Page:The Czechoslovak Review, vol3, 1919.djvu/16

 man-Swedish syndicate is waiting for the first opportunity to invade Czechoslovakia with synthetic nitrates.

Agriculture supported by chemical science and by favorable patent and protective laws will work wonders for the industrial development of Czechoslovak lands. Modern condensing and desiccating plants for milk, eggs, fruits and vegetables, epecially potatoes, will develop farming and dairying, will substitute the export of milk powder and condensed milk for the export of inferior cheese and cheese products, and will help in the development of fruit and poultry farming. Packing and canning industry will follow the agricultural development. Canning fruits and making jams, jellies and “povidla” will make many districts far richer than feeding fruits to hogs and cattle or utilizing them for making brandies like the famous “slivovice”.

State analytical and research laboratories will of course have to work hand in hand with manufacturers. New schools, university courses for pure chemistry and technical institutes for applied chemistry must be established.

Another important branch of agricultural chemistry is cultivation of medicinal plants that was raised to a very high degree of perfection here in United States. Austrian Pharmacological Institute was making experiments in Moravia before the war, but the results have not been published. Since Czechoslovak lands are the habitat of many well known medicinal plants like Beladonna, Digitalis, Rhubarb, Sage, etc., and the climate is excellent for the cultivation of nearly all medicinal plants except tropical drugs, this industry can be developed so as to be a source of national wealth.

With packing and oil industry there must be connected the production of fatty acids for soaps with glycerine as by-product, manufacturing of natural fertilizers, glue and gelatine.

Wood and peat industry in Czechoslovakia is waiting for more extensive industrial development which would be safe from the influence of capitalists from Vienna and Germany. Wood and peat are very important not only for fuel, but for the manufacturing of wood and industrial grain alcohol, pyroligneous oils, acids and cellulose. New uses must be found for products from lignite, or as it called in Bohemia, brown coal. Peat cellulose can be worked up as a substitute for wool; wood cellulose is excellent for fireproof pyrocellulose and celluloid as well nitrocellulose for artificial leather and rubber. Celluloid industry will need artificial camphorr which will need pinene oils, epecially turpentine, for its production.

Iron and steel industry must be taken over and placed in the hands of Czech manufacturers. Access to the sea or seas will present the opportuninty not only to get cheap salt, but to start the production of the important hydrochloric acid, bromine and iodine and their acids and salts.

Dyes, synthetic drugs and all coal tar chemicals will be produced by Czech chemists and manufacturers not only for home industries, but also for export to neighboring Slavic states, because Czechoslovak patent and tariff laws will not favor the export of crude coal tar products to Germany, but rather the home production of coal tar, coke, benzol, toluol, aniline and subsequent production of dyes and drugs.

Compressed gases like air, oxygen, acetylene, alcohol and vinegar production from acetylene, wood, animal and mineral carbon industry, production of artificial gems, manufacturing of building materials like gypsum and cements, insecticides, utilization of starches are only a few of the important problems which are to be solved by Czech chemists for the good of Czech chemical industry.

The line of chemical industries in Czechoslovakia waiting for chemists and enterprising men is really inexhaustible. What must be emphasized here is this: our Czech and Slovak countrymen here in United States should study the economic situation and consider well the opportunity for investments in Czechoslovak chemical industries. Such investments will serve a double purpose. First as profitable investments, second as protection against new German and Hungarian economic and industrial expansion in the new Middle European States. German military and political autocracy has been defeated, but German industrial autocracy is making preparations for a new economical offensive. This offensive will be just as dangerous as any military or peace offensive. The German dye trust is making preparation and will be spending millions in advertising to regain its pre-war position on the world’s dye market: they invaded all neutral countries during