Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 64.djvu/543

Rh labor. This, indeed, is the essence and strength of the American industry and was the cause for the development of the mechanical industry, and in this respect America is the ruling nation and has set an example to the whole world.

But the conditions are quite different in the purely chemical branch of the industry, the object of which is to convert crude materials by means of numerous chemical processes and chemical forces into more precious ones; where a new process devised by a chemist revolutionizes the industries and makes the old processes unprofitable, even if they are performed by the most ingenious appliances constructed by the most talented engineer; where not only the art of construction, but the genius of the naturalist in recognizing the forces of nature and their products is necessary to accomplish the object in view; where never or only rarely the production of large masses comes into consideration, but where an endless chain of products of the greatest variety must be prepared in small quantities.

If I have sung the praises of the American engineer and of the American mechanical industry in the preceding portion of this lecture, I must now express my satisfaction with the German chemist and the German chemical industry. In this field lies the strength of Germany—a consequence perhaps of the peculiarity of the German character. Forced by the want of natural resources and unprovided with American abundance, the German in scientific exploration must proceed in a cautious and economical manner, always bent on patient and minute research. He is forced to live a simpler life and to be modest in his demands, which is contrary to the American temperament.

It is true you have already a very important industry in the inorganic field of our science and produce large quantities of acids and alkalies and, above all, of metals. In consequence of the immense and cheap water power at your disposal, a very remarkable electrochemical industry has been developed. But these works manufacture at present only inorganic products, and so far as I can see it is impossible up to date to manufacture organic products as economically by electro-chemistry as it is possible with the older chemical methods. You have also begun to isolate the products of tar distillation which are formed during the coking of coal, and it is intended to convert the hydrocarbons thus obtained into more intricate organic products. You have also the beginning of a coal-tar color industry, due to the protective duty of thirty per cent, ad valorem. I have also noted that in metallurgical and textile works, but above all in factories of heavy chemicals and pharmaceutical specialties, chemists exercise analytical control of the raw materials which enter into the process. At some places we found wonderful laboratories in which many chemists were employed. We saw above all how your universities and technical