant usually death or
+amputation. Now nearly ninety per cent. of the wounded are able to
+continue in the service. The reason for this improvement is that
+medicines are now being made to order instead of being gathered "from
+China to Peru." The old herb doctor picked up any strange plant that he
+could find and tried it on any sick man that would let him. This
+empirical method, though hard on the patients, resulted in the course of
+five thousand years in the discovery of a number of useful remedies. But
+the modern medicine man when he knows the cause of the disease is
+usually able to devise ways of counteracting it directly. For instance,
+he knows, thanks to Pasteur and Metchnikoff, that the cause of wound
+infection is the bacterial enemies of man which swarm by the million
+into any breach in his protective armor, the skin. Now when a breach is
+made in a line of intrenchments the defenders rush troops to the
+threatened spot for two purposes, constructive and destructive,
+engineers and warriors, the former to build up the rampart with
+sandbags, the latter to kill the enemy. So when the human body is
+invaded the blood brings to the breach two kinds of defenders. One is
+the serum which neutralizes the bacterial poison and by coagulating
+forms a new skin or scab over the exposed flesh. The other is the
+phagocytes or white corpuscles, the free lances of our corporeal
+militia, which attack and kill the invading bacteria. The aim of the
+physician then is to aid these defenders as much as possible without
+interfering with them. Therefore the antiseptic he is seeking is one
+that will assist the serum in protecting and repairing the broken
+tissues and will kill the hostile bacteria without killing the friendly
+phagocytes. Carbolic acid, the most familiar of the coal-tar
+antiseptics, will destroy the bacteria when it is diluted with 250 parts
+of water, but unfortunately it puts a stop to the fighting activities of
+the phagocytes when it is only half that strength, or one to 500, so it
+cannot destroy the infection without hindering the healing.
+
+In this search for substances that would attack a specific disease germ
+one of the leading investigators was Prof. Paul Ehrlich, a German
+physician of the Hebrew race. He found that the aniline dyes were useful
+for staining slides under the microscope, for they would pick out
+particular cells and leave others uncolored and from this starting point
+he worked out organic and metallic compounds which would destroy the
+bacteria and parasites that cause some of the most dreadful of diseases.
+A year after the war broke out Professor Ehrlich died while working in
+his laboratory on how to heal with coal-tar compounds the wounds
+inflicted by explosives from the same source.
+
+One of the most valuable of the aniline antiseptics employed by Ehrlich
+is flavine or, if the reader prefers to call it by its full name,
+diaminomethylacridinium chloride. Flavine, as its name implies, is a
+yellow dye and will kill the germs causing ordinary abscesses when in
+solution as dilute as one part of the dye to 200,000 parts of water, but
+it does not interfere with the bactericidal action of the white blood
+corpuscles unless the solution is 400 times as strong as this, that is
+one part in 500. Unlike carbolic acid and other antiseptics it is said
+to stimulate the serum instead of impairing its activity. Another
+antiseptic of the coal-tar family which has recently been brought into
+use by Dr. Dakin of the Rockefeller Institute is that called by European
+physicians chloramine-T and by American physicians chlorazene and by
+chemists para-toluene-sodium-sulfo-chloramide.
+
+This may serve to illustrate how a chemist is able to make such remedies
+as the doctor needs, instead of depending upon the accidental
+by-products of plants. On an earlier page I explained how by starting
+with the simplest of ring-compounds, the benzene of coal tar, we could
+get aniline. Suppose we go a step further and boil the aniline oil with
+acetic acid, which is the acid of vinegar minus its water. This easy
+process gives us acetanilid, which when introduced into the market some
+years ago under the name of "antifebrin" made a fortune for its makers.
+
+The making of medicines from coal tar began in 1874 when Kolbe made
+salicylic acid from carbolic acid. Salicylic acid is a rheumatism remedy
+and had previously been extracted from willow bark. If now we treat
+salicylic acid with concentrated acetic acid we get "aspirin." From
+aniline again are made "phenacetin," "antipyrin" and a lot of other
+drugs that have become altogether too popular as headache remedies--say
+rather "headache relievers."
+
+Another class of synthetics equally useful and likewise abused, are the
+soporifics, such as "sulphonal," "veronal" and "medinal." When it is not
+desired to put the patient to sleep but merely to render insensible a
+particular place, as when a tooth is to be pulled, cocain may be used.
+This, like alcohol and morphine, has proved a curse as well as a
+blessing and its sale has had to be restricted because of the many
+victims to the habit of using this drug. Cocain is obtained from the
+leaves of the South American coca tree, but can be made artificially
+from coal-tar products. The laboratory is superior to the forest because
+other forms of local anesthetics, such as eucain and novocain, can be
+made that are better than the natural alkaloid because more effective
+and less poisonous.
+
+I must not forget to mention another lot of coal-tar derivatives in
+which some of my readers will take a personal interest. That is the
+photographic developers. I am old enough to remember when we used to
+develop our plates in ferrous sulfate solution and you never saw nicer
+negatives than we got with it. But when pyrogallic acid came in we
+switched over to that even though it did stain our fingers and sometimes
+our plates. Later came a swarm of new organic reducing agents under
+various fancy names, such as metol, hydro (short for hydro-quinone) and
+eikongen ("the image-maker"). Every fellow fixed up his own formula and
+called his fellow-members of the camera club fools for not adopting it
+though he secretly hoped they would not.
+
+Under the double stimulus of patriotism and high prices the American
+drug and dyestuff industry developed rapidly. In 1917 about as many
+pounds of dyes were manufactured in America as were imported in 1913 and
+our _exports_ of American-made dyes exceeded in value our _imports_
+before the war. In 1914 the output of American dyes was valued at
+$2,500,000. In 1917 it amounted to over $57,000,000. This does not mean
+that the problem was solved, for the home products were not equal in
+variety and sometimes not in quality to those made in Germany. Many
+valuable dyes were lacking and the cost was of course much higher.
+Whether the American industry can compete with the foreign in an open
+market and on equal terms is impossible to say because such conditions
+did not prevail before the war and they are not going to prevail in the
+future. Formerly the large German cartels through their agents and
+branches in this country kept the business in their own hands and now
+the American manufacturers are determined to maintain the independence
+they have acquired. They will not depend hereafter upon the tariff to
+cut off competition but have adopted more effective measures. The 4500
+German chemical patents that had been seized by the Alien Property
+Custodian were sold by him for $250,000 to the Chemical Foundation, an
+association of American manufacturers organized "for the Americanization
+of such institutions as may be affected thereby, for the exclusion or
+elimination of alien interests hostile or detrimental to said industries
+and for the advancement of chemical and allied science and industry in
+the United States." The Foundation has a large fighting fund so that it
+"may be able to commence immediately and prosecute with the utmost vigor
+infringement proceedings whenever the first German attempt shall
+hereafter be made to import into this country."
+
+So much mystery has been made of the achievements of German chemists--as
+though the Teutonic brain had a special lobe for that faculty, lacking
+in other craniums--that I want to quote what Dr. Hesse says about his
+first impressions of a German laboratory of industrial research:
+
+     Directly after graduating from the University of Chicago in
+     1896, I entered the employ of the largest coal-tar dye works in
+     the world at its plant in Germany and indeed in one of its
+     research laboratories. This was my first trip outside the
+     United States and it was, of course, an event of the first
+     magnitude for me to be in Europe, and, as a chemist, to be in
+     Germany, in a German coal-tar dye plant, and to cap it all in
+     its research laboratory--a real _sanctum sanctorum_ for
+     chemists. In a short time the daily routine wore the novelty
+     off my experience and I then settled down to calm analysis and
+     dispassionate appraisal of my surroundings and to compare what
+     was actually before and around me with my expectations. I
+     found that the general laboratory equipment was no better than
+     what I had been accustomed to; that my colleagues had no better
+     fundamental training than I had enjoyed nor any better fact--or
+     manipulative--equipment than I; that those in charge of the
+     work had no better general intellectual equipment nor any more
+     native ability than had my instructors; in short, there was
+     nothing new about it all, nothing that we did not have back
+     home, nothing--except the specific problems that were engaging
+     their attention, and the special opportunities of attacking
+     them. Those problems were of no higher order of complexity than
+     those I had been accustomed to for years, in fact, most of them
+     were not very complex from a purely intellectual viewpoint.
+     There was nothing inherently uncanny, magical or wizardly about
+     their occupation whatever. It was nothing but plain hard work
+     and keeping everlastingly at it. Now, what was the actual thing
+     behind that chemical laboratory that we did not have at home?
+     It was money, willing to back such activity, convinced that in
+     the final outcome, a profit would be made; money, willing to
+     take university graduates expecting from them no special
+     knowledge other than a good and thorough grounding in
+     scientific research and provide them with opportunity to become
+     specialists suited to the factory's needs.
+
+It is evidently not impossible to make the United States self-sufficient
+in the matter of coal-tar products. We've got the tar; we've got the
+men; we've got the money, too. Whether such a policy would pay us in the
+long run or whether it is necessary as a measure of military or
+commercial self-defense is another question that cannot here be decided.
+But whatever share we may have in it the coal-tar industry has increased
+the economy of civilization and added to the wealth of the world by
+showing how a waste by-product could be utilized for making new dyes and
+valuable medicines, a better use for tar than as fuel for political
+bonfires and as clothing for the nakedness of social outcasts.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+SYNTHETIC PERFUMES AND FLAVORS
+
+
+The primitive man got his living out of such wild plants and animals as
+he could find. Next he, or more likely his wife, began to cultivate the
+plants and tame the animals so as to insure a constant supply. This was
+the first step toward civilization, for when men had to settle down in a
+community (_civitas_) they had to ameliorate their manners and make laws
+protecting land and property. In this settled and orderly life the
+plants and animals improved as well as man and returned a hundredfold
+for the pains that their master had taken in their training. But still
+man was dependent upon the chance bounties of nature. He could select,
+but he could not invent. He could cultivate, but he could not create. If
+he wanted sugar he had to send to the West Indies. If he wanted spices
+he had to send to the East Indies. If he wanted indigo he had to send to
+India. If he wanted a febrifuge he had to send to Peru. If he wanted a
+fertilizer he had to send to Chile. If he wanted rubber he had to send
+to the Congo. If he wanted rubies he had to send to Mandalay. If he
+wanted otto of roses he had to send to Turkey. Man was not yet master of
+his environment.
+
+This period of cultivation, the second stage of civilization, began
+before the dawn of history and lasted until recent times. We might
+almost say up to the twentieth century, for it was not until the
+fundamental laws of heredity were discovered that man could originate
+new species of plants and animals according to a predetermined plan by
+combining such characteristics as he desired to perpetuate. And it was
+not until the fundamental laws of chemistry were discovered that man
+could originate new compounds more suitable to his purpose than any to
+be found in nature. Since the progress of mankind is continuous it is
+impossible to draw a date line, unless a very jagged one, along the
+frontier of human culture, but it is evident that we are just entering
+upon the third era of evolution in which man will make what he needs
+instead of trying to find it somewhere. The new epoch has hardly dawned,
+yet already a man may stay at home in New York or London and make his
+own rubber and rubies, his own indigo and otto of roses. More than this,
+he can make gems and colors and perfumes that never existed since time
+began. The man of science has signed a declaration of independence of
+the lower world and we are now in the midst of the revolution.
+
+Our eyes are dazzled by the dawn of the new era. We know what the hunter
+and the horticulturist have already done for man, but we cannot imagine
+what the chemist can do. If we look ahead through the eyes of one of the
+greatest of French chemists, Berthelot, this is what we shall see:
+
+     The problem of food is a chemical problem. Whenever energy can
+     be obtained economically we can begin to make all kinds of
+     aliment, with carbon borrowed from carbonic acid, hydrogen
+     taken from the water and oxygen and nitrogen drawn from the
+     air.... The day will come when each person will carry for his
+     nourishment his little nitrogenous tablet, his pat of fatty
+     matter, his package of starch or sugar, his vial of aromatic
+     spices suited to his personal taste; all manufactured
+     economically and in unlimited quantities; all independent of
+     irregular seasons, drought and rain, of the heat that withers
+     the plant and of the frost that blights the fruit; all free
+     from pathogenic microbes, the origin of epidemics and the
+     enemies of human life. On that day chemistry will have
+     accomplished a world-wide revolution that cannot be estimated.
+     There will no longer be hills covered with vineyards and fields
+     filled with cattle. Man will gain in gentleness and morality
+     because he will cease to live by the carnage and destruction of
+     living creatures.... The earth will be covered with grass,
+     flowers and woods and in it the human race will dwell in the
+     abundance and joy of the legendary age of gold--provided that a
+     spiritual chemistry has been discovered that changes the nature
+     of man as profoundly as our chemistry transforms material
+     nature.
+
+But this is looking so far into the future that we can trust no man's
+eyesight, not even Berthelot's. There is apparently no impossibility
+about the manufacture of synthetic food, but at present there is no
+apparent probability of it. There is no likelihood that the laboratory
+will ever rival the wheat field. The cornstalk will always be able to
+work cheaper than the chemist in the manufacture of starch. But in rarer
+and choicer products of nature the chemist has proved his ability to
+compete and even to excel.
+
+What have been from the dawn of history to the rise of synthetic
+chemistry the most costly products of nature? What could tempt a
+merchant to brave the perils of a caravan journey over the deserts of
+Asia beset with Arab robbers? What induced the Portuguese and Spanish
+mariners to risk their frail barks on perilous waters of the Cape of
+Good Hope or the Horn? The chief prizes were perfumes, spices, drugs and
+gems. And why these rather than what now constitutes the bulk of oversea
+and overland commerce? Because they were precious, portable and
+imperishable. If the merchant got back safe after a year or two with a
+little flask of otto of roses, a package of camphor and a few pearls
+concealed in his garments his fortune was made. If a single ship of the
+argosy sent out from Lisbon came back with a load of sandalwood, indigo
+or nutmeg it was regarded as a successful venture. You know from reading
+the Bible, or if not that, from your reading of Arabian Nights, that a
+few grains of frankincense or a few drops of perfumed oil were regarded
+as gifts worthy the acceptance of a king or a god. These products of the
+Orient were equally in demand by the toilet and the temple. The
+unctorium was an adjunct of the Roman bathroom. Kings had to be greased
+and fumigated before they were thought fit to sit upon a throne. There
+was a theory, not yet altogether extinct, that medicines brought from a
+distance were most efficacious, especially if, besides being expensive,
+they tasted bad like myrrh or smelled bad like asafetida. And if these
+failed to save the princely patient he was embalmed in aromatics or, as
+we now call them, antiseptics of the benzene series.
+
+Today, as always, men are willing to pay high for the titillation of the
+senses of smell and taste. The African savage will trade off an ivory
+tusk for a piece of soap reeking with synthetic musk. The clubman will
+pay $10 for a bottle of wine which consists mostly of water with about
+ten per cent. of alcohol, worth a cent or two, but contains an
+unweighable amount of the "bouquet" that can only be produced on the
+sunny slopes of Champagne or in the valley of the Rhine. But very likely
+the reader is quite as extravagant, for when one buys the natural violet
+perfumery he is paying at the rate of more than $10,000 a pound for the
+odoriferous oil it contains; the rest is mere water and alcohol. But you
+would not want the pure undiluted oil if you could get it, for it is
+unendurable. A single whiff of it paralyzes your sense of smell for a
+time just as a loud noise deafens you.
+
+Of the five senses, three are physical and two chemical. By touch we
+discern pressures and surface textures. By hearing we receive
+impressions of certain air waves and by sight of certain ether waves.
+But smell and taste lead us to the heart of the molecule and enable us
+to tell how the atoms are put together. These twin senses stand like
+sentries at the portals of the body, where they closely scrutinize
+everything that enters. Sounds and sights may be disagreeable, but they
+are never fatal. A man can live in a boiler factory or in a cubist art
+gallery, but he cannot live in a room containing hydrogen sulfide. Since
+it is more important to be warned of danger than guided to delights our
+senses are made more sensitive to pain than pleasure. We can detect by
+the smell one two-millionth of a milligram of oil of roses or musk, but
+we can detect one two-billionth of a milligram of mercaptan, which is
+the vilest smelling compound that man has so far invented. If you do not
+know how much a milligram is consider a drop picked up by the point of
+a needle and imagine that divided into two billion parts. Also try to
+estimate the weight of the odorous particles that guide a dog to the fox
+or warn a deer of the presence of man. The unaided nostril can rival the
+spectroscope in the detection and analysis of unweighable amounts of
+matter.
+
+What we call flavor or savor is a joint effect of taste and odor in
+which the latter predominates. There are only four tastes of importance,
+acid, alkaline, bitter and sweet. The acid, or sour taste, is the
+perception of hydrogen atoms charged with positive electricity. The
+alkaline, or soapy taste, is the perception of hydroxyl radicles charged
+with negative electricity. The bitter and sweet tastes and all the odors
+depend upon the chemical constitution of the compound, but the laws of
+the relation have not yet been worked out. Since these sense organs, the
+taste and smell buds, are sunk in the moist mucous membrane they can
+only be touched by substances soluble in water, and to reach the sense
+of smell they must also be volatile so as to be diffused in the air
+inhaled by the nose. The "taste" of food is mostly due to the volatile
+odors of it that creep up the back-stairs into the olfactory chamber.
+
+A chemist given an unknown substance would have to make an elementary
+analysis and some tedious tests to determine whether it contained methyl
+or ethyl groups, whether it was an aldehyde or an ester, whether the
+carbon atoms were singly or doubly linked and whether it was an open
+chain or closed. But let him get a whiff of it and he can give instantly
+a pretty shrewd guess as to these points. His nose knows.
+
+Although the chemist does not yet know enough to tell for certain from
+looking at the structural formula what sort of odor the compound would
+have or whether it would have any, yet we can divide odoriferous
+substances into classes according to their constitution. What are
+commonly known as "fruity" odors belong mostly to what the chemist calls
+the fatty or aliphatic series. For instance, we may have in a ripe fruit
+an alcohol (say ethyl or common alcohol) and an acid (say acetic or
+vinegar) and a combination of these, the ester or organic salt (in this
+case ethyl acetate), which is more odorous than either of its
+components. These esters of the fatty acids give the characteristic
+savor to many of our favorite fruits, candies and beverages. The pear
+flavor, amyl acetate, is made from acetic acid and amyl alcohol--though
+amyl alcohol (fusel oil) has a detestable smell. Pineapple is ethyl
+butyrate--but the acid part of it (butyric acid) is what gives Limburger
+cheese its aroma. These essential oils are easily made in the
+laboratory, but cannot be extracted from the fruit for separate use.
+
+If the carbon chain contains one or more double linkages we get the
+"flowery" perfumes. For instance, here is the symbol of geraniol, the
+chief ingredient of otto of roses:
+
+  (CH_{3})_{2}C = CHCH_{2}CH_{2}C(CH_{3})_{2} = CHCH_{2}OH
+
+The rose would smell as sweet under another name, but it may be
+questioned whether it would stand being called by the name of
+dimethyl-2-6-octadiene-2-6-ol-8. Geraniol by oxidation goes into the
+aldehyde, citral, which occurs in lemons, oranges and verbena flowers.
+Another compound of this group, linalool, is found in lavender, bergamot
+and many flowers.
+
+Geraniol, as you would see if you drew up its structural formula in the
+way I described in the last chapter, contains a chain of six carbon
+atoms, that is, the same number as make a benzene ring. Now if we shake
+up geraniol and other compounds of this group (the diolefines) with
+diluted sulfuric acid the carbon chain hooks up to form a benzene ring,
+but with the other carbon atoms stretched across it; rather too
+complicated to depict here. These "bridged rings" of the formula
+C_{5}H_{8}, or some multiple of that, constitute the important group of
+the terpenes which occur in turpentine and such wild and woodsy things
+as sage, lavender, caraway, pine needles and eucalyptus. Going further
+in this direction we are led into the realm of the heavy oriental odors,
+patchouli, sandalwood, cedar, cubebs, ginger and camphor. Camphor can
+now be made directly from turpentine so we may be independent of Formosa
+and Borneo.
+
+When we have a six carbon ring without double linkings (cyclo-aliphatic)
+or with one or two such, we get soft and delicate perfumes like the
+violet (ionone and irone). But when these pass into the benzene ring
+with its three double linkages the odor becomes more powerful and so
+characteristic that the name "aromatic compound" has been extended to
+the entire class of benzene derivatives, although many of them are
+odorless. The essential oils of jasmine, orange blossoms, musk,
+heliotrope, tuberose, ylang ylang, etc., consist mostly of this class
+and can be made from the common source of aromatic compounds, coal tar.
+
+The synthetic flavors and perfumes are made in the same way as the dyes
+by starting with some coal-tar product or other crude material and
+building up the molecule to the desired complexity. For instance, let us
+start with phenol, the ill-smelling and poisonous carbolic acid of
+disagreeable associations and evil fame. Treat this to soda-water and it
+is transformed into salicylic acid, a white odorless powder, used as a
+preservative and as a rheumatism remedy. Add to this methyl alcohol
+which is obtained by the destructive distillation of wood and is much
+more poisonous than ordinary ethyl alcohol. The alcohol and the acid
+heated together will unite with the aid of a little sulfuric acid and we
+get what the chemist calls methyl salicylate and other people call oil
+of wintergreen, the same as is found in wintergreen berries and birch
+bark. We have inherited a taste for this from our pioneer ancestors and
+we use it extensively to flavor our soft drinks, gum, tooth paste and
+candy, but the Europeans have not yet found out how nice it is.
+
+But, starting with phenol again, let us heat it with caustic alkali and
+chloroform. This gives us two new compounds of the same composition, but
+differing a little in the order of the atoms. If you refer back to the
+diagram of the benzene ring which I gave in the last chapter, you will
+see that there are six hydrogen atoms attached to it. Now any or all
+these hydrogen atoms may be replaced by other elements or groups and
+what the product is depends not only on what the new elements are, but
+where they are put. It is like spelling words. The three letters _t_,
+_r_ and _a_ mean very different things according to whether they are put
+together as _art_, _tar_ or _rat_. Or, to take a more apposite
+illustration, every hostess knows that the success of her dinner depends
+upon how she seats her guests around the table. So in the case of
+aromatic compounds, a little difference in the seating arrangement
+around the benzene ring changes the character. The two derivatives of
+phenol, which we are now considering, have two substituting groups. One
+is--O-H (called the hydroxyl group). The other is--CHO (called the
+aldehyde group). If these are opposite (called the para position) we
+have an odorless white solid. If they are side by side (called the ortho
+position) we have an oil with the odor of meadowsweet. Treating the
+odorless solid with methyl alcohol we get audepine (or anisic aldehyde)
+which is the perfume of hawthorn blossoms. But treating the other of the
+twin products, the fragrant oil, with dry acetic acid ("Perkin's
+reaction") we get cumarin, which is the perfume part of the tonka or
+tonquin beans that our forefathers used to carry in their snuff boxes.
+One ounce of cumarin is equal to four pounds of tonka beans. It smells
+sufficiently like vanilla to be used as a substitute for it in cheap
+extracts. In perfumery it is known as "new mown hay."
+
+You may remember what I said on a former page about the career of
+William Henry Perkin, the boy who loved chemistry better than eating,
+and how he discovered the coal-tar dyes. Well, it is also to his
+ingenious mind that we owe the starting of the coal-tar perfume business
+which has had almost as important a development. Perkin made cumarin in
+1868, but this, like the dye industry, escaped from English hands and
+flew over the North Sea. Before the war Germany was exporting
+$1,500,000 worth of synthetic perfumes a year. Part of these went to
+France, where they were mixed and put up in fancy bottles with French
+names and sold to Americans at fancy prices.
+
+The real vanilla flavor, vanillin, was made by Tiemann in 1874. At first
+it sold for nearly $800 a pound, but now it may be had for $10. How
+extensively it is now used in chocolate, ice cream, soda water, cakes
+and the like we all know. It should be noted that cumarin and vanillin,
+however they may be made, are not imitations, but identical with the
+chief constituent of the tonka and vanilla beans and, of course, are
+equally wholesome or harmless. But the nice palate can distinguish a
+richer flavor in the natural extracts, for they contain small quantities
+of other savory ingredients.
+
+A true perfume consists of a large number of odoriferous chemical
+compounds mixed in such proportions as to produce a single harmonious
+effect upon the sense of smell in a fine brand of perfume may be
+compounded a dozen or twenty different ingredients and these, if they
+are natural essences, are complex mixtures of a dozen or so distinct
+substances. Perfumery is one of the fine arts. The perfumer, like the
+orchestra leader, must know how to combine and cooerdinate his
+instruments to produce a desired sensation. A Wagnerian opera requires
+103 musicians. A Strauss opera requires 112. Now if the concert manager
+wants to economize he will insist upon cutting down on the most
+expensive musicians and dropping out some of the others, say, the
+supernumerary violinists and the man who blows a single blast or tinkles
+a triangle once in the course of the evening. Only the trained ear will
+detect the difference and the manager can make more money.
+
+Suppose our mercenary impresario were unable to get into the concert
+hall of his famous rival. He would then listen outside the window and
+analyze the sound in this fashion: "Fifty per cent. of the sound is made
+by the tuba, 20 per cent. by the bass drum, 15 per cent. by the 'cello
+and 10 per cent. by the clarinet. There are some other instruments, but
+they are not loud and I guess if we can leave them out nobody will know
+the difference." So he makes up his orchestra out of these four alone
+and many people do not know the difference.
+
+The cheap perfumer goes about it in the same way. He analyzes, for
+instance, the otto or oil of roses which cost during the war $400 a
+pound--if you could get it at any price--and he finds that the chief
+ingredient is geraniol, costing only $5, and next is citronelol, costing
+$20; then comes nerol and others. So he makes up a cheap brand of
+perfumery out of three or four such compounds. But the genuine oil of
+roses, like other natural essences, contains a dozen or more
+constituents and to leave many of them out is like reducing an orchestra
+to a few loud-sounding instruments or a painting to a three-color print.
+A few years ago an attempt was made to make music electrically by
+producing separately each kind of sound vibration contained in the
+instruments imitated. Theoretically that seems easy, but practically the
+tone was not satisfactory because the tones and overtones of a full
+orchestra or even of a single violin are too numerous and complex to be
+reproduced individually. So the synthetic perfumes have not driven out
+the natural perfumes, but, on the contrary, have aided and stimulated
+the growth of flowers for essences. The otto or attar of roses, favorite
+of the Persian monarchs and romances, has in recent years come chiefly
+from Bulgaria. But wars are not made with rosewater and the Bulgars for
+the last five years have been engaged in other business than cultivating
+their own gardens. The alembic or still was invented by the Arabian
+alchemists for the purpose of obtaining the essential oil or attar of
+roses. But distillation, even with the aid of steam, is not altogether
+satisfactory. For instance, the distilled rose oil contains anywhere
+from 10 to 74 per cent. of a paraffin wax (stearopten) that is odorless
+and, on the other hand, phenyl-ethyl alcohol, which is an important
+constituent of the scent of roses, is broken up in the process of
+distillation. So the perfumer can improve on the natural or rather the
+distilled oil by leaving out part of the paraffin and adding the missing
+alcohol. Even the imported article taken direct from the still is not
+always genuine, for the wily Bulgar sometimes "increases the yield" by
+sprinkling his roses in the vat with synthetic geraniol just as the wily
+Italian pours a barrel of American cottonseed oil over his olives in the
+press.
+
+Another method of extracting the scent of flowers is by _enfleurage_,
+which takes advantage of the tendency of fats to absorb odors. You know
+how butter set beside fish in the ice box will get a fishy flavor. In
+_enfleurage_ moist air is carried up a tower passing alternately over
+trays of fresh flowers, say violets, and over glass plates covered with
+a thin layer of lard. The perfumed lard may then be used as a pomade or
+the perfume may be extracted by alcohol.
+
+But many sweet flowers do not readily yield an essential oil, so in such
+oases we have to rely altogether upon more or less successful
+substitutes. For instance, the perfumes sold under the names of
+"heliotrope," "lily of the valley," "lilac," "cyclamen," "honeysuckle,"
+"sweet pea," "arbutus," "mayflower" and "magnolia" are not produced from
+these flowers but are simply imitations made from other essences,
+synthetic or natural. Among the "thousand flowers" that contribute to
+the "Eau de Mille Fleurs" are the civet cat, the musk deer and the sperm
+whale. Some of the published formulas for "Jockey Club" call for civet
+or ambergris and those of "Lavender Water" for musk and civet. The less
+said about the origin of these three animal perfumes the better.
+Fortunately they are becoming too expensive to use and are being
+displaced by synthetic products more agreeable to a refined imagination.
+The musk deer may now be saved from extinction since we can make
+tri-nitro-butyl-xylene from coal tar. This synthetic musk passes muster
+to human nostrils, but a cat will turn up her nose at it. The synthetic
+musk is not only much cheaper than the natural, but a dozen times as
+strong, or let us say, goes a dozen times as far, for nobody wants it
+any stronger.
+
+Such powerful scents as these are only pleasant when highly diluted, yet
+they are, as we have seen, essential ingredients of the finest perfumes.
+For instance, the natural oil of jasmine and other flowers contain
+traces of indols and skatols which have most disgusting odors. Though
+our olfactory organs cannot detect their presence yet we perceive their
+absence so they have to be put into the artificial perfume. Just so a
+brief but violent discord in a piece of music or a glaring color
+contrast in a painting may be necessary to the harmony of the whole.
+
+It is absurd to object to "artificial" perfumes, for practically all
+perfumes now sold are artificial in the sense of being compounded by the
+art of the perfumer and whether the materials he uses are derived from
+the flowers of yesteryear or of Carboniferous Era is nobody's business
+but his. And he does not tell. The materials can be purchased in the
+open market. Various recipes can be found in the books. But every famous
+perfumer guards well the secret of his formulas and hands it as a legacy
+to his posterity. The ancient Roman family of Frangipani has been made
+immortal by one such hereditary recipe. The Farina family still claims
+to have the exclusive knowledge of how to make Eau de Cologne. This
+famous perfume was first compounded by an Italian, Giovanni Maria
+Farina, who came to Cologne in 1709. It soon became fashionable and was
+for a time the only scent allowed at some of the German courts. The
+various published recipes contain from six to a dozen ingredients,
+chiefly the oils of neroli, rosemary, bergamot, lemon and lavender
+dissolved in very pure alcohol and allowed to age like wine. The
+invention, in 1895, of artificial neroli (orange flowers) has improved
+the product.
+
+French perfumery, like the German, had its origin in Italy, when
+Catherine de' Medici came to Paris as the bride of Henri II. She
+brought with her, among other artists, her perfumer, Sieur Toubarelli,
+who established himself in the flowery land of Grasse. Here for four
+hundred years the industry has remained rooted and the family formulas
+have been handed down from generation to generation. In the city of
+Grasse there were at the outbreak of the war fifty establishments making
+perfumes. The French perfumer does not confine himself to a single
+sense. He appeals as well to sight and sound and association. He adds to
+the attractiveness of his creation by a quaintly shaped bottle, an
+artistic box and an enticing name such as "Dans les Nues," "Le Coeur de
+Jeannette," "Nuit de Chine," "Un Air Embaume," "Le Vertige," "Bon Vieux
+Temps," "L'Heure Bleue," "Nuit d'Amour," "Quelques Fleurs," "Djer-Kiss."
+
+The requirements of a successful scent are very strict. A perfume must
+be lasting, but not strong. All its ingredients must continue to
+evaporate in the same proportion, otherwise it will change odor and
+deteriorate. Scents kill one another as colors do. The minutest trace of
+some impurity or foreign odor may spoil the whole effect. To mix the
+ingredients in a vessel of any metal but aluminum or even to filter
+through a tin funnel is likely to impair the perfume. The odoriferous
+compounds are very sensitive and unstable bodies, otherwise they would
+have no effect upon the olfactory organ. The combination that would be
+suitable for a toilet water would not be good for a talcum powder and
+might spoil in a soap. Perfumery is used even in the "scentless" powders
+and soaps. In fact it is now used more extensively, if less intensively,
+than ever before in the history of the world. During the Unwashed Ages,
+commonly called the Dark Ages, between the destruction of the Roman
+baths and the construction of the modern bathroom, the art of the
+perfumer, like all the fine arts, suffered an eclipse. "The odor of
+sanctity" was in highest esteem and what that odor was may be imagined
+from reading the lives of the saints. But in the course of centuries the
+refinements of life began to seep back into Europe from the East by
+means of the Arabs and Crusaders, and chemistry, then chiefly the art of
+cosmetics, began to revive. When science, the greatest democratizing
+agent on earth, got into action it elevated the poor to the ranks of
+kings and priests in the delights of the palate and the nose. We should
+not despise these delights, for the pleasure they confer is greater, in
+amount at least, than that of the so-called higher senses. We eat three
+times a day; some of us drink oftener; few of us visit the concert hall
+or the art gallery as often as we do the dining room. Then, too, these
+primitive senses have a stronger influence upon our emotional nature
+than those acquired later in the course of evolution. As Kipling puts
+it:
+
+  Smells are surer than sounds or sights
+  To make your heart-strings crack.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+CELLULOSE
+
+
+Organic compounds, on which our life and living depend, consist chiefly
+of four elements: carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen. These compounds
+are sometimes hard to analyze, but when once the chemist has ascertained
+their constitution he can usually make them out of their elements--if he
+wants to. He will not want to do it as a business unless it pays and it
+will not pay unless the manufacturing process is cheaper than the
+natural process. This depends primarily upon the cost of the crude
+materials. What, then, is the market price of these four elements?
+Oxygen and nitrogen are free as air, and as we have seen in the second
+chapter, their direct combination by the electric spark is possible.
+Hydrogen is free in the form of water but expensive to extricate by
+means of the electric current. But we need more carbon than anything
+else and where shall we get that? Bits of crystallized carbon can be
+picked up in South Africa and elsewhere, but those who can afford to buy
+them prefer to wear them rather than use them in making synthetic food.
+Graphite is rare and hard to melt. We must then have recourse to the
+compounds of carbon. The simplest of these, carbon dioxide, exists in
+the air but only four parts in ten thousand by volume. To extract the
+carbon and get it into combination with the other elements would be a
+difficult and expensive process. Here, then, we must call in cheap
+labor, the cheapest of all laborers, the plants. Pine trees on the
+highlands and cotton plants on the lowlands keep their green traps set
+all the day long and with the captured carbon dioxide build up
+cellulose. If, then, man wants free carbon he can best get it by
+charring wood in a kiln or digging up that which has been charred in
+nature's kiln during the Carboniferous Era. But there is no reason why
+he should want to go back to elemental carbon when he can have it
+already combined with hydrogen in the remains of modern or fossil
+vegetation. The synthetic products on which modern chemistry prides
+itself, such as vanillin, camphor and rubber, are not built up out of
+their elements, C, H and O, although they might be as a laboratory
+stunt. Instead of that the raw material of the organic chemist is
+chiefly cellulose, or the products of its recent or remote destructive
+distillation, tar and oil.
+
+It is unnecessary to tell the reader what cellulose is since he now
+holds a specimen of it in his hand, pretty pure cellulose except for the
+sizing and the specks of carbon that mar the whiteness of its surface.
+This utilization of cellulose is the chief cause of the difference
+between the modern world and the ancient, for what is called the
+invention of printing is essentially the inventing of paper. The Romans
+made type to stamp their coins and lead pipes with and if they had had
+paper to print upon the world might have escaped the Dark Ages. But the
+clay tablets of the Babylonians were cumbersome; the wax tablets of the
+Greeks were perishable; the papyrus of the Egyptians was fragile;
+parchment was expensive and penning was slow, so it was not until
+literature was put on a paper basis that democratic education became
+possible. At the present time sheepskin is only used for diplomas,
+treaties and other antiquated documents. And even if your diploma is
+written in Latin it is likely to be made of sulfated cellulose.
+
+The textile industry has followed the same law of development that I
+have indicated in the other industries. Here again we find the three
+stages of progress, (1) utilization of natural products, (2) cultivation
+of natural products, (3) manufacture of artificial products. The
+ancients were dependent upon plants, animals and insects for their
+fibers. China used silk, Greece and Rome used wool, Egypt used flax and
+India used cotton. In the course of cultivation for three thousand years
+the animal and vegetable fibers were lengthened and strengthened and
+cheapened. But at last man has risen to the level of the worm and can
+spin threads to suit himself. He can now rival the wasp in the making of
+paper. He is no longer dependent upon the flax and the cotton plant, but
+grinds up trees to get his cellulose. A New York newspaper uses up
+nearly 2000 acres of forest a year. The United States grinds up about
+five million cords of wood a year in the manufacture of pulp for paper
+and other purposes.
+
+In making "mechanical pulp" the blocks of wood, mostly spruce and
+hemlock, are simply pressed sidewise of the grain against wet
+grindstones. But in wood fiber the cellulose is in part combined with
+lignin, which is worse than useless. To break up the ligno-cellulose
+combine chemicals are used. The logs for this are not ground fine, but
+cut up by disk chippers. The chips are digested for several hours under
+heat and pressure with acid or alkali. There are three processes in
+vogue. In the most common process the reagent is calcium sulfite, made
+by passing sulfur fumes (SO_{2}) into lime water. In another process a
+solution of caustic of soda is used to disintegrate the wood. The third,
+known as the "sulfate" process, should rather be called the sulfide
+process since the active agent is an alkaline solution of sodium sulfide
+made by roasting sodium sulfate with the carbonaceous matter extracted
+from the wood. This sulfate process, though the most recent of the
+three, is being increasingly employed in this country, for by means of
+it the resinous pine wood of the South can be worked up and the final
+product, known as kraft paper because it is strong, is used for
+wrapping.
+
+But whatever the process we get nearly pure cellulose which, as you can
+see by examining this page under a microscope, consists of a tangled web
+of thin white fibers, the remains of the original cell walls. Owing to
+the severe treatment it has undergone wood pulp paper does not last so
+long as the linen rag paper used by our ancestors. The pages of the
+newspapers, magazines and books printed nowadays are likely to become
+brown and brittle in a few years, no great loss for the most part since
+they have served their purpose, though it is a pity that a few copies of
+the worst of them could not be printed on permanent paper for
+preservation in libraries so that future generations could congratulate
+themselves on their progress in civilization.
+
+But in our absorption in the printed page we must not forget the other
+uses of paper. The paper clothing, so often prophesied, has not yet
+arrived. Even paper collars have gone out of fashion--if they ever were
+in. In Germany during the war paper was used for socks, shirts and shoes
+as well as handkerchiefs and napkins but it could not stand wear and
+washing. Our sanitary engineers have set us to drinking out of
+sharp-edged paper cups and we blot our faces instead of wiping them.
+Twine is spun of paper and furniture made of the twine, a rival of
+rattan. Cloth and matting woven of paper yarn are being used for burlap
+and grass in the making of bags and suitcases.
+
+Here, however, we are not so much interested in manufactures of
+cellulose itself, that is, wood, paper and cotton, as we are in its
+chemical derivatives. Cellulose, as we can see from the symbol,
+C_{6}H_{10}O_{5}, is composed of the three elements of carbon, hydrogen
+and oxygen. These are present in the same proportion as in starch
+(C_{6}H_{10}O_{5}), while glucose or grape sugar (C_{6}H_{12}O_{6}) has
+one molecule of water more. But glucose is soluble in cold water and
+starch is soluble in hot, while cellulose is soluble in neither.
+Consequently cellulose cannot serve us for food, although some of the
+vegetarian animals, notably the goat, have a digestive apparatus that
+can handle it. In Finland and Germany birch wood pulp and straw were
+used not only as an ingredient of cattle food but also put into war
+bread. It is not likely, however, that the human stomach even under the
+pressure of famine is able to get much nutriment out of sawdust. But by
+digesting with dilute acid sawdust can be transformed into sugars and
+these by fermentation into alcohol, so it would be possible for a man
+after he has read his morning paper to get drunk on it.
+
+If the cellulose, instead of being digested a long time in dilute acid,
+is dipped into a solution of sulfuric acid (50 to 80 per cent.) and then
+washed and dried it acquires a hard, tough and translucent coating that
+makes it water-proof and grease-proof. This is the "parchment paper"
+that has largely replaced sheepskin. Strong alkali has a similar effect
+to strong acid. In 1844 John Mercer, a Lancashire calico printer,
+discovered that by passing cotton cloth or yarn through a cold 30 per
+cent. solution of caustic soda the fiber is shortened and strengthened.
+For over forty years little attention was paid to this discovery, but
+when it was found that if the material was stretched so that it could
+not shrink on drying the twisted ribbons of the cotton fiber were
+changed into smooth-walled cylinders like silk, the process came into
+general use and nowadays much that passes for silk is "mercerized"
+cotton.
+
+Another step was taken when Cross of London discovered that when the
+mercerized cotton was treated with carbon disulfide it was dissolved to
+a yellow liquid. This liquid contains the cellulose in solution as a
+cellulose xanthate and on acidifying or heating the cellulose is
+recovered in a hydrated form. If this yellow solution of cellulose is
+squirted out of tubes through extremely minute holes into acidulated
+water, each tiny stream becomes instantly solidified into a silky thread
+which may be spun and woven like that ejected from the spinneret of the
+silkworm. The origin of natural silk, if we think about it, rather
+detracts from the pleasure of wearing it, and if "he who needlessly
+sets foot upon a worm" is to be avoided as a friend we must hope that
+the advance of the artificial silk industry will be rapid enough to
+relieve us of the necessity of boiling thousands of baby worms in their
+cradles whenever we want silk stockings.
+
+  On a plain rush hurdle a silkworm lay
+  When a proud young princess came that way.
+  The haughty daughter of a lordly king
+  Threw a sidelong glance at the humble thing,
+  Little thinking she walked in pride
+  In the winding sheet where the silkworm died.
+
+But so far we have not reached a stage where we can altogether dispense
+with the services of the silkworm. The viscose threads made by the
+process look as well as silk, but they are not so strong, especially
+when wet.
+
+Besides the viscose method there are several other methods of getting
+cellulose into solution so that artificial fibers may be made from it. A
+strong solution of zinc chloride will serve and this process used to be
+employed for making the threads to be charred into carbon filaments for
+incandescent bulbs. Cellulose is also soluble in an ammoniacal solution
+of copper hydroxide. The liquid thus formed is squirted through a fine
+nozzle into a precipitating solution of caustic soda and glucose, which
+brings back the cellulose to its original form.
+
+In the chapter on explosives I explained how cellulose treated with
+nitric acid in the presence of sulfuric acid was nitrated. The cellulose
+molecule having three hydroxyl (--OH) groups, can take up one, two or
+three nitrate groups (--ONO_{2}). The higher nitrates are known as
+guncotton and form the basis of modern dynamite and smokeless powder.
+The lower nitrates, known as pyroxylin, are less explosive, although
+still very inflammable. All these nitrates are, like the original
+cellulose, insoluble in water, but unlike the original cellulose,
+soluble in a mixture of ether and alcohol. The solution is called
+collodion and is now in common use to spread a new skin over a wound.
+The great war might be traced back to Nobel's cut finger. Alfred Nobel
+was a Swedish chemist--and a pacifist. One day while working in the
+laboratory he cut his finger, as chemists are apt to do, and, again as
+chemists are apt to do, he dissolved some guncotton in ether-alcohol and
+swabbed it on the wound. At this point, however, his conduct diverges
+from the ordinary, for instead of standing idle, impatiently waving his
+hand in the air to dry the film as most people, including chemists, are
+apt to do, he put his mind on it and it occurred to him that this sticky
+stuff, slowly hardening to an elastic mass, might be just the thing he
+was hunting as an absorbent and solidifier of nitroglycerin. So instead
+of throwing away the extra collodion that he had made he mixed it with
+nitroglycerin and found that it set to a jelly. The "blasting gelatin"
+thus discovered proved to be so insensitive to shock that it could be
+safely transported or fired from a cannon. This was the first of the
+high explosives that have been the chief factor in modern warfare.
+
+But on the whole, collodion has healed more wounds than it has caused
+besides being of infinite service to mankind otherwise. It has made
+modern photography possible, for the film we use in the camera and
+moving picture projector consists of a gelatin coating on a pyroxylin
+backing. If collodion is forced through fine glass tubes instead of
+through a slit, it comes out a thread instead of a film. If the
+collodion jet is run into a vat of cold water the ether and alcohol
+dissolve; if it is run into a chamber of warm air they evaporate. The
+thread of nitrated cellulose may be rendered less inflammable by taking
+out the nitrate groups by treatment with ammonium or calcium sulfide.
+This restores the original cellulose, but now it is an endless thread of
+any desired thickness, whereas the native fiber was in size and length
+adapted to the needs of the cottonseed instead of the needs of man. The
+old motto, "If you want a thing done the way you want it you must do it
+yourself," explains why the chemist has been called in to supplement the
+work of nature in catering to human wants.
+
+Instead of nitric acid we may use strong acetic acid to dissolve the
+cotton. The resulting cellulose acetates are less inflammable than the
+nitrates, but they are more brittle and more expensive. Motion picture
+films made from them can be used in any hall without the necessity of
+imprisoning the operator in a fire-proof box where if anything happens
+he can burn up all by himself without disturbing the audience. The
+cellulose acetates are being used for auto goggles and gas masks as well
+as for windows in leather curtains and transparent coverings for index
+cards. A new use that has lately become important is the varnishing of
+aeroplane wings, as it does not readily absorb water or catch fire and
+makes the cloth taut and air-tight. Aeroplane wings can be made of
+cellulose acetate sheets as transparent as those of a dragon-fly and not
+easy to see against the sky.
+
+The nitrates, sulfates and acetates are the salts or esters of the
+respective acids, but recently true ethers or oxides of cellulose have
+been prepared that may prove still better since they contain no acid
+radicle and are neutral and stable.
+
+These are in brief the chief processes for making what is commonly but
+quite improperly called "artificial silk." They are not the same
+substance as silkworm silk and ought not to be--though they sometimes
+are--sold as such. They are none of them as strong as the silk fiber
+when wet, although if I should venture to say which of the various makes
+weakens the most on wetting I should get myself into trouble. I will
+only say that if you have a grudge against some fisherman give him a fly
+line of artificial silk, 'most any kind.
+
+The nitrate process was discovered by Count Hilaire de Chardonnet while
+he was at the Polytechnic School of Paris, and he devoted his life and
+his fortune trying to perfect it. Samples of the artificial silk were
+exhibited at the Paris Exposition in 1889 and two years later he started
+a factory at Basancon. In 1892, Cross and Bevan, English chemists,
+discovered the viscose or xanthate process, and later the acetate
+process. But although all four of these processes were invented
+in France and England, Germany reaped most benefit from the new
+industry, which was bringing into that country $6,000,000 a year
+before the war. The largest producer in the world was the Vereinigte
+Glanzstoff-Fabriken of Elberfeld, which was paying annual dividends of
+34 per cent. in 1914.
+
+The raw materials, as may be seen, are cheap and abundant, merely
+cellulose, salt, sulfur, carbon, air and water. Any kind of cellulose
+can be used, cotton waste, rags, paper, or even wood pulp. The processes
+are various, the names of the products are numerous and the uses are
+innumerable. Even the most inattentive must have noticed the widespread
+employment of these new forms of cellulose. We can buy from a street
+barrow for fifteen cents near-silk neckties that look as well as those
+sold for seventy-five. As for wear--well, they all of them wear till
+after we get tired of wearing them. Paper "vulcanized" by being run
+through a 30 per cent. solution of zinc chloride and subjected to
+hydraulic pressure comes out hard and horny and may be used for trunks
+and suit cases. Viscose tubes for sausage containers are more sanitary
+and appetizing than the customary casings. Viscose replaces ramie or
+cotton in the Welsbach gas mantles. Viscose film, transparent and a
+thousandth of an inch thick (cellophane), serves for candy wrappers.
+Cellulose acetate cylinders spun out of larger orifices than silk are
+trying--not very successfully as yet--to compete with hog's bristles and
+horsehair. Stir powdered metals into the cellulose solution and you have
+the Bayko yarn. Bayko (from the manufacturers, Farbenfabriken vorm.
+Friedr. Bayer and Company) is one of those telescoped names like Socony,
+Nylic, Fominco, Alco, Ropeco, Ripans, Penn-Yan, Anzac, Dagor, Dora and
+Cadets, which will be the despair of future philologers.
+
+[Illustration: A PAPER MILL IN ACTION
+
+This photograph was taken in the barking room of the big pulp mill of
+the Great Northern Paper Company at Millinocket, Maine]
+
+[Illustration: CELLULOSE FROM WOOD PULP
+
+This is now made into a large variety of useful articles of which a few
+examples are here pictured]
+
+Soluble cellulose may enable us in time to dispense with the weaver as
+well as the silkworm. It may by one operation give us fabrics instead of
+threads. A machine has been invented for manufacturing net and lace, the
+liquid material being poured on one side of a roller and the fabric
+being reeled off on the other side. The process seems capable of
+indefinite extension and application to various sorts of woven, knit and
+reticulated goods. The raw material is cotton waste and the finished
+fabric is a good substitute for silk. As in the process of making
+artificial silk the cellulose is dissolved in a cupro-ammoniacal
+solution, but instead of being forced out through minute openings to
+form threads, as in that process, the paste is allowed to flow upon a
+revolving cylinder which is engraved with the pattern of the desired
+textile. A scraper removes the excess and the turning of the cylinder
+brings the paste in the engraved lines down into a bath which solidifies
+it.
+
+Tulle or net is now what is chiefly being turned out, but the engraved
+design may be as elaborate and artistic as desired, and various
+materials can be used. Since the threads wherever they cross are united,
+the fabric is naturally stronger than the ordinary. It is all of a piece
+and not composed of parts. In short, we seem to be on the eve of a
+revolution in textiles that is the same as that taking place in building
+materials. Our concrete structures, however great, are all one stone.
+They are not built up out of blocks, but cast as a whole.
+
+Lace has always been the aristocrat among textiles. It has maintained
+its exclusiveness hitherto by being based upon hand labor. In no other
+way could one get so much painful, patient toil put into such a light
+and portable form. A filmy thing twined about a neck or dropping from a
+wrist represented years of work by poor peasant girls or pallid, unpaid
+nuns. A visit to a lace factory, even to the public rooms where the
+wornout women were not to be seen, is enough to make one resolve never
+to purchase any such thing made by hand again. But our good resolutions
+do not last long and in time we forget the strained eyes and bowed
+backs, or, what is worse, value our bit of lace all the more because it
+means that some poor woman has put her life and health into it, netting
+and weaving, purling and knotting, twining and twisting, throwing and
+drawing, thread by thread, day after day, until her eyes can no longer
+see and her fingers have become stiffened.
+
+But man is not naturally cruel. He does not really enjoy being a slave
+driver, either of human or animal slaves, although he can be hardened to
+it with shocking ease if there seems no other way of getting what he
+wants. So he usually welcomes that Great Liberator, the Machine. He
+prefers to drive the tireless engine than to whip the straining horses.
+He had rather see the farmer riding at ease in a mowing machine than
+bending his back over a scythe.
+
+The Machine is not only the Great Liberator, it is the Great Leveler
+also. It is the most powerful of the forces for democracy. An
+aristocracy can hardly be maintained except by distinction in dress, and
+distinction in dress can only be maintained by sumptuary laws or
+costliness. Sumptuary laws are unconstitutional in this country, hence
+the stress laid upon costliness. But machinery tends to bring styles
+and fabrics within the reach of all. The shopgirl is almost as well
+dressed on the street as her rich customer. The man who buys ready-made
+clothing is only a few weeks behind the vanguard of the fashion. There
+is often no difference perceptible to the ordinary eye between cheap and
+high-priced clothing once the price tag is off. Jewels as a portable
+form of concentrated costliness have been in favor from the earliest
+ages, but now they are losing their factitious value through the advance
+of invention. Rubies of unprecedented size, not imitation, but genuine
+rubies, can now be manufactured at reasonable rates. And now we may hope
+that lace may soon be within the reach of all, not merely lace of the
+established forms, but new and more varied and intricate and beautiful
+designs, such as the imagination has been able to conceive, but the hand
+cannot execute.
+
+Dissolving nitrocellulose in ether and alcohol we get the collodion
+varnish that we are all familiar with since we have used it on our cut
+fingers. Spread it on cloth instead of your skin and it makes a very
+good leather substitute. As we all know to our cost the number of
+animals to be skinned has not increased so rapidly in recent years as
+the number of feet to be shod. After having gone barefoot for a million
+years or so the majority of mankind have decided to wear shoes and this
+change in fashion comes at a time, roughly speaking, when pasture land
+is getting scarce. Also there are books to be bound and other new things
+to be done for which leather is needed. The war has intensified the
+stringency; so has feminine fashion. The conventions require that the
+shoe-tops extend nearly to skirt-bottom and this means that an inch or
+so must be added to the shoe-top every year. Consequent to this rise in
+leather we have to pay as much for one shoe as we used to pay for a
+pair.
+
+Here, then, is a chance for Necessity to exercise her maternal function.
+And she has responded nobly. A progeny of new substances have been
+brought forth and, what is most encouraging to see, they are no longer
+trying to worm their way into favor as surreptitious surrogates under
+the names of "leatheret," "leatherine," "leatheroid" and
+"leather-this-or-that" but come out boldly under names of their own
+coinage and declare themselves not an imitation, not even a substitute,
+but "better than leather." This policy has had the curious result of
+compelling the cowhide men to take full pages in the magazines to call
+attention to the forgotten virtues of good old-fashioned sole-leather!
+There are now upon the market synthetic shoes that a vegetarian could
+wear with a clear conscience. The soles are made of some rubber
+composition; the uppers of cellulose fabric (canvas) coated with a
+cellulose solution such as I have described.
+
+Each firm keeps its own process for such substance a dead secret, but
+without prying into these we can learn enough to satisfy our legitimate
+curiosity. The first of the artificial fabrics was the old-fashioned and
+still indispensable oil-cloth, that is canvas painted or printed with
+linseed oil carrying the desired pigments. Linseed oil belongs to the
+class of compounds that the chemist calls "unsaturated" and the
+psychologist would call "unsatisfied." They take up oxygen from the air
+and become solid, hence are called the "drying oils," although this
+does not mean that they lose water, for they have not any to lose.
+Later, ground cork was mixed with the linseed oil and then it went by
+its Latin name, "linoleum."
+
+The next step was to cut loose altogether from the natural oils and use
+for the varnish a solution of some of the cellulose esters, usually the
+nitrate (pyroxylin or guncotton), more rarely the acetate. As a solvent
+the ether-alcohol mixture forming collodion was, as we have seen, the
+first to be employed, but now various other solvents are in use, among
+them castor oil, methyl alcohol, acetone, and the acetates of amyl or
+ethyl. Some of these will be recognized as belonging to the fruit
+essences that we considered in Chapter V, and doubtless most of us have
+perceived an odor as of over-ripe pears, bananas or apples mysteriously
+emanating from a newly lacquered radiator. With powdered bronze,
+imitation gold, aluminum or something of the kind a metallic finish can
+be put on any surface.
+
+Canvas coated or impregnated with such soluble cellulose gives us new
+flexible and durable fabrics that have other advantages over leather
+besides being cheaper and more abundant. Without such material for
+curtains and cushions the automobile business would have been sorely
+hampered. It promises to provide us with a book binding that will not
+crumble to powder in the course of twenty years. Linen collars may be
+water-proofed and possibly Dame Fashion--being a fickle lady--may some
+day relent and let us wear such sanitary and economical neckwear. For
+shoes, purses, belts and the like the cellulose varnish or veneer is
+usually colored and stamped to resemble the grain of any kind of
+leather desired, even snake or alligator.
+
+If instead of dissolving the cellulose nitrate and spreading it on
+fabric we combine it with camphor we get celluloid, a plastic solid
+capable of innumerable applications. But that is another story and must
+be reserved for the next chapter.
+
+But before leaving the subject of cellulose proper I must refer back
+again to its chief source, wood. We inherited from the Indians a
+well-wooded continent. But the pioneer carried an ax on his shoulder and
+began using it immediately. For three hundred years the trees have been
+cut down faster than they could grow, first to clear the land, next for
+fuel, then for lumber and lastly for paper. Consequently we are within
+sight of a shortage of wood as we are of coal and oil. But the coal and
+oil are irrecoverable while the wood may be regrown, though it would
+require another three hundred years and more to grow some of the trees
+we have cut down. For fuel a pound of coal is about equal to two pounds
+of wood, and a pound of gasoline to three pounds of wood in heating
+value, so there would be a great loss in efficiency and economy if the
+world had to go back to a wood basis. But when that time shall come, as,
+of course, it must come some time, the wood will doubtless not be burned
+in its natural state but will be converted into hydrogen and carbon
+monoxide in a gas producer or will be distilled in closed ovens giving
+charcoal and gas and saving the by-products, the tar and acid liquors.
+As it is now the lumberman wastes two-thirds of every tree he cuts down.
+The rest is left in the forest as stump and tops or thrown out at the
+mill as sawdust and slabs. The slabs and other scraps may be used as
+fuel or worked up into small wood articles like laths and clothes-pins.
+The sawdust is burned or left to rot. But it is possible, although it
+may not be profitable, to save all this waste.
+
+In a former chapter I showed the advantages of the introduction of
+by-product coke-ovens. The same principle applies to wood as to coal. If
+a cord of wood (128 cubic feet) is subjected to a process of destructive
+distillation it yields about 50 bushels of charcoal, 11,500 cubic feet
+of gas, 25 gallons of tar, 10 gallons of crude wood alcohol and 200
+pounds of crude acetate of lime. Resinous woods such as pine and fir
+distilled with steam give turpentine and rosin. The acetate of lime
+gives acetic acid and acetone. The wood (methyl) alcohol is almost as
+useful as grain (ethyl) alcohol in arts and industry and has the
+advantage of killing off those who drink it promptly instead of slowly.
+
+The chemist is an economical soul. He is never content until he has
+converted every kind of waste product into some kind of profitable
+by-product. He now has his glittering eye fixed upon the mountains of
+sawdust that pile up about the lumber mills. He also has a notion that
+he can beat lumber for some purposes.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+SYNTHETIC PLASTICS
+
+
+In the last chapter I told how Alfred Nobel cut his finger and, daubing
+it over with collodion, was led to the discovery of high explosive,
+dynamite. I remarked that the first part of this process--the hurting
+and the healing of the finger--might happen to anybody but not everybody
+would be led to discovery thereby. That is true enough, but we must not
+think that the Swedish chemist was the only observant man in the world.
+About this same time a young man in Albany, named John Wesley Hyatt, got
+a sore finger and resorted to the same remedy and was led to as great a
+discovery. His father was a blacksmith and his education was confined to
+what he could get at the seminary of Eddytown, New York, before he was
+sixteen. At that age he set out for the West to make his fortune. He
+made it, but after a long, hard struggle. His trade of typesetter gave
+him a living in Illinois, New York or wherever he wanted to go, but he
+was not content with his wages or his hours. However, he did not strike
+to reduce his hours or increase his wages. On the contrary, he increased
+his working time and used it to increase his income. He spent his nights
+and Sundays in making billiard balls, not at all the sort of thing you
+would expect of a young man of his Christian name. But working with
+billiard balls is more profitable than playing with them--though that
+is not the sort of thing you would expect a man of my surname to say.
+Hyatt had seen in the papers an offer of a prize of $10,000 for the
+discovery of a satisfactory substitute for ivory in the making of
+billiard balls and he set out to get that prize. I don't know whether he
+ever got it or not, but I have in my hand a newly published circular
+announcing that Mr. Hyatt has now perfected a process for making
+billiard balls "better than ivory." Meantime he has turned out several
+hundred other inventions, many of them much more useful and profitable,
+but I imagine that he takes less satisfaction in any of them than he
+does in having solved the problem that he undertook fifty years ago.
+
+The reason for the prize was that the game on the billiard table was
+getting more popular and the game in the African jungle was getting
+scarcer, especially elephants having tusks more than 2-7/16 inches in
+diameter. The raising of elephants is not an industry that promises as
+quick returns as raising chickens or Belgian hares. To make a ball
+having exactly the weight, color and resiliency to which billiard
+players have become accustomed seemed an impossibility. Hyatt tried
+compressed wood, but while he did not succeed in making billiard balls
+he did build up a profitable business in stamped checkers and dominoes.
+
+Setting type in the way they did it in the sixties was hard on the
+hands. And if the skin got worn thin or broken the dirty lead type were
+liable to infect the fingers. One day in 1863 Hyatt, finding his fingers
+were getting raw, went to the cupboard where was kept the "liquid
+cuticle" used by the printers. But when he got there he found it was
+bare, for the vial had tipped over--you know how easily they tip
+over--and the collodion had run out and solidified on the shelf.
+Possibly Hyatt was annoyed, but if so he did not waste time raging
+around the office to find out who tipped over that bottle. Instead he
+pulled off from the wood a bit of the dried film as big as his thumb
+nail and examined it with that "'satiable curtiosity," as Kipling calls
+it, which is characteristic of the born inventor. He found it tough and
+elastic and it occurred to him that it might be worth $10,000. It turned
+out to be worth many times that.
+
+Collodion, as I have explained in previous chapters, is a solution in
+ether and alcohol of guncotton (otherwise known as pyroxylin or
+nitrocellulose), which is made by the action of nitric acid on cotton.
+Hyatt tried mixing the collodion with ivory powder, also using it to
+cover balls of the necessary weight and solidity, but they did not work
+very well and besides were explosive. A Colorado saloon keeper wrote in
+to complain that one of the billiard players had touched a ball with a
+lighted cigar, which set it off and every man in the room had drawn his
+gun.
+
+The trouble with the dissolved guncotton was that it could not be
+molded. It did not swell up and set; it merely dried up and shrunk. When
+the solvent evaporated it left a wrinkled, shriveled, horny film,
+satisfactory to the surgeon but not to the man who wanted to make balls
+and hairpins and knife handles out of it. In England Alexander Parkes
+began working on the problem in 1855 and stuck to it for ten years
+before he, or rather his backers, gave up. He tried mixing in various
+things to stiffen up the pyroxylin. Of these, camphor, which he tried in
+1865, worked the best, but since he used castor oil to soften the mass
+articles made of "parkesine" did not hold up in all weathers.
+
+Another Englishman, Daniel Spill, an associate of Parkes, took up the
+problem where he had dropped it and turned out a better product,
+"xylonite," though still sticking to the idea that castor oil was
+necessary to get the two solids, the guncotton and the camphor,
+together.
+
+But Hyatt, hearing that camphor could be used and not knowing enough
+about what others had done to follow their false trails, simply mixed
+his camphor and guncotton together without any solvent and put the
+mixture in a hot press. The two solids dissolved one another and when
+the press was opened there was a clear, solid, homogeneous block
+of--what he named--"celluloid." The problem was solved and in the
+simplest imaginable way. Tissue paper, that is, cellulose, is treated
+with nitric acid in the presence of sulfuric acid. The nitration is not
+carried so far as to produce the guncotton used in explosives but only
+far enough to make a soluble nitrocellulose or pyroxylin. This is pulped
+and mixed with half the quantity of camphor, pressed into cakes and
+dried. If this mixture is put into steam-heated molds and subjected to
+hydraulic pressure it takes any desired form. The process remains
+essentially the same as was worked out by the Hyatt brothers in the
+factory they set up in Newark in 1872 and some of their original
+machines are still in use. But this protean plastic takes innumerable
+forms and almost as many names. Each factory has its own secrets and
+lays claim to peculiar merits. The fundamental product itself is not
+patented, so trade names are copyrighted to protect the product. I have
+already mentioned three, "parkesine," "xylonite" and "celluloid," and I
+may add, without exhausting the list of species belonging to this genus,
+"viscoloid," "lithoxyl," "fiberloid," "coraline," "eburite,"
+"pulveroid," "ivorine," "pergamoid," "duroid," "ivortus," "crystalloid,"
+"transparene," "litnoid," "petroid," "pasbosene," "cellonite" and
+"pyralin."
+
+Celluloid can be given any color or colors by mixing in aniline dyes or
+metallic pigments. The color may be confined to the surface or to the
+interior or pervade the whole. If the nitrated tissue paper is bleached
+the celluloid is transparent or colorless. In that case it is necessary
+to add an antacid such as urea to prevent its getting yellow or opaque.
+To make it opaque and less inflammable oxides or chlorides of zinc,
+aluminum, magnesium, etc., are mixed in.
+
+Without going into the question of their variations and relative merits
+we may consider the advantages of the pyroxylin plastics in general.
+Here we have a new substance, the product of the creative genius of man,
+and therefore adaptable to his needs. It is hard but light, tough but
+elastic, easily made and tolerably cheap. Heated to the boiling point of
+water it becomes soft and flexible. It can be turned, carved, ground,
+polished, bent, pressed, stamped, molded or blown. To make a block of
+any desired size simply pile up the sheets and put them in a hot press.
+To get sheets of any desired thickness, simply shave them off the block.
+To make a tube of any desired size, shape or thickness squirt out the
+mixture through a ring-shaped hole or roll the sheets around a hot bar.
+Cut the tube into sections and you have rings to be shaped and stamped
+into box bodies or napkin rings. Print words or pictures on a celluloid
+sheet, put a thin transparent sheet over it and weld them together, then
+you have something like the horn book of our ancestors, but better.
+
+Nowadays such things as celluloid and pyralin can be sold under their
+own name, but in the early days the artificial plastics, like every new
+thing, had to resort to _camouflage_, a very humiliating expedient since
+in some cases they were better than the material they were forced to
+imitate. Tortoise shell, for instance, cracks, splits and twists, but a
+"tortoise shell" comb of celluloid looks as well and lasts better. Horn
+articles are limited to size of the ceratinous appendages that can be
+borne on the animal's head, but an imitation of horn can be made of any
+thickness by wrapping celluloid sheets about a cone. Ivory, which also
+has a laminated structure, may be imitated by rolling together alternate
+white opaque and colorless translucent sheets. Some of the sheets are
+wrinkled in order to produce the knots and irregularities of the grain
+of natural ivory. Man's chief difficulty in all such work is to imitate
+the imperfections of nature. His whites are too white, his surfaces are
+too smooth, his shapes are too regular, his products are too pure.
+
+The precious red coral of the Mediterranean can be perfectly imitated by
+taking a cast of a coral branch and filling in the mold with celluloid
+of the same color and hardness. The clear luster of amber, the dead
+black of ebony, the cloudiness of onyx, the opalescence of alabaster,
+the glow of carnelian--once confined to the selfish enjoyment of the
+rich--are now within the reach of every one, thanks to this chameleon
+material. Mosaics may be multiplied indefinitely by laying together
+sheets and sticks of celluloid, suitably cut and colored to make up the
+picture, fusing the mass, and then shaving off thin layers from the end.
+That _chef d'oeuvre_ of the Venetian glass makers, the Battle of Isus,
+from the House of the Faun in Pompeii, can be reproduced as fast as the
+machine can shave them off the block. And the tesserae do not fall out
+like those you bought on the Rialto.
+
+The process thus does for mosaics, ivory and coral what printing does
+for pictures. It is a mechanical multiplier and only by such means can
+we ever attain to a state of democratic luxury. The product, in cases
+where the imitation is accurate, is equally valuable except to those who
+delight in thinking that coral insects, Italian craftsmen and elephants
+have been laboring for years to put a trinket into their hands. The Lord
+may be trusted to deal with such selfish souls according to their
+deserts.
+
+But it is very low praise for a synthetic product that it can pass
+itself off, more or less acceptably, as a natural product. If that is
+all we could do without it. It must be an improvement in some respects
+on anything to be found in nature or it does not represent a real
+advance. So celluloid and its congeners are not confined to the shapes
+of shell and coral and crystal, or to the grain of ivory and wood and
+horn, the colors of amber and amethyst and lapis lazuli, but can be
+given forms and textures and tints that were never known before 1869.
+
+Let me see now, have I mentioned all the uses of celluloid? Oh, no,
+there are handles for canes, umbrellas, mirrors and brushes, knives,
+whistles, toys, blown animals, card cases, chains, charms, brooches,
+badges, bracelets, rings, book bindings, hairpins, campaign buttons,
+cuff and collar buttons, cuffs, collars and dickies, tags, cups, knobs,
+paper cutters, picture frames, chessmen, pool balls, ping pong balls,
+piano keys, dental plates, masks for disfigured faces, penholders,
+eyeglass frames, goggles, playing cards--and you can carry on the list
+as far as you like.
+
+Celluloid has its disadvantages. You may mold, you may color the stuff
+as you will, the scent of the camphor will cling around it still. This
+is not usually objectionable except where the celluloid is trying to
+pass itself off for something else, in which case it deserves no
+sympathy. It is attacked and dissolved by hot acids and alkalies. It
+softens up when heated, which is handy in shaping it though not so
+desirable afterward. But the worst of its failings is its
+combustibility. It is not explosive, but it takes fire from a flame and
+burns furiously with clouds of black smoke.
+
+But celluloid is only one of many plastic substances that have been
+introduced to the present generation. A new and important group of them
+is now being opened up, the so-called "condensation products." If you
+will take down any old volume of chemical research you will find
+occasionally words to this effect: "The reaction resulted in nothing but
+an insoluble resin which was not further investigated." Such a passage
+would be marked with a tear if chemists were given to crying over their
+failures. For it is the epitaph of a buried hope. It likely meant the
+loss of months of labor. The reason the chemist did not do anything
+further with the gummy stuff that stuck up his test tube was because he
+did not know what to do with it. It could not be dissolved, it could not
+be crystallized, it could not be distilled, therefore it could not be
+purified, analyzed and identified.
+
+What had happened was in most cases this. The molecule of the compound
+that the chemist was trying to make had combined with others of its kind
+to form a molecule too big to be managed by such means. Financiers call
+the process a "merger." Chemists call it "polymerization." The resin was
+a molecular trust, indissoluble, uncontrollable and contaminating
+everything it touched.
+
+But chemists--like governments--have learned wisdom in recent years.
+They have not yet discovered in all cases how to undo the process of
+polymerization, or, if you prefer the financial phrase, how to
+unscramble the eggs. But they have found that these molecular mergers
+are very useful things in their way. For instance there is a liquid
+known as isoprene (C_{5}H_{8}). This on heating or standing turns into a
+gum, that is nothing less than rubber, which is some multiple of
+C_{5}H_{8}.
+
+For another instance there is formaldehyde, an acrid smelling gas, used
+as a disinfectant. This has the simplest possible formula for a
+carbohydrate, CH_{2}O. But in the leaf of a plant this molecule
+multiplies itself by six and turns into a sweet solid glucose
+(C_{6}H_{12}O_{6}), or with the loss of water into starch
+(C_{6}H_{10}O_{5}) or cellulose (C_{6}H_{10}O_{5}).
+
+But formaldehyde is so insatiate that it not only combines with itself
+but seizes upon other substances, particularly those having an
+acquisitive nature like its own. Such a substance is carbolic acid
+(phenol) which, as we all know, is used as a disinfectant like
+formaldehyde because it, too, has the power of attacking decomposable
+organic matter. Now Prof. Adolf von Baeyer discovered in 1872 that when
+phenol and formaldehyde were brought into contact they seized upon one
+another and formed a combine of unusual tenacity, that is, a resin. But
+as I have said, chemists in those days were shy of resins. Kleeberg in
+1891 tried to make something out of it and W.H. Story in 1895 went so
+far as to name the product "resinite," but nothing came of it until 1909
+when L.H. Baekeland undertook a serious and systematic study of this
+reaction in New York. Baekeland was a Belgian chemist, born at Ghent in
+1863 and professor at Bruges. While a student at Ghent he took up
+photography as a hobby and began to work on the problem of doing away
+with the dark-room by producing a printing paper that could be developed
+under ordinary light. When he came over to America in 1889 he brought
+his idea with him and four years later turned out "Velox," with which
+doubtless the reader is familiar. Velox was never patented because, as
+Dr. Baekeland explained in his speech of acceptance of the Perkin medal
+from the chemists of America, lawsuits are too expensive. Manufacturers
+seem to be coming generally to the opinion that a synthetic name
+copyrighted as a trademark affords better protection than a patent.
+
+Later Dr. Baekeland turned his attention to the phenol condensation
+products, working gradually up from test tubes to ton vats according to
+his motto: "Make your mistakes on a small scale and your profits on a
+large scale." He found that when equal weights of phenol and
+formaldehyde were mixed and warmed in the presence of an alkaline
+catalytic agent the solution separated into two layers, the upper
+aqueous and the lower a resinous precipitate. This resin was soft,
+viscous and soluble in alcohol or acetone. But if it was heated under
+pressure it changed into another and a new kind of resin that was hard,
+inelastic, unplastic, infusible and insoluble. The chemical name of this
+product is "polymerized oxybenzyl methylene glycol anhydride," but
+nobody calls it that, not even chemists. It is called "Bakelite" after
+its inventor.
+
+The two stages in its preparation are convenient in many ways. For
+instance, porous wood may be soaked in the soft resin and then by heat
+and pressure it is changed to the bakelite form and the wood comes out
+with a hard finish that may be given the brilliant polish of Japanese
+lacquer. Paper, cardboard, cloth, wood pulp, sawdust, asbestos and the
+like may be impregnated with the resin, producing tough and hard
+material suitable for various purposes. Brass work painted with it and
+then baked at 300 deg. F. acquires a lacquered surface that is unaffected by
+soap. Forced in powder or sheet form into molds under a pressure of 1200
+to 2000 pounds to the square inch it takes the most delicate
+impressions. Billiard balls of bakelite are claimed to be better than
+ivory because, having no grain, they do not swell unequally with heat
+and humidity and so lose their sphericity. Pipestems and beads of
+bakelite have the clear brilliancy of amber and greater strength.
+Fountain pens made of it are transparent so you can see how much ink you
+have left. A new and enlarging field for bakelite and allied products is
+the making of noiseless gears for automobiles and other machinery, also
+of air-plane propellers.
+
+Celluloid is more plastic and elastic than bakelite. It is therefore
+more easily worked in sheets and small objects. Celluloid can be made
+perfectly transparent and colorless while bakelite is confined to the
+range between a clear amber and an opaque brown or black. On the other
+hand bakelite has the advantage in being tasteless, odorless, inert,
+insoluble and non-inflammable. This last quality and its high electrical
+resistance give bakelite its chief field of usefulness. Electricity was
+discovered by the Greeks, who found that amber (_electron_) when rubbed
+would pick up straws. This means simply that amber, like all such
+resinous substances, natural or artificial, is a non-conductor or
+di-electric and does not carry off and scatter the electricity collected
+on the surface by the friction. Bakelite is used in its liquid form for
+impregnating coils to keep the wires from shortcircuiting and in its
+solid form for commutators, magnetos, switch blocks, distributors, and
+all sorts of electrical apparatus for automobiles, telephones, wireless
+telegraphy, electric lighting, etc.
+
+Bakelite, however, is only one of an indefinite number of such
+condensation products. As Baeyer said long ago: "It seems that all the
+aldehydes will, under suitable circumstances, unite with the aromatic
+hydrocarbons to form resins." So instead of phenol, other coal tar
+products such as cresol, naphthol or benzene itself may be used. The
+carbon links (-CH_{2}-, methylene) necessary to hook these carbon rings
+together may be obtained from other substances than the aldehydes,
+for instance from the amines, or ammonia derivatives. Three chemists,
+L.V. Kedman, A.J. Weith and F.P. Broek, working in 1910 on the
+Industrial Fellowships of the late Robert Kennedy Duncan at the
+University of Kansas, developed a process using formin instead
+of formaldehyde. Formin--or, if you insist upon its full name,
+hexa-methylene-tetramine--is a sugar-like substance with a fish-like
+smell. This mixed with crystallized carbolic acid and slightly warmed
+melts to a golden liquid that sets on pouring into molds. It is still
+plastic and can be bent into any desired shape, but on further heating
+it becomes hard without the need of pressure. Ammonia is given off in
+this process instead of water which is the by-product in the case of
+formaldehyde. The product is similar to bakelite, exactly how similar is
+a question that the courts will have to decide. The inventors threatened
+to call it Phenyl-endeka-saligeno-saligenin, but, rightly fearing that
+this would interfere with its salability, they have named it "redmanol."
+
+A phenolic condensation product closely related to bakelite and redmanol
+is condensite, the invention of Jonas Walter Aylesworth. Aylesworth was
+trained in what he referred to as "the greatest university of the world,
+the Edison laboratory." He entered this university at the age of
+nineteen at a salary of $3 a week, but Edison soon found that he had in
+his new boy an assistant who could stand being shut up in the laboratory
+working day and night as long as he could. After nine years of close
+association with Edison he set up a little laboratory in his own back
+yard to work out new plastics. He found that by acting on
+naphthalene--the moth-ball stuff--with chlorine he got a series of
+useful products called "halowaxes." The lower chlorinated products are
+oils, which may be used for impregnating paper or soft wood, making it
+non-inflammable and impregnable to water. If four atoms of chlorine
+enter the naphthalene molecule the product is a hard wax that rings like
+a metal.
+
+Condensite is anhydrous and infusible, and like its rivals finds its
+chief employment in the insulation parts of electrical apparatus. The
+records of the Edison phonograph are made of it. So are the buttons of
+our blue-jackets. The Government at the outbreak of the war ordered
+40,000 goggles in condensite frames to protect the eyes of our gunners
+from the glare and acid fumes.
+
+The various synthetics played an important part in the war. According to
+an ancient military pun the endurance of soldiers depends upon the
+strength of their soles. The new compound rubber soles were found useful
+in our army and the Germans attribute their success in making a little
+leather go a long way during the late war to the use of a new synthetic
+tanning material known as "neradol." There are various forms of this.
+Some are phenolic condensation products of formaldehyde like those we
+have been considering, but some use coal-tar compounds having no phenol
+groups, such as naphthalene sulfonic acid. These are now being made in
+England under such names as "paradol," "cresyntan" and "syntan." They
+have the advantage of the natural tannins such as bark in that they are
+of known strength and can be varied to suit.
+
+This very grasping compound, formaldehyde, will attack almost anything,
+even molecules many times its size. Gelatinous and albuminous substances
+of all sorts are solidified by it. Glue, skimmed milk, blood, eggs,
+yeast, brewer's slops, may by this magic agent be rescued from waste and
+reappear in our buttons, hairpins, roofing, phonographs, shoes or
+shoe-polish. The French have made great use of casein hardened by
+formaldehyde into what is known as "galalith" (i.e., milkstone). This is
+harder than celluloid and non-inflammable, but has the disadvantages of
+being more brittle and of absorbing moisture. A mixture of casein and
+celluloid has something of the merits of both.
+
+The Japanese, as we should expect, are using the juice of the soy bean,
+familiar as a condiment to all who patronize chop-sueys or use
+Worcestershire sauce. The soy glucine coagulated by formalin gives a
+plastic said to be better and cheaper than celluloid. Its inventor, S.
+Sato, of Sendai University, has named it, according to American
+precedent, "Satolite," and has organized a million-dollar Satolite
+Company at Mukojima.
+
+The algin extracted from the Pacific kelp can be used as a rubber
+surrogate for water-proofing cloth. When combined with heavier alkaline
+bases it forms a tough and elastic substance that can be rolled into
+transparent sheets like celluloid or turned into buttons and knife
+handles.
+
+In Australia when the war shut off the supply of tin the Government
+commission appointed to devise means of preserving fruits recommended
+the use of cardboard containers varnished with "magramite." This is a
+name the Australians coined for synthetic resin made from phenol and
+formaldehyde like bakelite. Magramite dissolved in alcohol is painted on
+the cardboard cans and when these are stoved the coating becomes
+insoluble.
+
+Tarasoff has made a series of condensation products from phenol and
+formaldehyde with the addition of sulfonated oils. These are formed by
+the action of sulfuric acid on coconut, castor, cottonseed or mineral
+oils. The products of this combination are white plastics, opaque,
+insoluble and infusible.
+
+Since I am here chiefly concerned with "Creative Chemistry," that is,
+with the art of making substances not found in nature, I have not spoken
+of shellac, asphaltum, rosin, ozocerite and the innumerable gums, resins
+and waxes, animal, mineral and vegetable, that are used either by
+themselves or in combination with the synthetics. What particular "dope"
+or "mud" is used to coat a canvas or form a telephone receiver is often
+hard to find out. The manufacturer finds secrecy safer than the patent
+office and the chemist of a rival establishment is apt to be baffled in
+his attempt to analyze and imitate. But we of the outside world are not
+concerned with this, though we are interested in the manifold
+applications of these new materials.
+
+There seems to be no limit to these compounds and every week the
+journals report new processes and patents. But we must not allow the new
+ones to crowd out the remembrance of the oldest and most famous of the
+synthetic plasters, hard rubber, to which a separate chapter must be
+devoted.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+THE RACE FOR RUBBER
+
+
+There is one law that regulates all animate and inanimate things. It is
+formulated in various ways, for instance:
+
+Running down a hill is easy. In Latin it reads, _facilis descensus
+Averni._ Herbert Spencer calls it the dissolution of definite coherent
+heterogeneity into indefinite incoherent homogeneity. Mother Goose
+expresses it in the fable of Humpty Dumpty, and the business man
+extracts the moral as, "You can't unscramble an egg." The theologian
+calls it the dogma of natural depravity. The physicist calls it the
+second law of thermodynamics. Clausius formulates it as "The entropy of
+the world tends toward a maximum." It is easier to smash up than to
+build up. Children find that this is true of their toys; the Bolsheviki
+have found that it is true of a civilization. So, too, the chemist knows
+analysis is easier than synthesis and that creative chemistry is the
+highest branch of his art.
+
+This explains why chemists discovered how to take rubber apart over
+sixty years before they could find out how to put it together. The first
+is easy. Just put some raw rubber into a retort and heat it. If you can
+stand the odor you will observe the caoutchouc decomposing and a
+benzine-like liquid distilling over. This is called "isoprene." Any
+Freshman chemist could write the reaction for this operation. It is
+simply
+
+  C_{10}H_{16}   -->  2C_{5}H_{8}
+  caoutchouc           isoprene
+
+That is, one molecule of the gum splits up into two molecules of the
+liquid. It is just as easy to write the reaction in the reverse
+directions, as 2 isoprene--> 1 caoutchouc, but nobody could make it go
+in that direction. Yet it could be done. It had been done. But the man
+who did it did not know how he did it and could not do it again.
+Professor Tilden in May, 1892, read a paper before the Birmingham
+Philosophical Society in which he said:
+
+     I was surprised a few weeks ago at finding the contents of the
+     bottles containing isoprene from turpentine entirely changed in
+     appearance. In place of a limpid, colorless liquid the bottles
+     contained a dense syrup in which were floating several large
+     masses of a yellowish color. Upon examination this turned out
+     to be India rubber.
+
+But neither Professor Tilden nor any one else could repeat this
+accidental metamorphosis. It was tantalizing, for the world was willing
+to pay $2,000,000,000 a year for rubber and the forests of the Amazon
+and Congo were failing to meet the demand. A large share of these
+millions would have gone to any chemist who could find out how to make
+synthetic rubber and make it cheaply enough. With such a reward of fame
+and fortune the competition among chemists was intense. It took the form
+of an international contest in which England and Germany were neck and
+neck.
+
+[Illustration: Courtesy of the "India Rubber World."
+
+What goes into rubber and what is made out of it]
+
+The English, who had been beaten by the Germans in the dye business
+where they had the start, were determined not to lose in this. Prof.
+W.H. Perkin, of Manchester University, was one of the most eager, for he
+was inspired by a personal grudge against the Germans as well as by
+patriotism and scientific zeal. It was his father who had, fifty years
+before, discovered mauve, the first of the anilin dyes, but England
+could not hold the business and its rich rewards went over to Germany.
+So in 1909 a corps of chemists set to work under Professor Perkin in the
+Manchester laboratories to solve the problem of synthetic rubber. What
+reagent could be found that would reverse the reaction and convert the
+liquid isoprene into the solid rubber? It was discovered, by accident,
+we may say, but it should be understood that such advantageous accidents
+happen only to those who are working for them and know how to utilize
+them. In July, 1910, Dr. Matthews, who had charge of the research, set
+some isoprene to drying over metallic sodium, a common laboratory method
+of freeing a liquid from the last traces of water. In September he found
+that the flask was filled with a solid mass of real rubber instead of
+the volatile colorless liquid he had put into it.
+
+Twenty years before the discovery would have been useless, for sodium
+was then a rare and costly metal, a little of it in a sealed glass tube
+being passed around the chemistry class once a year as a curiosity, or a
+tiny bit cut off and dropped in water to see what a fuss it made. But
+nowadays metallic sodium is cheaply produced by the aid of electricity.
+The difficulty lay rather in the cost of the raw material, isoprene. In
+industrial chemistry it is not sufficient that a thing can be made; it
+must be made to pay. Isoprene could be obtained from turpentine, but
+this was too expensive and limited in supply. It would merely mean the
+destruction of pine forests instead of rubber forests. Starch was
+finally decided upon as the best material, since this can be obtained
+for about a cent a pound from potatoes, corn and many other sources.
+Here, however, the chemist came to the end of his rope and had to call
+the bacteriologist to his aid. The splitting of the starch molecule is
+too big a job for man; only the lower organisms, the yeast plant, for
+example, know enough to do that. Owing perhaps to the _entente cordiale_
+a French biologist was called into the combination, Professor Fernbach,
+of the Pasteur Institute, and after eighteen months' hard work he
+discovered a process of fermentation by which a large amount of fusel
+oil can be obtained from any starchy stuff. Hitherto the aim in
+fermentation and distillation had been to obtain as small a proportion
+of fusel as possible, for fusel oil is a mixture of the heavier
+alcohols, all of them more poisonous and malodorous than common alcohol.
+But here, as has often happened in the history of industrial chemistry,
+the by-product turned out to be more valuable than the product. From
+fusel oil by the use of chlorine isoprene can be prepared, so the chain
+was complete.
+
+But meanwhile the Germans had been making equal progress. In 1905 Prof.
+Karl Harries, of Berlin, found out the name of the caoutchouc molecule.
+This discovery was to the chemists what the architect's plan of a house
+is to the builder. They knew then what they were trying to construct
+and could go about their task intelligently.
+
+Mark Twain said that he could understand something about how astronomers
+could measure the distance of the planets, calculate their weights and
+so forth, but he never could see how they could find out their names
+even with the largest telescopes. This is a joke in astronomy but it
+is not in chemistry. For when the chemist finds out the structure
+of a compound he gives it a name which means that. The stuff came
+to be called "caoutchouc," because that was the way the Spaniards
+of Columbus's time caught the Indian word "cahuchu." When
+Dr. Priestley called it "India rubber" he told merely where it
+came from and what it was good for. But when Harries named it
+"1-5-dimethyl-cyclo-octadien-1-5" any chemist could draw a picture of it
+and give a guess as to how it could be made. Even a person without any
+knowledge of chemistry can get the main point of it by merely looking at
+this diagram:
+
+     C    C              C---C
+     ||   ||             ||  |
+  C--C    C           C--C   C
+     |    |     -->      |   |
+     C    C--C           C   C--C
+     ||   ||             |   ||
+     C    C              C---C
+
+[Illustration: isoprene _turns into_ caoutchouc]
+
+I have dropped the 16 H's or hydrogen atoms of the formula for
+simplicity's sake. They simply hook on wherever they can. You will see
+that the isoprene consists of a chain of four carbon atoms (represented
+by the C's) with an extra carbon on the side. In the transformation of
+this colorless liquid into soft rubber two of the double linkages break
+and so permit the two chains of 4 C's to unite to form one ring of
+eight. If you have ever played ring-around-a-rosy you will get the idea.
+In Chapter IV I explained that the anilin dyes are built up upon the
+benzene ring of six carbon atoms. The rubber ring consists of eight at
+least and probably more. Any substance containing that peculiar carbon
+chain with two double links C=C-C=C can double up--polymerize, the
+chemist calls it--into a rubber-like substance. So we may have many
+kinds of rubber, some of which may prove to be more useful than that
+which happens to be found in nature.
+
+With the structural formula of Harries as a clue chemists all over the
+world plunged into the problem with renewed hope. The famous Bayer dye
+works at Elberfeld took it up and there in August, 1909, Dr. Fritz
+Hofmann worked out a process for the converting of pure isoprene into
+rubber by heat. Then in 1910 Harries happened upon the same sodium
+reaction as Matthews, but when he came to get it patented he found that
+the Englishman had beaten him to the patent office by a few weeks.
+
+This Anglo-German rivalry came to a dramatic climax in 1912 at the great
+hall of the College of the City of New York when Dr. Carl Duisberg, of
+the Elberfeld factory, delivered an address on the latest achievements
+of the chemical industry before the Eighth--and the last for a long
+time--International Congress of Applied Chemistry. Duisberg insisted
+upon talking in German, although more of his auditors would have
+understood him in English. He laid full emphasis upon German
+achievements and cast doubt upon the claim of "the Englishman Tilden" to
+have prepared artificial rubber in the eighties. Perkin, of Manchester,
+confronted him with his new process for making rubber from potatoes, but
+Duisberg countered by proudly displaying two automobile tires made of
+synthetic rubber with which he had made a thousand-mile run.
+
+The intense antagonism between the British and German chemists at this
+congress was felt by all present, but we did not foresee that in two
+years from that date they would be engaged in manufacturing poison gas
+to fire at one another. It was, however, realized that more was at stake
+than personal reputation and national prestige. Under pressure of the
+new demand for automobiles the price of rubber jumped from $1.25 to $3 a
+pound in 1910, and millions had been invested in plantations. If
+Professor Perkin was right when he told the congress that by his process
+rubber could be made for less than 25 cents a pound it meant that these
+plantations would go the way of the indigo plantations when the Germans
+succeeded in making artificial indigo. If Dr. Duisberg was right when he
+told the congress that synthetic rubber would "certainly appear on the
+market in a very short time," it meant that Germany in war or peace
+would become independent of Brazil in the matter of rubber as she had
+become independent of Chile in the matter of nitrates.
+
+As it turned out both scientists were too sanguine. Synthetic rubber has
+not proved capable of displacing natural rubber by underbidding it nor
+even of replacing natural rubber when this is shut out. When Germany
+was blockaded and the success of her armies depended on rubber, price
+was no object. Three Danish sailors who were caught by United States
+officials trying to smuggle dental rubber into Germany confessed that
+they had been selling it there for gas masks at $73 a pound. The German
+gas masks in the latter part of the war were made without rubber and
+were frail and leaky. They could not have withstood the new gases which
+American chemists were preparing on an unprecedented scale. Every scrap
+of old rubber in Germany was saved and worked over and over and diluted
+with fillers and surrogates to the limit of elasticity. Spring tires
+were substituted for pneumatics. So it is evident that the supply of
+synthetic rubber could not have been adequate or satisfactory. Neither,
+on the other hand, have the British made a success of the Perkin
+process, although they spent $200,000 on it in the first two years. But,
+of course, there was not the same necessity for it as in the case of
+Germany, for England had practically a monopoly of the world's supply of
+natural rubber either through owning plantations or controlling
+shipping. If rubber could not be manufactured profitably in Germany when
+the demand was imperative and price no consideration it can hardly be
+expected to compete with the natural under peace conditions.
+
+The problem of synthetic rubber has then been solved scientifically but
+not industrially. It can be made but cannot be made to pay. The
+difficulty is to find a cheap enough material to start with. We can make
+rubber out of potatoes--but potatoes have other uses. It would require
+more land and more valuable land to raise the potatoes than to raise the
+rubber. We can get isoprene by the distillation of turpentine--but why
+not bleed a rubber tree as well as a pine tree? Turpentine is neither
+cheap nor abundant enough. Any kind of wood, sawdust for instance, can
+be utilized by converting the cellulose over into sugar and fermenting
+this to alcohol, but the process is not likely to prove profitable.
+Petroleum when cracked up to make gasoline gives isoprene or other
+double-bond compounds that go over into some form of rubber.
+
+But the most interesting and most promising of all is the complete
+inorganic synthesis that dispenses with the aid of vegetation and starts
+with coal and lime. These heated together in the electric furnace form
+calcium carbide and this, as every automobilist knows, gives acetylene
+by contact with water. From this gas isoprene can be made and the
+isoprene converted into rubber by sodium, or acid or alkali or simple
+heating. Acetone, which is also made from acetylene, can be converted
+directly into rubber by fuming sulfuric acid. This seems to have been
+the process chiefly used by the Germans during the war. Several carbide
+factories were devoted to it. But the intermediate and by-products of
+the process, such as alcohol, acetic acid and acetone, were in as much
+demand for war purposes as rubber. The Germans made some rubber from
+pitch imported from Sweden. They also found a useful substitute in
+aluminum naphthenate made from Baku petroleum, for it is elastic and
+plastic and can be vulcanized.
+
+So although rubber can be made in many different ways it is not
+profitable to make it in any of them. We have to rely still upon the
+natural product, but we can greatly improve upon the way nature produces
+it. When the call came for more rubber for the electrical and automobile
+industries the first attempt to increase the supply was to put pressure
+upon the natives to bring in more of the latex. As a consequence the
+trees were bled to death and sometimes also the natives. The Belgian
+atrocities in the Congo shocked the civilized world and at Putumayo on
+the upper Amazon the same cause produced the same horrible effects. But
+no matter what cruelty was practiced the tropical forests could not be
+made to yield a sufficient increase, so the cultivation of the rubber
+was begun by far-sighted men in Dutch Java, Sumatra and Borneo and in
+British Malaya and Ceylon.
+
+Brazil, feeling secure in the possession of a natural monopoly, made no
+effort to compete with these parvenus. It cost about as much to gather
+rubber from the Amazon forests as it did to raise it on a Malay
+plantation, that is, 25 cents a pound. The Brazilian Government clapped
+on another 25 cents export duty and spent the money lavishly. In 1911
+the treasury of Para took in $2,000,000 from the rubber tax and a good
+share of the money was spent on a magnificent new theater at Manaos--not
+on setting out rubber trees. The result of this rivalry between the
+collector and the cultivator is shown by the fact that in the decade
+1907-1917 the world's output of plantation rubber increased from 1000 to
+204,000 tons, while the output of wild rubber decreased from 68,000 to
+53,000. Besides this the plantation rubber is a cleaner and more even
+product, carefully coagulated by acetic acid instead of being smoked
+over a forest fire. It comes in pale yellow sheets instead of big black
+balls loaded with the dirt or sticks and stones that the honest Indian
+sometimes adds to make a bigger lump. What's better, the man who milks
+the rubber trees on a plantation may live at home where he can be
+decently looked after. The agriculturist and the chemist may do what the
+philanthropist and statesman could not accomplish: put an end to the
+cruelties involved in the international struggle for "black gold."
+
+The United States uses three-fourths of the world's rubber output and
+grows none of it. What is the use of tropical possessions if we do not
+make use of them? The Philippines could grow all our rubber and keep a
+$300,000,000 business under our flag. Santo Domingo, where rubber was
+first discovered, is now under our supervision and could be enriched by
+the industry. The Guianas, where the rubber tree was first studied,
+might be purchased. It is chiefly for lack of a definite colonial policy
+that our rubber industry, by far the largest in the world, has to be
+dependent upon foreign sources for all its raw materials. Because the
+Philippines are likely to be cast off at any moment, American
+manufacturers are placing their plantations in the Dutch or British
+possessions. The Goodyear Company has secured a concession of 20,000
+acres near Medan in Dutch Sumatra.
+
+While the United States is planning to relinquish its Pacific
+possessions the British have more than doubled their holdings in New
+Guinea by the acquisition of Kaiser Wilhelm's Land, good rubber
+country. The British Malay States in 1917 exported over $118,000,000
+worth of plantation-grown rubber and could have sold more if shipping
+had not been short and production restricted. Fully 90 per cent. of the
+cultivated rubber is now grown in British colonies or on British
+plantations in the Dutch East Indies. To protect this monopoly an act
+has been passed preventing foreigners from buying more land in the Malay
+Peninsula. The Japanese have acquired there 50,000 acres, on which they
+are growing more than a million dollars' worth of rubber a year. The
+British _Tropical Life_ says of the American invasion: "As America is so
+extremely wealthy Uncle Sam can well afford to continue to buy our
+rubber as he has been doing instead of coming in to produce rubber to
+reduce his competition as a buyer in the world's market." The Malaya
+estates calculate to pay a dividend of 20 per cent. on the investment
+with rubber selling at 30 cents a pound and every two cents additional
+on the price brings a further 3-1/2 per cent. dividend. The output is
+restricted by the Rubber Growers' Association so as to keep the price up
+to 50-70 cents. When the plantations first came into bearing in 1910
+rubber was bringing nearly $3 a pound, and since it can be produced at
+less than 30 cents a pound we can imagine the profits of the early
+birds.
+
+The fact that the world's rubber trade was in the control of Great
+Britain caused America great anxiety and financial loss in the early
+part of the war when the British Government, suspecting--not without
+reason--that some American rubber goods were getting into Germany
+through neutral nations, suddenly shut off our supply. This threatened
+to kill the fourth largest of our industries and it was only by the
+submission of American rubber dealers to the closest supervision and
+restriction by the British authorities that they were allowed to
+continue their business. Sir Francis Hopwood, in laying down these
+regulations, gave emphatic warning "that in case any manufacturer,
+importer or dealer came under suspicion his permits should be
+immediately revoked. Reinstatement will be slow and difficult. The
+British Government will cancel first and investigate afterward." Of
+course the British had a right to say under what conditions they should
+sell their rubber and we cannot blame them for taking such precautions
+to prevent its getting to their enemies, but it placed the United States
+in a humiliating position and if we had not been in sympathy with their
+side it would have aroused more resentment than it did. But it made
+evident the desirability of having at least part of our supply under our
+own control and, if possible, within our own country. Rubber is not rare
+in nature, for it is contained in almost every milky juice. Every
+country boy knows that he can get a self-feeding mucilage brush by
+cutting off a milkweed stalk. The only native source so far utilized is
+the guayule, which grows wild on the deserts of the Mexican and the
+American border. The plant was discovered in 1852 by Dr. J.M. Bigelow
+near Escondido Creek, Texas. Professor Asa Gray described it and named
+it Parthenium argentatum, or the silver Pallas. When chopped up and
+macerated guayule gives a satisfactory quality of caoutchouc in
+profitable amounts. In 1911 seven thousand tons of guayule were
+imported from Mexico; in 1917 only seventeen hundred tons. Why this
+falling off? Because the eager exploiters had killed the goose that laid
+the golden egg, or in plain language, pulled up the plant by the roots.
+Now guayule is being cultivated and is reaped instead of being uprooted.
+Experiments at the Tucson laboratory have recently removed the
+difficulty of getting the seed to germinate under cultivation. This
+seems the most promising of the home-grown plants and, until artificial
+rubber can be made profitable, gives us the only chance of being in part
+independent of oversea supply.
+
+There are various other gums found in nature that can for some purposes
+be substituted for caoutchouc. Gutta percha, for instance, is pliable
+and tough though not very elastic. It becomes plastic by heat so it can
+be molded, but unlike rubber it cannot be hardened by heating with
+sulfur. A lump of gutta percha was brought from Java in 1766 and placed
+in a British museum, where it lay for nearly a hundred years before it
+occurred to anybody to do anything with it except to look at it. But a
+German electrician, Siemens, discovered in 1847 that gutta percha was
+valuable for insulating telegraph lines and it found extensive
+employment in submarine cables as well as for golf balls, and the like.
+
+Balata, which is found in the forests of the Guianas, is between gutta
+percha and rubber, not so good for insulation but useful for shoe soles
+and machine belts. The bark of the tree is so thick that the latex does
+not run off like caoutchouc when the bark is cut. So the bark has to be
+cut off and squeezed in hand presses. Formerly this meant cutting down
+the tree, but now alternate strips of the bark are cut off and squeezed
+so the tree continues to live.
+
+When Columbus discovered Santo Domingo he found the natives playing with
+balls made from the gum of the caoutchouc tree. The soldiers of Pizarro,
+when they conquered Inca-Land, adopted the Peruvian custom of smearing
+caoutchouc over their coats to keep out the rain. A French scientist, M.
+de la Condamine, who went to South America to measure the earth, came
+back in 1745 with some specimens of caoutchouc from Para as well as
+quinine from Peru. The vessel on which he returned, the brig _Minerva_,
+had a narrow escape from capture by an English cruiser, for Great
+Britain was jealous of any trespassing on her American sphere of
+influence. The Old World need not have waited for the discovery of the
+New, for the rubber tree grows wild in Annam as well as Brazil, but none
+of the Asiatics seems to have discovered any of the many uses of the
+juice that exudes from breaks in the bark.
+
+The first practical use that was made of it gave it the name that has
+stuck to it in English ever since. Magellan announced in 1772 that it
+was good to remove pencil marks. A lump of it was sent over from France
+to Priestley, the clergyman chemist who discovered oxygen and was mobbed
+out of Manchester for being a republican and took refuge in
+Pennsylvania. He cut the lump into little cubes and gave them to his
+friends to eradicate their mistakes in writing or figuring. Then they
+asked him what the queer things were and he said that they were "India
+rubbers."
+
+[Illustration: FOREST RUBBER
+
+Compare this tropical tangle and gnarled trunk with the straight tree
+and cleared ground of the plantation. At the foot of the trunk are cups
+collecting rubber juice.]
+
+[Illustration: PLANTATION RUBBER
+
+This spiral cut draws off the milk as completely and quickly as possible
+without harming the tree. The man is pulling off a strip of coagulated
+rubber that clogs it.]
+
+[Illustration: IN MAKING GARDEN HOSE THE RUBBER IS FORMED INTO A TUBE
+BY THE MACHINE ON THE RIGHT AND COILED ON THE TABLE TO THE LEFT]
+
+The Peruvian natives had used caoutchouc for water-proof clothing,
+shoes, bottles and syringes, but Europe was slow to take it up, for the
+stuff was too sticky and smelled too bad in hot weather to become
+fashionable in fastidious circles. In 1825 Mackintosh made his name
+immortal by putting a layer of rubber between two cloths.
+
+A German chemist, Ludersdorf, discovered in 1832 that the gum could be
+hardened by treating it with sulfur dissolved in turpentine. But it was
+left to a Yankee inventor, Charles Goodyear, of Connecticut, to work out
+a practical solution of the problem. A friend of his, Hayward, told him
+that it had been revealed to him in a dream that sulfur would harden
+rubber, but unfortunately the angel or defunct chemist who inspired the
+vision failed to reveal the details of the process. So Hayward sold out
+his dream to Goodyear, who spent all his own money and all he could
+borrow from his friends trying to convert it into a reality. He worked
+for ten years on the problem before the "lucky accident" came to him.
+One day in 1839 he happened to drop on the hot stove of the kitchen that
+he used as a laboratory a mixture of caoutchouc and sulfur. To his
+surprise he saw the two substances fuse together into something new.
+Instead of the soft, tacky gum and the yellow, brittle brimstone he had
+the tough, stable, elastic solid that has done so much since to make our
+footing and wheeling safe, swift and noiseless. The gumshoes or galoshes
+that he was then enabled to make still go by the name of "rubbers" in
+this country, although we do not use them for pencil erasers.
+
+Goodyear found that he could vary this "vulcanized rubber" at will. By
+adding a little more sulfur he got a hard substance which, however,
+could be softened by heat so as to be molded into any form wanted. Out
+of this "hard rubber" "vulcanite" or "ebonite" were made combs,
+hairpins, penholders and the like, and it has not yet been superseded
+for some purposes by any of its recent rivals, the synthetic resins.
+
+The new form of rubber made by the Germans, methyl rubber, is said to be
+a superior substitute for the hard variety but not satisfactory for the
+soft. The electrical resistance of the synthetic product is 20 per cent,
+higher than the natural, so it is excellent for insulation, but it is
+inferior in elasticity. In the latter part of the war the methyl rubber
+was manufactured at the rate of 165 tons a month.
+
+The first pneumatic tires, known then as "patent aerial wheels," were
+invented by Robert William Thomson of London in 1846. On the following
+year a carriage equipped with them was seen in the streets of New York
+City. But the pneumatic tire did not come into use until after 1888,
+when an Irish horse-doctor, John Boyd Dunlop, of Belfast, tied a rubber
+tube around the wheels of his little son's velocipede. Within seven
+years after that a $25,000,000 corporation was manufacturing Dunlop
+tires. Later America took the lead in this business. In 1913 the United
+States exported $3,000,000 worth of tires and tubes. In 1917 the
+American exports rose to $13,000,000, not counting what went to the
+Allies. The number of pneumatic tires sold in 1917 is estimated at
+18,000,000, which at an average cost of $25 would amount to
+$450,000,000.
+
+No matter how much synthetic rubber may be manufactured or how many
+rubber trees are set out there is no danger of glutting the market, for
+as the price falls the uses of rubber become more numerous. One can
+think of a thousand ways in which rubber could be used if it were only
+cheap enough. In the form of pads and springs and tires it would do much
+to render traffic noiseless. Even the elevated railroad and the subway
+might be opened to conversation, and the city made habitable for mild
+voiced and gentle folk. It would make one's step sure, noiseless and
+springy, whether it was used individualistically as rubber heels or
+collectivistically as carpeting and paving. In roofing and siding and
+paint it would make our buildings warmer and more durable. It would
+reduce the cost and permit the extension of electrical appliances of
+almost all kinds. In short, there is hardly any other material whose
+abundance would contribute more to our comfort and convenience. Noise is
+an automatic alarm indicating lost motion and wasted energy. Silence is
+economy and resiliency is superior to resistance. A gumshoe outlasts a
+hobnailed sole and a rubber tube full of air is better than a steel
+tire.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+THE RIVAL SUGARS
+
+
+The ancient Greeks, being an inquisitive and acquisitive people, were
+fond of collecting tales of strange lands. They did not care much
+whether the stories were true or not so long as they were interesting.
+Among the marvels that the Greeks heard from the Far East two of the
+strangest were that in India there were plants that bore wool without
+sheep and reeds that bore honey without bees. These incredible tales
+turned out to be true and in the course of time Europe began to get a
+little calico from Calicut and a kind of edible gravel that the Arabs
+who brought it called "sukkar." But of course only kings and queens
+could afford to dress in calico and have sugar prescribed for them when
+they were sick.
+
+Fortunately, however, in the course of time the Arabs invaded Spain and
+forced upon the unwilling inhabitants of Europe such instrumentalities
+of higher civilization as arithmetic and algebra, soap and sugar. Later
+the Spaniards by an act of equally unwarranted and beneficent aggression
+carried the sugar cane to the Caribbean, where it thrived amazingly. The
+West Indies then became a rival of the East Indies as a treasure-house
+of tropical wealth and for several centuries the Spanish, Portuguese,
+Dutch, English, Danes and French fought like wildcats to gain possession
+of this little nest of islands and the routes leading thereunto.
+
+The English finally overcame all these enemies, whether they fought her
+singly or combined. Great Britain became mistress of the seas and took
+such Caribbean lands as she wanted. But in the end her continental foes
+came out ahead, for they rendered her victory valueless. They were
+defeated in geography but they won in chemistry. Canning boasted that
+"the New World had been called into existence to redress the balance of
+the Old." Napoleon might have boasted that he had called in the sugar
+beet to balance the sugar cane. France was then, as Germany was a
+century later, threatening to dominate the world. England, then as in
+the Great War, shut off from the seas the shipping of the aggressive
+power. France then, like Germany later, felt most keenly the lack of
+tropical products, chief among which, then but not in the recent crisis,
+was sugar. The cause of this vital change is that in 1747 Marggraf, a
+Berlin chemist, discovered that it was possible to extract sugar from
+beets. There was only a little sugar in the beet root then, some six per
+cent., and what he got out was dirty and bitter. One of his pupils in
+1801 set up a beet sugar factory near Breslau under the patronage of the
+King of Prussia, but the industry was not a success until Napoleon took
+it up and in 1810 offered a prize of a million francs for a practical
+process. How the French did make fun of him for this crazy notion! In a
+comic paper of that day you will find a cartoon of Napoleon in the
+nursery beside the cradle of his son and heir, the King of Rome--known
+to the readers of Rostand as l'Aiglon. The Emperor is squeezing the
+juice of a beet into his coffee and the nurse has put a beet into the
+mouth of the infant King, saying: "Suck, dear, suck. Your father says
+it's sugar."
+
+In like manner did the wits ridicule Franklin for fooling with
+electricity, Rumford for trying to improve chimneys, Parmentier for
+thinking potatoes were fit to eat, and Jefferson for believing that
+something might be made of the country west of the Mississippi. In all
+ages ridicule has been the chief weapon of conservatism. If you want to
+know what line human progress will take in the future read the funny
+papers of today and see what they are fighting. The satire of every
+century from Aristophanes to the latest vaudeville has been directed
+against those who are trying to make the world wiser or better, against
+the teacher and the preacher, the scientist and the reformer.
+
+In spite of the ridicule showered upon it the despised beet year by year
+gained in sweetness of heart. The percentage of sugar rose from six to
+eighteen and by improved methods of extraction became finally as pure
+and palatable as the sugar of the cane. An acre of German beets produces
+more sugar than an acre of Louisiana cane. Continental Europe waxed
+wealthy while the British West Indies sank into decay. As the beets of
+Europe became sweeter the population of the islands became blacker.
+Before the war England was paying out $125,000,000 for sugar, and more
+than two-thirds of this money was going to Germany and Austria-Hungary.
+Fostered by scientific study, protected by tariff duties, and stimulated
+by export bounties, the beet sugar industry became one of the financial
+forces of the world. The English at home, especially the
+marmalade-makers, at first rejoiced at the idea of getting sugar for
+less than cost at the expense of her continental rivals. But the
+suffering colonies took another view of the situation. In 1888 a
+conference of the powers called at London agreed to stop competing by
+the pernicious practice of export bounties, but France and the United
+States refused to enter, so the agreement fell through. Another
+conference ten years later likewise failed, but when the parvenu beet
+sugar ventured to invade the historic home of the cane the limit of
+toleration had been reached. The Council of India put on countervailing
+duties to protect their homegrown cane from the bounty-fed beet. This
+forced the calling of a convention at Brussels in 1903 "to equalize the
+conditions of competition between beet sugar and cane sugar of the
+various countries," at which the powers agreed to a mutual suppression
+of bounties. Beet sugar then divided the world's market equally with
+cane sugar and the two rivals stayed substantially neck and neck until
+the Great War came. This shut out from England the product of Germany,
+Austria-Hungary, Belgium, northern France and Russia and took the
+farmers from their fields. The battle lines of the Central Powers
+enclosed the land which used to grow a third of the world's supply of
+sugar. In 1913 the beet and the cane each supplied about nine million
+tons of sugar. In 1917 the output of cane sugar was 11,200,000 and of
+beet sugar 5,300,000 tons. Consequently the Old World had to draw upon
+the New. Cuba, on which the United States used to depend for half its
+sugar supply, sent over 700,000 tons of raw sugar to England in 1916.
+The United States sent as much more refined sugar. The lack of shipping
+interfered with our getting sugar from our tropical dependencies,
+Hawaii, Porto Rico and the Philippines. The homegrown beets give us only
+a fifth and the cane of Louisiana and Texas only a fifteenth of the
+sugar we need. As a result we were obliged to file a claim in advance to
+get a pound of sugar from the corner grocery and then we were apt to be
+put off with rock candy, muscovado or honey. Lemon drops proved useful
+for Russian tea and the "long sweetening" of our forefathers came again
+into vogue in the form of various syrups. The United States was
+accustomed to consume almost a fifth of all the sugar produced in the
+world--and then we could not get it.
+
+[Illustration: MAP SHOWING LOCATION OF EUROPEAN BEET SUGAR
+FACTORIES--ALSO BATTLE LINES AT CLOSE OF 1918 ESTIMATED THAT ONE-THIRD
+OF WORLDS PRODUCTION BEFORE THE WAR WAS PRODUCED WITHIN BATTLE LINES
+Courtesy American Sugar Refining Co.]
+
+The shortage made us realize how dependent we have become upon sugar.
+Yet it was, as we have seen, practically unknown to the ancients and
+only within the present generation has it become an essential factor in
+our diet. As soon as the chemist made it possible to produce sugar at a
+reasonable price all nations began to buy it in proportion to their
+means. Americans, as the wealthiest people in the world, ate the most,
+ninety pounds a year on the average for every man, woman and child. In
+other words we ate our weight of sugar every year. The English consumed
+nearly as much as the Americans; the French and Germans about half as
+much; the Balkan peoples less than ten pounds per annum; and the African
+savages none.
+
+[Illustration: How the sugar beet has gained enormously in sugar content
+under chemical control]
+
+Pure white sugar is the first and greatest contribution of chemistry to
+the world's dietary. It is unique in being a single definite chemical
+compound, sucrose, C_{12}H_{22}O_{11}. All natural nutriments are more
+or less complex mixtures. Many of them, like wheat or milk or fruit,
+contain in various proportions all of the three factors of foods, the
+fats, the proteids and the carbohydrates, as well as water and the
+minerals and other ingredients necessary to life. But sugar is a simple
+substance, like water or salt, and like them is incapable of sustaining
+life alone, although unlike them it is nutritious. In fact, except the
+fats there is no more nutritious food than sugar, pound for pound, for
+it contains no water and no waste. It is therefore the quickest and
+usually the cheapest means of supplying bodily energy. But as may be
+seen from its formula as given above it contains only three elements,
+carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, and omits nitrogen and other elements
+necessary to the body. An engine requires not only coal but also
+lubricating oil, water and bits of steel and brass to keep it in repair.
+But as a source of the energy needed in our strenuous life sugar has no
+equal and only one rival, alcohol. Alcohol is the offspring of sugar, a
+degenerate descendant that retains but few of the good qualities of its
+sire and has acquired some evil traits of its own. Alcohol, like sugar,
+may serve to furnish the energy of a steam engine or a human body. Used
+as a fuel alcohol has certain advantages, but used as a food it has the
+disqualification of deranging the bodily mechanism. Even a little
+alcohol will impair the accuracy and speed of thought and action, while
+a large quantity, as we all know from observation if not experience,
+will produce temporary incapacitation.
+
+When man feeds on sugar he splits it up by the aid of air into water and
+carbon dioxide in this fashion:
+
+  C_{12}H_{22}O_{11} +  12O_{2}   -->   11H_{2}O  + 12CO_{2}
+        cane sugar     oxygen           water      carbon dioxide
+
+When sugar is burned the reaction is just the same.
+
+But when the yeast plant feeds on sugar it carries the process only part
+way and instead of water the product is alcohol, a very different thing,
+so they say who have tried both as beverages. The yeast or fermentation
+reaction is this:
+
+  C_{12}H_{22}O_{11} +  H_{2}O   -->  4C_{2}H_{6}O   +  4CO_{2}
+        cane sugar      water         alcohol       carbon dioxide
+
+Alcohol then is the first product of the decomposition of sugar, a
+dangerous half-way house. The twin product, carbon dioxide or carbonic
+acid, is a gas of slightly sour taste which gives an attractive tang and
+effervescence to the beer, wine, cider or champagne. That is to say, one
+of these twins is a pestilential fellow and the other is decidedly
+agreeable. Yet for several thousand years mankind took to the first and
+let the second for the most part escape into the air. But when the
+chemist appeared on the scene he discovered a way of separating the two
+and bottling the harmless one for those who prefer it. An increasing
+number of people were found to prefer it, so the American soda-water
+fountain is gradually driving Demon Rum out of the civilized world. The
+brewer nowadays caters to two classes of customers. He bottles up the
+beer with the alcohol and a little carbonic acid in it for the saloon
+and he catches the rest of the carbonic acid that he used to waste and
+sells it to the drug stores for soda-water or uses it to charge some
+non-alcoholic beer of his own.
+
+This catering to rival trades is not an uncommon thing with the chemist.
+As we have seen, the synthetic perfumes are used to improve the natural
+perfumes. Cottonseed is separated into oil and meal; the oil going to
+make margarin and the meal going to feed the cows that produce butter.
+Some people have been drinking coffee, although they do not like the
+taste of it, because they want the stimulating effect of its alkaloid,
+caffein. Other people liked the warmth and flavor of coffee but find
+that caffein does not agree with them. Formerly one had to take the
+coffee whole or let it alone. Now one can have his choice, for the
+caffein is extracted for use in certain popular cold drinks and the rest
+of the bean sold as caffein-free coffee.
+
+Most of the "soft drinks" that are now gradually displacing the hard
+ones consist of sugar, water and carbonic acid, with various flavors,
+chiefly the esters of the fatty and aromatic acids, such as I described
+in a previous chapter. These are still usually made from fruits and
+spices and in some cases the law or public opinion requires this, but
+eventually, I presume, the synthetic flavors will displace the natural
+and then we shall get rid of such extraneous and indigestible matter as
+seeds, skins and bark. Suppose the world had always been used to
+synthetic and hence seedless figs, strawberries and blackberries.
+Suppose then some manufacturer of fig paste or strawberry jam should put
+in ten per cent. of little round hard wooden nodules, just the sort to
+get stuck between the teeth or caught in the vermiform appendix. How
+long would it be before he was sent to jail for adulterating food? But
+neither jail nor boycott has any reformatory effect on Nature.
+
+Nature is quite human in that respect. But you can reform Nature as you
+can human beings by looking out for heredity and culture. In this way
+Mother Nature has been quite cured of her bad habit of putting seeds in
+bananas and oranges. Figs she still persists in adulterating with
+particles of cellulose as nutritious as sawdust. But we can circumvent
+the old lady at this. I got on Christmas a package of figs from
+California without a seed in them. Somebody had taken out all the
+seeds--it must have been a big job--and then put the figs together again
+as natural looking as life and very much better tasting.
+
+Sugar and alcohol are both found in Nature; sugar in the ripe fruit,
+alcohol when it begins to decay. But it was the chemist who discovered
+how to extract them. He first worked with alcohol and unfortunately
+succeeded.
+
+Previous to the invention of the still by the Arabian chemists man could
+not get drunk as quickly as he wanted to because his liquors were
+limited to what the yeast plant could stand without intoxication. When
+the alcoholic content of wine or beer rose to seventeen per cent. at the
+most the process of fermentation stopped because the yeast plants got
+drunk and quit "working." That meant that a man confined to ordinary
+wine or beer had to drink ten or twenty quarts of water to get one
+quart of the stuff he was after, and he had no liking for water.
+
+So the chemist helped him out of this difficulty and got him into worse
+trouble by distilling the wine. The more volatile part that came over
+first contained the flavor and most of the alcohol. In this way he could
+get liquors like brandy and whisky, rum and gin, containing from thirty
+to eighty per cent. of alcohol. This was the origin of the modern liquor
+problem. The wine of the ancients was strong enough to knock out Noah
+and put the companions of Socrates under the table, but it was not until
+distilled liquors came in that alcoholism became chronic, epidemic and
+ruinous to whole populations.
+
+But the chemist later tried to undo the ruin he had quite inadvertently
+wrought by introducing alcohol into the world. One of his most
+successful measures was the production of cheap and pure sugar which, as
+we have seen, has become a large factor in the dietary of civilized
+countries. As a country sobers up it takes to sugar as a "self-starter"
+to provide the energy needed for the strenuous life. A five o'clock
+candy is a better restorative than a five o'clock highball or even a
+five o'clock tea, for it is a true nutrient instead of a mere stimulant.
+It is a matter of common observation that those who like sweets usually
+do not like alcohol. Women, for instance, are apt to eat candy but do
+not commonly take to alcoholic beverages. Look around you at a banquet
+table and you will generally find that those who turn down their wine
+glasses generally take two lumps in their demi-tasses. We often hear it
+said that whenever a candy store opens up a saloon in the same block
+closes up. Our grandmothers used to warn their daughters: "Don't marry a
+man who does not want sugar in his tea. He is likely to take to drink."
+So, young man, when next you give a box of candy to your best girl and
+she offers you some, don't decline it. Eat it and pretend to like it, at
+least, for it is quite possible that she looked into a physiology and is
+trying you out. You never can tell what girls are up to.
+
+In the army and navy ration the same change has taken place as in the
+popular dietary. The ration of rum has been mostly replaced by an
+equivalent amount of candy or marmalade. Instead of the tippling trooper
+of former days we have "the chocolate soldier." No previous war in
+history has been fought so largely on sugar and so little on alcohol as
+the last one. When the war reduced the supply and increased the demand
+we all felt the sugar famine and it became a mark of patriotism to
+refuse candy and to drink coffee unsweetened. This, however, is not, as
+some think, the mere curtailment of a superfluous or harmful luxury, the
+sacrifice of a pleasant sensation. It is a real deprivation and a
+serious loss to national nutrition. For there is no reason to think the
+constantly rising curve of sugar consumption has yet reached its maximum
+or optimum. Individuals overeat, but not the population as a whole.
+According to experiments of the Department of Agriculture men doing
+heavy labor may add three-quarters of a pound of sugar to their daily
+diet without any deleterious effects. This is at the rate of 275 pounds
+a year, which is three times the average consumption of England and
+America. But the Department does not state how much a girl doing
+nothing ought to eat between meals.
+
+Of the 2500 to 3500 calories of energy required to keep a man going for
+a day the best source of supply is the carbohydrates, that is, the
+sugars and starches. The fats are more concentrated but are more
+expensive and less easily assimilable. The proteins are also more
+expensive and their decomposition products are more apt to clog up the
+system. Common sugar is almost an ideal food. Cheap, clean, white,
+portable, imperishable, unadulterated, pleasant-tasting, germ-free,
+highly nutritious, completely soluble, altogether digestible, easily
+assimilable, requires no cooking and leaves no residue. Its only fault
+is its perfection. It is so pure that a man cannot live on it. Four
+square lumps give one hundred calories of energy. But twenty-five or
+thirty-five times that amount would not constitute a day's ration, in
+fact one would ultimately starve on such fare. It would be like
+supplying an army with an abundance of powder but neglecting to provide
+any bullets, clothing or food. To make sugar the sole food is
+impossible. To make it the main food is unwise. It is quite proper for
+man to separate out the distinct ingredients of natural products--to
+extract the butter from the milk, the casein from the cheese, the sugar
+from the cane--but he must not forget to combine them again at each meal
+with the other essential foodstuffs in their proper proportion.
+
+[Illustration: THE RIVAL SUGARS The sugar beet of the north has become
+a close rival of the sugar cane of the south]
+
+[Illustration: INTERIOR OF A SUGAR MILL SHOWING THE MACHINERY FOR
+CRUSHING CANE TO EXTRACT THE JUICE]
+
+[Illustration: Courtesy of American Sugar Refinery Co.
+
+VACUUM PANS OF THE AMERICAN SUGAR REFINERY COMPANY
+
+In these air-tight vats the water is boiled off from the cane juice
+under diminished atmospheric pressure until the sugar crystallizes out]
+
+Sugar is not a synthetic product and the business of the chemist has
+been merely to extract and purify it. But this is not so simple as it
+seems and every sugar factory has had to have its chemist. He has
+analyzed every mother beet for a hundred years. He has watched every
+step of the process from the cane to the crystal lest the sucrose should
+invert to the less sweet and non-crystallizable glucose. He has tested
+with polarized light every shipment of sugar that has passed through the
+custom house, much to the mystification of congressmen who have often
+wondered at the money and argumentation expended in a tariff discussion
+over the question of the precise angle of rotation of the plane of
+vibration of infinitesimal waves in a hypothetical ether.
+
+The reason for this painstaking is that there are dozens of different
+sugars, so much alike that they are difficult to separate. They are all
+composed of the same three elements, C, H and O, and often in the same
+proportion. Sometimes two sugars differ only in that one has a
+right-handed and the other a left-handed twist to its molecule. They
+bear the same resemblance to one another as the two gloves of a pair.
+Cane sugar and beet sugar are when completely purified the same
+substance, that is, sucrose, C_{12}H_{22}O_{11}. The brown and
+straw-colored sugars, which our forefathers used and which we took to
+using during the war, are essentially the same but have not been so
+completely freed from moisture and the coloring and flavoring matter of
+the cane juice. Maple sugar is mostly sucrose. So partly is honey.
+Candies are made chiefly of sucrose with the addition of glucose, gums
+or starch, to give them the necessary consistency and of such colors and
+flavors, natural or synthetic, as may be desired. Practically all candy,
+even the cheapest, is nowadays free from deleterious ingredients in the
+manufacture, though it is liable to become contaminated in the handling.
+In fact sugar is about the only food that is never adulterated. It would
+be hard to find anything cheaper to add to it that would not be easily
+detected. "Sanding the sugar," the crime of which grocers are generally
+accused, is the one they are least likely to be guilty of.
+
+Besides the big family of sugars which are all more or less sweet,
+similar in structure and about equally nutritious, there are, very
+curiously, other chemical compounds of altogether different composition
+which taste like sugar but are not nutritious at all. One of these is
+a coal-tar derivative, discovered accidentally by an American student
+of chemistry, Ira Remsen, afterward president of Johns Hopkins
+University, and named by him "saccharin." This has the composition
+C_{6}H_{4}COSO_{2}NH, and as you may observe from the symbol it contains
+sulfur (S) and nitrogen (N) and the benzene ring (C_{6}H_{4}) that are
+not found in any of the sugars. It is several hundred times sweeter than
+sugar, though it has also a slightly bitter aftertaste. A minute
+quantity of it can therefore take the place of a large amount of sugar
+in syrups, candies and preserves, so because it lends itself readily to
+deception its use in food has been prohibited in the United States and
+other countries. But during the war, on account of the shortage of
+sugar, it came again into use. The European governments encouraged what
+they formerly tried to prevent, and it became customary in Germany or
+Italy to carry about a package of saccharin tablets in the pocket and
+drop one or two into the tea or coffee. Such reversals of administrative
+attitude are not uncommon. When the use of hops in beer was new it was
+prohibited by British law. But hops became customary nevertheless and
+now the law requires hops to be used in beer. When workingmen first
+wanted to form unions, laws were passed to prevent them. But now, in
+Australia for instance, the laws require workingmen to form unions.
+Governments naturally tend to a conservative reaction against anything
+new.
+
+It is amusing to turn back to the pure food agitation of ten years ago
+and read the sensational articles in the newspapers about the poisonous
+nature of this dangerous drug, saccharin, in view of the fact that it is
+being used by millions of people in Europe in amounts greater than once
+seemed to upset the tender stomachs of the Washington "poison squads."
+But saccharin does not appear to be responsible for any fatalities yet,
+though people are said to be heartily sick of it. And well they may be,
+for it is not a substitute for sugar except to the sense of taste.
+Glucose may correctly be called a substitute for sucrose as margarin for
+butter, since they not only taste much the same but have about the same
+food value. But to serve saccharin in the place of sugar is like giving
+a rubber bone to a dog. It is reported from Europe that the constant use
+of saccharin gives one eventually a distaste for all sweets. This is
+quite likely, although it means the reversal within a few years of
+prehistoric food habits. Mankind has always associated sweetness with
+food value, for there are few sweet things found in nature except the
+sugars. We think we eat sugar because it is sweet. But we do not. We eat
+it because it is good for us. The reason it tastes sweet to us is
+because it is good for us. So man makes a virtue out of necessity, a
+pleasure out of duty, which is the essence of ethics.
+
+In the ancient days of Ind the great Raja Trishanku possessed an earthly
+paradise that had been constructed for his delectation by a magician.
+Therein grew all manner of beautiful flowers, savory herbs and delicious
+fruits such as had never been known before outside heaven. Of them all
+the Raja and his harems liked none better than the reed from which they
+could suck honey. But Indra, being a jealous god, was wroth when he
+looked down and beheld mere mortals enjoying such delights. So he willed
+the destruction of the enchanted garden. With drought and tempest it was
+devastated, with fire and hail, until not a leaf was left of its
+luxuriant vegetation and the ground was bare as a threshing floor. But
+the roots of the sugar cane are not destroyed though the stalk be cut
+down; so when men ventured to enter the desert where once had been this
+garden of Eden, they found the cane had grown up again and they carried
+away cuttings of it and cultivated it in their gardens. Thus it happened
+that the nectar of the gods descended first to monarchs and their
+favorites, then was spread among the people and carried abroad to other
+lands until now any child with a penny in his hand may buy of the best
+of it. So it has been with many things. So may it be with all things.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+WHAT COMES FROM CORN
+
+
+The discovery of America dowered mankind with a world of new flora. The
+early explorers in their haste to gather up gold paid little attention
+to the more valuable products of field and forest, but in the course of
+centuries their usefulness has become universally recognized. The potato
+and tomato, which Europe at first considered as unfit for food or even
+as poisonous, have now become indispensable among all classes. New World
+drugs like quinine and cocaine have been adopted into every
+pharmacopeia. Cocoa is proving a rival of tea and coffee, and even the
+banana has made its appearance in European markets. Tobacco and chicle
+occupy the nostrils and jaws of a large part of the human race. Maize
+and rubber are become the common property of mankind, but still may be
+called American. The United States alone raises four-fifths of the corn
+and uses three-fourths of the caoutchouc of the world.
+
+All flesh is grass. This may be taken in a dietary as well as a
+metaphorical sense. The graminaceae provide the greater part of the
+sustenance of man and beast; hay and cereals, wheat, oats, rye, barley,
+rice, sugar cane, sorghum and corn. From an American viewpoint the
+greatest of these, physically and financially, is corn. The corn crop of
+the United States for 1917, amounting to 3,159,000,000 bushels, brought
+in more money than the wheat, cotton, potato and rye crops all
+together.
+
+When Columbus reached the West Indies he found the savages playing with
+rubber balls, smoking incense sticks of tobacco and eating cakes made of
+a new grain that they called _mahiz_. When Pizarro invaded Peru he found
+this same cereal used by the natives not only for food but also for
+making alcoholic liquor, in spite of the efforts of the Incas to enforce
+prohibition. When the Pilgrim Fathers penetrated into the woods back of
+Plymouth Harbor they discovered a cache of Indian corn. So throughout
+the three Americas, from Canada to Peru, corn was king and it has proved
+worthy to rank with the rival cereals of other continents, the wheat of
+Europe and the rice of Asia. But food habits are hard to change and for
+the most part the people of the Old World are still ignorant of the
+delights of hasty pudding and Indian pudding, of hoe-cake and hominy, of
+sweet corn and popcorn. I remember thirty years ago seeing on a London
+stand a heap of dejected popcorn balls labeled "Novel American
+Confection. Please Try One." But nobody complied with this pitiful
+appeal but me and I was sorry that I did. Americans used to respond with
+a shipload of corn whenever an appeal came from famine sufferers in
+Armenia, Russia, Ireland, India or Austria, but their generosity was
+chilled when they found that their gift was resented as an insult or as
+an attempt to poison the impoverished population, who declared that they
+would rather die than eat it--and some of them did. Our Department of
+Agriculture sent maize missionaries to Europe with farmers and millers
+as educators and expert cooks to serve free flapjacks and pones, but the
+propaganda made little impression and today Americans are urged to eat
+more of their own corn because the famished families of the war-stricken
+region will not touch it. Just so the beggars of Munich revolted at
+potato soup when the pioneer of American food chemists, Bumford,
+attempted to introduce this transatlantic dish.
+
+But here we are not so much concerned with corn foods as we are with its
+manufactured products. If you split a kernel in two you will find that
+it consists of three parts: a hard and horny hull on the outside, a
+small oily and nitrogenous germ at the point, and a white body
+consisting mostly of starch. Each of these is worked up into various
+products, as may be seen from the accompanying table. The hull forms
+bran and may be mixed with the gluten as a cattle food. The corn steeped
+for several days with sulfurous acid is disintegrated and on being
+ground the germs are floated off, the gluten or nitrogenous portion
+washed out, the starch grains settled down and the residue pressed
+together as oil cake fodder. The refined oil from the germ is marketed
+as a table or cooking oil under the name of "Mazola" and comes into
+competition with olive, peanut and cottonseed oil in the making of
+vegetable substitutes for lard and butter. Inferior grades may be used
+for soaps or for glycerin and perhaps nitroglycerin. A bushel of corn
+yields a pound or more of oil. From the corn germ also is extracted a
+gum called "paragol" that forms an acceptable substitute for rubber in
+certain uses. The "red rubber" sponges and the eraser tips to pencils
+may be made of it and it can contribute some twenty per cent. to the
+synthetic soles of shoes.
+
+[Illustration: CORN PRODUCTS]
+
+Starch, which constitutes fifty-five per cent. of the corn kernel, can
+be converted into a variety of products for dietary and industrial uses.
+As found in corn, potatoes or any other vegetables starch consists of
+small, round, white, hard grains, tasteless, and insoluble in cold
+water. But hot water converts it into a soluble, sticky form which may
+serve for starching clothes or making cornstarch pudding. Carrying the
+process further with the aid of a little acid or other catalyst it takes
+up water and goes over into a sugar, dextrose, commonly called
+"glucose." Expressed in chemical shorthand this reaction is
+
+  C_{6}H_{10}O_{5} + H_{2}O   -->  C_{6}H_{12}O_{6}
+         starch      water          dextrose
+
+This reaction is carried out on forty million bushels of corn a year in
+the United States. The "starch milk," that is, the starch grains washed
+out from the disintegrated corn kernel by water, is digested in large
+pressure tanks under fifty pounds of steam with a few tenths of one per
+cent. of hydrochloric acid until the required degree of conversion is
+reached. Then the remaining acid is neutralized by caustic soda, and
+thereby converted into common salt, which in this small amount does not
+interfere but rather enhances the taste. The product is the commercial
+glucose or corn syrup, which may if desired be evaporated to a white
+powder. It is a mixture of three derivatives of starch in about this
+proportion:
+
+  Maltose          45 per cent.
+  Dextrose         20 per cent.
+  Dextrin          35 per cent.
+
+There are also present three- or four-tenths of one per cent. salt and
+as much of the corn protein and a variable amount of water. It will be
+noticed that the glucose (dextrose), which gives name to the whole, is
+the least of the three ingredients.
+
+Maltose, or malt sugar, has the same composition as cane sugar
+(C_{12}H_{22}O_{11}), but is not nearly so sweet. Dextrin, or starch
+paste, is not sweet at all. Dextrose or glucose is otherwise known; as
+grape sugar, for it is commonly found in grapes and other ripe fruits.
+It forms half of honey and it is one of the two products into which
+cane sugar splits up when we take it into the mouth. It is not so sweet
+as cane sugar and cannot be so readily crystallized, which, however, is
+not altogether a disadvantage.
+
+The process of changing starch into dextrose that takes place in the
+great steam kettles of the glucose factory is essentially the same as
+that which takes place in the ripening of fruit and in the digestion of
+starch. A large part of our nutriment, therefore, consists of glucose
+either eaten as such in ripe fruits or produced in the mouth or stomach
+by the decomposition of the starch of unripe fruit, vegetables and
+cereals. Glucose may be regarded as a predigested food. In spite of this
+well-known fact we still sometimes read "poor food" articles in which
+glucose is denounced as a dangerous adulterant and even classed as a
+poison.
+
+The other ingredients of commercial glucose, the maltose and dextrin,
+have of course the same food value as the dextrose, since they are made
+over into dextrose in the process of digestion. Whether the glucose
+syrup is fit to eat depends, like anything else, on how it is made. If,
+as was formerly sometimes the case, sulfuric acid was used to effect the
+conversion of the starch or sulfurous acid to bleach the glucose and
+these acids were not altogether eliminated, the product might be
+unwholesome or worse. Some years ago in England there was a mysterious
+epidemic of arsenical poisoning among beer drinkers. On tracing it back
+it was found that the beer had been made from glucose which had been
+made from sulfuric acid which had been made from sulfur which had been
+made from a batch of iron pyrites which contained a little arsenic. The
+replacement of sulfuric acid by hydrochloric has done away with that
+danger and the glucose now produced is pure.
+
+The old recipe for home-made candy called for the addition of a little
+vinegar to the sugar syrup to prevent "graining." The purpose of the
+acid was of course to invert part of the cane sugar to glucose so as to
+keep it from crystallizing out again. The professional candy-maker now
+uses the corn glucose for that purpose, so if we accuse him of
+"adulteration" on that ground we must levy the same accusation against
+our grandmothers. The introduction of glucose into candy manufacture has
+not injured but greatly increased the sale of sugar for the same
+purpose. This is not an uncommon effect of scientific progress, for as
+we have observed, the introduction of synthetic perfumes has stimulated
+the production of odoriferous flowers and the price of butter has gone
+up with the introduction of margarin. So, too, there are more weavers
+employed and they get higher wages than in the days when they smashed up
+the first weaving machines, and the same is true of printers and
+typesetting machines. The popular animosity displayed toward any new
+achievement of applied science is never justified, for it benefits not
+only the world as a whole but usually even those interests with which it
+seems at first to conflict.
+
+The chemist is an economizer. It is his special business to hunt up
+waste products and make them useful. He was, for instance, worried over
+the waste of the cores and skins and scraps that were being thrown away
+when apples were put up. Apple pulp contains pectin, which is what makes
+jelly jell, and berries and fruits that are short of it will refuse to
+"jell." But using these for their flavor he adds apple pulp for pectin
+and glucose for smoothness and sugar for sweetness and, if necessary,
+synthetic dyes for color, he is able to put on the market a variety of
+jellies, jams and marmalades at very low price. The same principle
+applies here as in the case of all compounded food products. If they are
+made in cleanly fashion, contain no harmful ingredients and are
+truthfully labeled there is no reason for objecting to them. But if the
+manufacturer goes so far as to put strawberry seeds--or hayseed--into
+his artificial "strawberry jam" I think that might properly be called
+adulteration, for it is imitating the imperfections of nature, and man
+ought to be too proud to do that.
+
+The old-fashioned open kettle molasses consisted mostly of glucose and
+other invert sugars together with such cane sugar as could not be
+crystallized out. But when the vacuum pan was introduced the molasses
+was impoverished of its sweetness and beet sugar does not yield any
+molasses. So we now have in its place the corn syrups consisting of
+about 85 per cent. of glucose and 15 per cent. of sugar flavored with
+maple or vanillin or whatever we like. It is encouraging to see the bill
+boards proclaiming the virtues of "Karo" syrup and "Mazola" oil when
+only a few years ago the products of our national cereal were without
+honor in their own country.
+
+Many other products besides foods are made from corn starch. Dextrin
+serves in place of the old "gum arabic" for the mucilage of our
+envelopes and stamps. Another form of dextrin sold as "Kordex" is used
+to hold together the sand of the cores of castings. After the casting
+has been made the scorched core can be shaken out. Glucose is used in
+place of sugar as a filler for cheap soaps and for leather.
+
+Altogether more than a hundred different commercial products are now
+made from corn, not counting cob pipes. Every year the factories of the
+United States work up over 50,000,000 bushels of corn into 800,000,000
+pounds of corn syrup, 600,000,000 pounds of starch, 230,000,000 pounds
+of corn sugar, 625,000,000 pounds of gluten feed, 90,000,000 pounds of
+oil and 90,000,000 pounds of oil cake.
+
+Two million bushels of cobs are wasted every year in the United States.
+Can't something be made out of them? This is the question that is
+agitating the chemists of the Carbohydrate Laboratory of the Department
+of Agriculture at Washington. They have found it possible to work up the
+corn cobs into glucose and xylose by heating with acid. But glucose can
+be more cheaply obtained from other starchy or woody materials and they
+cannot find a market for the xylose. This is a sort of a sugar but only
+about half as sweet as that from cane. Who can invent a use for it! More
+promising is the discovery by this laboratory that by digesting the cobs
+with hot water there can be extracted about 30 per cent. of a gum
+suitable for bill posting and labeling.
+
+Since the starches and sugars belong to the same class of compounds as
+the celluloses they also can be acted upon by nitric acid with the
+production of explosives like guncotton. Nitro-sugar has not come into
+common use, but nitro-starch is found to be one of safest of the high
+explosives. On account of the danger of decomposition and spontaneous
+explosion from the presence of foreign substances the materials in
+explosives must be of the purest possible. It was formerly thought that
+tapioca must be imported from Java for making nitro-starch. But during
+the war when shipping was short, the War Department found that it could
+be made better and cheaper from our home-grown corn starch. When the war
+closed the United States was making 1,720,000 pounds of nitro-starch a
+month for loading hand grenades. So, too, the Post Office Department
+discovered that it could use mucilage made of corn dextrin as well as
+that which used to be made from tapioca. This is progress in the right
+direction. It would be well to divert some of the energetic efforts now
+devoted to the increase of commerce to the discovery of ways of reducing
+the need for commerce by the development of home products. There is no
+merit in simply hauling things around the world.
+
+In the last chapter we saw how dextrose or glucose could be converted by
+fermentation into alcohol. Since corn starch, as we have seen, can be
+converted into dextrose, it can serve as a source of alcohol. This was,
+in fact, one of the earliest misuses to which corn was put, and before
+the war put a stop to it 34,000,000 bushels went into the making of
+whiskey in the United States every year, not counting the moonshiners'
+output. But even though we left off drinking whiskey the distillers
+could still thrive. Mars is more thirsty than Bacchus. The output of
+whiskey, denatured for industrial purposes, is more than three times
+what is was before the war, and the price has risen from 30 cents a
+gallon to 67 cents. This may make it profitable to utilize sugars,
+starches and cellulose that formerly were out of the question. According
+to the calculations of the Forest Products Laboratory of Madison it
+costs from 37 to 44 cents a gallon to make alcohol from corn, but it may
+be made from sawdust at a cost of from 14 to 20 cents. This is not "wood
+alcohol" (that is, methyl alcohol, CH_{4}O) such as is made by the
+destructive distillation of wood, but genuine "grain alcohol" (ethyl
+alcohol, C_{2}H_{6}O), such as is made by the fermentation of glucose or
+other sugar. The first step in the process is to digest the sawdust or
+chips with dilute sulfuric acid under heat and pressure. This converts
+the cellulose (wood fiber) in large part into glucose ("corn sugar")
+which may be extracted by hot water in a diffusion battery as in
+extracting the sugar from beet chips. This glucose solution may then be
+fermented by yeast and the resulting alcohol distilled off. The process
+is perfectly practicable but has yet to be proved profitable. But the
+sulfite liquors of the paper mills are being worked up successfully into
+industrial alcohol.
+
+The rapidly approaching exhaustion of our oil fields which the war has
+accelerated leads us to look around to see what we can get to take the
+place of gasoline. One of the most promising of the suggested
+substitutes is alcohol. The United States is exceptionally rich in
+mineral oil, but some countries, for instance England, Germany, France
+and Australia, have little or none. The Australian Advisory Council of
+Science, called to consider the problem, recommends alcohol for
+stationary engines and motor cars. Alcohol has the disadvantage of
+being less volatile than gasoline so it is hard to start up the engine
+from the cold. But the lower volatility and ignition point of alcohol
+are an advantage in that it can be put under a pressure of 150 pounds to
+the square inch. A pound of gasoline contains fifty per cent. more
+potential energy than a pound of alcohol, but since the alcohol vapor
+can be put under twice the compression of the gasoline and requires only
+one-third the amount of air, the thermal efficiency of an alcohol engine
+may be fifty per cent. higher than that of a gasoline engine. Alcohol
+also has several other conveniences that can count in its favor. In the
+case of incomplete combustion the cylinders are less likely to be
+clogged with carbon and the escaping gases do not have the offensive
+odor of the gasoline smoke. Alcohol does not ignite so easily as
+gasoline and the fire is more readily put out, for water thrown upon
+blazing alcohol dilutes it and puts out the flame while gasoline floats
+on water and the fire is spread by it. It is possible to increase the
+inflammability of alcohol by mixing with it some hydrocarbon such as
+gasoline, benzene or acetylene. In the Taylor-White process the vapor
+from low-grade alcohol containing 17 per cent. water is passed over
+calcium carbide. This takes out the water and adds acetylene gas, making
+a suitable mixture for an internal combustion engine.
+
+Alcohol can be made from anything of a starchy, sugary or woody nature,
+that is, from the main substance of all vegetation. If we start with
+wood (cellulose) we convert it first into sugar (glucose) and, of
+course, we could stop here and use it for food instead of carrying it
+on into alcohol. This provides one factor of our food, the carbohydrate,
+but by growing the yeast plants on glucose and feeding them with
+nitrates made from the air we can get the protein and fat. So it is
+quite possible to live on sawdust, although it would be too expensive a
+diet for anybody but a millionaire, and he would not enjoy it. Glucose
+has been made from formaldehyde and this in turn made from carbon,
+hydrogen and oxygen, so the synthetic production of food from the
+elements is not such an absurdity as it was thought when Berthelot
+suggested it half a century ago.
+
+The first step in the making of alcohol is to change the starch over
+into sugar. This transformation is effected in the natural course of
+sprouting by which the insoluble starch stored up in the seed is
+converted into the soluble glucose for the sap of the growing plant.
+This malting process is that mainly made use of in the production of
+alcohol from grain. But there are other ways of effecting the change. It
+may be done by heating with acid as we have seen, or according to a
+method now being developed the final conversion may be accomplished by
+mold instead of malt. In applying this method, known as the amylo
+process, to corn, the meal is mixed with twice its weight of water,
+acidified with hydrochloric acid and steamed. The mash is then cooled
+down somewhat, diluted with sterilized water and innoculated with the
+mucor filaments. As the mash molds the starch is gradually changed over
+to glucose and if this is the product desired the process may be stopped
+at this point. But if alcohol is wanted yeast is added to ferment the
+sugar. By keeping it alkaline and treating with the proper bacteria a
+high yield of glycerin can be obtained.
+
+In the fermentation process for making alcoholic liquors a little
+glycerin is produced as a by-product. Glycerin, otherwise called
+glycerol, is intermediate between sugar and alcohol. Its molecule
+contains three carbon atoms, while glucose has six and alcohol two. It
+is possible to increase the yield of glycerin if desired by varying the
+form of fermentation. This was desired most earnestly in Germany during
+the war, for the British blockade shut off the importation of the fats
+and oils from which the Germans extracted the glycerin for their
+nitroglycerin. Under pressure of this necessity they worked out a
+process of getting glycerin in quantity from sugar and, news of this
+being brought to this country by Dr. Alonzo Taylor, the United States
+Treasury Department set up a special laboratory to work out this
+problem. John R. Eoff and other chemists working in this laboratory
+succeeded in getting a yield of twenty per cent. of glycerin by
+fermenting black strap molasses or other syrup with California wine
+yeast. During the fermentation it is necessary to neutralize the acetic
+acid formed with sodium or calcium carbonate. It was estimated that
+glycerin could be made from waste sugars at about a quarter of its
+war-time cost, but it is doubtful whether the process would be
+profitable at normal prices.
+
+We can, if we like, dispense with either yeast or bacteria in the
+production of glycerin. Glucose syrup suspended in oil under steam
+pressure with finely divided nickel as a catalyst and treated with
+nascent hydrogen will take up the hydrogen and be converted into
+glycerin. But the yield is poor and the process expensive.
+
+Food serves substantially the same purpose in the body as fuel in the
+engine. It provides the energy for work. The carbohydrates, that is the
+sugars, starches and celluloses, can all be used as fuels and can
+all--even, as we have seen, the cellulose--be used as foods. The final
+products, water and carbon dioxide, are in both cases the same and
+necessarily therefore the amount of energy produced is the same in the
+body as in the engine. Corn is a good example of the equivalence of the
+two sources of energy. There are few better foods and no better fuels. I
+can remember the good old days in Kansas when we had corn to burn. It
+was both an economy and a luxury, for--at ten cents a bushel--it was
+cheaper than coal or wood and preferable to either at any price. The
+long yellow ears, each wrapped in its own kindling, could be handled
+without crocking the fingers. Each kernel as it crackled sent out a
+blazing jet of oil and the cobs left a fine bed of coals for the corn
+popper to be shaken over. Driftwood and the pyrotechnic fuel they make
+now by soaking sticks in strontium and copper salts cannot compare with
+the old-fashioned corn-fed fire in beauty and the power of evoking
+visions. Doubtless such luxury would be condemned as wicked nowadays,
+but those who have known the calorific value of corn would find it hard
+to abandon it altogether, and I fancy that the Western farmer's wife,
+when she has an extra batch of baking to do, will still steal a few ears
+from the crib.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+SOLIDIFIED SUNSHINE
+
+
+All life and all that life accomplishes depend upon the supply of solar
+energy stored in the form of food. The chief sources of this vital
+energy are the fats and the sugars. The former contain two and a quarter
+times the potential energy of the latter. Both, when completely
+purified, consist of nothing but carbon, hydrogen and oxygen; elements
+that are to be found freely everywhere in air and water. So when the
+sunny southland exports fats and oils, starches and sugar, it is then
+sending away nothing material but what comes back to it in the next
+wind. What it is sending to the regions of more slanting sunshine is
+merely some of the surplus of the radiant energy it has received so
+abundantly, compacted for convenience into a portable and edible form.
+
+In previous chapters I have dealt with some of the uses of cotton, its
+employment for cloth, for paper, for artificial fibers, for explosives,
+and for plastics. But I have ignored the thing that cotton is attached
+to and for which, in the economy of nature, the fibers are formed; that
+is, the seed. It is as though I had described the aeroplane and ignored
+the aviator whom it was designed to carry. But in this neglect I am but
+following the example of the human race, which for three thousand years
+used the fiber but made no use of the seed except to plant the next
+crop.
+
+Just as mankind is now divided into the two great classes, the
+wheat-eaters and the rice-eaters, so the ancient world was divided into
+the wool-wearers and the cotton-wearers. The people of India wore
+cotton; the Europeans wore wool. When the Greeks under Alexander fought
+their way to the Far East they were surprised to find wool growing on
+trees. Later travelers returning from Cathay told of the same marvel and
+travelers who stayed at home and wrote about what they had not seen,
+like Sir John Maundeville, misunderstood these reports and elaborated a
+legend of a tree that bore live lambs as fruit. Here, for instance, is
+how a French poetical botanist, Delacroix, described it in 1791, as
+translated from his Latin verse:
+
+  Upon a stalk is fixed a living brute,
+  A rooted plant bears quadruped for fruit;
+  It has a fleece, nor does it want for eyes,
+  And from its brows two wooly horns arise.
+  The rude and simple country people say
+  It is an animal that sleeps by day
+  And wakes at night, though rooted to the ground,
+  To feed on grass within its reach around.
+
+But modern commerce broke down the barrier between East and West. A new
+cotton country, the best in the world, was discovered in America. Cotton
+invaded England and after a hard fight, with fists as well as finance,
+wool was beaten in its chief stronghold. Cotton became King and the
+wool-sack in the House of Lords lost its symbolic significance.
+
+Still two-thirds of the cotton crop, the seed, was wasted and it is only
+within the last fifty years that methods of using it have been
+developed to any extent.
+
+The cotton crop of the United States for 1917 amounted to about
+11,000,000 bales of 500 pounds each. When the Great War broke out and no
+cotton could be exported to Germany and little to England the South was
+in despair, for cotton went down to five or six cents a pound. The
+national Government, regardless of states' rights, was called upon for
+aid and everybody was besought to "buy a bale." Those who responded to
+this patriotic appeal were well rewarded, for cotton rose as the war
+went on and sold at twenty-nine cents a pound.
+
+[ILLUSTRATION: PRODUCTS AND USES OF COTTONSEED]
+
+But the chemist has added some $150,000,000 a year to the value of the
+crop by discovering ways of utilizing the cottonseed that used to be
+thrown away or burned as fuel. The genealogical table of the progeny of
+the cottonseed herewith printed will give some idea of their variety. If
+you will examine a cottonseed you will see first that there is a fine
+fuzz of cotton fiber sticking to it. These linters can be removed by
+machinery and used for any purpose where length of fiber is not
+essential. For instance, they may be nitrated as described in previous
+articles and used for making smokeless powder or celluloid.
+
+On cutting open the seed you will observe that it consists of an oily,
+mealy kernel encased in a thin brown hull. The hulls, amounting to 700
+or 900 pounds in a ton of seed, were formerly burned. Now, however, they
+bring from $4 to $10 a ton because they can be ground up into
+cattle-feed or paper stock or used as fertilizer.
+
+The kernel of the cottonseed on being pressed yields a yellow oil and
+leaves a mealy cake. This last, mixed with the hulls, makes a good
+fodder for fattening cattle. Also, adding twenty-five per cent. of the
+refined cottonseed meal to our war bread made it more nutritious and no
+less palatable. Cottonseed meal contains about forty per cent. of
+protein and is therefore a highly concentrated and very valuable feeding
+stuff. Before the war we were exporting nearly half a million tons of
+cottonseed meal to Europe, chiefly to Germany and Denmark, where it is
+used for dairy cows. The British yeoman, his country's pride, has not
+yet been won over to the use of any such newfangled fodder and
+consequently the British manufacturer could not compete with his
+continental rivals in the seed-crushing business, for he could not
+dispose of his meal-cake by-product as did they.
+
+[Illustration: Photo by Press Illustrating Service
+
+Cottonseed Oil As It Is Squeezed From The Seed By The Presses]
+
+[Illustration: Photo by Press Illustrating Service
+
+Cottonseed Oil As It Comes From The Compressors Flowing Out Of The
+Faucets
+
+When cold it is firm and white like lard]
+
+Let us now turn to the most valuable of the cottonseed products, the
+oil. The seed contains about twenty per cent. of oil, most of which can
+be squeezed out of the hot seeds by hydraulic pressure. It comes out as
+a red liquid of a disagreeable odor. This is decolorized, deodorized and
+otherwise purified in various ways: by treatment with alkalies or acids,
+by blowing air and steam through it, by shaking up with fuller's earth,
+by settling and filtering. The refined product is a yellow oil, suitable
+for table use. Formerly, on account of the popular prejudice against any
+novel food products, it used to masquerade as olive oil. Now, however,
+it boldly competes with its ancient rival in the lands of the olive tree
+and America ships some 700,000 barrels of cottonseed oil a year to the
+Mediterranean. The Turkish Government tried to check the spread of
+cottonseed oil by calling it an adulterant and prohibiting its mixture
+with olive oil. The result was that the sale of Turkish olive oil fell
+off because people found its flavor too strong when undiluted. Italy
+imports cottonseed oil and exports her olive oil. Denmark imports
+cottonseed meal and margarine and exports her butter.
+
+Northern nations are accustomed to hard fats and do not take to oils for
+cooking or table use as do the southerners. Butter and lard are
+preferred to olive oil and ghee. But this does not rule out cottonseed.
+It can be combined with the hard fats of animal or vegetable origin in
+margarine or it may itself be hardened by hydrogen.
+
+To understand this interesting reaction which is profoundly affecting
+international relations it will be necessary to dip into the chemistry
+of the subject. Here are the symbols of the chief ingredients of the
+fats and oils. Please look at them.
+
+  Linoleic acid       C_{18}H_{32}O_{2}
+  Oleic acid          C_{18}H_{34}O_{2}
+  Stearic acid        C_{18}H_{36}O_{2}
+
+Don't skip these because you have not studied chemistry. That's why I am
+giving them to you. If you had studied chemistry you would know them
+without my telling. Just examine them and you will discover the secret.
+You will see that all three are composed of the same elements, carbon,
+hydrogen, and oxygen. Notice next the number of atoms in each element as
+indicated by the little low figures on the right of each letter. You
+observe that all three contain the same number of atoms of carbon and
+oxygen but differ in the amount of hydrogen. This trifling difference in
+composition makes a great difference in behavior. The less the hydrogen
+the lower the melting point. Or to say the same thing in other words,
+fatty substances low in hydrogen are apt to be liquids and those with a
+full complement of hydrogen atoms are apt to be solids at the ordinary
+temperature of the air. It is common to call the former "oils" and the
+latter "fats," but that implies too great a dissimilarity, for the
+distinction depends on whether we are living in the tropics or the
+arctic. It is better, therefore, to lump them all together and call
+them "soft fats" and "hard fats," respectively.
+
+Fats of the third order, the stearic group, are called "saturated"
+because they have taken up all the hydrogen they can hold. Fats of the
+other two groups are called "unsaturated." The first, which have the
+least hydrogen, are the most eager for more. If hydrogen is not handy
+they will take up other things, for instance oxygen. Linseed oil, which
+consists largely, as the name implies, of linoleic acid, will absorb
+oxygen on exposure to the air and become hard. That is why it is used in
+painting. Such oils are called "drying" oils, although the hardening
+process is not really drying, since they contain no water, but is
+oxidation. The "semi-drying oils," those that will harden somewhat on
+exposure to the air, include the oils of cottonseed, corn, sesame, soy
+bean and castor bean. Olive oil and peanut oil are "non-drying" and
+contain oleic compounds (olein). The hard fats, such as stearin,
+palmitin and margarin, are mostly of animal origin, tallow and lard,
+though coconut and palm oil contain a large proportion of such saturated
+compounds.
+
+Though the chemist talks of the fatty "acids," nobody else would call
+them so because they are not sour. But they do behave like the acids in
+forming salts with bases. The alkali salts of the fatty acids are known
+to us as soaps. In the natural fats they exist not as free acids but as
+salts of an organic base, glycerin, as I explained in a previous
+chapter. The natural fats and oils consist of complex mixtures of the
+glycerin compounds of these acids (known as olein, stearin, etc.), as
+well as various others of a similar sort. If you will set a bottle of
+salad oil in the ice-box you will see it separate into two parts. The
+white, crystalline solid that separates out is largely stearin. The part
+that remains liquid is largely olein. You might separate them by
+filtering it cold and if then you tried to sell the two products you
+would find that the hard fat would bring a higher price than the oil,
+either for food or soap. If you tried to keep them you would find that
+the hard fat kept neutral and "sweet" longer than the other. You may
+remember that the perfumes (as well as their odorous opposites) were
+mostly unsaturated compounds. So we find that it is the free and
+unsaturated fatty acids that cause butter and oil to become rank and
+rancid.
+
+Obviously, then, we could make money if we could turn soft, unsaturated
+fats like olein into hard, saturated fats like stearin. Referring to the
+symbols we see that all that is needed to effect the change is to get
+the former to unite with hydrogen. This requires a little coaxing. The
+coaxer is called a catalyst. A catalyst, as I have previously explained,
+is a substance that by its mere presence causes the union of two other
+substances that might otherwise remain separate. For that reason the
+catalyst is referred to as "a chemical parson." Finely divided metals
+have a strong catalytic action. Platinum sponge is excellent but too
+expensive. So in this case nickel is used. A nickel salt mixed with
+charcoal or pumice is reduced to the metallic state by heating in a
+current of hydrogen. Then it is dropped into the tank of oil and
+hydrogen gas is blown through. The hydrogen may be obtained by splitting
+water into its two components, hydrogen and oxygen, by means of the
+electrical current, or by passing steam over spongy iron which takes out
+the oxygen. The stream of hydrogen blown through the hot oil converts
+the linoleic acid to oleic and then the oleic into stearic. If you
+figured up the weights from the symbols given above you would find that
+it takes about one pound of hydrogen to convert a hundred pounds of
+olein to stearin and the cost is only about one cent a pound. The nickel
+is unchanged and is easily separated. A trace of nickel may remain in
+the product, but as it is very much less than the amount dissolved when
+food is cooked in nickel-plated vessels it cannot be regarded as
+harmful.
+
+Even more unsaturated fats may be hydrogenated. Fish oil has hitherto
+been almost unusable because of its powerful and persistent odor. This
+is chiefly due to a fatty acid which properly bears the uneuphonious
+name of clupanodonic acid and has the composition of C_{18}H_{28}O_{2}.
+By comparing this with the symbol of the odorless stearic acid,
+C_{18}H_{36}O_{2}, you will see that all the rank fish oil lacks to make
+it respectable is eight hydrogen atoms. A Japanese chemist, Tsujimoto,
+has discovered how to add them and now the reformed fish oil under the
+names of "talgol" and "candelite" serves for lubricant and even enters
+higher circles as a soap or food.
+
+This process of hardening fats by hydrogenation resulted from the
+experiments of a French chemist, Professor Sabatier of Toulouse, in the
+last years of the last century, but, as in many other cases, the Germans
+were the first to take it up and profit by it. Before the war the copra
+or coconut oil from the British Asiatic colonies of India, Ceylon and
+Malaya went to Germany at the rate of $15,000,000 a year. The palm
+kernels grown in British West Africa were shipped, not to Liverpool, but
+to Hamburg, $19,000,000 worth annually. Here the oil was pressed out and
+used for margarin and the residual cake used for feeding cows produced
+butter or for feeding hogs produced lard. Half of the copra raised in
+the British possessions was sent to Germany and half of the oil from it
+was resold to the British margarin candle and soap makers at a handsome
+profit. The British chemists were not blind to this, but they could do
+nothing, first because the English politician was wedded to free trade,
+second, because the English farmer would not use oil cake for his stock.
+France was in a similar situation. Marseilles produced 15,500,000
+gallons of oil from peanuts grown largely in the French African
+colonies--but shipped the oil-cake on to Hamburg. Meanwhile the Germans,
+in pursuit of their policy of attaining economic independence, were
+striving to develop their own tropical territory. The subjects of King
+George who because they had the misfortune to live in India were
+excluded from the British South African dominions or mistreated when
+they did come, were invited to come to German East Africa and set to
+raising peanuts in rivalry to French Senegal and British Coromandel.
+Before the war Germany got half of the Egyptian cottonseed and half of
+the Philippine copra. That is one of the reasons why German warships
+tried to check Dewey at Manila in 1898 and German troops tried to
+conquer Egypt in 1915.
+
+But the tide of war set the other way and the German plantations of
+palmnuts and peanuts in Africa have come into British possession and
+now the British Government is starting an educational campaign to teach
+their farmers to feed oil cake like the Germans and their people to eat
+peanuts like the Americans.
+
+The Germans shut off from the tropical fats supply were hard up for food
+and for soap, for lubricants and for munitions. Every person was given a
+fat card that reduced his weekly allowance to the minimum. Millers were
+required to remove the germs from their cereals and deliver them to the
+war department. Children were set to gathering horse-chestnuts,
+elderberries, linden-balls, grape seeds, cherry stones and sunflower
+heads, for these contain from six to twenty per cent. of oil. Even the
+blue-bottle fly--hitherto an idle creature for whom Beelzebub found
+mischief--was conscripted into the national service and set to laying
+eggs by the billion on fish refuse. Within a few days there is a crop of
+larvae which, to quote the "Chemische Zentralblatt," yields forty-five
+grams per kilogram of a yellow oil. This product, we should hope, is
+used for axle-grease and nitroglycerin, although properly purified it
+would be as nutritious as any other--to one who has no imagination.
+Driven to such straits Germany would have given a good deal for one of
+those tropical islands that we are so careless about.
+
+It might have been supposed that since the United States possessed the
+best land in the world for the production of cottonseed, coconuts,
+peanuts, and corn that it would have led all other countries in the
+utilization of vegetable oils for food. That this country has not so
+used its advantage is due to the fact that the new products have not
+merely had to overcome popular conservatism, ignorance and
+prejudice--hard things to fight in any case--but have been deliberately
+checked and hampered by the state and national governments in defense of
+vested interests. The farmer vote is a power that no politician likes to
+defy and the dairy business in every state was thoroughly organized. In
+New York the oleomargarin industry that in 1879 was turning out products
+valued at more than $5,000,000 a year was completely crushed out by
+state legislation.[2] The output of the United States, which in 1902 had
+risen to 126,000,000 pounds, was cut down to 43,000,000 pounds in 1909
+by federal legislation. According to the disingenuous custom of American
+lawmakers the Act of 1902 was passed through Congress as a "revenue
+measure," although it meant a loss to the Government of more than three
+million dollars a year over what might be produced by a straight two
+cents a pound tax. A wholesale dealer in oleomargarin was made to pay a
+higher license than a wholesale liquor dealer. The federal law put a tax
+of ten cents a pound on yellow oleomargarin and a quarter of a cent a
+pound on the uncolored. But people--doubtless from pure
+prejudice--prefer a yellow spread for their bread, so the economical
+housewife has to work over her oleomargarin with the annatto which is
+given to her when she buys a package or, if the law prohibits this,
+which she is permitted to steal from an open box on the grocer's
+counter. A plausible pretext for such legislation is afforded by the
+fact that the butter substitutes are so much like butter that they
+cannot be easily distinguished from it unless the use of annatto is
+permitted to butter and prohibited to its competitors. Fradulent sales
+of substitutes of any kind ought to be prevented, but the recent pure
+food legislation in America has shown that it is possible to secure
+truthful labeling without resorting to such drastic measures. In Europe
+the laws against substitution were very strict, but not devised to
+restrict the industry. Consequently the margarin output of Germany
+doubled in the five years preceding the war and the output of England
+tripled. In Denmark the consumption of margarin rose from 8.8 pounds per
+capita in 1890 to 32.6 pounds in 1912. Yet the butter business,
+Denmark's pride, was not injured, and Germany and England imported more
+butter than ever before. Now that the price of butter in America has
+gone over the seventy-five cent mark Congress may conclude that it no
+longer needs to be protected against competition.
+
+The "compound lards" or "lard compounds," consisting usually of
+cottonseed oil and oleo-stearin, although the latter may now be replaced
+by hardened oil, met with the same popular prejudice and attempted
+legislative interference, but succeeded more easily in coming into
+common use under such names as "Cottosuet," "Kream Krisp," "Kuxit,"
+"Korno," "Cottolene" and "Crisco."
+
+Oleomargarin, now generally abbreviated to margarin, originated, like
+many other inventions, in military necessity. The French Government in
+1869 offered a prize for a butter substitute for the army that should be
+cheaper and better than butter in that it did not spoil so easily. The
+prize was won by a French chemist, Mege-Mouries, who found that by
+chilling beef fat the solid stearin could be separated from an oil
+(oleo) which was the substantially same as that in milk and hence in
+butter. Neutral lard acts the same.
+
+This discovery of how to separate the hard and soft fats was followed by
+improved methods for purifying them and later by the process for
+converting the soft into the hard fats by hydrogenation. The net result
+was to put into the hands of the chemist the ability to draw his
+materials at will from any land and from the vegetable and animal
+kingdoms and to combine them as he will to make new fat foods for every
+use; hard for summer, soft for winter; solid for the northerners and
+liquid for the southerners; white, yellow or any other color, and
+flavored to suit the taste. The Hindu can eat no fat from the sacred
+cow; the Mohammedan and the Jew can eat no fat from the abhorred pig;
+the vegetarian will touch neither; other people will take both. No
+matter, all can be accommodated.
+
+All the fats and oils, though they consist of scores of different
+compounds, have practically the same food value when freed from the
+extraneous matter that gives them their characteristic flavors. They are
+all practically tasteless and colorless. The various vegetable and
+animal oils and fats have about the same digestibility, 98 per cent.,[3]
+and are all ordinarily completely utilized in the body, supplying it
+with two and a quarter times as much energy as any other food.
+
+It does not follow, however, that there is no difference in the
+products. The margarin men accuse butter of harboring tuberculosis germs
+from which their product, because it has been heated or is made from
+vegetable fats, is free. The butter men retort that margarin is lacking
+in vitamines, those mysterious substances which in minute amounts are
+necessary for life and especially for growth. Both the claim and the
+objection lose a large part of their force where the margarin, as is
+customarily the case, is mixed with butter or churned up with milk to
+give it the familiar flavor. But the difficulty can be easily overcome.
+The milk used for either butter or margarin should be free or freed from
+disease germs. If margarin is altogether substituted for butter, the
+necessary vitamines may be sufficiently provided by milk, eggs and
+greens.
+
+Owing to these new processes all the fatty substances of all lands have
+been brought into competition with each other. In such a contest the
+vegetable is likely to beat the animal and the southern to win over the
+northern zones. In Europe before the war the proportion of the various
+ingredients used to make butter substitutes was as follows:
+
+  AVERAGE COMPOSITION OF EUROPEAN MARGARIN
+
+
+                            Per Cent.
+  Animal hard fats              25
+  Vegetable hard fats           35
+    Copra                       29
+    Palm-kernel                  6
+  Vegetable soft fats           26
+    Cottonseed                  13
+    Peanut                       6
+    Sesame                       6
+    Soya-bean                    1
+  Water, milk, salt             14
+                               ___
+                               100
+
+This is not the composition of any particular brand but the average of
+them all. The use of a certain amount of the oil of the sesame seed is
+required by the laws of Germany and Denmark because it can be easily
+detected by a chemical color test and so serves to prevent the margarin
+containing it from being sold as butter. "Open sesame!" is the password
+to these markets. Remembering that margarin originally was made up
+entirely of animal fats, soft and hard, we can see from the above
+figures how rapidly they are being displaced by the vegetable fats. The
+cottonseed and peanut oils have replaced the original oleo oil and the
+tropical oils from the coconut (copra) and African palm are crowding out
+the animal hard fats. Since now we can harden at will any of the
+vegetable oils it is possible to get along altogether without animal
+fats. Such vegetable margarins were originally prepared for sale in
+India, but proved unexpectedly popular in Europe, and are now being
+introduced into America. They are sold under various trade names
+suggesting their origin, such as "palmira," "palmona," "milkonut,"
+"cocose," "coconut oleomargarin" and "nucoa nut margarin." The last
+named is stated to be made of coconut oil (for the hard fat) and peanut
+oil (for the soft fat), churned up with a culture of pasteurized milk
+(to impart the butter flavor). The law requires such a product to be
+branded "oleomargarine" although it is not. Such cases of compulsory
+mislabeling are not rare. You remember the "Pigs is Pigs" story.
+
+Peanut butter has won its way into the American menu without any
+camouflage whatever, and as a salad oil it is almost equally frank about
+its lowly origin. This nut, which grows on a vine instead of a tree,
+and is dug from the ground like potatoes instead of being picked with a
+pole, goes by various names according to locality, peanuts, ground-nuts,
+monkey-nuts, arachides and goobers. As it takes the place of cotton oil
+in some of its products so it takes its place in the fields and oilmills
+of Texas left vacant by the bollweevil. The once despised peanut added
+some $56,000,000 to the wealth of the South in 1916. The peanut is rich
+in the richest of foods, some 50 per cent. of oil and 30 per cent. of
+protein. The latter can be worked up into meat substitutes that will
+make the vegetarian cease to envy his omnivorous neighbor. Thanks
+largely to the chemist who has opened these new fields of usefulness,
+the peanut-raiser got $1.25 a bushel in 1917 instead of the 30 cents
+that he got four years before.
+
+It would be impossible to enumerate all the available sources of
+vegetable oils, for all seeds and nuts contain more or less fatty matter
+and as we become more economical we shall utilize of what we now throw
+away. The germ of the corn kernel, once discarded in the manufacture of
+starch, now yields a popular table oil. From tomato seeds, one of the
+waste products of the canning factory, can be extracted 22 per cent. of
+an edible oil. Oats contain 7 per cent. of oil. From rape seed the
+Japanese get 20,000 tons of oil a year. To the sources previously
+mentioned may be added pumpkin seeds, poppy seeds, raspberry seeds,
+tobacco seeds, cockleburs, hazelnuts, walnuts, beechnuts and acorns.
+
+The oil-bearing seeds of the tropics are innumerable and will become
+increasingly essential to the inhabitants of northern lands. It was the
+realization of this that brought on the struggle of the great powers
+for the possession of tropical territory which, for years before, they
+did not think worth while raising a flag over. No country in the future
+can consider itself safe unless it has secure access to such sources. We
+had a sharp lesson in this during the war. Palm oil, it seems, is
+necessary for the manufacture of tinplate, an industry that was built up
+in the United States by the McKinley tariff. The British possessions in
+West Africa were the chief source of palm oil and the Germans had the
+handling of it. During the war the British Government assumed control of
+the palm oil products of the British and German colonies and prohibited
+their export to other countries than England. Americans protested and
+beseeched, but in vain. The British held, quite correctly, that they
+needed all the oil they could get for food and lubrication and
+nitroglycerin. But the British also needed canned meat from America for
+their soldiers and when it was at length brought to their attention that
+the packers could not ship meat unless they had cans and that cans could
+not be made without tin and that tin could not be made without palm oil
+the British Government consented to let us buy a little of their palm
+oil. The lesson is that of Voltaire's story, "Candide," "Let us
+cultivate our own garden"--and plant a few palm trees in it--also rubber
+trees, but that is another story.
+
+The international struggle for oil led to the partition of the Pacific
+as the struggle for rubber led to the partition of Africa. Theodor
+Weber, as Stevenson says, "harried the Samoans" to get copra much as
+King Leopold of Belgium harried the Congoese to get caoutchouc. It was
+Weber who first fully realized that the South Sea islands, formerly
+given over to cannibals, pirates and missionaries, might be made
+immensely valuable through the cultivation of the coconut palms. When
+the ripe coconut is split open and exposed to the sun the meat dries up
+and shrivels and in this form, called "copra," it can be cut out and
+shipped to the factory where the oil is extracted and refined. Weber
+while German Consul in Samoa was also manager of what was locally known
+as "the long-handled concern" (_Deutsche Handels und Plantagen
+Gesellschaft der Suedsee Inseln zu Hamburg_), a pioneer commercial and
+semi-official corporation that played a part in the Pacific somewhat
+like the British Hudson Bay Company in Canada or East India Company in
+Hindustan. Through the agency of this corporation on the start Germany
+acquired a virtual monopoly of the transportation and refining of
+coconut oil and would have become the dominant power in the Pacific if
+she had not been checked by force of arms. In Apia Bay in 1889 and again
+in Manila Bay in 1898 an American fleet faced a German fleet ready for
+action while a British warship lay between. So we rescued the
+Philippines and Samoa from German rule and in 1914 German power was
+eliminated from the Pacific. During the ten years before the war, the
+production of copra in the German islands more than doubled and this was
+only the beginning of the business. Now these islands have been divided
+up among Australia, New Zealand and Japan, and these countries are
+planning to take care of the copra.
+
+But although we get no extension of territory from the war we still
+have the Philippines and some of the Samoan Islands, and these are
+capable of great development. From her share of the Samoan Islands
+Germany got a million dollars' worth of copra and we might get more from
+ours. The Philippines now lead the world in the production of copra, but
+Java is a close second and Ceylon not far behind. If we do not look out
+we will be beaten both by the Dutch and the British, for they are
+undertaking the cultivation of the coconut on a larger scale and in a
+more systematic way. According to an official bulletin of the Philippine
+Government a coconut plantation should bring in "dividends ranging from
+10 to 75 per cent. from the tenth to the hundredth year." And this being
+printed in 1913 figured the price of copra at 3-1/2 cents, whereas it
+brought 4-1/2 cents in 1918, so the prospect is still more encouraging.
+The copra is half fat and can be cheaply shipped to America, where it
+can be crushed in the southern oilmills when they are not busy on
+cottonseed or peanuts. But even this cost of transportation can be
+reduced by extracting the oil in the islands and shipping it in bulk
+like petroleum in tank steamers.
+
+In the year ending June, 1918, the United States imported from the
+Philippines 155,000,000 pounds of coconut oil worth $18,000,000 and
+220,000,000 pounds of copra worth $10,000,000. But this was about half
+our total importations; the rest of it we had to get from foreign
+countries. Panama palms may give us a little relief from this dependence
+on foreign sources. In 1917 we imported 19,000,000 whole coconuts from
+Panama valued at $700,000.
+
+[Illustration: SPLITTING COCONUTS ON THE ISLAND OF TAHITI
+
+After drying in the sun the meat is picked and the oil extracted for
+making coconut butter]
+
+[Illustration: From "America's Munitions"
+
+THE ELECTRIC CURRENT PASSING THROUGH SALT WATER IN THESE CELLS
+DECOMPOSES THE SALT INTO CAUSTIC SODA AND CHLORINE GAS
+
+There were eight rooms like this in the Edgewood plant, capable of
+producing 200,000 pounds of chlorine a day]
+
+A new form of fat that has rapidly come into our market is the oil of
+the soya or soy bean. In 1918 we imported over 300,000,000 pounds of
+soy-bean oil, mostly from Manchuria. The oil is used in manufacture of
+substitutes for butter, lard, cheese, milk and cream, as well as for
+soap and paint. The soy-bean can be raised in the United States wherever
+corn can be grown and provides provender for man and beast. The soy meal
+left after the extraction of the oil makes a good cattle food and the
+fermented juice affords the shoya sauce made familiar to us through the
+popularity of the chop-suey restaurants.
+
+As meat and dairy products become scarcer and dearer we shall become
+increasingly dependent upon the vegetable fats. We should therefore
+devise means of saving what we now throw away, raise as much as we can
+under our own flag, keep open avenues for our foreign supply and
+encourage our cooks to make use of the new products invented by our
+chemists.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+FIGHTING WITH FUMES
+
+
+The Germans opened the war using projectiles seventeen inches in
+diameter. They closed it using projectiles one one-hundred millionth of
+an inch in diameter. And the latter were more effective than the former.
+As the dimensions were reduced from molar to molecular the battle became
+more intense. For when the Big Bertha had shot its bolt, that was the
+end of it. Whomever it hit was hurt, but after that the steel fragments
+of the shell lay on the ground harmless and inert. The men in the
+dugouts could hear the shells whistle overhead without alarm. But the
+poison gas could penetrate where the rifle ball could not. The malignant
+molecules seemed to search out their victims. They crept through the
+crevices of the subterranean shelters. They hunted for the pinholes in
+the face masks. They lay in wait for days in the trenches for the
+soldiers' return as a cat watches at the hole of a mouse. The cannon
+ball could be seen and heard. The poison gas was invisible and
+inaudible, and sometimes even the chemical sense which nature has given
+man for his protection, the sense of smell, failed to give warning of
+the approach of the foe.
+
+The smaller the matter that man can deal with the more he can get out of
+it. So long as man was dependent for power upon wind and water his
+working capacity was very limited. But as soon as he passed over the
+border line from physics into chemistry and learned how to use the
+molecule, his efficiency in work and warfare was multiplied manifold.
+The molecular bombardment of the piston by steam or the gases of
+combustion runs his engines and propels his cars. The first man who
+wanted to kill another from a safe distance threw the stone by his arm's
+strength. David added to his arm the centrifugal force of a sling when
+he slew Goliath. The Romans improved on this by concentrating in a
+catapult the strength of a score of slaves and casting stone cannon
+balls to the top of the city wall. But finally man got closer to
+nature's secret and discovered that by loosing a swarm of gaseous
+molecules he could throw his projectile seventy-five miles and then by
+the same force burst it into flying fragments. There is no smaller
+projectile than the atom unless our belligerent chemists can find a way
+of using the electron stream of the cathode ray. But this so far has
+figured only in the pages of our scientific romancers and has not yet
+appeared on the battlefield. If, however, man could tap the reservoir of
+sub-atomic energy he need do no more work and would make no more war,
+for unlimited powers of construction and destruction would be at his
+command. The forces of the infinitesimal are infinite.
+
+The reason why a gas is so active is because it is so egoistic.
+Psychologically interpreted, a gas consists of particles having the
+utmost aversion to one another. Each tries to get as far away from every
+other as it can. There is no cohesive force; no attractive impulse;
+nothing to draw them together except the all too feeble power of
+gravitation. The hotter they get the more they try to disperse and so
+the gas expands. The gas represents the extreme of individualism as
+steel represents the extreme of collectivism. The combination of the two
+works wonders. A hot gas in a steel cylinder is the most powerful agency
+known to man, and by means of it he accomplishes his greatest
+achievements in peace or war time.
+
+The projectile is thrown from the gun by the expansive force of the
+gases released from the powder and when it reaches its destination it is
+blown to pieces by the same force. This is the end of it if it is a
+shell of the old-fashioned sort, for the gases of combustion mingle
+harmlessly with the air of which they are normal constituents. But if it
+is a poison gas shell each molecule as it is released goes off straight
+into the air with a speed twice that of the cannon ball and carries
+death with it. A man may be hit by a heavy piece of lead or iron and
+still survive, but an unweighable amount of lethal gas may be fatal to
+him.
+
+Most of the novelties of the war were merely extensions of what was
+already known. To increase the caliber of a cannon from 38 to 42
+centimeters or its range from 30 to 75 miles does indeed make necessary
+a decided change in tactics, but it is not comparable to the revolution
+effected by the introduction of new weapons of unprecedented power such
+as airplanes, submarines, tanks, high explosives or poison gas. If any
+army had been as well equipped with these in the beginning as all armies
+were at the end it might easily have won the war. That is to say, if the
+general staff of any of the powers had had the foresight and confidence
+to develop and practise these modes of warfare on a large scale in
+advance it would have been irresistible against an enemy unprepared to
+meet them. But no military genius appeared on either side with
+sufficient courage and imagination to work out such schemes in secret
+before trying them out on a small scale in the open. Consequently the
+enemy had fair warning and ample time to learn how to meet them and
+methods of defense developed concurrently with methods of attack. For
+instance, consider the motor fortresses to which Ludendorff ascribes his
+defeat. The British first sent out a few clumsy tanks against the German
+lines. Then they set about making a lot of stronger and livelier ones,
+but by the time these were ready the Germans had field guns to smash
+them and chain fences with concrete posts to stop them. On the other
+hand, if the Germans had followed up their advantage when they first set
+the cloud of chlorine floating over the battlefield of Ypres they might
+have won the war in the spring of 1915 instead of losing it in the fall
+of 1918. For the British were unprepared and unprotected against the
+silent death that swept down upon them on the 22nd of April, 1915. What
+happened then is best told by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in his "History of
+the Great War."
+
+     From the base of the German trenches over a considerable length
+     there appeared jets of whitish vapor, which gathered and
+     swirled until they settled into a definite low cloud-bank,
+     greenish-brown below and yellow above, where it reflected the
+     rays of the sinking sun. This ominous bank of vapor, impelled
+     by a northern breeze, drifted swiftly across the space which
+     separated the two lines. The French troops, staring over the
+     top of their parapet at this curious screen which ensured them
+     a temporary relief from fire, were observed suddenly to throw
+     up their hands, to clutch at their throats, and to fall to the
+     ground in the agonies of asphyxiation. Many lay where they had
+     fallen, while their comrades, absolutely helpless against this
+     diabolical agency, rushed madly out of the mephitic mist and
+     made for the rear, over-running the lines of trenches behind
+     them. Many of them never halted until they had reached Ypres,
+     while others rushed westwards and put the canal between
+     themselves and the enemy. The Germans, meanwhile, advanced, and
+     took possession of the successive lines of trenches, tenanted
+     only by the dead garrisons, whose blackened faces, contorted
+     figures, and lips fringed with the blood and foam from their
+     bursting lungs, showed the agonies in which they had died. Some
+     thousands of stupefied prisoners, eight batteries of French
+     field-guns, and four British 4.7's, which had been placed in a
+     wood behind the French position, were the trophies won by this
+     disgraceful victory.
+
+     Under the shattering blow which they had received, a blow
+     particularly demoralizing to African troops, with their fears
+     of magic and the unknown, it was impossible to rally them
+     effectually until the next day. It is to be remembered in
+     explanation of this disorganization that it was the first
+     experience of these poison tactics, and that the troops engaged
+     received the gas in a very much more severe form than our own
+     men on the right of Langemarck. For a time there was a gap five
+     miles broad in the front of the position of the Allies, and
+     there were many hours during which there was no substantial
+     force between the Germans and Ypres. They wasted their time,
+     however, in consolidating their ground, and the chance of a
+     great coup passed forever. They had sold their souls as
+     soldiers, but the Devil's price was a poor one. Had they had a
+     corps of cavalry ready, and pushed them through the gap, it
+     would have been the most dangerous moment of the war.
+
+A deserter had come over from the German side a week before and told
+them that cylinders of poison gas had been laid in the front trenches,
+but no one believed him or paid any attention to his tale. War was then,
+in the Englishman's opinion, a gentleman's game, the royal sport, and
+poison was prohibited by the Hague rules. But the Germans were not
+playing the game according to the rules, so the British soldiers were
+strangled in their own trenches and fell easy victims to the advancing
+foe. Within half an hour after the gas was turned on 80 per cent. of the
+opposing troops were knocked out. The Canadians, with wet handkerchiefs
+over their faces, closed in to stop the gap, but if the Germans had been
+prepared for such success they could have cleared the way to the coast.
+But after such trials the Germans stopped the use of free chlorine and
+began the preparation of more poisonous gases. In some way that may not
+be revealed till the secret history of the war is published, the British
+Intelligence Department obtained a copy of the lecture notes of the
+instructions to the German staff giving details of the new system of gas
+warfare to be started in December. Among the compounds named was
+phosgene, a gas so lethal that one part in ten thousand of air may be
+fatal. The antidote for it is hexamethylene tetramine. This is not
+something the soldier--or anybody else--is accustomed to carry around
+with him, but the British having had a chance to cram up in advance on
+the stolen lecture notes were ready with gas helmets soaked in the
+reagent with the long name.
+
+The Germans rejoiced when gas bombs took the place of bayonets because
+this was a field in which intelligence counted for more than brute
+force and in which therefore they expected to be supreme. As usual they
+were right in their major premise but wrong in their conclusion, owing
+to the egoism of their implicit minor premise. It does indeed give the
+advantage to skill and science, but the Germans were beaten at their own
+game, for by the end of the war the United States was able to turn out
+toxic gases at a rate of 200 tons a day, while the output of Germany or
+England was only about 30 tons. A gas plant was started at Edgewood,
+Maryland, in November, 1917. By March it was filling shell and before
+the war put a stop to its activities in the fall it was producing
+1,300,000 pounds of chlorine, 1,000,000 pounds of chlorpicrin, 1,300,000
+pounds of phosgene and 700,000 pounds of mustard gas a month.
+
+Chlorine, the first gas used, is unpleasantly familiar to every one who
+has entered a chemical laboratory or who has smelled the breath of
+bleaching powder. It is a greenish-yellow gas made from common salt. The
+Germans employed it at Ypres by laying cylinders of the liquefied gas in
+the trenches, about a yard apart, and running a lead discharge pipe over
+the parapet. When the stop cocks are turned the gas streams out and
+since it is two and a half times as heavy as air it rolls over the
+ground like a noisome mist. It works best when the ground slopes gently
+down toward the enemy and when the wind blows in that direction at a
+rate between four and twelve miles an hour. But the wind, being strictly
+neutral, may change its direction without warning and then the gases
+turn back in their flight and attack their own side, something that
+rifle bullets have never been known to do.
+
+[Illustration: (C) International Film Service
+
+GERMANS STARTING A GAS ATTACK ON THE RUSSIAN LINES
+
+Behind the cylinders from which the gas streams are seen three lines of
+German troops waiting to attack. The photograph was taken from above by
+a Russian airman]
+
+[Illustration: (C) Press Illustrating Service
+
+FILLING THE CANNISTERS OF GAS MASKS WITH CHARCOAL MADE FROM FRUIT PITS
+IN LONG ISLAND CITY]
+
+Because free chlorine would not stay put and was dependent on the favor
+of the wind for its effect, it was later employed, not as an elemental
+gas, but in some volatile liquid that could be fired in a shell and so
+released at any particular point far back of the front trenches.
+
+The most commonly used of these compounds was phosgene, which, as the
+reader can see by inspection of its formula, COCl_{2}, consists of
+chlorine (Cl) combined with carbon monoxide (CO), the cause of deaths
+from illuminating gas. These two poisonous gases, chlorine and carbon
+monoxide, when mixed together, will not readily unite, but if a ray of
+sunlight falls upon the mixture they combine at once. For this reason
+John Davy, who discovered the compound over a hundred years ago, named
+it phosgene, that is, "produced by light." The same roots recur in
+hydrogen, so named because it is "produced from water," and phosphorus,
+because it is a "light-bearer."
+
+In its modern manufacture the catalyzer or instigator of the combination
+is not sunlight but porous carbon. This is packed in iron boxes eight
+feet long, through which the mixture of the two gases was forced. Carbon
+monoxide may be made by burning coke with a supply of air insufficient
+for complete combustion, but in order to get the pure gas necessary for
+the phosgene common air was not used, but instead pure oxygen extracted
+from it by a liquid air plant.
+
+Phosgene is a gas that may be condensed easily to a liquid by cooling it
+down to 46 degrees Fahrenheit. A mixture of three-quarters chlorine with
+one-quarter phosgene has been found most effective. By itself phosgene
+has an inoffensive odor somewhat like green corn and so may fail to
+arouse apprehension until a toxic concentration is reached. But even
+small doses have such an effect upon the heart action for days afterward
+that a slight exertion may prove fatal.
+
+The compound manufactured in largest amount in America was chlorpicrin.
+This, like the others, is not so unfamiliar as it seems. As may be seen
+from its formula, CCl_{3}NO_{2}, it is formed by joining the nitric acid
+radical (NO_{2}), found in all explosives, with the main part of
+chloroform (HCCl_{3}). This is not quite so poisonous as phosgene, but
+it has the advantage that it causes nausea and vomiting. The soldier so
+affected is forced to take off his gas mask and then may fall victim to
+more toxic gases sent over simultaneously.
+
+Chlorpicrin is a liquid and is commonly loaded in a shell or bomb with
+20 per cent. of tin chloride, which produces dense white fumes that go
+through gas masks. It is made from picric acid (trinitrophenol), one of
+the best known of the high explosives, by treatment with chlorine. The
+chlorine is obtained, as it is in the household, from common bleaching
+powder, or "chloride of lime." This is mixed with water to form a cream
+in a steel still 18 feet high and 8 feet in diameter. A solution of
+calcium picrate, that is, the lime salt of picric acid, is pumped in and
+as the reaction begins the mixture heats up and the chlorpicrin distils
+over with the steam. When the distillate is condensed the chlorpicrin,
+being the heavier liquid, settles out under the layer of water and may
+be drawn off to fill the shell.
+
+Much of what a student learns in the chemical laboratory he is apt to
+forget in later life if he does not follow it up. But there are two
+gases that he always remembers, chlorine and hydrogen sulfide. He is
+lucky if he has escaped being choked by the former or sickened by the
+latter. He can imagine what the effect would be if two offensive fumes
+could be combined without losing their offensive features. Now a
+combination something like this is the so-called mustard gas, which is
+not a gas and is not made from mustard. But it is easily gasified, and
+oil of mustard is about as near as Nature dare come to making such
+sinful stuff. It was first made by Guthrie, an Englishman, in 1860, and
+rediscovered by a German chemist, Victor Meyer, in 1886, but he found it
+so dangerous to work with that he abandoned the investigation. Nobody
+else cared to take it up, for nobody could see any use for it. So it
+remained in innocuous desuetude, a mere name in "Beilstein's
+Dictionary," together with the thousands of other organic compounds that
+have been invented and never utilized. But on July 12, 1917, the British
+holding the line at Ypres were besprinkled with this villainous
+substance. Its success was so great that the Germans henceforth made it
+their main reliance and soon the Allies followed suit. In one offensive
+of ten days the Germans are said to have used a million shells
+containing 2500 tons of mustard gas.
+
+The making of so dangerous a compound on a large scale was one of the
+most difficult tasks set before the chemists of this and other
+countries, yet it was successfully solved. The raw materials are
+chlorine, alcohol and sulfur. The alcohol is passed with steam through
+a vertical iron tube filled with kaolin and heated. This converts the
+alcohol into a gas known as ethylene (C_{2}H_{4}). Passing a stream of
+chlorine gas into a tank of melted sulfur produces sulfur monochloride
+and this treated with the ethylene makes the "mustard." The final
+reaction was carried on at the Edgewood Arsenal in seven airtight tanks
+or "reactors," each having a capacity of 30,000 pounds. The ethylene gas
+being led into the tank and distributed through the liquid sulfur
+chloride by porous blocks or fine nozzles, the two chemicals combined to
+form what is officially named "di-chlor-di-ethyl-sulfide"
+(ClC_{2}H_{4}SC_{2}H_{4}Cl). This, however, is too big a mouthful, so
+even the chemists were glad to fall in with the commonalty and call it
+"mustard gas."
+
+The effectiveness of "mustard" depends upon its persistence. It is a
+stable liquid, evaporating slowly and not easily decomposed. It lingers
+about trenches and dugouts and impregnates soil and cloth for days. Gas
+masks do not afford complete protection, for even if they are
+impenetrable they must be taken off some time and the gas lies in wait
+for that time. In some cases the masks were worn continuously for twelve
+hours after the attack, but when they were removed the soldiers were
+overpowered by the poison. A place may seem to be free from it but when
+the sun heats up the ground the liquid volatilizes and the vapor soaks
+through the clothing. As the men become warmed up by work their skin is
+blistered, especially under the armpits. The mustard acts like steam,
+producing burns that range from a mere reddening to serious
+ulcerations, always painful and incapacitating, but if treated promptly
+in the hospital rarely causing death or permanent scars. The gas attacks
+the eyes, throat, nose and lungs and may lead to bronchitis or
+pneumonia. It was found necessary at the front to put all the clothing
+of the soldiers into the sterilizing ovens every night to remove all
+traces of mustard. General Johnson and his staff in the 77th Division
+were poisoned in their dugouts because they tried to alleviate the
+discomfort of their camp cots by bedding taken from a neighboring
+village that had been shelled the day before.
+
+Of the 925 cases requiring medical attention at the Edgewood Arsenal 674
+were due to mustard. During the month of August 3-1/2 per cent. of the
+mustard plant force were sent to the hospital each day on the average.
+But the record of the Edgewood Arsenal is a striking demonstration of
+what can be done in the prevention of industrial accidents by the
+exercise of scientific prudence. In spite of the fact that from three to
+eleven thousand men were employed at the plant for the year 1918 and
+turned out some twenty thousand tons of the most poisonous gases known
+to man, there were only three fatalities and not a single case of
+blindness.
+
+Besides the four toxic gases previously described, chlorine, phosgene,
+chlorpicrin and mustard, various other compounds have been and many
+others might be made. A list of those employed in the present war
+enumerates thirty, among them compounds of bromine, arsenic and cyanogen
+that may prove more formidable than any so far used. American chemists
+kept very mum during the war but occasionally one could not refrain
+from saying: "If the Kaiser knew what I know he would surrender
+unconditionally by telegraph." No doubt the science of chemical warfare
+is in its infancy and every foresighted power has concealed weapons of
+its own in reserve. One deadly compound, whose identity has not yet been
+disclosed, is known as "Lewisite," from Professor Lewis of Northwestern,
+who was manufacturing it at the rate of ten tons a day in the "Mouse
+Trap" stockade near Cleveland.
+
+Throughout the history of warfare the art of defense has kept pace with
+the art of offense and the courage of man has never failed, no matter to
+what new danger he was exposed. As each new gas employed by the enemy
+was detected it became the business of our chemists to discover some
+method of absorbing or neutralizing it. Porous charcoal, best made from
+such dense wood as coconut shells, was packed in the respirator box
+together with layers of such chemicals as will catch the gases to be
+expected. Charcoal absorbs large quantities of any gas. Soda lime and
+potassium permanganate and nickel salts were among the neutralizers
+used.
+
+The mask is fitted tightly about the face or over the head with rubber.
+The nostrils are kept closed with a clip so breathing must be done
+through the mouth and no air can be inhaled except that passing through
+the absorbent cylinder. Men within five miles of the front were required
+to wear the masks slung on their chests so they could be put on within
+six seconds. A well-made mask with a fresh box afforded almost complete
+immunity for a time and the soldiers learned within a few days to
+handle their masks adroitly. So the problem of defense against this new
+offensive was solved satisfactorily, while no such adequate protection
+against the older weapons of bayonet and shrapnel has yet been devised.
+
+Then the problem of the offense was to catch the opponent with his
+mask off or to make him take it off. Here the lachrymators and
+the sternutators, the tear gases and the sneeze gases, came into
+play. Phenylcarbylamine chloride would make the bravest soldier
+weep on the battlefield with the abandonment of a Greek hero.
+Di-phenyl-chloro-arsine would set him sneezing. The Germans alternated
+these with diabolical ingenuity so as to catch us unawares. Some shells
+gave off voluminous smoke or a vile stench without doing much harm, but
+by the time our men got used to these and grew careless about their
+masks a few shells of some extremely poisonous gas were mixed with them.
+
+The ideal gas for belligerent purposes would be odorless, colorless and
+invisible, toxic even when diluted by a million parts of air, not set on
+fire or exploded by the detonator of the shell, not decomposed by water,
+not readily absorbed, stable enough to stand storage for six months and
+capable of being manufactured by the thousands of tons. No one gas will
+serve all aims. For instance, phosgene being very volatile and quickly
+dissipated is thrown into trenches that are soon to be taken while
+mustard gas being very tenacious could not be employed in such a case
+for the trenches could not be occupied if they were captured.
+
+The extensive use of poison gas in warfare by all the belligerents is a
+vindication of the American protest at the Hague Conference against its
+prohibition. At the First Conference of 1899 Captain Mahan argued very
+sensibly that gas shells were no worse than other projectiles and might
+indeed prove more merciful and that it was illogical to prohibit a
+weapon merely because of its novelty. The British delegates voted with
+the Americans in opposition to the clause "the contracting parties agree
+to abstain from the use of projectiles the sole object of which is the
+diffusion of asphyxiating or deleterious gases." But both Great Britain
+and Germany later agreed to the provision. The use of poison gas by
+Germany without warning was therefore an act of treachery and a
+violation of her pledge, but the United States has consistently refused
+to bind herself to any such restriction. The facts reported by General
+Amos A. Fries, in command of the overseas branch of the American
+Chemical Warfare Service, give ample support to the American contention
+at The Hague:
+
+     Out of 1000 gas casualties there are from 30 to 40 fatalities,
+     while out of 1000 high explosive casualties the number of
+     fatalities run from 200 to 250. While exact figures are as yet
+     not available concerning the men permanently crippled or
+     blinded by high explosives one has only to witness the
+     debarkation of a shipload of troops to be convinced that the
+     number is very large. On the other hand there is, so far as
+     known at present, not a single case of permanent disability or
+     blindness among our troops due to gas and this in face of the
+     fact that the Germans used relatively large quantities of this
+     material.
+
+     In the light of these facts the prejudice against the use of
+     gas must gradually give way; for the statement made to the
+     effect that its use is contrary to the principles of humanity
+     will apply with far greater force to the use of high
+     explosives. As a matter of fact, for certain purposes toxic gas
+     is an ideal agent. For example, it is difficult to imagine any
+     agent more effective or more humane that may be used to render
+     an opposing battery ineffective or to protect retreating
+     troops.
+
+Captain Mahan's argument at The Hague against the proposed prohibition
+of poison gas is so cogent and well expressed that it has been quoted in
+treatises on international law ever since. These reasons were, briefly:
+
+     1. That no shell emitting such gases is as yet in practical use
+     or has undergone adequate experiment; consequently, a vote
+     taken now would be taken in ignorance of the facts as to
+     whether the results would be of a decisive character or whether
+     injury in excess of that necessary to attain the end of
+     warfare--the immediate disabling of the enemy--would be
+     inflicted.
+
+     2. That the reproach of cruelty and perfidy, addressed against
+     these supposed shells, was equally uttered formerly against
+     firearms and torpedoes, both of which are now employed without
+     scruple. Until we know the effects of such asphyxiating shells,
+     there was no saying whether they would be more or less merciful
+     than missiles now permitted. That it was illogical, and not
+     demonstrably humane, to be tender about asphyxiating men with
+     gas, when all are prepared to admit that it was allowable to
+     blow the bottom out of an ironclad at midnight, throwing four
+     or five hundred into the sea, to be choked by water, with
+     scarcely the remotest chance of escape.
+
+As Captain Mahan says, the same objection has been raised at the
+introduction of each new weapon of war, even though it proved to be no
+more cruel than the old. The modern rifle ball, swift and small and
+sterilized by heat, does not make so bad a wound as the ancient sword
+and spear, but we all remember how gunpowder was regarded by the dandies
+of Hotspur's time:
+
+  And it was great pity, so it was,
+  This villainous saltpeter should be digg'd
+  Out of the bowels of the harmless earth
+  Which many a good tall fellow had destroy'd
+  So cowardly; and but for these vile guns
+  He would himself have been a soldier.
+
+The real reason for the instinctive aversion manifested against any new
+arm or mode of attack is that it reveals to us the intrinsic horror of
+war. We naturally revolt against premeditated homicide, but we have
+become so accustomed to the sword and latterly to the rifle that they do
+not shock us as they ought when we think of what they are made for. The
+Constitution of the United States prohibits the infliction of "cruel and
+unusual punishments." The two adjectives were apparently used almost
+synonymously, as though any "unusual" punishment were necessarily
+"cruel," and so indeed it strikes us. But our ingenious lawyers were
+able to persuade the courts that electrocution, though unknown to the
+Fathers and undeniably "unusual," was not unconstitutional. Dumdum
+bullets are rightfully ruled out because they inflict frightful and
+often incurable wounds, and the aim of humane warfare is to disable the
+enemy, not permanently to injure him.
+
+[Illustration: From "America's Munitions" THE CHLORPICRIN PLANT AT THE
+EDGEWOOD ARSENAL
+
+From these stills, filled with a mixture of bleaching powder, lime, and
+picric acid, the poisonous gas, chlorpicrin, distills off. This plant
+produced 31 tons in one day]
+
+[Illustration: Courtesy of the Metal and Thermit Corporation, N.Y.
+
+REPAIRING THE BROKEN STERN POST OF THE U.S.S. NORTHERN PACIFIC, THE
+BIGGEST MARINE WELD IN THE WORLD
+
+On the right the fractured stern post is shown. On the left it is being
+mended by means of thermit. Two crucibles each containing 700 pounds of
+the thermit mixture are seen on the sides of the vessel. From the bottom
+of these the melted steel flowed down to fill the fracture]
+
+In spite of the opposition of the American and British delegates the
+First Hague Conference adopted the clause, "The contracting powers agree
+to abstain from the use of projectiles the [sole] object of which is the
+diffusion of asphyxiating or deleterious gases." The word "sole"
+(_unique_) which appears in the original French text of The Hague
+convention is left out of the official English translation. This is a
+strange omission considering that the French and British defended their
+use of explosives which diffuse asphyxiating and deleterious gases on
+the ground that this was not the "sole" purpose of the bombs but merely
+an accidental effect of the nitric powder used.
+
+The Hague Congress of 1907 placed in its rules for war: "It is expressly
+forbidden to employ poisons or poisonous weapons." But such attempts to
+rule out new and more effective means of warfare are likely to prove
+futile in any serious conflict and the restriction gives the advantage
+to the most unscrupulous side. We Americans, if ever we give our assent
+to such an agreement, would of course keep it, but our enemy--whoever he
+may be in the future--will be, as he always has been, utterly without
+principle and will not hesitate to employ any weapon against us.
+Besides, as the Germans held, chemical warfare favors the army that is
+most intelligent, resourceful and disciplined and the nation that stands
+highest in science and industry. This advantage, let us hope, will be on
+our side.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+PRODUCTS OF THE ELECTRIC FURNACE
+
+
+The control of man over the materials of nature has been vastly enhanced
+by the recent extension of the range of temperature at his command. When
+Fahrenheit stuck the bulb of his thermometer into a mixture of snow and
+salt he thought he had reached the nadir of temperature, so he scratched
+a mark on the tube where the mercury stood and called it zero. But we
+know that absolute zero, the total absence of heat, is 459 of
+Fahrenheit's degrees lower than his zero point. The modern scientist can
+get close to that lowest limit by making use of the cooling by the
+expansion principle. He first liquefies air under pressure and then
+releasing the pressure allows it to boil off. A tube of hydrogen
+immersed in the liquid air as it evaporates is cooled down until it can
+be liquefied. Then the boiling hydrogen is used to liquefy helium, and
+as this boils off it lowers the temperature to within three or four
+degrees of absolute zero.
+
+The early metallurgist had no hotter a fire than he could make by
+blowing charcoal with a bellows. This was barely enough for the smelting
+of iron. But by the bringing of two carbon rods together, as in the
+electric arc light, we can get enough heat to volatilize the carbon at
+the tips, and this means over 7000 degrees Fahrenheit. By putting a
+pressure of twenty atmospheres onto the arc light we can raise it to
+perhaps 14,000 degrees, which is 3000 degrees hotter than the sun. This
+gives the modern man a working range of about 14,500 degrees, so it is
+no wonder that he can perform miracles.
+
+When a builder wants to make an old house over into a new one he takes
+it apart brick by brick and stone by stone, then he puts them together
+in such new fashion as he likes. The electric furnace enables the
+chemist to take his materials apart in the same way. As the temperature
+rises the chemical and physical forces that hold a body together
+gradually weaken. First the solid loosens up and becomes a liquid, then
+this breaks bonds and becomes a gas. Compounds break up into their
+elements. The elemental molecules break up into their component atoms
+and finally these begin to throw off corpuscles of negative electricity
+eighteen hundred times smaller than the smallest atom. These electrons
+appear to be the building stones of the universe. No indication of any
+smaller units has been discovered, although we need not assume that in
+the electron science has delivered, what has been called, its
+"ultim-atom." The Greeks called the elemental particles of matter
+"atoms" because they esteemed them "indivisible," but now in the light
+of the X-ray we can witness the disintegration of the atom into
+electrons. All the chemical and physical properties of matter, except
+perhaps weight, seem to depend upon the number and movement of the
+negative and positive electrons and by their rearrangement one element
+may be transformed into another.
+
+So the electric furnace, where the highest attainable temperature is
+combined with the divisive and directive force of the current, is a
+magical machine for accomplishment of the metamorphoses desired by the
+creative chemist. A hundred years ago Davy, by dipping the poles of his
+battery into melted soda lye, saw forming on one of them a shining
+globule like quicksilver. It was the metal sodium, never before seen by
+man. Nowadays this process of electrolysis (electric loosening) is
+carried out daily by the ton at Niagara.
+
+The reverse process, electro-synthesis (electric combining), is equally
+simple and even more important. By passing a strong electric current
+through a mixture of lime and coke the metal calcium disengages itself
+from the oxygen of the lime and attaches itself to the carbon. Or, to
+put it briefly,
+
+  CaO  +  3C   -->   CaC_{2} + CO
+  lime   coke       calcium    carbon
+                      carbide    monoxide
+
+This reaction is of peculiar importance because it bridges the gulf
+between the organic and inorganic worlds. It was formerly supposed that
+the substances found in plants and animals, mostly complex compounds of
+carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, could only be produced by "vital forces."
+If this were true it meant that chemistry was limited to the mineral
+kingdom and to the extraction of such carbon compounds as happened to
+exist ready formed in the vegetable and animal kingdoms. But fortunately
+this barrier to human achievement proved purely illusory. The organic
+field, once man had broken into it, proved easier to work in than the
+inorganic.
+
+But it must be confessed that man is dreadfully clumsy about it yet. He
+takes a thousand horsepower engine and an electric furnace at several
+thousand degrees to get carbon into combination with hydrogen while the
+little green leaf in the sunshine does it quietly without getting hot
+about it. Evidently man is working as wastefully as when he used a
+thousand slaves to drag a stone to the pyramid or burned down a house to
+roast a pig. Not until his laboratory is as cool and calm and
+comfortable as the forest and the field can the chemist call himself
+completely successful.
+
+But in spite of his clumsiness the chemist is actually making things
+that he wants and cannot get elsewhere. The calcium carbide that he
+manufactures from inorganic material serves as the raw material for
+producing all sorts of organic compounds. The electric furnace was first
+employed on a large scale by the Cowles Electric Smelting and Aluminum
+Company at Cleveland in 1885. On the dump were found certain lumps of
+porous gray stone which, dropped into water, gave off a gas that
+exploded at touch of a match with a splendid bang and flare. This gas
+was acetylene, and we can represent the reaction thus:
+
+  CaC_{2} + 2 H_{2}O --> C_{2}H_{2} + CaO_{2}H_{2}
+
+  calcium carbide _added_ to water _
+    gives_ acetylene _and_ slaked lime
+
+We are all familiar with this reaction now, for it is acetylene that
+gives the dazzling light of the automobiles and of the automatic signal
+buoys of the seacoast. When burned with pure oxygen instead of air it
+gives the hottest of chemical flames, hotter even than the oxy-hydrogen
+blowpipe. For although a given weight of hydrogen will give off more
+heat when it burns than carbon will, yet acetylene will give off more
+heat than either of its elements or both of them when they are separate.
+This is because acetylene has stored up heat in its formation instead of
+giving it off as in most reactions, or to put it in chemical language,
+acetylene is an endothermic compound. It has required energy to bring
+the H and the C together, therefore it does not require energy to
+separate them, but, on the contrary, energy is released when they are
+separated. That is to say, acetylene is explosive not only when mixed
+with air as coal gas is but by itself. Under a suitable impulse
+acetylene will break up into its original carbon and hydrogen with great
+violence. It explodes with twice as much force without air as ordinary
+coal gas with air. It forms an explosive compound with copper, so it has
+to be kept out of contact with brass tubes and stopcocks. But compressed
+in steel cylinders and dissolved in acetone, it is safe and commonly
+used for welding and melting. It is a marvelous though not an unusual
+sight on city streets to see a man with blue glasses on cutting down
+through a steel rail with an oxy-acetylene blowpipe as easily as a
+carpenter saws off a board. With such a flame he can carve out a pattern
+in a steel plate in a way that reminds me of the days when I used to
+make brackets with a scroll saw out of cigar boxes. The torch will
+travel through a steel plate an inch or two thick at a rate of six to
+ten inches a minute.
+
+[Illustration: Courtesy of the Carborundum Company, Niagara Falls
+
+MAKING ALOXITE IN THE ELECTRIC FURNACES BY FUSING COKE AND BAUXITE
+
+In the background are the circular furnaces. In the foreground are the
+fused masses of the product]
+
+[Illustration: Courtesy of the Carborundum Co., Niagara Falls
+
+A BLOCK OF CARBORUNDUM CRYSTALS]
+
+[Illustration: Courtesy of the Carborundum Co., Niagara Falls
+
+MAKING CARBORUNDUM IN THE ELECTRIC FURNACE
+
+At the end may be seen the attachments for the wires carrying the
+electric current and on the side the flames from the burning carbon.]
+
+The temperatures attainable with various fuels in the compound blowpipe
+are said to be:
+
+
+  Acetylene with oxygen        7878 deg. F.
+  Hydrogen with oxygen         6785 deg. F.
+  Coal gas with oxygen         6575 deg. F.
+  Gasoline with oxygen         5788 deg. F.
+
+If we compare the formula of acetylene, C_{2}H_{2} with that of
+ethylene, C_{2}H_{4}, or with ethane, C_{2}H_{6}, we see that acetylene
+could take on two or four more atoms. It is evidently what the chemists
+call an "unsaturated" compound, one that has not reached its limit of
+hydrogenation. It is therefore a very active and energetic compound,
+ready to pick up on the slightest instigation hydrogen or oxygen or
+chlorine or any other elements that happen to be handy. This is why it
+is so useful as a starting point for synthetic chemistry.
+
+To build up from this simple substance, acetylene, the higher compounds
+of carbon and oxygen it is necessary to call in the aid of that
+mysterious agency, the catalyst. Acetylene is not always acted upon by
+water, as we know, for we see it bubbling up through the water when
+prepared from the carbide. But if to the water be added a little acid
+and a mercury salt, the acetylene gas will unite with the water forming
+a new compound, acetaldehyde. We can show the change most simply in this
+fashion:
+
+  C_{2}H_{2} + H_{2}O --> C_{2}H_{4}O
+
+  acetylene _added to_ water _forms_ acetaldehyde
+
+Acetaldehyde is not of much importance in itself, but is useful as a
+transition. If its vapor mixed with hydrogen is passed over finely
+divided nickel, serving as a catalyst, the two unite and we have
+alcohol, according to this reaction:
+
+  C_{2}H_{4}O + H_{2} --> C_{2}H_{6}O
+
+  acetaldehyde _added to_ hydrogen _forms_ alcohol
+
+Alcohol we are all familiar with--some of us too familiar, but the
+prohibition laws will correct that. The point to be noted is that the
+alcohol we have made from such unpromising materials as limestone and
+coal is exactly the same alcohol as is obtained by the fermentation of
+fruits and grains by the yeast plant as in wine and beer. It is not a
+substitute or imitation. It is not the wood spirits (methyl alcohol,
+CH_{4}O), produced by the destructive distillation of wood, equally
+serviceable as a solvent or fuel, but undrinkable and poisonous.
+
+Now, as we all know, cider and wine when exposed to the air gradually
+turn into vinegar, that is, by the growth of bacteria the alcohol is
+oxidized to acetic acid. We can, if we like, dispense with the bacteria
+and speed up the process by employing a catalyst. Acetaldehyde, which is
+halfway between alcohol and acid, may also be easily oxidized to acetic
+acid. The relationship is readily seen by this:
+
+  C{2}H_{6}O -->  CC_{2}H_{4}O --> C_{2}H_{4}O_{3}
+
+  alcohol         acetaldehyde      acetic acid
+
+Acetic acid, familiar to us in a diluted and flavored form as vinegar,
+is when concentrated of great value in industry, especially as a
+solvent. I have already referred to its use in combination with
+cellulose as a "dope" for varnishing airplane canvas or making
+non-inflammable film for motion pictures. Its combination with lime,
+calcium acetate, when heated gives acetone, which, as may be seen from
+its formula (C_{3}H_{6}O) is closely related to the other compounds we
+have been considering, but it is neither an alcohol nor an acid. It is
+extensively employed as a solvent.
+
+Acetone is not only useful for dissolving solids but it will under
+pressure dissolve many times its volume of gaseous acetylene. This is a
+convenient way of transporting and handling acetylene for lighting or
+welding.
+
+If instead of simply mixing the acetone and acetylene in a solution we
+combine them chemically we can get isoprene, which is the mother
+substance of ordinary India rubber. From acetone also is made the "war
+rubber" of the Germans (methyl rubber), which I have mentioned in a
+previous chapter. The Germans had been getting about half their supply
+of acetone from American acetate of lime and this was of course shut
+off. That which was produced in Germany by the distillation of beech
+wood was not even enough for the high explosives needed at the front. So
+the Germans resorted to rotting potatoes--or rather let us say, since it
+sounds better--to the cultivation of _Bacillus macerans_. This
+particular bacillus converts the starch of the potato into two-thirds
+alcohol and one-third acetone. But soon potatoes got too scarce to be
+used up in this fashion, so the Germans turned to calcium carbide as a
+source of acetone and before the war ended they had a factory capable of
+manufacturing 2000 tons of methyl rubber a year. This shows the
+advantage of having several strings to a bow.
+
+The reason why acetylene is such an active and acquisitive thing the
+chemist explains, or rather expresses, by picturing its structure in
+this shape:
+
+  H-C[triple bond]C-H
+
+Now the carbon atoms are holding each other's hands because they have
+nothing else to do. There are no other elements around to hitch on to.
+But the two carbons of acetylene readily loosen up and keeping the
+connection between them by a single bond reach out in this fashion with
+their two disengaged arms and grab whatever alien atoms happen to be in
+the vicinity:
+
+    | |
+  H-C-C-H
+    | |
+
+Carbon atoms belong to the quadrumani like the monkeys, so they are
+peculiarly fitted to forming chains and rings. This accounts for the
+variety and complexity of the carbon compounds.
+
+So when acetylene gas mixed with other gases is passed over a catalyst,
+such as a heated mass of iron ore or clay (hydrates or silicates of iron
+or aluminum), it forms all sorts of curious combinations. In the
+presence of steam we may get such simple compounds as acetic acid,
+acetone and the like. But when three acetylene molecules join to form a
+ring of six carbon atoms we get compounds of the benzene series such as
+were described in the chapter on the coal-tar colors. If ammonia is
+mixed with acetylene we may get rings with the nitrogen atom in place of
+one of the carbons, like the pyridins and quinolins, pungent bases such
+as are found in opium and tobacco. Or if hydrogen sulfide is mixed with
+the acetylene we may get thiophenes, which have sulfur in the ring. So,
+starting with the simple combination of two atoms of carbon with two of
+hydrogen, we can get directly by this single process some of the most
+complicated compounds of the organic world, as well as many others not
+found in nature.
+
+In the development of the electric furnace America played a pioneer
+part. Provost Smith of the University of Pennsylvania, who is the best
+authority on the history of chemistry in America, claims for Robert
+Hare, a Philadelphia chemist born in 1781, the honor of constructing the
+first electrical furnace. With this crude apparatus and with no greater
+electromotive force than could be attained from a voltaic pile, he
+converted charcoal into graphite, volatilized phosphorus from its
+compounds, isolated metallic calcium and synthesized calcium carbide. It
+is to Hare also that we owe the invention in 1801 of the oxy-hydrogen
+blowpipe, which nowadays is used with acetylene as well as hydrogen.
+With this instrument he was able to fuse strontia and volatilize
+platinum.
+
+But the electrical furnace could not be used on a commercial scale until
+the dynamo replaced the battery as a source of electricity. The
+industrial development of the electrical furnace centered about the
+search for a cheap method of preparing aluminum. This is the metallic
+base of clay and therefore is common enough. But clay, as we know from
+its use in making porcelain, is very infusible and difficult to
+decompose. Sixty years ago aluminum was priced at $140 a pound, but one
+would have had difficulty in buying such a large quantity as a pound at
+any price. At international expositions a small bar of it might be seen
+in a case labeled "silver from clay." Mechanics were anxious to get the
+new metal, for it was light and untarnishable, but the metallurgists
+could not furnish it to them at a low enough price. In order to extract
+it from clay a more active metal, sodium, was essential. But sodium also
+was rare and expensive. In those days a professor of chemistry used to
+keep a little stick of it in a bottle under kerosene and once a year he
+whittled off a piece the size of a pea and threw it into water to show
+the class how it sizzled and gave off hydrogen. The way to get cheaper
+aluminum was, it seemed, to get cheaper sodium and Hamilton Young
+Castner set himself at this problem. He was a Brooklyn boy, a student of
+Chandler's at Columbia. You can see the bronze tablet in his honor at
+the entrance of Havemeyer Hall. In 1886 he produced metallic sodium by
+mixing caustic soda with iron and charcoal in an iron pot and heating in
+a gas furnace. Before this experiment sodium sold at $2 a pound; after
+it sodium sold at twenty cents a pound.
+
+But although Castner had succeeded in his experiment he was defeated in
+his object. For while he was perfecting the sodium process for making
+aluminum the electrolytic process for getting aluminum directly was
+discovered in Oberlin. So the $250,000 plant of the "Aluminium Company
+Ltd." that Castner had got erected at Birmingham, England, did not make
+aluminum at all, but produced sodium for other purposes instead. Castner
+then turned his attention to the electrolytic method of producing sodium
+by the use of the power of Niagara Falls, electric power. Here in 1894
+he succeeded in separating common salt into its component elements,
+chlorine and sodium, by passing the electric current through brine and
+collecting the sodium in the mercury floor of the cell. The sodium by
+the action of water goes into caustic soda. Nowadays sodium and chlorine
+and their components are made in enormous quantities by the
+decomposition of salt. The United States Government in 1918 procured
+nearly 4,000,000 pounds of chlorine for gas warfare.
+
+The discovery of the electrical process of making aluminum that
+displaced the sodium method was due to Charles M. Hall. He was the son
+of a Congregational minister and as a boy took a fancy to chemistry
+through happening upon an old text-book of that science in his father's
+library. He never knew who the author was, for the cover and title page
+had been torn off. The obstacle in the way of the electrolytic
+production of aluminum was, as I have said, because its compounds were
+so hard to melt that the current could not pass through. In 1886, when
+Hall was twenty-two, he solved the problem in the laboratory of Oberlin
+College with no other apparatus than a small crucible, a gasoline burner
+to heat it with and a galvanic battery to supply the electricity. He
+found that a Greenland mineral, known as cryolite (a double fluoride of
+sodium and aluminum), was readily fused and would dissolve alumina
+(aluminum oxide). When an electric current was passed through the melted
+mass the metal aluminum would collect at one of the poles.
+
+In working out the process and defending his claims Hall used up all his
+own money, his brother's and his uncle's, but he won out in the end and
+Judge Taft held that his patent had priority over the French claim of
+Herault. On his death, a few years ago, Hall left his large fortune to
+his Alma Mater, Oberlin.
+
+Two other young men from Ohio, Alfred and Eugene Cowles, with whom Hall
+was for a time associated, wore the first to develop the wide
+possibilities of the electric furnace on a commercial scale. In 1885
+they started the Cowles Electric Smelting and Aluminum Company at
+Lockport, New York, using Niagara power. The various aluminum bronzes
+made by absorbing the electrolyzed aluminum in copper attracted
+immediate attention by their beauty and usefulness in electrical work
+and later the company turned out other products besides aluminum, such
+as calcium carbide, phosphorus, and carborundum. They got carborundum as
+early as 1885 but miscalled it "crystallized silicon," so its
+introduction was left to E.A. Acheson, who was a graduate of Edison's
+laboratory. In 1891 he packed clay and charcoal into an iron bowl,
+connected it to a dynamo and stuck into the mixture an electric light
+carbon connected to the other pole of the dynamo. When he pulled out the
+rod he found its end encrusted with glittering crystals of an unknown
+substance. They were blue and black and iridescent, exceedingly hard and
+very beautiful. He sold them at first by the carat at a rate that would
+amount to $560 a pound. They were as well worth buying as diamond dust,
+but those who purchased them must have regretted it, for much finer
+crystals were soon on sale at ten cents a pound. The mysterious
+substance turned out to be a compound of carbon and silicon, the
+simplest possible compound, one atom of each, CSi. Acheson set up a
+factory at Niagara, where he made it in ten-ton batches. The furnace
+consisted simply of a brick box fifteen feet long and seven feet wide
+and deep, with big carbon electrodes at the ends. Between them was
+packed a mixture of coke to supply the carbon, sand to supply the
+silicon, sawdust to make the mass porous and salt to make it fusible.
+
+[Illustration: The first American electric furnace, constructed by
+Robert Hare of Philadelphia. From "Chemistry in America," by Edgar Fahs
+Smith]
+
+The substance thus produced at Niagara Falls is known as "carborundum"
+south of the American-Canadian boundary and as "crystolon" north of this
+line, as "carbolon" by another firm, and as "silicon carbide" by
+chemists the world over. Since it is next to the diamond in hardness it
+takes off metal faster than emery (aluminum oxide), using less power and
+wasting less heat in futile fireworks. It is used for grindstones of
+all sizes, including those the dentist uses on your teeth. It has
+revolutionized shop-practice, for articles can be ground into shape
+better and quicker than they can be cut. What is more, the artificial
+abrasives do not injure the lungs of the operatives like sandstone. The
+output of artificial abrasives in the United States and Canada for 1917
+was:
+
+                         Tons        Value
+  Silicon carbide       8,323       $1,074,152
+  Aluminum oxide       48,463        6,969,387
+
+A new use for carborundum was found during the war when Uncle Sam
+assumed the role of Jove as "cloud-compeller." Acting on carborundum
+with chlorine--also, you remember, a product of electrical
+dissolution--the chlorine displaces the carbon, forming silicon
+tetra-chloride (SiCl_{4}), a colorless liquid resembling chloroform.
+When this comes in contact with moist air it gives off thick, white
+fumes, for water decomposes it, giving a white powder (silicon
+hydroxide) and hydrochloric acid. If ammonia is present the acid will
+unite with it, giving further white fumes of the salt, ammonium
+chloride. So a mixture of two parts of silicon chloride with one part of
+dry ammonia was used in the war to produce smoke-screens for the
+concealment of the movements of troops, batteries and vessels or put in
+shells so the outlook could see where they burst and so get the range.
+Titanium tetra-chloride, a similar substance, proved 50 per cent. better
+than silicon, but phosphorus--which also we get from the electric
+furnace--was the most effective mistifier of all.
+
+Before the introduction of the artificial abrasives fine grinding was
+mostly done by emery, which is an impure form of aluminum oxide found in
+nature. A purer form is made from the mineral bauxite by driving off its
+combined water. Bauxite is the ore from which is made the pure aluminum
+oxide used in the electric furnace for the production of metallic
+aluminum. Formerly we imported a large part of our bauxite from France,
+but when the war shut off this source we developed our domestic fields
+in Arkansas, Alabama and Georgia, and these are now producing half a
+million tons a year. Bauxite simply fused in the electric furnace makes
+a better abrasive than the natural emery or corundum, and it is sold for
+this purpose under the name of "aloxite," "alundum," "exolon," "lionite"
+or "coralox." When the fused bauxite is worked up with a bonding
+material into crucibles or muffles and baked in a kiln it forms the
+alundum refractory ware. Since alundum is porous and not attacked by
+acids it is used for filtering hot and corrosive liquids that would eat
+up filter-paper. Carborundum or crystolon is also made up into
+refractory ware for high temperature work. When the fused mass of the
+carborundum furnace is broken up there is found surrounding the
+carborundum core a similar substance though not quite so hard and
+infusible, known as "carborundum sand" or "siloxicon." This is mixed
+with fireclay and used for furnace linings.
+
+Many new forms of refractories have come into use to meet the demands of
+the new high temperature work. The essentials are that it should not
+melt or crumble at high heat and should not expand and contract greatly
+under changes of temperature (low coefficient of thermal expansion).
+Whether it is desirable that it should heat through readily or slowly
+(coefficient of thermal conductivity) depends on whether it is wanted as
+a crucible or as a furnace lining. Lime (calcium oxide) fuses only at
+the highest heat of the electric furnace, but it breaks down into dust.
+Magnesia (magnesium oxide) is better and is most extensively employed.
+For every ton of steel produced five pounds of magnesite is needed.
+Formerly we imported 90 per cent. of our supply from Austria, but now we
+get it from California and Washington. In 1913 the American production
+of magnesite was only 9600 tons. In 1918 it was 225,000. Zirconia
+(zirconium oxide) is still more refractory and in spite of its greater
+cost zirkite is coming into use as a lining for electric furnaces.
+
+Silicon is next to oxygen the commonest element in the world. It forms a
+quarter of the earth's crust, yet it is unfamiliar to most of us. That
+is because it is always found combined with oxygen in the form of silica
+as quartz crystal or sand. This used to be considered too refractory to
+be blown but is found to be easily manipulable at the high temperatures
+now at the command of the glass-blower. So the chemist rejoices in
+flasks that he can heat red hot in the Bunsen burner and then plunge
+into ice water without breaking, and the cook can bake and serve in a
+dish of "pyrex," which is 80 per cent. silica.
+
+At the beginning of the twentieth century minute specimens of silicon
+were sold as laboratory curiosities at the price of $100 an ounce. Two
+years later it was turned out by the barrelful at Niagara as an
+accidental by-product and could not find a market at ten cents a pound.
+Silicon from the electric furnace appears in the form of hard,
+glittering metallic crystals.
+
+An alloy of iron and silicon, ferro-silicon, made by heating a mixture
+of iron ore, sand and coke in the electrical furnace, is used as a
+deoxidizing agent in the manufacture of steel.
+
+Since silicon has been robbed with difficulty of its oxygen it takes it
+on again with great avidity. This has been made use of in the making of
+hydrogen. A mixture of silicon (or of the ferro-silicon alloy containing
+90 per cent. of silicon) with soda and slaked lime is inert, compact and
+can be transported to any point where hydrogen is needed, say at a
+battle front. Then the "hydrogenite," as the mixture is named, is
+ignited by a hot iron ball and goes off like thermit with the production
+of great heat and the evolution of a vast volume of hydrogen gas. Or the
+ferro-silicon may be simply burned in an atmosphere of steam in a closed
+tank after ignition with a pinch of gunpowder. The iron and the silicon
+revert to their oxides while the hydrogen of the water is set free. The
+French "silikol" method consists in treating silicon with a 40 per cent.
+solution of soda.
+
+Another source of hydrogen originating with the electric furnace is
+"hydrolith," which consists of calcium hydride. Metallic calcium is
+prepared from lime in the electric furnace. Then pieces of the calcium
+are spread out in an oven heated by electricity and a current of dry
+hydrogen passed through. The gas is absorbed by the metal, forming the
+hydride (CaH_{2}). This is packed up in cans and when hydrogen is
+desired it is simply dropped into water, when it gives off the gas just
+as calcium carbide gives off acetylene.
+
+This last reaction was also used in Germany for filling Zeppelins. For
+calcium carbide is convenient and portable and acetylene, when it is
+once started, as by an electric shock, decomposes spontaneously by its
+own internal heat into hydrogen and carbon. The latter is left as a
+fine, pure lampblack, suitable for printer's ink.
+
+Napoleon, who was always on the lookout for new inventions that could be
+utilized for military purposes, seized immediately upon the balloon as
+an observation station. Within a few years after the first ascent had
+been made in Paris Napoleon took balloons and apparatus for generating
+hydrogen with him on his "archeological expedition" to Egypt in which he
+hoped to conquer Asia. But the British fleet in the Mediterranean put a
+stop to this experiment by intercepting the ship, and military aviation
+waited until the Great War for its full development. This caused a
+sudden demand for immense quantities of hydrogen and all manner of means
+was taken to get it. Water is easily decomposed into hydrogen and oxygen
+by passing an electric current through it. In various electrolytical
+processes hydrogen has been a wasted by-product since the balloon demand
+was slight and it was more bother than it was worth to collect and
+purify the hydrogen. Another way of getting hydrogen in quantity is by
+passing steam over red-hot coke. This produces the blue water-gas, which
+contains about 50 per cent. hydrogen, 40 per cent. carbon monoxide and
+the rest nitrogen and carbon dioxide. The last is removed by running the
+mixed gases through lime. Then the nitrogen and carbon monoxide are
+frozen out in an air-liquefying apparatus and the hydrogen escapes to
+the storage tank. The liquefied carbon monoxide, allowed to regain its
+gaseous form, is used in an internal combustion engine to run the plant.
+
+There are then many ways of producing hydrogen, but it is so light and
+bulky that it is difficult to get it where it is wanted. The American
+Government in the war made use of steel cylinders each holding 161 cubic
+feet of the gas under a pressure of 2000 pounds per square inch. Even
+the hydrogen used by the troops in France was shipped from America in
+this form. For field use the ferro-silicon and soda process was adopted.
+A portable generator of this type was capable of producing 10,000 cubic
+feet of the gas per hour.
+
+The discovery by a Kansas chemist of natural sources of helium may make
+it possible to free ballooning of its great danger, for helium is
+non-inflammable and almost as light as hydrogen.
+
+Other uses of hydrogen besides ballooning have already been referred to
+in other chapters. It is combined with nitrogen to form synthetic
+ammonia. It is combined with oxygen in the oxy-hydrogen blowpipe to
+produce heat. It is combined with vegetable and animal oils to convert
+them into solid fats. There is also the possibility of using it as a
+fuel in the internal combustion engine in place of gasoline, but for
+this purpose we must find some way of getting hydrogen portable or
+producible in a compact form.
+
+Aluminum, like silicon, sodium and calcium, has been rescued by violence
+from its attachment to oxygen and like these metals it reverts with
+readiness to its former affinity. Dr. Goldschmidt made use of this
+reaction in his thermit process. Powdered aluminum is mixed with iron
+oxide (rust). If the mixture is heated at any point a furious struggle
+takes place throughout the whole mass between the iron and the aluminum
+as to which metal shall get the oxygen, and the aluminum always comes
+out ahead. The temperature runs up to some 6000 degrees Fahrenheit
+within thirty seconds and the freed iron, completely liquefied, runs
+down into the bottom of the crucible, where it may be drawn off by
+opening a trap door. The newly formed aluminum oxide (alumina) floats as
+slag on top. The applications of the thermit process are innumerable.
+If, for instance, it is desired to mend a broken rail or crank shaft
+without moving it from its place, the two ends are brought together or
+fixed at the proper distance apart. A crucible filled with the thermit
+mixture is set up above the joint and the thermit ignited with a priming
+of aluminum and barium peroxide to start it off. The barium peroxide
+having a superabundance of oxygen gives it up readily and the aluminum
+thus encouraged attacks the iron oxide and robs it of its oxygen. As
+soon as the iron is melted it is run off through the bottom of the
+crucible and fills the space between the rail ends, being kept from
+spreading by a mold of refractory material such as magnesite. The two
+ends of the rail are therefore joined by a section of the same size,
+shape, substance and strength as themselves. The same process can be
+used for mending a fracture or supplying a missing fragment of a steel
+casting of any size, such as a ship's propeller or a cogwheel.
+
+[Illustration: TYPES OF GAS MASK USED BY AMERICA, THE ALLIES, AND
+GERMANY DURING THE WAR
+
+In the top row are the American masks, chronologically, from left to
+right: U.S. Navy mask (obsolete), U.S. Navy mask (final type), U.S. Army
+box respirator (used throughout the war), U.S.R.F.K. respirator,
+U.S.A.T. respirator (an all-rubber mask), U.S.K.T. respirator (a sewed
+fabric mask), and U.S. "Model 1919," ready for production when the
+armistice was signed. In the middle row, left to right, are: British
+veil (the original emergency mask used in April, 1915), British P.H.
+helmet (the next emergency mask), British box respirator (standard
+British army type), French M2 mask (original type), French Tissot
+artillery mask, and French A.R.S. mask (latest type). In the front row:
+the latest German mask, the Russian mask, Italian mask, British motor
+corps mask, U.S. rear area emergency respirator, and U.S. Connell mask]
+
+[Illustration: PUMPING MELTED WHITE PHOSPHORUS INTO HAND GRENADES
+FILLED WITH WATER--EDGEWOOD ARSENAL]
+
+[Illustration: FILLING SHELL WITH "MUSTARD GAS"
+
+Empty shells are being placed on small trucks to be run into the filling
+chamber. The large truck in the foreground contains loaded shell]
+
+For smaller work thermit has two rivals, the oxy-acetylene torch and
+electric welding. The former has been described and the latter is rather
+out of the range of this volume, although I may mention that in the
+latter part of 1918 there was launched from a British shipyard the first
+rivotless steel vessel. In this the steel plates forming the shell,
+bulkheads and floors are welded instead of being fastened together by
+rivets. There are three methods of doing this depending upon the
+thickness of the plates and the sort of strain they are subject to. The
+plates may be overlapped and tacked together at intervals by pressing
+the two electrodes on opposite sides of the same point until the spot is
+sufficiently heated to fuse together the plates here. Or roller
+electrodes may be drawn slowly along the line of the desired weld,
+fusing the plates together continuously as they go. Or, thirdly, the
+plates may be butt-welded by being pushed together edge to edge without
+overlapping and the electric current being passed from one plate to the
+other heats up the joint where the conductivity is interrupted.
+
+It will be observed that the thermit process is essentially like the
+ordinary blast furnace process of smelting iron and other metals except
+that aluminum is used instead of carbon to take the oxygen away from the
+metal in the ore. This has an advantage in case carbon-free metals are
+desired and the process is used for producing manganese, tungsten,
+titanium, molybdenum, vanadium and their allows with iron and copper.
+
+During the war thermit found a new and terrible employment, as it was
+used by the airmen for setting buildings on fire and exploding
+ammunition dumps. The German incendiary bombs consisted of a perforated
+steel nose-piece, a tail to keep it falling straight and a cylindrical
+body which contained a tube of thermit packed around with mineral wax
+containing potassium perchlorate. The fuse was ignited as the missile
+was released and the thermit, as it heated up, melted the wax and
+allowed it to flow out together with the liquid iron through the holes
+in the nose-piece. The American incendiary bombs were of a still more
+malignant type. They weighed about forty pounds apiece and were charged
+with oil emulsion, thermit and metallic sodium. Sodium decomposes water
+so that if any attempt were made to put out with a hose a fire started
+by one of these bombs the stream of water would be instantaneously
+changed into a jet of blazing hydrogen.
+
+Besides its use in combining and separating different elements the
+electric furnace is able to change a single element into its various
+forms. Carbon, for instance, is found in three very distinct forms: in
+hard, transparent and colorless crystals as the diamond, in black,
+opaque, metallic scales as graphite, and in shapeless masses and powder
+as charcoal, coke, lampblack, and the like. In the intense heat of the
+electric arc these forms are convertible one into the other according to
+the conditions. Since the third form is the cheapest the object is to
+change it into one of the other two. Graphite, plumbago or "blacklead,"
+as it is still sometimes called, is not found in many places and more
+rarely found pure. The supply was not equal to the demand until Acheson
+worked out the process of making it by packing powdered anthracite
+between the electrodes of his furnace. In this way graphite can be
+cheaply produced in any desired quantity and quality.
+
+Since graphite is infusible and incombustible except at exceedingly high
+temperatures, it is extensively used for crucibles and electrodes. These
+electrodes are made in all sizes for the various forms of electric lamps
+and furnaces from rods one-sixteenth of an inch in diameter to bars a
+foot thick and six feet long. It is graphite mixed with fine clay to
+give it the desired degree of hardness that forms the filling of our
+"lead" pencils. Finely ground and flocculent graphite treated with
+tannin may be held in suspension in liquids and even pass through
+filter-paper. The mixture with water is sold under the name of
+"aquadag," with oil as "oildag" and with grease as "gredag," for
+lubrication. The smooth, slippery scales of graphite in suspension slide
+over each other easily and keep the bearings from rubbing against each
+other.
+
+The other and more difficult metamorphosis of carbon, the transformation
+of charcoal into diamond, was successfully accomplished by Moissan in
+1894. Henri Moissan was a toxicologist, that is to say, a Professor of
+Poisoning, in the Paris School of Pharmacy, who took to experimenting
+with the electric furnace in his leisure hours and did more to
+demonstrate its possibilities than any other man. With it he isolated
+fluorine, most active of the elements, and he prepared for the first
+time in their purity many of the rare metals that have since found
+industrial employment. He also made the carbides of the various metals,
+including the now common calcium carbide. Among the problems that he
+undertook and solved was the manufacture of artificial diamonds. He
+first made pure charcoal by burning sugar. This was packed with iron in
+the hollow of a block of lime into which extended from opposite sides
+the carbon rods connected to the dynamo. When the iron had melted and
+dissolved all the carbon it could, Moissan dumped it into water or
+better into melted lead or into a hole in a copper block, for this
+cooled it most rapidly. After a crust was formed it was left to solidify
+slowly. The sudden cooling of the iron on the outside subjected the
+carbon, which was held in solution, to intense pressure and when the bit
+of iron was dissolved in acid some of the carbon was found to be
+crystallized as diamond, although most of it was graphite. To be sure,
+the diamonds were hardly big enough to be seen with the naked eye, but
+since Moissan's aim was to make diamonds, not big diamonds, he ceased
+his efforts at this point.
+
+To produce large diamonds the carbon would have to be liquefied in
+considerable quantity and kept in that state while it slowly
+crystallized. But that could only be accomplished at a temperature and
+pressure and duration unattainable as yet. Under ordinary atmospheric
+pressure carbon passes over from the solid to the gaseous phase without
+passing through the liquid, just as snow on a cold, clear day will
+evaporate without melting.
+
+Probably some one in the future will take up the problem where Moissan
+dropped it and find out how to make diamonds of any size. But it is not
+a question that greatly interests either the scientist or the
+industrialist because there is not much to be learned from it and not
+much to be made out of it. If the inventor of a process for making
+cheap diamonds could keep his electric furnace secretly in his cellar
+and market his diamonds cautiously he might get rich out of it, but he
+would not dare to turn out very large stones or too many of them, for if
+a suspicion got around that he was making them the price would fall to
+almost nothing even if he did sell another one. For the high price of
+the diamond is purely fictitious. It is in the first place kept up by
+limiting the output of the natural stone by the combination of dealers
+and, further, the diamond is valued not for its usefulness or beauty but
+by its real or supposed rarity. Chesterton says: "All is gold that
+glitters, for the glitter is the gold." This is not so true of gold, for
+if gold were as cheap as nickel it would be very valuable, since we
+should gold-plate our machinery, our ships, our bridges and our roofs.
+But if diamonds were cheap they would be good for nothing except
+grindstones and drills. An imitation diamond made of heavy glass (paste)
+cannot be distinguished from the genuine gem except by an expert. It
+sparkles about as brilliantly, for its refractive index is nearly as
+high. The reason why it is not priced so highly is because the natural
+stone has presumably been obtained through the toil and sweat of
+hundreds of negroes searching in the blue ground of the Transvaal for
+many months. It is valued exclusively by its cost. To wear a diamond
+necklace is the same as hanging a certified check for $100,000 by a
+string around the neck.
+
+Real values are enhanced by reduction in the cost of the price of
+production. Fictitious values are destroyed by it. Aluminum at
+twenty-five cents a pound is immensely more valuable to the world than
+when it is a curiosity in the chemist's cabinet and priced at $160 a
+pound.
+
+So the scope of the electric furnace reaches from the costly but
+comparatively valueless diamond to the cheap but indispensable steel. As
+F.J. Tone says, if the automobile manufacturers were deprived of Niagara
+products, the abrasives, aluminum, acetylene for welding and high-speed
+tool steel, a factory now turning out five hundred cars a day would be
+reduced to one hundred. I have here been chiefly concerned with
+electricity as effecting chemical changes in combining or separating
+elements, but I must not omit to mention its rapidly extending use as a
+source of heat, as in the production and casting of steel. In 1908 there
+were only fifty-five tons of steel produced by the electric furnace in
+the United States, but by 1918 this had risen to 511,364 tons. And
+besides ordinary steel the electric furnace has given us alloys of iron
+with the once "rare metals" that have created a new science of
+metallurgy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+METALS, OLD AND NEW
+
+
+The primitive metallurgist could only make use of such metals as he
+found free in nature, that is, such as had not been attacked and
+corroded by the ubiquitous oxygen. These were primarily gold or copper,
+though possibly some original genius may have happened upon a bit of
+meteoric iron and pounded it out into a sword. But when man found that
+the red ocher he had hitherto used only as a cosmetic could be made to
+yield iron by melting it with charcoal he opened a new era in
+civilization, though doubtless the ocher artists of that day denounced
+him as a utilitarian and deplored the decadence of the times.
+
+Iron is one of the most timid of metals. It has a great disinclination
+to be alone. It is also one of the most altruistic of the elements. It
+likes almost every other element better than itself. It has an especial
+affection for oxygen, and, since this is in both air and water, and
+these are everywhere, iron is not long without a mate. The result of
+this union goes by various names in the mineralogical and chemical
+worlds, but in common language, which is quite good enough for our
+purpose, it is called iron rust.
+
+[Illustration: By courtesy _Mineral Foote-Notes_.
+
+From Agricola's "De Re Metallica 1550." Primitive furnace for smelting
+iron ore.]
+
+Not many of us have ever seen iron, the pure metal, soft, ductile and
+white like silver. As soon as it is exposed to the air it veils itself
+with a thin film of rust and becomes black and then red. For that reason
+there is practically no iron in the world except what man has made. It
+is rarer than gold, than diamonds; we find in the earth no nuggets or
+crystals of it the size of the fist as we find of these. But
+occasionally there fall down upon us out of the clear sky great chunks
+of it weighing tons. These meteorites are the mavericks of the universe.
+We do not know where they come from or what sun or planet they belonged
+to. They are our only visitors from space, and if all the other spheres
+are like these fragments we know we are alone in the universe. For they
+contain rustless iron, and where iron does not rust man cannot live, nor
+can any other animal or any plant.
+
+Iron rusts for the same reason that a stone rolls down hill, because it
+gets rid of its energy that way. All things in the universe are
+constantly trying to get rid of energy except man, who is always trying
+to get more of it. Or, on second thought, we see that man is the
+greatest spendthrift of all, for he wants to expend so much more energy
+than he has that he borrows from the winds, the streams and the coal in
+the rocks. He robs minerals and plants of the energy which they have
+stored up to spend for their own purposes, just as he robs the bee of
+its honey and the silk worm of its cocoon.
+
+Man's chief business is in reversing the processes of nature. That is
+the way he gets his living. And one of his greatest triumphs was when he
+discovered how to undo iron rust and get the metal out of it. In the
+four thousand years since he first did this he has accomplished more
+than in the millions of years before. Without knowing the value of iron
+rust man could attain only to the culture of the Aztecs and Incas, the
+ancient Egyptians and Assyrians.
+
+The prosperity of modern states is dependent on the amount of iron rust
+which they possess and utilize. England, United States, Germany, all
+nations are competing to see which can dig the most iron rust out of the
+ground and make out of it railroads, bridges, buildings, machinery,
+battleships and such other tools and toys and then let them relapse into
+rust again. Civilization can be measured by the amount of iron rusted
+per capita, or better, by the amount rescued from rust.
+
+But we are devoting so much space to the consideration of the material
+aspects of iron that we are like to neglect its esthetic and ethical
+uses. The beauty of nature is very largely dependent upon the fact that
+iron rust and, in fact, all the common compounds of iron are colored.
+Few elements can assume so many tints. Look at the paint pot canons of
+the Yellowstone. Cheap glass bottles turn out brown, green, blue, yellow
+or black, according to the amount and kind of iron they contain. We
+build a house of cream-colored brick, varied with speckled brick and
+adorned with terra cotta ornaments of red, yellow and green, all due to
+iron. Iron rusts, therefore it must be painted; but what is there better
+to paint it with than iron rust itself? It is cheap and durable, for it
+cannot rust any more than a dead man can die. And what is also of
+importance, it is a good, strong, clean looking, endurable color.
+Whenever we take a trip on the railroad and see the miles of cars, the
+acres of roofing and wall, the towns full of brick buildings, we rejoice
+that iron rust is red, not white or some leas satisfying color.
+
+We do not know why it is so. Zinc and aluminum are metals very much like
+iron in chemical properties, but all their salts are colorless. Why is
+it that the most useful of the metals forms the most beautiful
+compounds? Some say, Providence; some say, chance; some say nothing. But
+if it had not been so we would have lost most of the beauty of rocks and
+trees and human beings. For the leaves and the flowers would all be
+white, and all the men and women would look like walking corpses.
+Without color in the flower what would the bees and painters do? If all
+the grass and trees were white, it would be like winter all the year
+round. If we had white blood in our veins like some of the insects it
+would be hard lines for our poets. And what would become of our morality
+if we could not blush?
+
+  "As for me, I thrill to see
+    The bloom a velvet cheek discloses!
+  Made of dust! I well believe it,
+    So are lilies, so are roses."
+
+An etiolated earth would be hardly worth living in.
+
+The chlorophyll of the leaves and the hemoglobin of the blood are
+similar in constitution. Chlorophyll contains magnesium in place of iron
+but iron is necessary to its formation. We all know how pale a plant
+gets if its soil is short of iron. It is the iron in the leaves that
+enables the plants to store up the energy of the sunshine for their own
+use and ours. It is the iron in our blood that enables us to get the
+iron out of iron rust and make it into machines to supplement our feeble
+hands. Iron is for us internally the carrier of energy, just as in the
+form of a trolley wire or of a third rail it conveys power to the
+electric car. Withdraw the iron from the blood as indicated by the
+pallor of the cheeks, and we become weak, faint and finally die. If the
+amount of iron in the blood gets too small the disease germs that are
+always attacking us are no longer destroyed, but multiply without check
+and conquer us. When the iron ceases to work efficiently we are killed
+by the poison we ourselves generate.
+
+Counting the number of iron-bearing corpuscles in the blood is now a
+common method of determining disease. It might also be useful in moral
+diagnosis. A microscopical and chemical laboratory attached to the
+courtroom would give information of more value than some of the evidence
+now obtained. For the anemic and the florid vices need very different
+treatment. An excess or a deficiency of iron in the body is liable to
+result in criminality. A chemical system of morals might be developed on
+this basis. Among the ferruginous sins would be placed murder, violence
+and licentiousness. Among the non-ferruginous, cowardice, sloth and
+lying. The former would be mostly sins of commission, the latter, sins
+of omission. The virtues could, of course, be similarly classified; the
+ferruginous virtues would include courage, self-reliance and
+hopefulness; the non-ferruginous, peaceableness, meekness and chastity.
+According to this ethical criterion the moral man would be defined as
+one whose conduct is better than we should expect from the per cent. of
+iron in his blood.
+
+The reason why iron is able to serve this unique purpose of conveying
+life-giving air to all parts of the body is because it rusts so readily.
+Oxidation and de-oxidation proceed so quietly that the tenderest cells
+are fed without injury. The blood changes from red to blue and _vice
+versa_ with greater ease and rapidity than in the corresponding
+alternations of social status in a democracy. It is because iron is so
+rustable that it is so useful. The factories with big scrap-heaps of
+rusting machinery are making the most money. The pyramids are the most
+enduring structures raised by the hand of man, but they have not
+sheltered so many people in their forty centuries as our skyscrapers
+that are already rusting.
+
+We have to carry on this eternal conflict against rust because oxygen is
+the most ubiquitous of the elements and iron can only escape its ardent
+embraces by hiding away in the center of the earth. The united elements,
+known to the chemist as iron oxide and to the outside world as rust, are
+among the commonest of compounds and their colors, yellow and red like
+the Spanish flag, are displayed on every mountainside. From the time of
+Tubal Cain man has ceaselessly labored to divorce these elements and,
+having once separated them, to keep them apart so that the iron may be
+retained in his service. But here, as usual, man is fighting against
+nature and his gains, as always, are only temporary. Sooner or later his
+vigilance is circumvented and the metal that he has extricated by the
+fiery furnace returns to its natural affinity. The flint arrowheads, the
+bronze spearpoints, the gold ornaments, the wooden idols of prehistoric
+man are still to be seen in our museums, but his earliest steel swords
+have long since crumbled into dust.
+
+Every year the blast furnaces of the world release 72,000,000 tons of
+iron from its oxides and every year a large part, said to be a quarter
+of that amount, reverts to its primeval forms. If so, then man after
+five thousand years of metallurgical industry has barely got three years
+ahead of nature, and should he cease his efforts for a generation there
+would be little left to show that man had ever learned to extract iron
+from its ores. The old question, "What becomes of all the pins?" may be
+as well asked of rails, pipes and threshing machines. The end of all
+iron is the same. However many may be its metamorphoses while in the
+service of man it relapses at last into its original state of oxidation.
+To save a pound of iron from corrosion is then as much a benefit to the
+world as to produce another pound from the ore. In fact it is of much
+greater benefit, for it takes four pounds of coal to produce one pound
+of steel, so whenever a piece of iron is allowed to oxidize it means
+that four times as much coal must be oxidized in order to replace it.
+And the beds of coal will be exhausted before the beds of iron ore.
+
+If we are ever to get ahead, if we are to gain any respite from this
+enormous waste of labor and natural resources, we must find ways of
+preventing the iron which we have obtained and fashioned into useful
+tools from being lost through oxidation. Now there is only one way of
+keeping iron and oxygen from uniting and that is to keep them apart. A
+very thin dividing wall will serve for the purpose, for instance, a film
+of oil. But ordinary oil will rub off, so it is better to cover the
+surface with an oil-like linseed which oxidizes to a hard elastic and
+adhesive coating. If with linseed oil we mix iron oxide or some other
+pigment we have a paint that will protect iron perfectly so long as it
+is unbroken. But let the paint wear off or crack so that air can get at
+the iron, then rust will form and spread underneath the paint on all
+sides. The same is true of the porcelain-like enamel with which our
+kitchen iron ware is nowadays coated. So long as the enamel holds it is
+all right but once it is broken through at any point it begins to scale
+off and gets into our food.
+
+Obviously it would be better for some purposes if we could coat our
+iron with another and less easily oxidized metal than with such
+dissimilar substances as paint or porcelain. Now the nearest relative to
+iron is nickel, and a layer of this of any desired thickness may be
+easily deposited by electricity upon any surface however irregular.
+Nickel takes a bright polish and keeps it well, so nickel plating has
+become the favorite method of protection for small objects where the
+expense is not prohibitive. Copper plating is used for fine wires. A
+sheet of iron dipped in melted tin comes out coated with a thin adhesive
+layer of the latter metal. Such tinned plate commonly known as "tin" has
+become the favorite material for pans and cans. But if the tin is
+scratched the iron beneath rusts more rapidly than if the tin were not
+there, for an electrolytic action is set up and the iron, being the
+negative element of the couple, suffers at the expense of the tin.
+
+With zinc it is quite the opposite. Zinc is negative toward iron, so
+when the two are in contact and exposed to the weather the zinc is
+oxidized first. A zinc plating affords the protection of a Swiss Guard,
+it holds out as long as possible and when broken it perishes to the last
+atom before it lets the oxygen get at the iron. The zinc may be applied
+in four different ways. (1) It may be deposited by electrolysis as in
+nickel plating, but the zinc coating is more apt to be porous. (2) The
+sheets or articles may be dipped in a bath of melted zinc. This gives us
+the familiar "galvanized iron," the most useful and when well done the
+most effective of rust preventives. Besides these older methods of
+applying zinc there are now two new ones. (3) One is the Schoop process
+by which a wire of zinc or other metal is fed into an oxy-hydrogen air
+blast of such heat and power that it is projected as a spray of minute
+drops with the speed of bullets and any object subjected to the
+bombardment of this metallic mist receives a coating as thick as
+desired. The zinc spray is so fine and cool that it may be received on
+cloth, lace, or the bare hand. The Schoop metallizing process has
+recently been improved by the use of the electric current instead of the
+blowpipe for melting the metal. Two zinc wires connected with any
+electric system, preferably the direct, are fed into the "pistol." Where
+the wires meet an electric arc is set up and the melted zinc is sprayed
+out by a jet of compressed air. (4) In the Sherardizing process the
+articles are put into a tight drum with zinc dust and heated to 800 deg. F.
+The zinc at this temperature attacks the iron and forms a series of
+alloys ranging from pure zinc on the top to pure iron at the bottom of
+the coating. Even if this cracks in part the iron is more or less
+protected from corrosion so long as any zinc remains. Aluminum is used
+similarly in the calorizing process for coating iron, copper or brass.
+First a surface alloy is formed by heating the metal with aluminum
+powder. Then the temperature is raised to a high degree so as to cause
+the aluminum on the surface to diffuse into the metal and afterwards it
+is again baked in contact with aluminum dust which puts upon it a
+protective plating of the pure aluminum which does not oxidize.
+
+[Illustration: PHOTOMICROGRAPHS SHOWING THE STRUCTURE OF STEEL MADE BY
+PROFESSOR E.G. MARTIN OF PURDUE UNIVERSITY
+
+1. Cold-worked steel showing ferrite and sorbite (enlarged 500 times)
+
+2. Steel showing pearlite crystals (enlarged 500 times)
+
+3. Structure characteristic of air-cooled steel (enlarged 50 times)
+
+4. The triangular structure characteristic of cast steel showing ferrite
+and pearlite (enlarged 50 times)]
+
+[Illustration: Courtesy of E.G. Mahin
+
+THE MICROSCOPIC STRUCTURE OF METALS
+
+1. Malleabilized casting; temper carbon in ferrite (enlarged 50 times)
+
+2. Type metal; lead-antimony alloy in matrix of lead (enlarged 100
+times)
+
+3. Gray cast iron; carbon as graphite (enlarged 500 times)
+
+4. Steel composed of cementite (white) and pearlite (black) (enlarged 50
+times)]
+
+Another way of protecting iron ware from rusting is to rust it. This is
+a sort of prophylactic method like that adopted by modern medicine where
+inoculation with a mild culture prevents a serious attack of the
+disease. The action of air and water on iron forms a series of compounds
+and mixtures of them. Those that contain least oxygen are hard, black
+and magnetic like iron itself. Those that have most oxygen are red and
+yellow powders. By putting on a tight coating of the black oxide we can
+prevent or hinder the oxidation from going on into the pulverulent
+stage. This is done in several ways. In the Bower-Barff process the
+articles to be treated are put into a closed retort and a current of
+superheated steam passed through for twenty minutes followed by a
+current of producer gas (carbon monoxide), to reduce any higher oxides
+that may have been formed. In the Gesner process a current of gasoline
+vapor is used as the reducing agent. The blueing of watch hands, buckles
+and the like may be done by dipping them into an oxidizing bath such as
+melted saltpeter. But in order to afford complete protection the layer
+of black oxide must be thickened by repeating the process which adds to
+the time and expense. This causes a slight enlargement and the high
+temperature often warps the ware so it is not suitable for nicely
+adjusted parts of machinery and of course tools would lose their temper
+by the heat.
+
+A new method of rust proofing which is free from these disadvantages is
+the phosphate process invented by Thomas Watts Coslett, an English
+chemist, in 1907, and developed in America by the Parker Company of
+Detroit. This consists simply in dipping the sheet iron or articles into
+a tank filled with a dilute solution of iron phosphate heated nearly to
+the boiling point by steam pipes. Bubbles of hydrogen stream off rapidly
+at first, then slower, and at the end of half an hour or longer the
+action ceases, and the process is complete. What has happened is that
+the iron has been converted into a basic iron phosphate to a depth
+depending upon the density of articles processed. Any one who has
+studied elementary qualitative analysis will remember that when he added
+ammonia to his "unknown" solution, iron and phosphoric acid, if present,
+were precipitated together, or in other words, iron phosphate is
+insoluble except in acids. Therefore a superficial film of such
+phosphate will protect the iron underneath except from acids. This film
+is not a coating added on the outside like paint and enamel or tin and
+nickel plate. It is therefore not apt to scale off and it does not
+increase the size of the article. No high heat is required as in the
+Sherardizing and Bower-Barff processes, so steel tools can be treated
+without losing their temper or edge.
+
+The deposit consisting of ferrous and ferric phosphates mixed with black
+iron oxide may be varied in composition, texture and color. It is
+ordinarily a dull gray and oiling gives a soft mat black more in
+accordance with modern taste than the shiny nickel plating that
+delighted our fathers. Even the military nowadays show more quiet taste
+than formerly and have abandoned their glittering accoutrements.
+
+The phosphate bath is not expensive and can be used continuously for
+months by adding more of the concentrated solution to keep up the
+strength and removing the sludge that is precipitated. Besides the iron
+the solution contains the phosphates of other metals such as calcium or
+strontium, manganese, molybdenum, or tungsten, according to the
+particular purpose. Since the phosphating solution does not act on
+nickel it may be used on articles that have been partly nickel-plated so
+there may be produced, for instance, a bright raised design against a
+dull black background. Then, too, the surface left by the Parker process
+is finely etched so it affords a good attachment for paint or enamel if
+further protection is needed. Even if the enamel does crack, the iron
+beneath is not so apt to rust and scale off the coating.
+
+These, then, are some of the methods which are now being used to combat
+our eternal enemy, the rust that doth corrupt. All of them are useful in
+their several ways. No one of them is best for all purposes. The claim
+of "rust-proof" is no more to be taken seriously than "fire-proof." We
+should rather, if we were finical, have to speak of "rust-resisting"
+coatings as we do of "slow-burning" buildings. Nature is insidious and
+unceasing in her efforts to bring to ruin the achievements of mankind
+and we need all the weapons we can find to frustrate her destructive
+determination.
+
+But it is not enough for us to make iron superficially resistant to rust
+from the atmosphere. We should like also to make it so that it would
+withstand corrosion by acids, then it could be used in place of the
+large and expensive platinum or porcelain evaporating pans and similar
+utensils employed in chemical works. This requirement also has been met
+in the non-corrosive forms of iron, which have come into use within the
+last five years. One of these, "tantiron," invented by a British
+metallurgist, Robert N. Lennox, in 1912, contains 15 per cent. of
+silicon. Similar products are known as "duriron" and "Buflokast" in
+America, "metilure" in France, "ileanite" in Italy and "neutraleisen" in
+Germany. It is a silvery-white close-grained iron, very hard and rather
+brittle, somewhat like cast iron but with silicon as the main additional
+ingredient in place of carbon. It is difficult to cut or drill but may
+be ground into shape by the new abrasives. It is rustproof and is not
+attacked by sulfuric, nitric or acetic acid, hot or cold, diluted or
+concentrated. It does not resist so well hydrochloric acid or sulfur
+dioxide or alkalies.
+
+The value of iron lies in its versatility. It is a dozen metals in one.
+It can be made hard or soft, brittle or malleable, tough or weak,
+resistant or flexible, elastic or pliant, magnetic or non-magnetic, more
+or less conductive to electricity, by slight changes of composition or
+mere differences of treatment. No wonder that the medieval mind ascribed
+these mysterious transformations to witchcraft. But the modern
+micrometallurgist, by etching the surface of steel and photographing it,
+shows it up as composite as a block of granite. He is then able to pick
+out its component minerals, ferrite, austenite, martensite, pearlite,
+graphite, cementite, and to show how their abundance, shape and
+arrangement contribute to the strength or weakness of the specimen. The
+last of these constituents, cementite, is a definite chemical compound,
+an iron carbide, Fe_{3}C, containing 6.6 per cent. of carbon, so hard as
+to scratch glass, very brittle, and imparting these properties to
+hardened steel and cast iron.
+
+With this knowledge at his disposal the iron-maker can work with his
+eyes open and so regulate his melt as to cause these various
+constituents to crystallize out as he wants them to. Besides, he is no
+longer confined to the alloys of iron and carbon. He has ransacked the
+chemical dictionary to find new elements to add to his alloys, and some
+of these rarities have proved to possess great practical value.
+Vanadium, for instance, used to be put into a fine print paragraph in
+the back of the chemistry book, where the class did not get to it until
+the term closed. Yet if it had not been for vanadium steel we should
+have no Ford cars. Tungsten, too, was relegated to the rear, and if the
+student remembered it at all it was because it bothered him to
+understand why its symbol should be W instead of T. But the student of
+today studies his lesson in the light of a tungsten wire and relieves
+his mind by listening to a phonograph record played with a "tungs-tone"
+stylus. When I was assistant in chemistry an "analysis" of steel
+consisted merely in the determination of its percentage of carbon, and I
+used to take Saturday for it so I could have time enough to complete the
+combustion. Now the chemists of a steel works' laboratory may have to
+determine also the tungsten, chromium, vanadium, titanium, nickel,
+cobalt, phosphorus, molybdenum, manganese, silicon and sulfur, any or
+all of them, and be spry about it, because if they do not get the report
+out within fifteen minutes while the steel is melting in the electrical
+furnace the whole batch of 75 tons may go wrong. I'm glad I quit the
+laboratory before they got to speeding up chemists so.
+
+The quality of the steel depends upon the presence and the relative
+proportions of these ingredients, and a variation of a tenth of 1 per
+cent. in certain of them will make a different metal out of it. For
+instance, the steel becomes stronger and tougher as the proportion of
+nicked is increased up to about 15 per cent. Raising the percentage to
+25 we get an alloy that does not rust or corrode and is non-magnetic,
+although both its component metals, iron and nickel, are by themselves
+attracted by the magnet. With 36 per cent. nickel and 5 per cent.
+manganese we get the alloy known as "invar," because it expands and
+contracts very little with changes of temperature. A bar of the best
+form of invar will expand less than one-millionth part of its length for
+a rise of one degree Centigrade at ordinary atmospheric temperature. For
+this reason it is used in watches and measuring instruments. The alloy
+of iron with 46 per cent. nickel is called "platinite" because its rate
+of expansion and contraction is the same as platinum and glass, and so
+it can be used to replace the platinum wire passing through the glass of
+an electric light bulb.
+
+A manganese steel of 11 to 14 per cent. is too hard to be machined. It
+has to be cast or ground into shape and is used for burglar-proof safes
+and armor plate. Chrome steel is also hard and tough and finds use in
+files, ball bearings and projectiles. Titanium, which the iron-maker
+used to regard as his implacable enemy, has been drafted into service as
+a deoxidizer, increasing the strength and elasticity of the steel. It is
+reported from France that the addition of three-tenths of 1 per cent. of
+zirconium to nickel steel has made it more resistant to the German
+perforating bullets than any steel hitherto known. The new "stainless"
+cutlery contains 12 to 14 per cent. of chromium.
+
+With the introduction of harder steels came the need of tougher tools to
+work them. Now the virtue of a good tool steel is the same as of a good
+man. It must be able to get hot without losing its temper. Steel of the
+old-fashioned sort, as everybody knows, gets its temper by being heated
+to redness and suddenly cooled by quenching or plunging it into water or
+oil. But when the point gets heated up again, as it does by friction in
+a lathe, it softens and loses its cutting edge. So the necessity of
+keeping the tool cool limited the speed of the machine.
+
+But about 1868 a Sheffield metallurgist, Robert F. Mushet, found that a
+piece of steel he was working with did not require quenching to harden
+it. He had it analyzed to discover the meaning of this peculiarity and
+learned that it contained tungsten, a rare metal unrecognized in the
+metallurgy of that day. Further investigation showed that steel to which
+tungsten and manganese or chromium had been added was tougher and
+retained its temper at high temperature better than ordinary carbon
+steel. Tools made from it could be worked up to a white heat without
+losing their cutting power. The new tools of this type invented by
+"Efficiency" Taylor at the Bethlehem Steel Works in the nineties have
+revolutionized shop practice the world over. A tool of the old sort
+could not cut at a rate faster than thirty feet a minute without
+overheating, but the new tungsten tools will plow through steel ten
+times as fast and can cut away a ton of the material in an hour. By
+means of these high-speed tools the United States was able to turn out
+five times the munitions that it could otherwise have done in the same
+time. On the other hand, if Germany alone had possessed the secret of
+the modern steels no power could have withstood her. A slight
+superiority in metallurgy has been the deciding factor in many a battle.
+Those of my readers who have had the advantages of Sunday school
+training will recall the case described in I Samuel 13:19-22.
+
+By means of these new metals armor plate has been made
+invulnerable--except to projectiles pointed with similar material.
+Flying has been made possible through engines weighing no more than two
+pounds per horse power. The cylinders of combustion engines and the
+casing of cannon have been made to withstand the unprecedented pressure
+and corrosive action of the fiery gases evolved within. Castings are
+made so hard that they cannot be cut--save with tools of the same sort.
+In the high-speed tools now used 20 or 30 per cent, of the iron is
+displaced by other ingredients; for example, tungsten from 14 to 25 per
+cent., chromium from 2 to 7 per cent., vanadium from 1/2 to 1-1/2 per
+cent., carbon from 6 to 8 per cent., with perhaps cobalt up to 4 per
+cent. Molybdenum or uranium may replace part of the tungsten.
+
+Some of the newer alloys for high-speed tools contain no iron at all.
+That which bears the poetic name of star-stone, stellite, is composed of
+chromium, cobalt and tungsten in varying proportions. Stellite keeps a
+hard cutting edge and gets tougher as it gets hotter. It is very hard
+and as good for jewelry as platinum except that it is not so expensive.
+Cooperite, its rival, is an alloy of nickel and zirconium, stronger,
+lighter and cheaper than stellite.
+
+Before the war nearly half of the world's supply of tungsten ore
+(wolframite) came from Burma. But although Burma had belonged to the
+British for a hundred years they had not developed its mineral resources
+and the tungsten trade was monopolized by the Germans. All the ore was
+shipped to Germany and the British Admiralty was content to buy from the
+Germans what tungsten was needed for armor plate and heavy guns. When
+the war broke out the British had the ore supply, but were unable at
+first to work it because they were not familiar with the processes.
+Germany, being short of tungsten, had to sneak over a little from
+Baltimore in the submarine _Deutschland_. In the United States before
+the war tungsten ore was selling at $6.50 a unit, but by the beginning
+of 1916 it had jumped to $85 a unit. A unit is 1 per cent. of tungsten
+trioxide to the ton, that is, twenty pounds. Boulder County, Colorado,
+and San Bernardino, California, then had mining booms, reminding one of
+older times. Between May and December, 1918, there was manufactured in
+the United States more than 45,500,000 pounds of tungsten steel
+containing some 8,000,000 pounds of tungsten.
+
+If tungsten ores were more abundant and the metal more easily
+manipulated, it would displace steel for many purposes. It is harder
+than steel or even quartz. It never rusts and is insoluble in acids. Its
+expansion by heat is one-third that of iron. It is more than twice as
+heavy as iron and its melting point is twice as high. Its electrical
+resistance is half that of iron and its tensile strength is a third
+greater than the strongest steel. It can be worked into wire .0002 of an
+inch in diameter, almost too thin to be seen, but as strong as copper
+wire ten times the size.
+
+The tungsten wires in the electric lamps are about .03 of an inch in
+diameter, and they give three times the light for the same consumption
+of electricity as the old carbon filament. The American manufacturers of
+the tungsten bulb have very appropriately named their lamp "Mazda" after
+the light god of the Zoroastrians. To get the tungsten into wire form
+was a problem that long baffled the inventors of the world, for it was
+too refractory to be melted in mass and too brittle to be drawn. Dr.
+W.D. Coolidge succeeded in accomplishing the feat in 1912 by reducing
+the tungstic acid by hydrogen and molding the metallic powder into a bar
+by pressure. This is raised to a white heat in the electric furnace,
+taken out and rolled down, and the process repeated some fifty times,
+until the wire is small enough so it can be drawn at a red heat through
+diamond dies of successively smaller apertures.
+
+The German method of making the lamp filaments is to squirt a mixture of
+tungsten powder and thorium oxide through a perforated diamond of the
+desired diameter. The filament so produced is drawn through a chamber
+heated to 2500 deg. C. at a velocity of eight feet an hour, which
+crystallizes the tungsten into a continuous thread.
+
+The first metallic filament used in the electric light on a commercial
+scale was made of tantalum, the metal of Tantalus. In the period
+1905-1911 over 100,000,000 tantalus lamps were sold, but tungsten
+displaced them as soon as that metal could be drawn into wire.
+
+A recent rival of tungsten both as a filament for lamps and hardener for
+steel is molybdenum. One pound of this metal will impart more resiliency
+to steel than three or four pounds of tungsten. The molybdenum steel,
+because it does not easily crack, is said to be serviceable for
+armor-piercing shells, gun linings, air-plane struts, automobile axles
+and propeller shafts. In combination with its rival as a
+tungsten-molybdenum alloy it is capable of taking the place of the
+intolerably expensive platinum, for it resists corrosion when used for
+spark plugs and tooth plugs. European steel men have taken to molybdenum
+more than Americans. The salts of this metal can be used in dyeing and
+photography.
+
+Calcium, magnesium and aluminum, common enough in their compounds, have
+only come into use as metals since the invention of the electric
+furnace. Now the photographer uses magnesium powder for his flashlight
+when he wants to take a picture of his friends inside the house, and the
+aviator uses it when he wants to take a picture of his enemies on the
+open field. The flares prepared by our Government for the war consist of
+a sheet iron cylinder, four feet long and six inches thick, containing a
+stick of magnesium attached to a tightly rolled silk parachute twenty
+feet in diameter when expanded. The whole weighed 32 pounds. On being
+dropped from the plane by pressing a button, the rush of air set
+spinning a pinwheel at the bottom which ignited the magnesium stick and
+detonated a charge of black powder sufficient to throw off the case and
+release the parachute. The burning flare gave off a light of 320,000
+candle power lasting for ten minutes as the parachute slowly descended.
+This illuminated the ground on the darkest night sufficiently for the
+airman to aim his bombs or to take photographs.
+
+The addition of 5 or 10 per cent. of magnesium to aluminum gives an
+alloy (magnalium) that is almost as light as aluminum and almost as
+strong as steel. An alloy of 90 per cent. aluminum and 10 per cent.
+calcium is lighter and harder than aluminum and more resistant to
+corrosion. The latest German airplane, the "Junker," was made entirely
+of duralumin. Even the wings were formed of corrugated sheets of this
+alloy instead of the usual doped cotton-cloth. Duralumin is composed of
+about 85 per cent. of aluminum, 5 per cent. of copper, 5 per cent. of
+zinc and 2 per cent. of tin.
+
+When platinum was first discovered it was so cheap that ingots of it
+were gilded and sold as gold bricks to unwary purchasers. The Russian
+Government used it as we use nickel, for making small coins. But this is
+an exception to the rule that the demand creates the supply. Platinum is
+really a "rare metal," not merely an unfamiliar one. Nowhere except in
+the Urals is it found in quantity, and since it seems indispensable in
+chemical and electrical appliances, the price has continually gone up.
+Russia collapsed into chaos just when the war work made the heaviest
+demand for platinum, so the governments had to put a stop to its use for
+jewelry and photography. The "gold brick" scheme would now have to be
+reversed, for gold is used as a cheaper metal to "adulterate" platinum.
+All the members of the platinum family, formerly ignored, were pressed
+into service, palladium, rhodium, osmium, iridium, and these, alloyed
+with gold or silver, were employed more or less satisfactorily by the
+dentist, chemist and electrician as substitutes for the platinum of
+which they had been deprived. One of these alloys, composed of 20 per
+cent. palladium and 80 per cent. gold, and bearing the telescoped name
+of "palau" (palladium au-rum) makes very acceptable crucibles for the
+laboratory and only costs half as much as platinum. "Rhotanium" is a
+similar alloy recently introduced. The points of our gold pens are
+tipped with an osmium-iridium alloy. It is a pity that this family of
+noble metals is so restricted, for they are unsurpassed in tenacity and
+incorruptibility. They could be of great service to the world in war and
+peace. As the "Bad Child" says in his "Book of Beasts":
+
+  I shoot the hippopotamus with bullets made of platinum,
+  Because if I use leaden ones, his hide is sure to flatten 'em.
+
+Along in the latter half of the last century chemists had begun to
+perceive certain regularities and relationships among the various
+elements, so they conceived the idea that some sort of a pigeon-hole
+scheme might be devised in which the elements could be filed away in the
+order of their atomic weights so that one could see just how a certain
+element, known or unknown, would behave from merely observing its
+position in the series. Mendeleef, a Russian chemist, devised the most
+ingenious of such systems called the "periodic law" and gave proof that
+there was something in his theory by predicting the properties of three
+metallic elements, then unknown but for which his arrangement showed
+three empty pigeon-holes. Sixteen years later all three of these
+predicted elements had been discovered, one by a Frenchman, one by a
+German and one by a Scandinavian, and named from patriotic impulse,
+gallium, germanium and scandium. This was a triumph of scientific
+prescience as striking as the mathematical proof of the existence of the
+planet Neptune by Leverrier before it had been found by the telescope.
+
+But although Mendeleef's law told "the truth," it gradually became
+evident that it did not tell "the whole truth and nothing but the
+truth," as the lawyers put it. As usually happens in the history of
+science the hypothesis was found not to explain things so simply and
+completely as was at first assumed. The anomalies in the arrangement did
+not disappear on closer study, but stuck out more conspicuously. Though
+Mendeleef had pointed out three missing links, he had failed to make
+provision for a whole group of elements since discovered, the inert
+gases of the helium-argon group. As we now know, the scheme was built
+upon the false assumptions that the elements are immutable and that
+their atomic weights are invariable.
+
+The elements that the chemists had most difficulty in sorting out and
+identifying were the heavy metals found in the "rare earths." There were
+about twenty of them so mixed up together and so much alike as to baffle
+all ordinary means of separating them. For a hundred years chemists
+worked over them and quarreled over them before they discovered that
+they had a commercial value. It was a problem as remote from
+practicality as any that could be conceived. The man in the street did
+not see why chemists should care whether there were two didymiums any
+more than why theologians should care whether there were two Isaiahs.
+But all of a sudden, in 1885, the chemical puzzle became a business
+proposition. The rare earths became household utensils and it made a big
+difference with our monthly gas bills whether the ceria and the thoria
+in the burner mantles were absolutely pure or contained traces of some
+of the other elements that were so difficult to separate.
+
+This sudden change of venue from pure to applied science came about
+through a Viennese chemist, Dr. Carl Auer, later and in consequence
+known as Baron Auer von Welsbach. He was trying to sort out the rare
+earths by means of the spectroscopic method, which consists ordinarily
+in dipping a platinum wire into a solution of the unknown substance and
+holding it in a colorless gas flame. As it burns off, each element gives
+a characteristic color to the flame, which is seen as a series of lines
+when looked at through the spectroscope. But the flash of the flame from
+the platinum wire was too brief to be studied, so Dr. Auer hit upon the
+plan of soaking a thread in the liquid and putting this in the gas jet.
+The cotton of course burned off at once, but the earths held together
+and when heated gave off a brilliant white light, very much like the
+calcium or limelight which is produced by heating a stick of quicklime
+in the oxy-hydrogen flame. But these rare earths do not require any such
+intense heat as that, for they will glow in an ordinary gas jet.
+
+So the Welsbach mantle burner came into use everywhere and rescued the
+coal gas business from the destruction threatened by the electric light.
+It was no longer necessary to enrich the gas with oil to make its flame
+luminous, for a cheaper fuel gas such as is used for a gas stove will
+give, with a mantle, a fine white light of much higher candle power than
+the ordinary gas jet. The mantles are knit in narrow cylinders on
+machines, cut off at suitable lengths, soaked in a solution of the salts
+of the rare earths and dried. Artificial silk (viscose) has been found
+better than cotton thread for the mantles, for it is solid, not hollow,
+more uniform in quality and continuous instead of being broken up into
+one-inch fibers. There is a great deal of difference in the quality of
+these mantles, as every one who has used them knows. Some that give a
+bright glow at first with the gas-cock only half open will soon break up
+or grow dull and require more gas to get any kind of a light out of
+them. Others will last long and grow better to the last. Slight
+impurities in the earths or the gas will speedily spoil the light. The
+best results are obtained from a mixture of 99 parts thoria and 1 part
+ceria. It is the ceria that gives the light, yet a little more of it
+will lower the luminosity.
+
+The non-chemical reader is apt to be confused by the strange names and
+their varied terminations, but he need not be when he learns that the
+new metals are given names ending in _-um_, such as sodium, cerium,
+thorium, and that their oxides (compounds with oxygen, the earths) are
+given the termination _-a_, like soda, ceria, thoria. So when he sees a
+name ending in _-um_ let him picture to himself a metal, any metal since
+they mostly look alike, lead or silver, for example. And when he comes
+across a name ending in _-a_ he may imagine a white powder like lime.
+Thorium, for instance, is, as its name implies, a metal named after the
+thunder god Thor, to whom we dedicate one day in each week, Thursday.
+Cerium gets its name from the Roman goddess of agriculture by way of the
+asteroid.
+
+The chief sources of the material for the Welsbach burners is monazite,
+a glittering yellow sand composed of phosphate of cerium with some 5 per
+cent. of thorium. In 1916 the United States imported 2,500,000 pounds of
+monazite from Brazil and India, most of which used to go to Germany. In
+1895 we got over a million and a half pounds from the Carolinas, but the
+foreign sand is richer and cheaper. The price of the salts of the rare
+metals fluctuates wildly. In 1895 thorium nitrate sold at $200 a pound;
+in 1913 it fell to $2.60, and in 1916 it rose to $8.
+
+Since the monazite contains more cerium than thorium and the mantles
+made from it contain more thorium than cerium, there is a superfluity of
+cerium. The manufacturers give away a pound of cerium salts with every
+purchase of a hundred pounds of thorium salts. It annoyed Welsbach to
+see the cerium residues thrown away and accumulating around his mantle
+factory, so he set out to find some use for it. He reduced the mixed
+earths to a metallic form and found that it gave off a shower of sparks
+when scratched. An alloy of cerium with 30 or 35 per cent. of iron
+proved the best and was put on the market in the form of automatic
+lighters. A big business was soon built up in Austria on the basis of
+this obscure chemical element rescued from the dump-heap. The sale of
+the cerite lighters in France threatened to upset the finances of the
+republic, which derived large revenue from its monopoly of match-making,
+so the French Government imposed a tax upon every man who carried one.
+American tourists who bought these lighters in Germany used to be much
+annoyed at being held up on the French frontier and compelled to take
+out a license. During the war the cerium sparklers were much used in the
+trenches for lighting cigarettes, but--as those who have seen "The
+Better 'Ole" will know--they sometimes fail to strike fire. Auer-metal
+or cerium-iron alloy was used in munitions to ignite hand grenades and
+to blazon the flight of trailer shells. There are many other pyrophoric
+(light-producing) alloys, including steel, which our ancestors used with
+flint before matches and percussion caps were invented.
+
+There are more than fifty metals known and not half of them have come
+into common use, so there is still plenty of room for the expansion of
+the science of metallurgy. If the reader has not forgotten his
+arithmetic of permutations he can calculate how many different alloys
+may be formed by varying the combinations and proportions of these
+fifty. We have seen how quickly elements formerly known only to
+chemists--and to some of them known only by name--have become
+indispensable in our daily life. Any one of those still unutilized may
+be found to have peculiar properties that fit it for filling a long
+unfelt want in modern civilization.
+
+Who, for instance, will find a use for gallium, the metal of France? It
+was described in 1869 by Mendeleef in advance of its advent and has been
+known in person since 1875, but has not yet been set to work. It is
+such a remarkable metal that it must be good for something. If you saw
+it in a museum case on a cold day you might take it to be a piece of
+aluminum, but if the curator let you hold it in your hand--which he
+won't--it would melt and run over the floor like mercury. The melting
+point is 87 deg. Fahr. It might be used in thermometers for measuring
+temperatures above the boiling point of mercury were it not for the
+peculiar fact that gallium wets glass so it sticks to the side of the
+tube instead of forming a clear convex curve on top like mercury.
+
+Then there is columbium, the American metal. It is strange that an
+element named after Columbia should prove so impractical. Columbium is a
+metal closely resembling tantalum and tantalum found a use as electric
+light filaments. A columbium lamp should appeal to our patriotism.
+
+The so-called "rare elements" are really abundant enough considering the
+earth's crust as a whole, though they are so thinly scattered that they
+are usually overlooked and hard to extract. But whenever one of them is
+found valuable it is soon found available. A systematic search generally
+reveals it somewhere in sufficient quantity to be worked. Who, then,
+will be the first to discover a use for indium, germanium, terbium,
+thulium, lanthanum, neodymium, scandium, samarium and others as unknown
+to us as tungsten was to our fathers?
+
+As evidence of the statement that it does not matter how rare an element
+may be it will come into common use if it is found to be commonly
+useful, we may refer to radium. A good rich specimen of radium ore,
+pitchblende, may contain as much, as one part in 4,000,000. Madame
+Curie, the brilliant Polish Parisian, had to work for years before she
+could prove to the world that such an element existed and for years
+afterwards before she could get the metal out. Yet now we can all afford
+a bit of radium to light up our watch dials in the dark. The amount
+needed for this is infinitesimal. If it were more it would scorch our
+skins, for radium is an element in eruption. The atom throws off
+corpuscles at intervals as a Roman candle throws off blazing balls. Some
+of these particles, the alpha rays, are atoms of another element,
+helium, charged with positive electricity and are ejected with a
+velocity of 18,000 miles a second. Some of them, the beta rays, are
+negative electrons, only about one seven-thousandth the size of the
+others, but are ejected with almost the speed of light, 186,000 miles a
+second. If one of the alpha projectiles strikes a slice of zinc sulfide
+it makes a splash of light big enough to be seen with a microscope, so
+we can now follow the flight of a single atom. The luminous watch dials
+consist of a coating of zinc sulfide under continual bombardment by the
+radium projectiles. Sir William Crookes invented this radium light
+apparatus and called it a "spinthariscope," which is Greek for
+"spark-seer."
+
+Evidently if radium is so wasteful of its substance it cannot last
+forever nor could it have forever existed. The elements then ate not
+necessarily eternal and immutable, as used to be supposed. They have a
+natural length of life; they are born and die and propagate, at least
+some of them do. Radium, for instance, is the offspring of ionium,
+which is the great-great-grandson of uranium, the heaviest of known
+elements. Putting this chemical genealogy into biblical language we
+might say: Uranium lived 5,000,000,000 years and begot Uranium X1, which
+lived 24.6 days and begot Uranium X2, which lived 69 seconds and begot
+Uranium 2, which lived 2,000,000 years and begot Ionium, which lived
+200,000 years and begot Radium, which lived 1850 years and begot Niton,
+which lived 3.85 days and begot Radium A, which lived 3 minutes and
+begot Radium B, which lived 26.8 minutes and begot Radium C, which lived
+19.5 minutes and begot Radium D, which lived 12 years and begot Radium
+E, which lived 5 days and begot Polonium, which lived 136 days and begot
+Lead.
+
+The figures I have given are the times when half the parent substance
+has gone over into the next generation. It will be seen that the chemist
+is even more liberal in his allowance of longevity than was Moses with
+the patriarchs. It appears from the above that half of the radium in any
+given specimen will be transformed in about 2000 years. Half of what is
+left will disappear in the next 2000 years, half of that in the next
+2000 and so on. The reader can figure out for himself when it will all
+be gone. He will then have the answer to the old Eleatic conundrum of
+when Achilles will overtake the tortoise. But we may say that after
+100,000 years there would not be left any radium worth mentioning, or in
+other words practically all the radium now in existence is younger than
+the human race. The lead that is found in uranium and has presumably
+descended from uranium, behaves like other lead but is lighter. Its
+atomic weight is only 206, while ordinary lead weighs 207. It appears
+then that the same chemical element may have different atomic weights
+according to its ancestry, while on the other hand different chemical
+elements may have the same atomic weight. This would have seemed
+shocking heresy to the chemists of the last century, who prided
+themselves on the immutability of the elements and did not take into
+consideration their past life or heredity. The study of these
+radioactive elements has led to a new atomic theory. I suppose most of
+us in our youth used to imagine the atom as a little round hard ball,
+but now it is conceived as a sort of solar system with an
+electropositive nucleus acting as the sun and negative electrons
+revolving around it like the planets. The number of free positive
+electrons in the nucleus varies from one in hydrogen to 92 in uranium.
+This leaves room for 92 possible elements and of these all but six are
+more or less certainly known and definitely placed in the scheme. The
+atom of uranium, weighing 238 times the atom of hydrogen, is the
+heaviest known and therefore the ultimate limit of the elements, though
+it is possible that elements may be found beyond it just as the planet
+Neptune was discovered outside the orbit of Uranus. Considering the
+position of uranium and its numerous progeny as mentioned above, it is
+quite appropriate that this element should bear the name of the father
+of all the gods.
+
+In these radioactive elements we have come upon sources of energy such
+as was never dreamed of in our philosophy. The most striking peculiarity
+of radium is that it is always a little warmer than its surroundings, no
+matter how warm these may be. Slowly, spontaneously and continuously,
+it decomposes and we know no way of hastening or of checking it. Whether
+it is cooled in liquefied air or heated to its melting point the change
+goes on just the same. An ounce of radium salt will give out enough heat
+in one hour to melt an ounce of ice and in the next hour will raise this
+water to the boiling point, and so on again and again without cessation
+for years, a fire without fuel, a realization of the philosopher's lamp
+that the alchemists sought in vain. The total energy so emitted is
+millions of times greater than that produced by any chemical combination
+such as the union of oxygen and hydrogen to form water. From the heavy
+white salt there is continually rising a faint fire-mist like the
+will-o'-the-wisp over a swamp. This gas is known as the emanation or
+niton, "the shining one." A pound of niton would give off energy at the
+rate of 23,000 horsepower; fine stuff to run a steamer, one would think,
+but we must remember that it does not last. By the sixth day the power
+would have fallen off by half. Besides, no one would dare to serve as
+engineer, for the radiation will rot away the flesh of a living man who
+comes near it, causing gnawing ulcers or curing them. It will not only
+break down the complex and delicate molecules of organic matter but will
+attack the atom itself, changing, it is believed, one element into
+another, again the fulfilment of a dream of the alchemists. And its
+rays, unseen and unfelt by us, are yet strong enough to penetrate an
+armorplate and photograph what is behind it.
+
+But radium is not the most mysterious of the elements but the least so.
+It is giving out the secret that the other elements have kept. It
+suggests to us that all the other elements in proportion to their weight
+have concealed within them similar stores of energy. Astronomers have
+long dazzled our imaginations by calculating the horsepower of the
+world, making us feel cheap in talking about our steam engines and
+dynamos when a minutest fraction of the waste dynamic energy of the
+solar system would make us all as rich as millionaires. But the heavenly
+bodies are too big for us to utilize in this practical fashion.
+
+And now the chemists have become as exasperating as the astronomers, for
+they give us a glimpse of incalculable wealth in the meanest substance.
+For wealth is measured by the available energy of the world, and if a
+few ounces of anything would drive an engine or manufacture nitrogenous
+fertilizer from the air all our troubles would be over. Kipling in his
+sketch, "With the Night Mail," and Wells in his novel, "The World Set
+Free," stretched their imaginations in trying to tell us what it would
+mean to have command of this power, but they are a little hazy in their
+descriptions of the machinery by which it is utilized. The atom is as
+much beyond our reach as the moon. We cannot rob its vault of the
+treasure.
+
+
+
+
+READING REFERENCES
+
+
+The foregoing pages will not have achieved their aim unless their
+readers have become sufficiently interested in the developments of
+industrial chemistry to desire to pursue the subject further in some of
+its branches. Assuming such interest has been aroused, I am giving below
+a few references to books and articles which may serve to set the reader
+upon the right track for additional information. To follow the rapid
+progress of applied science it is necessary to read continuously such
+periodicals as the _Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry_
+(New York), _Metallurgical and Chemical Engineering_ (New York),
+_Journal of the Society of Chemical Industry_ (London), _Chemical
+Abstracts_ (published by the American Chemical Society, Easton, Pa.),
+and the various journals devoted to special trades. The reader may need
+to be reminded that the United States Government publishes for free
+distribution or at low price annual volumes or special reports dealing
+with science and industry. Among these may be mentioned "Yearbook of the
+Department of Agriculture"; "Mineral Resources of the United States,"
+published by the United States Geological Survey in two annual volumes,
+Vol. I on the metals and Vol. II on the non-metals; the "Annual Report
+of the Smithsonian Institution," containing selected articles on pure
+and applied science; the daily "Commerce Reports" and special bulletins
+of Department of Commerce. Write for lists of publications of these
+departments.
+
+The following books on industrial chemistry in general are recommended
+for reading and reference: "The Chemistry of Commerce" and "Some
+Chemical Problems of To-Day" by Robert Kennedy Duncan (Harpers, N.Y.),
+"Modern Chemistry and Its Wonders" by Martin (Van Nostrand), "Chemical
+Discovery and Invention in the Twentieth Century" by Sir William A.
+Tilden (Dutton, N.Y.), "Discoveries and Inventions of the Twentieth
+Century" by Edward Cressy (Dutton), "Industrial Chemistry" by Allen
+Rogers (Van Nostrand).
+
+"Everyman's Chemistry" by Ellwood Hendrick (Harpers, Modern Science
+Series) is written in a lively style and assumes no previous knowledge
+of chemistry from the reader. The chapters on cellulose, gums, sugars
+and oils are particularly interesting. "Chemistry of Familiar Things" by
+S.S. Sadtler (Lippincott) is both comprehensive and comprehensible.
+
+The following are intended for young readers but are not to be despised
+by their elders who may wish to start in on an easy up-grade: "Chemistry
+of Common Things" (Allyn & Bacon, Boston) is a popular high school
+text-book but differing from most text-books in being readable and
+attractive. Its descriptions of industrial processes are brief but
+clear. The "Achievements of Chemical Science" by James C. Philip
+(Macmillan) is a handy little book, easy reading for pupils.
+"Introduction to the Study of Science" by W.P. Smith and E.G. Jewett
+(Macmillan) touches upon chemical topics in a simple way.
+
+On the history of commerce and the effect of inventions on society the
+following titles may be suggested: "Outlines of Industrial History" by
+E. Cressy (Macmillan); "The Origin of Invention," a study of primitive
+industry, by O.T. Mason (Scribner); "The Romance of Commerce" by Gordon
+Selbridge (Lane); "Industrial and Commercial Geography" or "Commerce and
+Industry" by J. Russell Smith (Holt); "Handbook of Commercial Geography"
+by G.G. Chisholm (Longmans).
+
+The newer theories of chemistry and the constitution of the atom are
+explained in "The Realities of Modern Science" by John Mills
+(Macmillan), and "The Electron" by R.A. Millikan (University of Chicago
+Press), but both require a knowledge of mathematics. The little book on
+"Matter and Energy" by Frederick Soddy (Holt) is better adapted to the
+general reader. The most recent text-book is the "Introduction to
+General Chemistry" by H.N. McCoy and E.M. Terry. (Chicago, 1919.)
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+The reader who may be interested in following up this subject will find
+references to all the literature in the summary by Helen R. Hosmer, of
+the Research Laboratory of the General Electric Company, in the _Journal
+of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry_, New York, for April, 1917.
+Bucher's paper may be found in the same journal for March, and the issue
+for September contains a full report of the action of U.S. Government
+and a comparison of the various processes. Send fifteen cents to the
+U.S. Department of Commerce (or to the nearest custom house) for
+Bulletin No. 52, Special Agents Series on "Utilization of Atmospheric
+Nitrogen" by T.H. Norton. The Smithsonian Institution of Washington has
+issued a pamphlet on "Sources of Nitrogen Compounds in the United
+States." In the 1913 report of the Smithsonian Institution there are two
+fine articles on this subject: "The Manufacture of Nitrates from the
+Atmosphere" and "The Distribution of Mankind," which discusses Sir
+William Crookes' prediction of the exhaustion of wheat land. The D. Van
+Nostrand Co., New York, publishes a monograph on "Fixation of
+Atmospheric Nitrogen" by J. Knox, also "TNT and Other Nitrotoluenes" by
+G.C. Smith. The American Cyanamid Company, New York, gives out some
+attractive literature on their process.
+
+"American Munitions 1917-1918," the report of Benedict Crowell, Director
+of Munitions, to the Secretary of War, gives a fully illustrated
+account of the manufacture of arms, explosives and toxic gases. Our war
+experience in the "Oxidation of Ammonia" is told by C.L. Parsons in
+_Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry_, June, 1919, and
+various other articles on the government munition work appeared in the
+same journal in the first half of 1919. "The Muscle Shoals Nitrate
+Plant" in _Chemical and Metallurgical Engineering_, January, 1919.
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+The Department of Agriculture or your congressman will send you
+literature on the production and use of fertilizers. From your state
+agricultural experiment station you can procure information as to local
+needs and products. Consult the articles on potash salts and phosphate
+rock in the latest volume of "Mineral Resources of the United States,"
+Part II Non-Metals (published free by the U.S. Geological Survey). Also
+consult the latest Yearbook of the Department of Agriculture. For
+self-instruction, problems and experiments get "Extension Course in
+Soils," Bulletin No. 355, U.S. Dept. of Agric. A list of all government
+publications on "Soil and Fertilizers" is sent free by Superintendent of
+Documents, Washington. The _Journal of Industrial and Engineering
+Chemistry_ for July, 1917, publishes an article by W.C. Ebaugh on
+"Potash and a World Emergency," and various articles on American sources
+of potash appeared in the same _Journal_ October, 1918, and February,
+1918. Bulletin 102, Part 2, of the United States National Museum
+contains an interpretation of the fertilizer situation in 1917 by J.E.
+Poque. On new potash deposits in Alsace and elsewhere see _Scientific
+American Supplement_, September 14, 1918.
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+Send ten cents to the Department of Commerce, Washington, for "Dyestuffs
+for American Textile and Other Industries," by Thomas H. Norton,
+Special Agents' Series, No. 96. A more technical bulletin by the same
+author is "Artificial Dyestuffs Used in the United States," Special
+Agents' Series, No. 121, thirty cents. "Dyestuff Situation in U.S.,"
+Special Agents' Series, No. 111, five cents. "Coal-Tar Products," by
+H.G. Porter, Technical Paper 89, Bureau of Mines, Department of the
+Interior, five cents. "Wealth in Waste," by Waldemar Kaempfert,
+_McClure's_, April, 1917. "The Evolution of Artificial Dyestuffs," by
+Thomas H. Norton, _Scientific American_, July 21, 1917. "Germany's
+Commercial Preparedness for Peace," by James Armstrong, _Scientific
+American_, January 29, 1916. "The Conquest of Commerce" and "American
+Made," by Edwin E. Slosson in _The Independent_ of September 6 and
+October 11, 1915. The H. Koppers Company, Pittsburgh, give out an
+illustrated pamphlet on their "By-Product Coke and Gas Ovens." The
+addresses delivered during the war on "The Aniline Color, Dyestuff and
+Chemical Conditions," by I.F. Stone, president of the National Aniline
+and Chemical Company, have been collected in a volume by the author. For
+"Dyestuffs as Medicinal Agents" by G. Heyl, see _Color Trade Journal_,
+vol. 4, p. 73, 1919. "The Chemistry of Synthetic Drugs" by Percy May,
+and "Color in Relation to Chemical Constitution" by E.R. Watson are
+published in Longmans' "Monographs on Industrial Chemistry." "Enemy
+Property in the United States" by A. Mitchell Palmer in _Saturday
+Evening Post_, July 19, 1919, tells of how Germany monopolized chemical
+industry. "The Carbonization of Coal" by V.B. Lewis (Van Nostrand,
+1912). "Research in the Tar Dye Industry" by B.C. Hesse in _Journal of
+Industrial and Engineering Chemistry_, September, 1916.
+
+Kekule tells how he discovered the constitution of benzene in the
+_Berichte der Deutschen chemischen Gesellschaft_, V. XXIII, I, p. 1306.
+I have quoted it with some other instances of dream discoveries in _The
+Independent_ of Jan. 26, 1918. Even this innocent scientific vision has
+not escaped the foul touch of the Freudians. Dr. Alfred Robitsek in
+"Symbolisches Denken in der chemischen Forschung," _Imago_, V. I, p. 83,
+has deduced from it that Kekule was morally guilty of the crime of
+OEdipus as well as minor misdemeanors.
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+Read up on the methods of extracting perfumes from flowers in any
+encyclopedia or in Duncan's "Chemistry of Commerce" or Tilden's
+"Chemical Discovery in the Twentieth Century" or Rogers' "Industrial
+Chemistry."
+
+The pamphlet containing a synopsis of the lectures by the late Alois von
+Isakovics on "Synthetic Perfumes and Flavors," published by the Synfleur
+Scientific Laboratories, Monticello, New York, is immensely interesting.
+Van Dyk & Co., New York, issue a pamphlet on the composition of oil of
+rose. Gildemeister's "The Volatile Oils" is excellent on the history of
+the subject. Walter's "Manual for the Essence Industry" (Wiley) gives
+methods and recipes. Parry's "Chemistry of Essential Oils and Artificial
+Perfumes," 1918 edition. "Chemistry and Odoriferous Bodies Since 1914"
+by G. Satie in _Chemie et Industrie_, vol. II, p. 271, 393. "Odor and
+Chemical Constitution," _Chemical Abstracts_, 1917, p. 3171 and _Journal
+of Society for Chemical Industry_, v. 36, p. 942.
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+The bulletin on "By-Products of the Lumber Industry" by H.K. Benson
+(published by Department of Commerce, Washington, 10 cents) contains a
+description of paper-making and wood distillation. There is a good
+article on cellulose products by H.S. Mork in _Journal of the Franklin
+Institute_, September, 1917, and in _Paper_, September 26, 1917. The
+Government Forest Products Laboratory at Madison, Wisconsin, publishes
+technical papers on distillation of wood, etc. The Forest Service of the
+U.S. Department of Agriculture is the chief source of information on
+forestry. The standard authority is Cross and Bevans' "Cellulose." For
+the acetates see the eighth volume of Worden's "Technology of the
+Cellulose Esters."
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+The speeches made when Hyatt was awarded the Perkin medal by the
+American Chemical Society for the discovery of celluloid may be found in
+the _Journal of the Society of Chemical Industry_ for 1914, p. 225. In
+1916 Baekeland received the same medal, and the proceedings are reported
+in the same _Journal_, v. 35, p. 285.
+
+A comprehensive technical paper with bibliography on "Synthetic Resins"
+by L.V. Redman appeared in the _Journal of Industrial and Engineering
+Chemistry_, January, 1914. The controversy over patent rights may be
+followed in the same _Journal_, v. 8 (1915), p. 1171, and v. 9 (1916),
+p. 207. The "Effects of Heat on Celluloid" have been examined by the
+Bureau of Standards, Washington (Technological Paper No. 98), abstract
+in _Scientific American Supplement_, June 29, 1918.
+
+For casein see Tague's article in Rogers' "Industrial Chemistry" (Van
+Nostrand). See also Worden's "Nitrocellulose Industry" and "Technology
+of the Cellulose Esters" (Van Nostrand); Hodgson's "Celluloid" and Cross
+and Bevan's "Cellulose."
+
+For references to recent research and new patent specifications on
+artificial plastics, resins, rubber, leather, wood, etc., see the
+current numbers of _Chemical Abstracts_ (Easton, Pa.) and such journals
+as the _India Rubber Journal, Paper, Textile World, Leather World_ and
+_Journal of American Leather Chemical Association._
+
+The General Bakelite Company, New York, the Redmanol Products Company,
+Chicago, the Condensite Company, Bloomfield, N.J., the Arlington
+Company, New York (handling pyralin), give out advertising literature
+regarding their respective products.
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+Sir William Tilden's "Chemical Discovery and Invention in the Twentieth
+Century" (E.P. Dutton & Co.) contains a readable chapter on rubber with
+references to his own discovery. The "Wonder Book of Rubber," issued by
+the B.F. Goodrich Rubber Company, Akron, Ohio, gives an interesting
+account of their industry. Iles: "Leading American Inventors" (Henry
+Holt & Co.) contains a life of Goodyear, the discoverer of
+vulcanization. Potts: "Chemistry of the Rubber Industry, 1912." The
+Rubber Industry: Report of the International Rubber Congress, 1914.
+Pond: "Review of Pioneer Work in Rubber Synthesis" in _Journal of the
+American Chemical Society_, 1914. Bang: "Synthetic Rubber" in
+_Metallurgical and Chemical Engineering_, May 1, 1917. Castellan:
+"L'Industrie caoutchouciere," doctor's thesis, University of Paris,
+1915. The _India Rubber World_, New York, all numbers, especially "What
+I Saw in the Philippines," by the Editor, 1917. Pearson: "Production of
+Guayule Rubber," _Commerce Reports_, 1918, and _India Rubber World_,
+1919. "Historical Sketch of Chemistry of Rubber" by S.C. Bradford in
+_Science Progress_, v. II, p. 1.
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+"The Cane Sugar Industry" (Bulletin No. 53, Miscellaneous Series,
+Department of Commerce, 50 cents) gives agricultural and manufacturing
+costs in Hawaii, Porto Rico, Louisiana and Cuba.
+
+"Sugar and Its Value as Food," by Mary Hinman Abel. (Farmer's Bulletin
+No. 535, Department of Agriculture, free.)
+
+"Production of Sugar in the United States and Foreign Countries," by
+Perry Elliott. (Department of Agriculture, 10 cents.)
+
+"Conditions in the Sugar Market January to October, 1917," a pamphlet
+published by the American Sugar Refining Company, 117 Wall Street, New
+York, gives an admirable survey of the present situation as seen by the
+refiners.
+
+"Cuban Cane Sugar," by Robert Wiles, 1916 (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill
+Co., 75 cents), an attractive little book in simple language.
+
+"The World's Cane Sugar Industry, Past and Present," by H.C.P. Geering.
+
+"The Story of Sugar," by Prof. G.T. Surface of Yale (Appleton, 1910). A
+very interesting and reliable book.
+
+The "Digestibility of Glucose" is discussed in _Journal of Industrial
+and Engineering Chemistry_, August, 1917. "Utilization of Beet Molasses"
+in _Metallurgical and Chemical Engineering_, April 5, 1917.
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+"Maize," by Edward Alber (Bulletin of the Pan-American Union, January,
+1915).
+
+"Glucose," by Geo. W. Rolfe _(Scientific American Supplement_, May 15 or
+November 6, 1915, and in Boger's "Industrial Chemistry").
+
+On making ethyl alcohol from wood, see Bulletin No. 110, Special Agents'
+Series, Department of Commerce (10 cents), and an article by F.W.
+Kressmann in _Metallurgical and Chemical Engineering_, July 15, 1916. On
+the manufacture and uses of industrial alcohol the Department of
+Agriculture has issued for free distribution Farmer's Bulletin 269 and
+424, and Department Bulletin 182.
+
+On the "Utilization of Corn Cobs," see _Journal of Industrial and
+Engineering Chemistry_, Nov., 1918. For John Winthrop's experiment, see
+the same _Journal_, Jan., 1919.
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+President Scherer's "Cotton as a World Power" (Stokes, 1916) is a
+fascinating volume that combines the history, science and politics of
+the plant and does not ignore the poetry and legend.
+
+In the Yearbook of the Department of Agriculture for 1916 will be found
+an interesting article by H.S. Bailey on "Some American Vegetable Oils"
+(sold separate for five cents), also "The Peanut: A Great American Food"
+by same author in the Yearbook of 1917. "The Soy Bean Industry" is
+discussed in the same volume. See also: Thompson's "Cottonseed Products
+and Their Competitors in Northern Europe" (Part I, Cake and Meal; Part
+II, Edible Oils. Department of Commerce, 10 cents each). "Production and
+Conservation of Fats and Oils in the United States" (Bulletin No. 769,
+1919, U.S. Dept. of Agriculture). "Cottonseed Meal for Feeding Cattle"
+(U.S. Department of Agriculture, Farmer's Bulletin 655, free).
+"Cottonseed Industry in Foreign Countries," by T.H. Norton, 1915
+(Department of Commerce, 10 cents). "Cottonseed Products" in _Journal of
+the Society of Chemical Industry_, July 16, 1917, and Baskerville's
+article in the same journal (1915, vol. 7, p. 277). Dunstan's "Oil Seeds
+and Feeding Cakes," a volume on British problems since the war. Ellis's
+"The Hydrogenation of Oils" (Van Nostrand, 1914). Copeland's "The
+Coconut" (Macmillan). Barrett's "The Philippine Coconut Industry"
+(Bulletin No. 25, Philippine Bureau of Agriculture). "Coconuts, the
+Consols of the East" by Smith and Pope (London). "All About Coconuts" by
+Belfort and Hoyer (London). Numerous articles on copra and other oils
+appear in _U.S. Commerce Reports_ and _Philippine Journal of Science_.
+"The World Wide Search for Oils" in _The Americas_ (National City Bank,
+N.Y.). "Modern Margarine Technology" by W. Clayton in _Journal Society
+of Chemical Industry_, Dec. 5, 1917; also see _Scientific_ _American
+Supplement_, Sept. 21, 1918. A court decision on the patent rights of
+hydrogenation is given in _Journal of Industrial and Engineering
+Chemistry_ for December, 1917. The standard work on the whole subject is
+Lewkowitsch's "Chemical Technology of Oils, Fats and Waxes" (3 vols.,
+Macmillan, 1915).
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+A full account of the development of the American Warfare Service has
+been published in the _Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry_
+in the monthly issues from January to August, 1919, and an article on
+the British service in the issue of April, 1918. See also Crowell's
+Report on "America's Munitions," published by War Department.
+_Scientific American_, March 29, 1919, contains several articles. A.
+Russell Bond's "Inventions of the Great War" (Century) contains chapters
+on poison gas and explosives.
+
+Lieutenant Colonel S.J.M. Auld, Chief Gas Officer of Sir Julian Byng's
+army and a member of the British Military Mission to the United States,
+has published a volume on "Gas and Flame in Modern Warfare" (George H.
+Doran Co.).
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+See chapter in Cressy's "Discoveries and Inventions of Twentieth
+Century." "Oxy-Acetylene Welders," Bulletin No. 11, Federal Board of
+Vocational Education, Washington, June, 1918, gives practical directions
+for welding. _Reactions_, a quarterly published by Goldschmidt Thermit
+Company, N.Y., reports latest achievements of aluminothermics. Provost
+Smith's "Chemistry in America" (Appleton) tells of the experiments of
+Robert Hare and other pioneers. "Applications of Electrolysis in
+Chemical Industry" by A.F. Hall (Longmans). For recent work on
+artificial diamonds see _Scientific American Supplement_, Dec. 8, 1917,
+and August 24, 1918. On acetylene see "A Storehouse of Sleeping Energy"
+by J.M. Morehead in _Scientific American_, January 27, 1917.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+Spring's "Non-Technical Talks on Iron and Steel" (Stokes) is a model of
+popular science writing, clear, comprehensive and abundantly
+illustrated. Tilden's "Chemical Discovery in the Twentieth Century" must
+here again be referred to. The Encyclopedia Britannica is convenient for
+reference on the various metals mentioned; see the article on "Lighting"
+for the Welsbach burner. The annual "Mineral Resources of the United
+States, Part I," contains articles on the newer metals by Frank W. Hess;
+see "Tungsten" in the volume for 1914, also Bulletin No. 652, U.S.
+Geological Survey, by same author. _Foote-Notes_, the house organ of the
+Foote Mineral Company, Philadelphia, gives information on the rare
+elements. Interesting advertising literature may be obtained from the
+Titantium Alloy Manufacturing Company, Niagara Falls, N.Y.; Duriron
+Castings Company, Dayton, O.; Buffalo Foundry and Machine Company,
+Buffalo, N.Y., manufacturers of "Buflokast" acid-proof apparatus, and
+similar concerns. The following additional references may be useful:
+Stellite alloys in _Jour. Ind. & Eng. Chem._, v. 9, p. 974; Rossi's work
+on titantium in same journal, Feb., 1918; Welsbach mantles in _Journal
+Franklin Institute_, v. 14, p. 401, 585; pure alloys in _Trans. Amer.
+Electro-Chemical Society_, v. 32, p. 269; molybdenum in _Engineering_,
+1917, or _Scientific American Supplement_, Oct. 20, 1917; acid-resisting
+iron in _Sc. Amer. Sup._, May 31, 1919; ferro-alloys in _Jour. Ind. &
+Eng. Chem._, v. 10, p. 831; influence of vanadium, etc., on iron, in
+_Met. Chem. Eng._, v. 15, p. 530; tungsten in _Engineering_, v. 104, p.
+214.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+  Abrasives, 249-251
+  Acetanilid, 87
+  Acetone, 125, 154, 243, 245
+  Acetylene, 30, 154, 240-248, 257, 307, 308
+  Acheson, 249
+  Air, liquefied, 33
+  Alcohol, ethyl, 101, 102, 127, 174, 190-194, 242-244, 305
+    methyl, 101, 102, 127, 191
+  Aluminum, 31, 246-248, 255, 272, 284
+  Ammonia, 27, 29, 31, 33, 56, 64, 250
+  American dye industry, 82
+  Aniline dyes, 60-92
+  Antiseptics, 86, 87
+  Argon, 16
+  Art and nature, 8, 9, 170, 173
+  Artificial silk, 116, 118, 119
+  Aspirin, 84
+  Atomic theory, 293-296, 299
+  Aylesworth, 140
+
+  Baekeland, 137
+  Baeyer, Adolf von, 77
+  Bakelite, 138, 303
+  Balata, 159
+  Bauxite, 31
+  Beet sugar, 165, 169, 305
+  Benzene formula, 67, 301, 101
+  Berkeley, 61
+  Berthelot, 7, 94
+  Birkeland-Eyde process, 26
+  Bucher process, 32
+  Butter, 201, 208
+
+  Calcium, 246, 253
+  Calcium carbide, 30, 339
+  Camphor, 100, 131
+  Cane sugar, 164, 167, 177, 180, 305
+  Carbolic acid, 18, 64, 84, 101, 102, 137
+  Carborundum, 249-251
+  Caro and Frank process, 30
+  Casein, 142
+  Castner, 246
+  Catalyst, 28, 204
+  Celluloid, 128-135, 302
+  Cellulose, 110-127, 129, 137, 302
+  Cellulose acetate, 118, 120, 302
+  Cerium, 288-290
+  Chemical warfare, 218-235, 307
+  Chlorin, 224, 226, 250
+  Chlorophyll, 267
+  Chlorpicrin, 224, 226
+  Chromicum, 278, 280
+  Coal, distillation of, 60, 64, 70, 84, 301
+  Coal tar colors, 60-92
+  Cochineal, 79
+  Coconut oil, 203, 211-215, 306
+  Collodion, 117, 123, 130
+  Cologne, eau de, 107
+  Copra, 203, 211-215, 306
+  Corn oil, 183, 305
+  Cotton, 112, 120, 129, 197
+  Cocain, 88
+  Condensite, 141
+  Cordite, 18, 19
+  Corn products, 181-195, 305
+  Coslett process, 273
+  Cottonseed oil, 201
+  Cowles, 248
+  Creative chemistry, 7
+  Crookes, Sir William, 292, 299
+  Curie, Madame, 292
+  Cyanamid, 30, 35, 299
+  Cyanides, 32
+
+  Diamond, 259-261, 308
+  Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan, 221
+  Drugs, synthetic, 6, 84, 301
+  Duisberg, 151
+  Dyestuffs, 60-92
+
+  Edison, 84, 141
+  Ehrlich, 86, 87
+  Electric furnace, 236-262, 307
+
+  Fats, 196-217, 306
+  Fertilizers, 37, 41, 43, 46, 300
+  Flavors, synthetic, 93-109
+  Food, synthetic, 94
+  Formaldehyde, 136, 142
+  Fruit flavors, synthetic, 99, 101
+
+  Galalith, 142
+  Gas masks, 223, 226, 230, 231
+  Gerhardt, 6, 7
+  Glucose, 137, 184-189, 194, 305
+  Glycerin, 194, 203
+  Goldschmidt, 256
+  Goodyear, 161
+  Graphite, 258
+  Guayule, 159, 304
+  Guncotton, 17, 117, 125, 130
+  Gunpowder, 14, 15, 22, 234
+  Gutta percha, 159
+
+  Haber process, 27, 28
+  Hall, C.H., 247
+  Hare, Robert, 237, 245, 307
+  Harries, 149
+  Helium, 236
+  Hesse, 70, 72, 90
+  Hofmann, 72, 80
+  Huxley, 10
+  Hyatt, 128, 129, 303
+  Hydrogen, 253-255
+  Hydrogenation of oils, 202-205, 306
+
+  Indigo, 76, 79
+  Iron, 236, 253, 262-270, 308
+  Isoprene, 136, 146, 149, 150, 154
+
+  Kelp products, 53, 142
+  Kekule's dream, 66, 301
+
+  Lard substitutes, 209
+  Lavoisier, 6
+  Leather substitutes, 124
+  Leucite, 53
+  Liebig, 38
+  Linseed oil, 202, 205, 270
+
+  Magnesium, 283
+  Maize products, 181-196, 305
+  Manganese, 278
+  Margarin, 207-212, 307
+  Mauve, discovery of, 74
+  Mendeleef, 285, 291
+  Mercerized cotton, 115
+  Moissan, 259
+  Molybdenum, 283, 308
+  Munition manufacture in U.S., 33, 224, 299, 307
+  Mushet, 279
+  Musk, synthetic, 96, 97, 106
+  Mustard gas, 224, 227-229
+
+  Naphthalene, 4, 142, 154
+  Nature and art, 8-13, 118, 122, 133
+  Nitrates, Chilean, 22, 24, 30, 36
+  Nitric acid derivatives, 20
+  Nitrocellulose, 17, 117
+  Nitrogen, in explosives, 14, 16, 117, 299
+    fixation, 24, 25, 29, 299
+  Nitro-glycerin, 18, 117, 214
+  Nobel, 18, 117
+
+  Oils, 196-217, 306
+  Oleomargarin, 207-212, 307
+  Orange blossoms, 99, 100
+  Osmium, 28
+  Ostwald, 29, 55
+  Oxy-hydrogen blowpipe, 246
+
+  Paper, 111, 132
+  Parker process, 273
+  Peanut oil, 206, 211, 214, 306
+  Perfumery, Art of, 103-108
+  Perfumes, synthetic, 93-109, 302
+  Perkin, W.H., 148
+  Perkin, Sir William, 72, 80, 102
+  Pharmaceutical chemistry, 6, 85-88
+  Phenol, 18, 64, 84, 101, 102, 137
+  Phonograph records, 84, 141
+  Phosphates, 56-59
+  Phosgene, 224, 225
+  Photographic developers, 88
+  Picric acid, 18, 84, 85, 226
+  Platinum, 28, 278, 280, 284, 286
+  Plastics, synthetic, 128-143
+  Pneumatic tires, 162
+  Poisonous gases in warfare, 218-235, 307
+  Potash, 37, 45-56, 300
+  Priestley, 150, 160
+  Purple, royal, 75, 79
+  Pyralin, 132, 133
+  Pyrophoric alloys, 290
+  Pyroxylin, 17, 127, 125, 130
+
+  Radium, 291, 295
+  Rare earths, 286-288, 308
+  Redmanol, 140
+  Remsen, Ira, 178
+  Refractories, 251-252
+  Resins, synthetic, 135-143
+  Rose perfume, 93, 96, 97, 99, 105
+  Rubber, natural, 155-161, 304
+    synthetic, 136, 145-163, 304
+  Rumford, Count, 160
+  Rust, protection from, 262-275
+
+  Saccharin, 178, 179
+  Salicylic acid, 88, 101
+  Saltpeter, Chilean, 22, 30, 36, 42
+  Schoop process, 272
+  Serpek process, 31
+  Silicon, 249, 253
+  Smell, sense of, 97, 98, 103, 109
+  Smith, Provost, 237, 245, 307
+  Smokeless powder, 15
+  Sodium, 148, 238, 247
+  Soil chemistry, 38, 39
+  Soy bean, 142, 211, 217, 306
+  Starch, 137, 184, 189, 190
+  Stassfort salts, 47, 49, 55
+  Stellites, 280, 308
+  Sugar, 164-180, 304
+  Sulfuric acid, 57
+
+  Tantalum, 282
+  Terpenes, 100, 154
+  Textile industry, 5, 112, 121, 300
+  Thermit, 256
+  Thermodynamics, Second law of, 145
+  Three periods of progress, 3
+  Tin plating, 271
+  Tilden, 146, 298
+  Titanium, 278, 308
+  TNT, 19, 21, 84, 299
+  Trinitrotoluol, 19, 21, 84, 299
+  Tropics, value of, 96, 156, 165, 196, 206, 213, 216
+  Tungsten, 257, 277, 281, 308
+
+  Uranium, 28
+
+  Vanadium, 277, 280, 308
+  Vanillin, 103
+  Violet perfume, 100
+  Viscose, 116
+  Vitamines, 211
+  Vulcanization, 161
+
+  Welding, 256
+  Welsbach burner, 287-289, 308
+  Wheat problem, 43, 299
+  Wood, distillation of, 126, 127
+  Wood pulp, 112, 120, 303
+
+  Ypres, Use of gases at, 221
+
+  Zinc plating, 271
+
+
+
+
+_Once a Slosson Reader_
+
+_Always a Slosson Fan_
+
+JUST PUBLISHED
+
+CHATS ON SCIENCE
+
+By E.E. SLOSSON
+
+Author of "Creative Chemistry," etc.
+
+
+Dr. Slosson is nothing short of a prodigy. He is a triple-starred
+scientist man who can bring down the highest flying scientific fact and
+tame it so that any of us can live with it and sometimes even love it.
+He can make a fairy tale out of coal-tar dyes and a laboratory into a
+joyful playhouse while it continues functioning gloriously as a
+laboratory. But to readers of "Creative Chemistry" it is wasting time to
+talk about Dr. Slosson's style.
+
+"Chats On Science," which has just been published, is made up of
+eighty-five brief chapters or sections or periods, each complete in
+itself, dealing with a gorgeous variety of subjects. They go from
+Popover Stars to Soda Water, from How Old Is Disease to Einstein in
+Words of One Syllable. The reader can begin anywhere, but when he begins
+he will ultimately read the entire series. It is good science and good
+reading. It contains some of the best writing Dr. Slosson has ever done.
+
+The Boston Transcript says: "These 'Chats' are even more fascinating,
+were that possible, than 'Creative Chemistry.' They are more marvelous
+than the most marvelous of fairy tales ... Even an adequate review could
+give little idea of the treasures of modern scientific knowledge 'Chats
+on Science' contains ... Dr. Slosson has, besides rare scientific
+knowledge, that gift of the gods--imagination."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+("Chats on Science" by E.E. Slosson is published by The Century Company,
+353 Fourth Avenue, New York City. It is sold for $2.00 at all
+bookstores, or it may be ordered from the publisher.)
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] I am quoting mostly Unstead's figures from the _Geographical
+Journal_ of 1913. See also Dickson's "The Distribution of Mankind," in
+Smithsonian Report, 1913.
+
+[2] United States Abstract of Census of Manufactures, 1914, p. 34.
+
+[3] United States Department of Agriculture, Bulletin No. 505.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CREATIVE CHEMISTRY***
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