Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 85.djvu/590

586 found artificial methods for its manufacture, employing domestic raw materials. To-day several German factories have installed plants to produce carbolic acid by the action of sulphuric acid on benzol and subsequent treatment with alkali. Whenever the price of coaltar carbolic acid rises beyond a point at which synthetic carbolic can be profitably manufactured, these plants are put into operation. They are promptly shut down when the price decreases.

German militarism, by initiating and promoting the everlasting battle between armor plates and armor piercing projectiles, also conferred great benefits on the industry and on mankind in general. We all know that as soon as an improvement in the manufacture of steel was made which allowed the production of armor plate of great resistance, the chemists and engineers evolved a projectile driven by powder, which would pierce such an armor. This fight is still on!

Instead of carbon, which originally was added to iron to produce the iron-alloy called steel, we now use nickel, chromium, tungsten, molybdenum, vanadium, manganese and silicon, which enable us to manufacture refined steel possessing varied properties. Most of these additions in order to give the desired results must be in the state of highest purity. These substances which at first seemed of no use in any other industry were produced primarily to fill the requirements of the manufacturers of cannon, projectiles and armor plate, and the largest maker of these elements in the pure state is the firm of Th. Goldschmidt, located in Essen, where it is able to work in close union with the Krupp Works.

By these modern improvements wonderful materials were placed at the disposal of the industries. The hardness of steel has been so increased that for safety vaults and safes an alloy is made which can neither be drilled nor exploded nor cut by the oxy-hydrogen flame. The chemical industries have been supplied with refined steel which is not attacked by acids, not even by boiling "aqua regia," while other modifications are not affected by hot caustic soda. Some of them are nonmagnetic, others are unaffected by atmospheric influences, or exhibit great resistance to electricity, while some possess high tensile strength. They are thus of specific value in the manufacture of automobiles, of steam turbines, of electric appliances, of rails for electric tramways, of dynamos, motors and transformers.

Vanadium steel furnishes our modern tools, which are distinguished by extreme hardness, and here a war on a small scale is going on between structural steel and steel for tools with which to work the former. Every improvement in the hardness of structural steel must of necessity bring about the manufacture of a still harder steel for tools, exactly as in the case of armor plates and armor piercing projectiles.

German militarism has also benefited the industries in a field where