of climatic conditions; he has enabled it to produce
substantially the same wine, year in and year out, no matter
what the weather; he has reduced the spoilage from 25 per cent
The chemist has made the wine industry reasonably independent
of climatic conditions; he has enabled it to produce
substantially the same wine, year in and year out, no matter
what the weather; he has reduced the spoilage from 25 per cent.
to 0.46 per cent. of the total; he has increased the shipping
radius of the goods and has made preservatives unnecessary. In
the copper industry he has learned and has taught how to make
operations so constant and so continuous that in the
manufacture of blister copper valuations are less than $1.00
apart on every $10,000 worth of product and in refined copper
the valuations of the product do not differ by more than $1.00
in every $50,000 worth of product. The quality of output is
maintained constant within microscopic differences. Without the
chemist the corn-products industry would never have arisen and
in 1914 this industry consumed as much corn as was grown in
that year by the nine states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont,
Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey
and Delaware combined; this amount is equal to the entire
production of the state of North Carolina and about 80 per
cent. of the production of each of the states of Georgia,
Michigan and Wisconsin; the chemist has produced over 100
useful commercial products from corn, which, without him, would
never have been produced. In the asphalt industry the chemist
has taught how to lay a road surface that will always be good,
and he has learned and taught how to construct a suitable road
surface for different conditions of service. In the cottonseed
oil industry, the chemist standardized methods of production,
reduced losses, increased yields, made new use of wastes and
by-products, and has added somewhere between $10 and $12 to the
value of each bale of cotton grown. In the cement industry, the
chemist has ascertained new ingredients, has utilized
theretofore waste products for this purpose, has reduced the
waste heaps of many industries and made them his starting
material; he has standardized methods of manufacture,
introduced methods of chemical control and has insured
constancy and permanency of quality and quantity of output. In
the sugar industry, the chemist has been active for so long a
time that 'the memory of man runneth not to the contrary.' The
sugar industry without the chemist is unthinkable. The Welsbach
mantle is distinctly a chemist"s invention and its successful
and economical manufacture depends largely upon chemical
methods. It would be difficult to give a just estimate of the
economic effect of this device upon illumination, so great and
valuable is it. In the textile industry, he has substituted
uniform, rational, well-thought out and simple methods of
treatment of all the various textile fabrics and fibers where
mystery, empiricism, 'rule-of-thumb' and their accompanying
uncertainties reigned. In the fertilizer industry, it was the
chemist who learned and who taught how to make our immense beds
of phosphate rock useful and serviceable to man in the
enrichment of the soil; he has taught how to make waste
products of other industries useful and available for
fertilization and he has shown how to make the gas works
contribute to the fertility of the soil. In the soda industry,
the chemist can successfully claim that he has founded it,
developed it and brought it to its present state of perfection
and utility, but not without the help of other technical men;
the fundamental ideas were and are chemical. In the leather
industry, the chemist has given us all of the modern methods of
mineral tanning, and without them the modern leather industry
is unthinkable. In the case of vegetable-tanned leather he has
also stepped in, standardized the quality of incoming material
and of outgoing product. In the flour industry the chemist has
learned and taught how to select the proper grain for specific
purposes, to standardize the product, and how to make flour
available for certain specific culinary and food purposes. In
the brewing industry, the chemist has standardized the methods
of determining the quality of incoming material and of outgoing
products, and has assisted in the development of a product of a
quality far beyond that obtaining prior to his entry into that
industry. In the preservation of foods, the chemist made the
fundamental discoveries; up to twenty years ago, however, he
took little or no part in the commercial operations, but now is
almost indispensable to commercial success. In the water supply
of cities, the chemist has put certainty in the place of
uncertainty; he has learned and has shown how, by chemical
methods of treatment and control, raw water of varying quality
can be made to yield potable water of substantially uniform
composition and quality. The celluloid industry and the
nitro-cellulose industry owe their very existence and much of
their development to the chemist. In the glass industry the
chemist has learned and taught how to prepare glasses suitable
for the widest ranges of uses and to control the quality and
quantity of the output. In the pulp and paper industry, the
chemist made the fundamental observations, inventions and
operations and to-day he is in control of all the operations of
the plant itself; to the chemist also is due the cheap
production of many of the materials entering into this
industry, as well as the increased and expanding market for the
product itself.
