Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 64.djvu/539

Rh products from the distillation of wood and coal-tar, the finished materials being aniline and alizarine dye-stuffs, indigo, pharmaceutical and photographic products, artificial sweeteners and artificial perfumes, are managed exclusively by scientific chemists. The practical man was forced to yield to the well-educated theoretical man.

Laboratories in which are to be found all the modern apparatus and implements of science and technique have taken the place of the dark cellars in which chemists were formerly imprisoned; magnificent libraries are at the disposal of the investigating chemist of the works, and everywhere Liebig's spirit rules and everywhere Liebig's methods are practised.

How much importance the German chemical industry attaches to the exclusive employment of scientific men, how these are educated at the universities and polytechnics, and what means are employed to maintain the scientific standard of the chemist, all that I had the honor of pointing out in a lecture, delivered seven years ago during my first visit to the United States before the New York Section of the Society of Chemical Industry. Meanwhile the number of chemists employed in our German factories has not only increased considerably, but we have also raised the requirements in the education of chemists whom we employ in our factories and laboratories. Where seven years ago, as I then stated, our factory, the Farbenfabriken vorm. Friedr. Bayer & Co. at Elberfeld, had only one hundred chemists, educated at German universities or high schools, we have now over 160 in our employ.

A systematic organization, founded on a scientific basis, encircles our works. No effort is omitted to bring to the notice of all the chemists every advance of science, so that they may utilize it for the benefit of our factory, and every new technical method is at once thoroughly investigated in order thus to gain new knowledge and create new products.

The details of such an organization are most interesting. The control of all raw materials, delivered at the works by water or rail and of all the intermediary products, are carried out by a central laboratory, which is devoted to analytical chemistry exclusively. In this laboratory a large force of analytical specialists is employed. Here are analyzed not only products which are bought by us, but also intermediary products which are furnished by one department of our works to another, and the exchange of goods within our factory is carried out by contracts which are concluded between the various departments. The analytical methods which are to be used and the conditions of the contracts are perhaps more stringent than if the material had been purchased from outside factories. When no