Creative chemistry : descriptive of recent achievements in the chemical industries

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CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

Courtesy of E. I. du Pont de Nemours Co.

BURKING AIK IN A BIRKELAND-EYDK FURNACE AT THE DU PONT PLANT

An electric arc consuming about 4000 horse-power of energy is passing between the
U-shaped electrodes which are made of copper tube cooled by an internal current of
water. On the sides of the chamber are seen the openings through which the air passes
impinging directly on both sides of the surface of the disk of flame. This flame is
approximately seven feet in diameter and appears to be continuous although an alter-
nating current of fifty cycles a second is used. The electric arc is spread into this disk
flame by the repellent power of an electro-magnet the pointed pole of which is seen
at the bottom of the picture. Under this intense heat a part of the nitrogen and oxygen
of the air combine to form oxides of nitrogen which when dissolved in water form the
nitric acid used in explosives.

Courtesy nl 1'.. I. du f-'ont de Nemours Co.

A BATTERY OF BIRKELAND-EYDE FURNACES FOR THE FIXATION OF
NITROGEN AT THE DU PONT PLANT

re
s

4-

STAR..J^n^ BOOK

Creative Chemistry

DESCRIPTIVE OF RECENT ACHIEVEMENTS
IN THE CHEMICAL INDUSTRIES

BY ,
EDWIN E. SLOSSON

M.S., Ph.D.

511157

' 9. e .5*3

ILLUSTRATED

GARDEN CITY PUBLISHING CO., INC.

GARDEN CITY, NEW YORK

•

Copyright, 1919, by
The Centuby Co.

Copyright. 1917, 1918, 1919, fajr
ThX IvOErEVDElTT CoxrokATiMl

TO MY FIRST TEACHER

PROFESSOR E. H. S. RAILEY

OF THE DMIVKRSITT OF KANSAS

AND MY LAST TEACHER

PROFESSOR JULIUS STIEGLITZ

or THK CNIVERSITT OF CHICAGO

THIS VOLUME IS GRATEFULLY
DEDICATED

/tV/

CONTENTS

PAOI

I Three Periods op Progress ....>.. 3

II Nitrogen 14

III Feeding the Soil ,37

IV Coal-Tar Colors 60

V Synthetic Perfumes and Flavors .... 93

VI Cellulose 110

VII Synthetic Plastics , . 128

VIII The Race for Rubber 145

IX The Rival Sugars ,• .. . . 164

X What Comes from Corn . . . . . . . 181

XI Solidified Sunshine 196

XII Fighting w^ith Fumes ........ 218

XIII Products op the Electric Furnace .... 236

XIV Metals, Old and New . . . . . . . . 263

Reading References .... . . v . 297

Index . . it .i .. a >. ..; > ,.-. s ». • 309

A CARD OF THANKS

This book originated in a series of articles prepared for The
Independent in 1917-18 for the purpose of interesting the
general reader in the recent achievements of industrial chem-
istry and providing supplementary reading for students of
chemistry in colleges and high schools. I am indebted to
Hamilton Holt, editor of The Independent, and to Karl V. S.
Howland, its publisher, for stimulus and opportunity to un-
dertake the writing of these pages and for the privilege of
reprinting them in this form.

In gathering the material for this volume I have received
the kindly aid of so many companies and individuals that it is
impossible to thank them all but I must at least mention as
those to whom I am especially grateful for information, ad-
vice and criticism : Thomas H. Norton of the Department of
Commerce; Dr. Bernhard C, Hesse; H. S. Bailey of the De-
partment of Agriculture; Professor Julius Stieglitz of the
University of Chicago; L. E. Edgar of the Du Pont de
Nemours Company; Milton Whitney of the U. S. Bureau of
Soils; Dr. H. N. McCoy; K. F. Kellerman of the Bureau of
Plant Industry.

B. B. S.

INTRODUCTION

By Julius Stieglitz

Formerly President of the American Chemical Society, Professor of
Chemistry in The University of Chicago

The recent war as never before in the history of the
world brought to the nations of the earth a realization
of the vital place which the science of chemistry holds
in the development of the resources of a nation. Some
of the most picturesque features of this awakening
reached the great public through the press. Thus, the
adventurous trips of the Deutschland with its cargoes
of concentrated aniline dyes, valued at millions of dol-
lars, emphasized as no other incident our former
dependence upon Germany for these products of her
chemical industries.

The public read, too, that her chemists saved Gcf-
many from an early disastrous defeat, both in the field
of military operations and in the matter of economic
supplies: unquestionably, without the tremendous ex-
pansion of her plants for the production of nitrates and
ammonia from the air by the processes of Haber, Ost-
wald and others of her great chemists, the war would
have ended in 1915, or early in 1916, from exhaustion
of Germany's supplies of nitrate explosives, if not in-
deed from exhaustion of her food supplies as a conse-
quence of the lack of nitrate and ammonia fertilizer
for her fields. Inventions of substitutes for cotton,
copper, rubber, wool and many other basic needs havo
been reported.

INTEODUCTION

These feats of chemistry, performed under the stress
of dire necessity, have, no doubt, excited the wonder
and interest of our public. It is far more important at
this time, however, when both for war and for peace
needs, the resources of our country are strained to the
utmost, that the public should awaken to a clear realiza-
tion of what this science of chemistry really means for
mankind, to the realization that its wizardry permeates
the whole life of the nation as a vitalizing, protective
and constructive agent very much in the same way as
our blood, coursing through our veins and arteries,
carries the constructive, defensive and life-bringing
materials to every organ in the body.

If the layman will but understand that chemistry is
the fundamental science of the transformation of mat-
ter, he will readily accept the validity of this sweeping
assertion : he will realize, for instance, why exactly the
same fundamental laws of the science apply to, and
make possible scientific control of, such widely diver-
gent national industries as agriculture and steel manu-
facturing. It governs the transformation of the salts,
minerals and humus of our fields and the components
of the air into com, wheat, cotton and the innumerable
other products of the soil; it governs no less the trans-
formation of crude ores into steel and alloys, which,
with the cunning born of chemical knowledge, may be
given practically any conceivable quality of hardness,
elasticity, toughness or strength. And exactly the
same thing may be said of the hundreds of national ac-
tivities that lie between the two extremes of agricul-
ture and steel manufacture I

Moreover, the domain of the science of the transf ori

INTRODUCTION

mation of matter includes even life itself as its loftiest
phase : from our birth to our return to dust the laws of
chemistry are the controlling laws of life, health, dis-
ease and death, and the ever clearer recognition of this
relation is the strongest force that is raising medicine
from the uncertain realm of an art to the safer sphere
of an exact science. To many scientific minds it has
even become evident that those most wonderful facts
of life, heredity and character, must find their final ex-
planation in the chemical composition of the compo-
nents of life producing, germinal protoplasm: mere
form and shape are no longer supreme but are rele-
gated to their proper place as the housing only of the
living matter which functions chemically.

It must be quite obvious now why thoughtful men are
insisting that the public should be awakened to a broad
realization of the significance of the science of chem-
istry for its national life.

It is a difficult science in its details, because it has
found that it can best interpret the visible phenomena
of the material world on the basis of the conception of
invisible minute material atoms and molecules, each a
world in itself, whose properties may be nevertheless
accurately deduced by a rigorous logic controlling the
highest type of scientific imagination. But a layman
is interested in the wonders of great bridges and of
monumental buildings without feeling the need of in*
quiring into the painfully minute and extended calcula-
tions of the engineer and architect of the strains and
stresses to which every pin and every bar of the great
bridge and every bit of stone, every foot of arch in a
monumental edifice, will be exposed. So the public may

INTRODUCTION

imderstaiid and appreciate with the keenest interest
the results of chemical effort without the need of in-
struction in the intricacies of our logic, of our dealings
with our minute, invisible particles.

The whole nation's welfare demands, indeed, that
our public be enlightened in the matter of the relation
of chemistry to our national life. Thus, if our com-
merce and our industries are to survive the terrific
competition that must follow the reestablishment of
peace, our public must insist that its representatives in
Congress preserve that independence in chemical man-
ufacturing which the war has forced upon us in the
matter of dyes, of numberless invaluable remedies to
cure and relieve suffering ; in the matter, too, of hun-
dreds of chemicals, which our industries need for their
successful existence.

Unless we are independent in these fields, how easily
might an unscrupulous competing nation do us untold
harm by the mere device, for instance, of delaying sup-
plies, or by sending inferior materials to this country or
by underselling our chemical manufacturers and, after
the destruction of our chemical independence, handicap-
ping our industries as they were in the first year or
two of the great war! This is not a mere possibility
created by the imagination, for our economic history
contains instance after instance of the purposeful un-
dermining and destruction of our industries in finer
chemicals, dyes and drugs by foreign interests bent on
preserving their monopoly. If one recalls that
through control, for instance, of dyes by a competing
nation, control is in fact also established over prod-
ucts, valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars, in

INTRODUCTION

which dyes enter as an essential factor, one may realize
indeed the tremendous industrial and commercial
power which is controlled by the single lever — chem-
ical dyes. Of even more vital moment is chemistry in
the domain of health : the pitiful calls of our hospitals
for local anesthetics to alleviate suffering on the oper-
ating table, the frantic appeals for the hypnotic that
soothes the epileptic and staves off his seizure, the al-
most furious demands for remedy after remedy, that
came in the early years of the war, are still ringing in
the hearts of many of us. No wonder that our small
army of chemists is grimly determined not to give up
the independence in chemistry which war has achieved
for ns! Only a widely enlightened public, however,
can insure the permanence of what farseeing men have
started to accomplish in developing the power of chem-
istry through research in every domain which chemis-
try touches.

The general public should realize that in the support
of great chemical research laboratories of universities
and technical schools it will be sustaining important
centers from which the science which improves prod-
ucts, abolishes waste, establishes new industries and
preserves life, may reach out helpfully into all the
activities of our great nation, that are dependent on
the transformation of matter.

The public is to be congratulated upon the fact that
the writer of the present volume is better qualified
than any other man in the country to bring home to his
readers some of the great results of modem chemical
activity as well as some of the big problems which must
continue to engage the attention of our chemists. Dr.

INTRODUCTION

Slosson has indeed the unique quality of combining an
exact and intimate knowledge of chemistry with tho
exquisite clarity and pointedness of expression of a
bom writer.

We have here an exposition by a master mind, an
exposition shorn of the terrifying and obscuring tech-
nicalities of the lecture room, that will be as absorbing
reading as any thrilling romance. For the story of
scientific achievement is the greatest epic the world has
ever known, and like the great national epics of bygone
ages, should quicken the life of the nation by a realiza-
tion of its powers and a picture of its possibilities.

CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

La Chimie poss^de cette faculte creatrice k
On degre plus eminent que les autres sciences,
parce qu'elle penetre plus profondement et
attaint jusqu'aux elements naturels des etres.

— Berihelot.

CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

THEEE PERIODS OF PROGRESS

The story of Robinson Crusoe is an allegory of
human history. Man is a castaway upon a desert
planet, isolated from other inhabited worlds — if there
be any such — ^by millions of miles of untraversable
space. He is absolutely dependent upon his own exer-
tions, for this world of his, as Wells says, has no im-
ports except meteorites and no exports of any kind.
Man has no wrecked ship from a former civilization
to draw upon for tools and weapons, but must utilize
as best he may such raw materials as he can find.
In this conquest of nature by man there are three
stages distinguishable:

1. The Appropriative Period

2. The Adaptive Period

3. The Creative Period

These eras overlap, and the human race, or rather
its vanguard, civilized man, may be passing into the
third stage in one field of human endeavor while still
lingering in the second or first in some other respect.
But in any particular line this sequence is followed.
The primitive man picks up whatever he can find avail-
able for his use. His successor in the next stage of
culture shapes and develops this crude instrument

4 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

until it becomes more suitable for Ms purpose. But
in the course of time man often finds that he can make
something new which is better than anything in nature
or naturally produced. The savage discovers. The
barbarian improves. The civilized man invents. The
first finds. The second fashions. The third fab-
ricates.

The primitive man was a troglodyte. He sought
shelter in any cave or crevice that he could find. Later
he dug it out to make it more roomy and piled up stones
at the entrance to keep out the wild beasts. This arti-
ficial barricade, this false facade, was gradually ex-
tended and solidified until finally man could build a
cave for himself anywhere in the open field from
stones he quarried out of the hill. But man was not
content with such materials and now puts up a building
which may be composed of steel, brick, terra cotta,
glass, concrete and plaster, none of which materials
are to be found in nature.

The untutored savage might cross a stream astride a
floating tree trunk. By and by it occurred to him to
sit inside the log instead of on it, so he hollowed it out
with fire or flint. Later, much later, he constructed an
ocean liner.

Cain, or whoever it was first slew his brother man,
made use of a stone or stick. Afterward it was found
a better weapon could be made by tying the stone to the
end of the stick, and as murder developed into a fine art
the stick was converted into the bow and this into the
catapult and finally into the cannon, while the stone,
was developed into the high explosive projectile.

The first music to soothe the savage breast was the

THEEE PERIODS OF PKOGRESS 5

soughing of the wind through the trees. Then strings
were stretched across a crevice for the wind to play
upon and there was the -^olian harp. The second
stage was entered when Hermes strung the tortoise
shell and plucked it with his fingers and when Athena,
raising the wind from her own lungs, forced it through
a hollow reed. From these beginnings we have the
organ and the orchestra, producing such sounds aa
nothing in nature can equal.

The first idol was doubtless a meteorite fallen from
heaven or a fulgurite or concretion picked up from the
€and, bearing some slight resemblance to a human
being. Later man made gods in his own image, and so
sculpture and painting grew until now the creations
of futuristic art could be worshiped — ^if one wanted
to — without violation of the second commandment, for
they are not the likeness of anything that is in heaven
above or that is in the earth beneath or that is in the
water under the earth.

In the textile industry the same development is ob-
servable. The primitive man used the skins of animals
he had slain to protect his own skin. In the course of
time he — or more probably his wife, for it is to the
women rather than to the men that we owe the early
steps in the arts and sciences — fastened leaves together
or pounded out bark to make garments. Later fibers
were plucked from the sheepskin, the oocoon and the
cotton-ball, twisted together and woven into cloth.
Nowadays it is possible to make a complete suit of
clothes, from hat to shoes, of any desirable texture,
form and color, and not include any substance to be
found in nature. The first metals available were those

6 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

foTind free in nature such as gold and copper. In a
later age it was found possible to extract iron from its
ores and today we have artificial alloys made of multi-
farious combinations of rare metals. The medicine
man dosed his patients with decoctions of such roots
and herbs as had a bad taste or queer look. The phar-
macist discovered how to extract from these their
medicinal principle such as morphine, quinine and co-
caine, and the creative chemist has discovered how to
make innumerable drugs adapted to specific diseases
and individual idiosyncrasies.

In the later or creative stages we enter the domain
of chemistry, for it is the chemist alone who possesses
the power of reducing a substance to its constituent
atoms and from them producing substances entirely
new. But the chemist has been slow to realize hia
unique power and the world has been still slower to
utilize his invaluable services. Until recently indeed
the leaders of chemical science expressly disclaimed
what should have been their proudest boast. The
French chemist Lavoisier in 1793 defined chemistry as
"the science of analysis.'* The German chemist Ger-
hardt in 1844 said: **I have demonstrated that the
chemist works in opposition to living nature, that he
bums, destroys, analyzes, that the vital force alone
operates by synthesis, that it reconstructs the edifice
torn down by the chemical forces.**

It is quite true that chemists up to the middle of the
last century were so absorbed in the destructive side of
their science that they were blind to the constructive
side of it. In this respect they were less prescient than
their contemned predecessors, the alchemists, who, fool*

THEEE PERIODS OF PEOGEESS 7

ish and pretentious as they were, aspired at least to the
formation of something new.

It was, I think, the French chemist Berthelot who
first clearly perceived the double aspect of chemistry,
for he defined it as * ' the science of analysis and synthe-
sis," of taking apart and of putting together. The
motto of chemistry, as of all the empirical sciences, is
savoir c'est pouvoir, to know in order to do. This is
the pragmatic test of all useful knowledge. Berthelot
goes on to say :

Chemistry creates its object. This creative faculty, com-
parable to that of art itself, distinguishes it essentially from
the natural and historical sciences. . . . These sciences do
not control their object. Thus they are too often condemned
to an eternal impotence in the search for truth of which they
must content themselves with possessing some few and often
uncertain fragments. On the contrary, the experimental sci-
ences have the power to realize their conjectures. . . . What
they dream of that they can manifest in actuality. . . .

Chemistry possesses this creative faculty to a more eminent
degree than the other sciences because it penetrates more pro-
foundly and attains even to the natural elements of exist-
ences.

Since Berthelot 's time, that is, within the last fifty
years, chemistry has won its chief triumphs in the field
of synthesis. Organic chemistry, that is, the chemistry
of the carbon compounds, so called because it was for-
merly assumed, as Gerhardt says, that they could only
be formed by ** vital force'* of organized plants and
animals, has taken a development far overshadowing
inorganic chemistry, or the chemistry of mineral sub-

a CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

stances. Chemists have prepared or know how to pre-
pare hundreds of thousands of such ''organic com-
pounds, ' ' few of which occur in the natural world.

But this conception of chemistry is yet far from hav-
ing been accepted by the world at large. This was
brought forcibly to my attention during the publication
of these chapters in **The Independent'* by various
letters, raising such objections as the following:

When you say in your article on "What Comes from Coal
Tar" that "Art can go ahead of nature in the dyestuff busi-
ness" you have doubtless for the moment allowed your enthu-
siasm to sweep you away from the moorings of reason.
Shakespeare, anticipating you and your "Creative Chemis-
try," has shown the utter untenableness of your position:
Nature is made better by no mean,
But nature makes that mean: so o'er that art,
Which, you say, adds to nature, is an art
That nature makes.
How can you say that art surpasses nature when you know
very well that nothing man is able to make can in any way
equal the perfection of all nature's products?

It is blasphemous of you to claim that man can improve
the works of God as they appear in nature. Only the Crea-
tor can create. Man only imitates, destroys or defiles God's
handiwork.

No, it was not in momentary absence of mind that I
claimed that man could improve upon nature in the
making of dyes. I not only said it, but I proved it.
I not only proved it, but I can back it up. I will give
a million dollars to anybody finding in nature dyestuffs
as numerous, varied, brilliant, pure and cheap as those
that are manufactured in the laboratory. I haven't

THREE PERIODS OF PROGRESS 9

that amount of money with me at the moment, but the
dyers would be glad to put it up for the discovery of
a satisfactory natural source for their tinctorial mate-
rials. This is not an opinion of mine but a matter of
fact, not to be decided by Shakespeare, who was not
acquainted with the aniline products.

Shakespeare in the passage quoted is indulging in his
favorite amusement of a play upon words. There is a
possible and a proper sense of the word ** nature" that
makes it include everything except the supernatural.
Therefore man and all his works belong to the realm
of nature. A tenement house in this sense is as *' nat-
ural" as a bird's nest, a peapod or a crystal.

But such a wide extension of the term destroys its
distinctive value. It is more convenient and quite as
correct to use "nature" as I have used it, in contradis-
tinction to * ' art, ' ' meaning by the former the products
of the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms, exclud-
ing the designs, inventions and constructions of man
which we call ' ' art. ' '

We cannot, in a general and abstract fashion, say
which is superior, art or nature, because it all depends
on the point of view. The worm loves a rotten log into
which he can bore. Man prefers a steel cabinet into
which the worm cannot bore. If man cannot improve
upon nature he has no motive for making anything.
Artificial products are therefore superior to natural
products as measured by man's convenience, otherwise
they would have no reason for existence.

Science and Christianity are at one in abhorring the
natural man and calling upon the civilized man to fight
and subdue him. The conquest of nature, not the imi-

10 CREATIVE CHEMISTEY

tation of nature, is the whole duty of man. Metch-
nikoff and St. Paul unite in criticizing the body we were
born with. St. Augustine and Huxley are in agree-
ment as to the eternal conflict between man and nature.
In his Eomanes lecture on ''Evolution and Ethics"
Huxley said: *'The ethical progress of society de-
pends, not on imitating the cosmic process, still less on
running away from it, but on combating it," and
again: "The history of civilization details the steps
by which man has succeeded in building up an artificial
world within the cosmos."

There speaks the true evolutionist, whose one desire
is to get away from nature as fast and far as possible.
Imitate Nature? Yes, when we cannot improve upon
her. Admire Nature ? Possibly, but be not blinded to
her defects. Learn from Nature? We should sit
humbly at her feet until we can stand erect and go our
own way. Love Nature ? Never ! She is our treach-
erous and unsleeping foe, ever to be feared and watched
and circumvented, for at any moment and in spite of all
our vigilance she may wipe out the human race by
famine, pestilence or earthquake and within a few cen-
turies obliterate every trace of its achievement. The
wild beasts that man has kept at bay for a few centuries
will in the end invade his palaces: the moss will en-
velop his walls and the lichen disrupt them. The clam
may survive man by as many millennia as it preceded
him. In the ultimate devolution of the world animal
life will disappear before vegetable, the higher plants
will be killed off before the lower, and finally the three
kingdoms of nature will be reduced to one, the mineral,
t^ivilized man, enthroned in his citadel and defended

THREE PERIODS OF PROGRESS 11

by all the forces of nature that he has brought under
his control, is after all in the same situation as a sav-
age, shivering in the darkness beside his fire, listening
to the pad of predatory feet, the rustle of serpents and
the cry of birds of prey, knowing that only the fire
keeps his enemies off, but knowing too that every stick
he lays on the fire lessens his fuel supply and hastens
the inevitable time when the beasts of the jungle will
make their fatal rush.

Chaos is the "natural" state of the universe. Cos-
mos is the rare and temporary exception. Of all the
million spheres this is apparently the only one habit-
able and of this only a small part — the reader may draw
the boundaries to suit himself — can be called civilized.
Anarchy is the natural state of the human race. It
prevailed exclusively all over the world up to some five
thousand years ago, since which a few peoples have
for a time succeeded in establishing a certain degree of
peace and order. This, however, can be maintained
only by strenuous and persistent efforts, for society
tends naturally to sink into the chaos out of which it has
arisen.

It is only by overcoming nature that man can rise.
The sole salvation for the human race lies in the re-
moval of the primal curse, the sentence of hard labor
for life that was imposed on man as he left Paradise.
Some folks are trying to elevate the laboring classes ;
some are trying to keep them down. The scientist has
a more radical remedy ; he wants to annihilate the la-
boring classes by abolishing labor. There is no longef
any need for human labor in the sense of personal toil,
for the physical energy necessary to accomplish all

12 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

kinds of work may be obtained from external sources
and it can be directed and controlled without extreme
exertion. Man's first effort in this direction was to
throw part of his burden upon the horse and ox or upon
other men. But within the last century it has been
discovered that neither human nor animal servitude is
necessary to give man leisure for the higher life, for by
means of the machine he can do the work of giants
without exhaustion. But the introduction of machines,
like every other step of human progress, met with the
most violent opposition from those it was to benefit.
* * Smash 'em I ' ' cried the workingman. * * Smash 'em ! ' '
cried the poet. ** Smash 'em!" cried the artist.
*' Smash 'em!" cried the theologian. *' Smash 'em!"
cried the magistrate. This opposition yet lingers and
every new invention, especially in chemistry, is greeted
with general distrust and often with legislative prohi-
bition.

Man is the tool-using animal, and the machine, that
is, the power-driven tool, is his peculiar achievement.
It is purely a creation of the human mind. The wheel,
its essential feature, does not exist in nature. The
lever, with its to-and-fro motion, we find in the limbs
of all animals, but the continuous and revolving lever,
the wheel, cannot be formed of bone and flesh. Man as
a motive power is a poor thing. He can only convert
three or four thousand calories of energy a day and he
does that very inefficiently. But he can make an engine
that will handle a hundred thousand times that, twice
as efficiently and three times as long. In this way only
can he get rid of pain and toil and gain the wealth he

THREE PERIODS OF PROGRESS 13

Oradually then lie will substitute for the natural
world an artificial world, molded nearer to his heart's
desire. Man the Artif ex will ultimately master Nature
and reign supreme over his own creation until chaos
shall come again. In the ancient drama it was deus ex
machina that came in at the end to solve the problems
of the play. It is to the same supernatural agency, the
divinity in machinery, that we must look for the salva-
tion of society. It is by means of applied science that
the earth can be made habitable and a decent human
life made possible. Creative evolution is at last be-
coming conscious.

n

NITEOGEN
PRESERVER AND DESTROYER OF LIFE

In the eyes of the chemist the Great War was essen-
tially a series of explosive reactions resulting in the
liberation of nitrogen. Nothing like it has been seen
in any previous wars. The first battles were fought
with cellulose, mostly in the form of clubs. The next
were fought with silica, mostly in the form of flint
arrowheads and spear-points. Then came the metals,
bronze to begin with and later iron. The nitrogenous
era in warfare began when Friar Roger Bacon or Friar
Schwartz — ^whichever it was — ground together in his
mortar saltpeter, charcoal and sulfur. The Chinese,
to be sure, had invented gunpowder long before, but
they — poor innocents — did not know of anything worse
to do with it than to make it into fire-crackers. With
the introduction of ''villainous saltpeter" war ceased
to be the vocation of the nobleman and since the noble-
man had no other vocation he began to become extinct,
A bullet fired from a mile away is no respecter of per-
sons. It is just as likely to kill a knight as a peasant,
and a brave man as a coward. You cannot fence with
a cannon ball nor overawe it with a plumed hat. The
only thing you can do is to hide and shoot back. Now
you cannot hide if you send up a column of smoke by
day and a pillar of fire by night — the most conspicuous
of signals— every time you shoot. So the next step

14

l^TBOGEN 15

was the invention of a smokeless powder. In this the
oxygen necessary for the combustion is already in such
dose combination with its fuel, the carbon and hydro-
gen, that no black particles of carbon can get away
unburnt. In the old-fashioned gunpowder the oxygen
necessary for the combustion of the carbon and sulfur
was in a separate package, in the molecule of potas-
sium nitrate, and however finely the mixture was
ground, some of the atoms, in the excitement of the ex-
plosion, failed to find their proper partners at the mo-
ment of dispersal. The new gunpowder besides being
smokeless is ashless. There is no black sticky mass
of potassium salts left to foul the gun barrel.

The gunpowder period of warfare was actively initi-
ated at the battle of Cressy, in which, as a contempo-
rary historian says, * ' The English guns made noise like
thunder and caused much loss in men and horses."
Smokeless powder as invented by Paul Vieille was
adopted by the French Government in 1887. This,
then, might be called the beginning of the guncotton or
nitrocellulose period — or, perhaps in deference to the
caveman's club, the second cellulose period of human
warfare. Better, doubtless, to call it the *'high ex-
plosive period, ' ' for various other nitro-eompounds be-
sides guncotton are being used.

The important thing to note is that all the explosives
from gunpowder down contain nitrogen as the essential
element. It is customary to call nitrogen "an inert
element" because it was hard to get it into combina-
tion with other elements. It might, on the other hand,
be looked upon as an active element because it acts so
energetically in getting out of its compounds. We can

16 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

dodge the question by saying that nitrogen is a most
unreliable and unsociable element. Like Kipling's cat
it walks by its wild lone.

It is not so bad as Argon the Lazy and the other celi-
bate gases of that family, where each individual atom
goes off by itself and absolutely refuses to unite even
temporarily with any other atom. The nitrogen atoms
will pair off with each other and stick together, but
they are reluctant to associate with other elements and
when they do the combination is likely to break up any
moment. You all know people like that, good enough
when by themselves but sure to break up any club,
church or society they get into. Now, the value of
nitrogen in warfare is due to the fact that all the atoms
desert in a body on the field of battle. Millions of them
may be lying packed in a gun cartridge, as quiet as you
please, but let a little disturbance start in the neighbor-
hood— say a grain of mercury fulminate flares up — and
all the nitrogen atoms get to trembling so violently
that they cannot be restrained. The shock spreads
rapidly through the whole mass. The hydrogen and
carbon atoms catch up the oxygen and in an instant
they are off on a stampede, crowding in every direc-
tion to find an exit, and getting more heated up all the
time. The only movable side is the cannon ball in
front, so they all pound against that and give it such
a shove that it goes. ten miles before it stops. The
external bombardment by the cannon ball is, therefore,
preceded by an internal bombardment on the cannon
ball by the molecules of the hot gases, whose speed is
about as great as the speed of the projectile that they
propel.

NITROGEN 17

The active agent in all these explosives is the nitro-
gen atom in combination with two oxygen atoms, which
the chemist calls the **nitro group" and which he repre-
sents by NO2. This group was, as I have said, orig-
inally used in the form of saltpeter or potassium ni-
trate, but since the chemist did not want the potassium
part of it — for it fouled his guns — he took the nitro
group out of the nitrate by means of sulfuric acid and
by the same means hooked it on to some compound of
carbon and hydrogen that would bum without leaving
any residue, and give nothing but gases. One of the
simplest of these hydrocarbon derivatives is glycerin,
the same as you use for sunburn. This mixed with
nitric and sulfuric acids gives nitroglycerin, an easy
thing to make, though I should not advise anybody to
try making it unless he has his life insured. But nitro-
glycerin is uncertain stuff to keep and being a liquid is
awkward to handle. So it was mixed with sawdust or
porous earth or something else that would soak it up.
This molded into sticks is our ordinary dynamite.

If instead of glycerin we take cellulose in the form
of wood pulp or cotton and treat this with nitric acid
in the presence of sulfuric we get nitrocellulose or gun-
cotton, which is the chief ingredient of smokeless pow-
der.

Now guncotton looks like common cotton. It is too
light and loose to pack well into a gun. So it is dis-
solved with ether and alcohol or acetone to make a
plastic mass that can be molded into rods and cut into
grains of suitable shape and size to bum at the proper
speed.

Here, then, we have a liquid explosive, nitroglycerin.

18 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

that has to he soaked up in some porous solid, and tf
porous solid, guncotton, that has to soak up some
liquid. Why not solve both difficulties together by
dissolving the guncotton in the nitroglycerin and so
get a double explosive! This is a simple idea. Any
of us can see the sense of it — once it is suggested to us.
But Alfred Nobel, the Swedish chemist, who thought it
out first in 1878, made millions out of it. Then, appar-
ently alarmed at the possible consequences of his in-
vention, he bequeathed the fortune he had made by it
to found international prizes for medical, chemical and
physical discoveries, idealistic literature and the pro-
motion of peace. But his posthumous efforts for the
advancement of civilization and the abolition of war
did not amount to much and his high explosives were
later employed to blow into pieces the doctors, chem-
ists, authors and pacifists he wished to reward.

Nobel's invention, "cordite," is composed of nitro-
glycerin and nitrocellulose with a little mineral jelly or
vaseline. Besides cordite and similar mixtures of
nitroglycerin and nitrocellulose there are two other
classes of high explosives in common use.

One is made from carbolic acid, which is familiar to
us all by its use as a disinfectant. If this is treated
with nitric and sulfuric acids we get from it picric acid,
a yellow crystalline solid. Every government has its
own secret formula for this type of explosive. The
British call theirs ** lyddite," the French "melinite"
and the Japanese "shimose."

The third kind of high explosives uses as its base
toluol. This is not so familiar to us as glycerin, cotton
or carbolic acid. It is one of the coal tar products, an

NITROGEN 19

Inflammable liquid, resembling benzene. When treated
with nitric acid in the usual way it takes up like the
others three nitro groups and so becomes tri-nitro-
toluol. Kealizing that people could not be expected to
use such a mouthful of a word, the chemists have sug-
gested various pretty nicknames, trotyl, tritol, trinol^
tolite and trilit, but the public, with the wilfulness it
always shows in the matter of names, persists in calling
it TNT, as though it were an author like G. B. S., or
O. K. C, or F. P. A. TNT is the latest of these high
explosives and in some ways the best of them. Picric
acid has the bad habit of attacking the metals with
which it rests in contact forming sensitive picrates that
are easily set off, but TNT is inert toward metals and
keeps well. TNT melts far below the boiling point of
water so can be readily liquefied and poured into shells.
It is insensitive to ordinary shocks. A rifle bullet can
be fired through a case of it without setting it off, and
if lighted with a match it burns quietly. The amazing
thing about these modem explosives, the organic ni-
trates, is the way they will stand banging about and
burning, yet the terrific violence with which they blow
up when shaken by an explosive wave of a particular
velocity like that of a fulminating cap. Like picric
acid, TNT stains the skin yellow and causes soreness
and sometimes serious cases of poisoning among the
employees, mostly girls, in the munition factories. On
the other hand, the girls working with cordite get to
using it as chewing gum ; a harmful habit, not because
of any danger of being blown up by it, but because
nitroglycerin is a heart stimulant and they do not need
that.

i

„j:^\n^

NITROGEN 2%

TNT is by no means smokeless. The German shells
that exploded with a cloud of black smoke and which
British soldiers called ** Black Marias," ** coal-boxes "
or ** Jack Johnsons" were loaded with it. But it is an
advantage to have a shell show where it strikes, al-
though a disadvantage to have it show where it starts.

It is these high explosives that have revolutionized
warfare. As soon as the first German shell packed
with these new nitrates burst inside the Gruson cupola
at Liege and tore out its steel and concrete by the roots
the world knew that the day of the fixed fortress was
gene. The armies deserted their expensively prepared
fortifications and took to the trenches. The British
troops in France found their weapons futile and sent
across the Channel the cry of **Send us high explosives
or we perish!" The home Government was slow to
heed the appeal, but no progress was made against the
Germans until the Allies had the means to blast them
out of their entrenchments by shells loaded with five
hundred pounds of TNT.

All these explosives are made from nitric acid and
this used to be made from nitrates such as potassium
nitrate or saltpeter. But nitrates are rarely found in
large quantities. Napoleon and Lee had a hard time
to scrape up enough saltpeter from the compost heaps,
cellars and caves for their gunpowder, and they did
not use as much nitrogen in a whole campaign as was
freed in a few days' cannonading on the Somme. Now
there is one place in the world — and so far as we know
one only — ^where nitrates are to be found abundantly.
This is in a desert on the western slope of the Andes
where ancient guano deposits have decomposed and

22 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

there was not enough rain to wash away their saUs.
Here is a bed two miles wide, two hundred miles long
and five feet deep yielding some twenty to fifty per cent.
of sodium nitrate. The deposit originally belonged to
Peru, but Chile fought her for it and got it in 1881.
Here all countries came to get their nitrates for agri-
culture and powder making. Germany was the largest
customer and imported 750,000 tons of Chilean nitrate
in 1913, besides using 100,000 tons of other nitrogen
salts. By this means her old, wornout fields were made
to yield greater harvests than our fresh land. Ger-
many and England were like two duelists buying pow-
der at the same shop. The Chilean Government,
pocketing an export duty that aggregated half a billion
dollars, permitted the saltpeter to be shoveled impar-
tially into British and German ships, and so two nitro-
gen atoms, torn from their Pacific home and parted,
like Evangeline and Gabriel, by transportation oversea,
may have found themselves flung into each other's arms
from the mouths of opposing howitzers in the air of
Flanders. Goethe could write a romance on such a
theme.

Now the moment war broke out this source of supply
was shut off to both parties, for they blockaded each
other. The British fleet closed up the German ports
while the German cruisers in the Pacific took up a posi-
tion off the coast of Chile in order to intercept the ships
carrying nitrates to England and France. The Pan-
ama Canal, designed to afford relief in such an emer-
gency, caved in most inopportunely. The British sent
a fleet to the Pacific to clear the nitrate route, but it was
outranged and defeated on November 1, 1914. Then a

NITEOGEN 23

stronger British fleet was sent out and smashed the
Germans off the Falkland Islands on December 8. But
for seven weeks the nitrate route had been closed while
the chemical reactions on the Mame and Yser were
decomposing nitrogen-compounds at an unheard of
rate.

England was now free to get nitrates for her muni-
tion factories, but Germany was still bottled up. She
had stored up Chilean nitrates in anticipation of the
war and as soon as it was seen to be coming she bought
all she could get in Europe. But this supply was alto-
gether inadequate and the war would have come to an
end in the first winter if German chemists had not
provided for such a contingency in advance by work-
ing out methods of getting nitrogen from the air. Long
ago it was said that the British ruled the sea and the
French the land so that left nothing to the German but
the air. The Germans seem to have taken this jibe
seriously and to have set themselves to make the most
of the aerial realm in order to challenge the British and
French in the fields they had appropriated. They had
succeeded so far that the Kaiser when he declared war
might well have considered himself the Prince of th©
Power of the Air. He had a fleet of Zeppelins and he
had means for the fixation of nitrogen such as no other
nation possessed. The Zeppelins burst like wind bags,
but the nitrogen plants worked and made Germany in-
dependent of Chile not only during the war, but in the
time of peace.

Germany during the war used 200,000 tons of nitric
acid a year in explosives, yet her supply of nitrogen
is exhaustless.

2i

jOEEATIVE CHEMISTRY

toaooc

ISmS

^

^0

% «

nnu E^

trecBimocea

I i ^

World production and consiunption of fixed inorganic nitrogen expressed

in tons nitrogen

From The Journal of Induttrial and Engineering Chemistrv, March, 1919.

Nitrogen is free as air. That is the trouble ; it is too
free. It is fixed nitrogen that we want and that we are
willing to pay for; nitrogen in combination with some
other elements in the form of food or fertilizer so we
can make use of it as we set it free. Fixed nitrogen
in its cheapest form, Chile saltpeter, rose to $250 dur-
ing the war. Free nitrogen costs nothing and is good
for nothing. If a land-owner has a right to an expand-
ing pyramid of air above him to the limits of the atmos-
phere— as, I believe, the courts have decided in the
eaves-dropping cases — then for every square foot of

NITROGEN 25

his ground lie owns as much nitrogen as he could buy
for $2500. The air is four-fifths free nitrogen and if
we could absorb it in our lungs as we do the oxygen
of the other fifth a few minutes breathing would give
us a full meal. But we let this free nitrogen all out
again through our noses and then go and pay 35 cents
a pound for steak or 60 cents a dozen for eggs in order
to get enough combined nitrogen to live on. Though
man is immersed in an ocean of nitrogen, yet he cannot
make use of it. He is like Coleridge's "Ancient Mari-
ner" with "water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to
drink.'*

Nitrogen is, as Hood said not so truly about gold,
"hard to get and hard to hold." The bacteria that
form the nodules on the roots of peas and beans have
the power that man has not of utilizing free nitrogen.
Instead of this quiet inconspicuous process man has to
call upon the lightning when he wants to fix nitrogen.
The air contains the oxygen and nitrogen which it is
desired to combine to form nitrates but th^ atoms are
paired, like to like. Passing an electric spark through
the air breaks up some of these pairs and in the confu-
sion of the shock the lonely atoms seize on their nearest
neighbor and so may get partners of the other sort.
I have seen this same thing happen in a square dance
where somebody made a blunder. It is easy to under-
stand the reaction if we represent the atoms of oxygen
and nitrogen by the initials of their names in this
fashion:

NN -H 00 ->- NO+NO
nitrogen oxygen nitric oxide

26 CREATIVE CHEMISTEY

The — ^ represents Jove's thunderbolt, a stroke of
artificial lightning. We see on the left the molecules
of oxygen and nitrogen, before taking the electric treat-
ment, as separate elemental pairs, and then to the right
of the arrow we find them as compound molecules of
nitric oxide. This takes up another atom of oxygen
from the air and becomes NOO, or using a subscript
figure to indicate the number of atoms and so avoid
repeating the letter, NO2 which is the familiar nitro
group of nitric acid (HO — NOg) and of its salts, the
nitrates, and of its organic compounds, the high ex-
plosives. The NO2 is a brown and evil-smelling gas
which when dissolved in water (HOH) and further
oxidized is completely converted into nitric acid.

The apparatus which effects this transformation is
essentially a gigantic arc light in a chimney through
which a current of hot air is blown. The more thor-
oughly the air comes under the action of the electric arc
the more molecules of nitrogen and oxygen will be
broken up and rearranged, but on the other hand if the
mixture of gases remains in the path of the discharge
the NO molecules are also broken up and go back into
their original form of NN and 00. So the object is to
spread out the electric arc as widely as possible and
then run the air through it rapidly. In the Schonherr
process the electric arc is a spiral flame twenty-three
feet long through which the air streams with a vortex
motion. In the Birkeland-Eyde furnace there is a
series of semi-circular arcs spread out by the repellent
force of a powerful electric magnet in a flaming disc
seven feet in diameter with a temperature of 6300° F.
In the Pauling furnace the electrodes between whifih

NITROGEN 27

the current strikes are two cast iron tubes curving up-
ward and outward like the horns of a Texas steer and
cooled by a stream of water passing through them.
These electric furnaces produce two or three ounces of
nitric acid for each kilowatt-hour of current consumed.
Whether they can compete with the natural nitrates
and the products of other processes depends upon how
cheaply they can get their electricity. Before the war
there were several large installations in Norway and
elsewhere where abundant water power was available
and now the Norwegians are using half a million horse
power continuously in the fixation of nitrogen and the
rest of the world as much again. The Germans had
invested largely in these foreign oxidation plants, but
shortly before the war they had sold out and turned
their attention to other processes not requiring so much
electrical energy, for their country is poorly provided
^th water power. The Haber process, that they made
most of, is based upon as simple a reaction as that we
have been considering, for it consists in uniting two
elemental gases to make a compound, but the elements
in this case are not nitrogen and oxygen, but nitrogen
and hydrogen. This gives ammonia instead of nitric
acid, but ammonia is useful for its own purposes and it
can be converted into nitric acid if this is desired. The
reaction is :

NN + HH + HH + HH->- NHHH + NHHH
nitrogen hydrogen ammonia

The animals go in two by two, but they come out four
by four. Four molecules of the mixed elements are
turned into two molecules and so the gas shrinks to half

28 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

its volume. At the same time it acquires an odor — i
familiar to us when we are curing a cold — that neither
of the original gases had. The agent that effects the
transformation in this case is not the electric spark—
for this would tend to work the reaction backwards—^
but uranium, a rare metal, which has the peculiar prop-
erty of helping along a reaction while seeming to take
no part in it. Such a substance is called a catalyst^
The action of a catalyst is rather mysterious and when-
ever we have a mystery we need an analogy. We may,
then, compare the catalyst to what is known as * ' a good
mixer" in society. You know the sort of man I mean.
He may not be brilliant or especially talkative, but
somehow there is always ''something doing" at a pic-
nic or house-party when he is along. The tactful host-
ess, the salon leader, is a social catalyst. The trouble
with catalysts, either human or metallic, is that they
are rare and that sometimes they get sulky and won't
work if the ingredients they are supposed to mix are
unsuitable.

But the uranium, osmium, platinum or whatever
metal is used as a catalyzing agent is expensive and al-
though it is not used up it is easily ** poisoned," as the
chemists say, by impurities in the gases. The nitrogen
and the hydrogen for the Haber process must then be
prepared and purified before trying to combine them
into ammonia. The nitrogen is obtained by liquefying
air by cold and pressure and then boiling off the nitro-
gen at —194° C. The oxygen left is useful for other
purposes. The hydrogen needed is extracted by a sim-
ilar process of fractional distillation from ** water-
gas," the blue-flame burning gas used for heating.

NITROGEN 28

Then the nitrogen and hydrogen, mixed in the propor-
tion of one to three, as shown in the reaction given
above, are compressed to two hundred atmospheres,
heated to 1300° F. and passed over the finely divided
uranium. The stream of gas that comes out contains
about four per cent, of ammonia, which is condensed to
a liquid by cooling and the uncombined hydrogen and
nitrogen passed again through the apparatus.

The ammonia can be employed in refrigeration and
other ways but if it is desired to get the nitrogen into
the form of nitric acid it has to be oxidized by the so-
ealled Ostwald process. This is the reaction :

NH. + 40 ->- HNO, + HjO
ammonia oxygen nitric acid water

The catalyst used to effect this combination is the
metal platinum in the form of fine wire gauze, since the
action takes place only on the surface. The ammonia
gas is mixed with air which supplies the oxygen and
the heated mixture run through the platinum gauze at
the rate of several yards a second. Althougli the gases
come in contact with the platinum only a five-hundredth
part of a second yet eighty-five per cent, is converted
into nitric acid.

The Haber process for the making of ammonia by
direct synthesis from its constituent elements and the
supplemental Ostwald process for the conversion of
the ammonia into nitric acid were the salvation of Ger-
many. As soon as the Germans saw that their dash
toward Paris had been stopped at the Marne they knew
that they were In for a long war and at once made plans
for a supply of fixed nitrogen. The chief German dye

30 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

factories, the Badische Anilin and Soda-Fabrik,
promptly put $100,000,000 into enlarging its plant and
raised its production of ammonium sulfate from 30,000
to 300,000 tons. One German electrical firm with aid
from the city of Berlin contracted to provide 66,000,000
pounds of fixed nitrogen a year at a cost of three cents
a pound for the next twenty-five years. The 750,000
tons of Chilean nitrate imported annually by Germany
contained about 116,000 tons of the essential element
nitrogen. The fourteen large plants erected during
the war can fix in the form of nitrates 500,000 tons of
nitrogen a year, which is more than twice the amount
needed for internal consumption. So Germany is now
not only independent of the outside world but will have
a surplus of nitrogen products which could be sold even
in America at about half what the farmer has been
paying for South American saltpeter.

Besides the Haber or direct process there are other
methods of making ammonia which are, at least outside
of Germany, of more importance. Most prominent of
these is the cyanamid process. This requires electri-
cal power since it starts with a product of the electrical
furnace, calcium carbide, familiar to us all as a source
of acetylene gas.

If a stream of nitrogen is passed over hot calcium
carbide it is taken up by the carbide according to the
following equation :

CaC, + N, -> CaCN, + C
calcium carbide nitrogen calcium cyanamid carbon

Calcium cyanamid was discovered in 1895 by Caro
and Franke when they were trying to work out a new

NITROGEN 81.

process for making cyanide to use in extracting gold.
It looks like stone and, under the name of lime-nitrogen,
or Kalkstickstoff, or nitrolim, is sold as a fertilizer.
If it is desired to get ammonia, it is treated with super-
heated steam. The reaction produces heat and pres-
sure, so it is necessary to carry it on in stout auto-
claves or enclosed kettles. The cyanamid is completely
and quickly converted into pure ammonia and calcium
carbonate, which is the same as the limestone from
which carbide was made. The reaction is :

CaCN, + 3H,0 ->- CaCO, + 2NH,
calcium cyanamid water calcium carbonate ammonia

Another electrical furnace method, the Serpek proc-
ess, uses aluminum instead of calcium for the fixation
of nitrogen. Bauxite, or impure aluminum oxide, the
ordinary mineral used in the manufacture of metallic
aluminum, is mixed with coal and heated in a revolving
electrical furnace through which nitrogen is passing.
The equation is :

A1,0, + 3C + N, ->- 2A1N + SCO
aluminum oxide carbon nitrogen aluminum nitride carbon

monoxide

Then the aluminum nitride is treated with steam
under pressure, which produces anmaonia and gives
back the original aluminum oxide, but in a purer form
than the mineral from which was made

2A1N + 3H.0 ->- 2NH, + AlA
aluminum nitride water ammonia aluminum oxide

The Serpek process is employed to some extent in
France in connection with the aluminum industry.
These are the principal processes for the fixation of

32 CBEATIVE CHEMISTRY

nitrogen now in use, but they by no means exhaust the
possibilities. For instance^ Professor John C. Bucher,
of Brown University, created a sensation in 1917 by
announcing a new process which he had worked out
with admirable completeness and which has some very
attractive features. It needs no electric power or high
pressure retorts or liquid air apparatus. He simply
fills a twenty-foot tube with briquets made out of soda
ash, iron and coke and passes producer gas through the
heated tube. Producer gas contains nitrogen since it
is made by passing air over hot coal. The reaction is :

2Na,C0,

+

4C + N, =

2NaCN

+ SCO

sodium
:arbonate

carbon nitrogen

sodium
cyanide

carbon
monoxide

The iron here acts as the catalyst and converts two
harmless substances, sodium carbonate, which is com-
mon washing soda, and carbon, into two of the most
deadly compounds known to man, cyanide and carbon
monoxide, which is what kills you when you blow out
the gas. Sodium cyanide is a salt of hydrocyanic acid,
which for some curious reason is called "Prussic acid. "
It is so violent a poison that, as the freshman said in a
chemistry recitation, *■ ' a single drop of it placed on the
tongue of a dog will kill a man.''

But sodium cyanide is not only useful in itself, for
the extraction of gold and cleaning of silver, but can
be converted into ammonia, and a variety of other com-
pounds such as urea and oxamid, which are good fer-
tilizers; sodium ferrocyanide, that makes Prussian
blue ; and oxalic acid used in dyeing. Professor Bucher
claimed that his furnace could be set up in a day at a
cost of less than $100 and could turn out 150 pounds of

NITROGEN 33

sodium cyanide in twenty-four hours. This process
was placed freely at the disposal of the United States
Oovernment for the war and a 10-ton plant was built at
Saltville, Va., by the Ordnance Department. But the
armistice put a stop to its operations and left the future
of the process undetermined.

We might have expected that the fixation of nitrogen
by passing an electrical spark through hot air would
have been an American invention, since it was Franklin
who snatched the lightning from the heavens as well as
the scepter from the tyrant and since our output of hot
air is unequaled by any other nation. But little atten-
tion was paid to the nitrogen problem until 1916 when
it became evident that we should soon be drawn into a
war ^'-with a first class power. *' On June 3, 1916, Con-
gress placed $20,000,000 at the disposal of the president
for investigation of **the best, cheapest and most avail-
able means for the production of nitrate and other
products for munitions of war and useful in the manu-
facture of fertilizers and other useful products by
water power or any other power.'* But by the time
war was declared on April 6, 1917, no definite program
had been approved and by the time the armistice was
signed on November 11, 1918, no plants were in active
operation. But five plants had been started and two
of them were nearly ready to begin work when they
were closed by the ending of the war. United States
Nitrate Plant No. 1 was located at Sheffield, Alabama,
and was designed for the production of ammonia by
** direct action'* from nitrogen and hydrogen accord-
ing to the plans of the American Chemical Company.
Its capacity was calculated at 60,000 pounds of anhy-

34 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

droTis ammonia a day, half of which was to be oxidized
to nitric acid. Plant No. 2 was erected at Muscle
Shoals, Alabama, to use the process of the American
Cyanamid Company. This was contracted to produce
110,000 tons of ammonium nitrate a year and later two
other cyanamid plants of half that capacity were
started at Toledo and Ancor, Ohio.

At Muscle Shoals a mushroom city of 20,000 sprang
up on an Alabama cotton field in six months. The raw
material, air, was as abundant there as anywhere and
the power, water, could be obtained from the Govern-
ment hydro-electric plant on the Tennessee River, but
this was not available during the war, so steam was em-
ployed instead. The heat of the coal was used to cool
the air down to the liquefying point. The principle of
this process is simple. Everybody knows that heat
expands and cold contracts, but not everybody has real-
ized the converse of this rule, that expansion cools and
compression heats. If air is forced into smaller space,
as in a tire pump, it heats up and if allowed to-expand
to ordinary pressure it cools off again. But if the air
while compressed is cooled and then allowed to expand
it must get still colder and the process can go on till it
becomes cold enough to congeal. That is, by expand-
ing a great deal of air, a little of it can be reduced to
the liquefying point. At Muscle Shoals the plant for
liquefying air, in order to get the nitrogen out of it,
consisted of two dozen towers each capable of produc-
ing 1765 cubic feet of pure nitrogen per hour. The air
was drawn in through two pipes, a yard across, and
passed through scrubbing towers to remove impurities.
The air was then compressed to 600 pounds per square

NITROGEN 35

Indfi. Nine tenths of the air was permitted to expand
to 50 pounds and this expansion cooled down the other
tenth, still under high pressure, to the liquefying point.
Eectifying towers 24 feet high were stacked with trays
of liquid air from which the nitrogen was continually
bubbling off since its boiling point is twelve degrees
centigrade lower than that of oxygen. Pure nitrogen
gas collected at the top of the tower and the residual
liquid air, now about half oxygen, was allowed to escape
at the bottom.

The nitrogen was then run through pipes into the
lime-nitrogen ovens. There were 1536 of these about
four feet square and each holding 1600 pounds of pul-
verized calcium carbide. This is at first heated by an
electrical current to start the reaction which afterwards
produces enough heat to keep it going. As the stream
of nitrogen gas passes over the finely divided carbide it
is absorbed to form calcium cyanamid as described on
a previous page. This product is cooled, powdered
and wet to destroy any quicklime or carbide left un-
changed. Then it is charged into autoclaves and steam
at high temperature and pressure is admitted. The
steam acting on the cyanamid sets free ammonia gas
which is carried to towers down which cold water is
sprayed, giving the ammonia water, familiar to the
kitchen and the bathroom.

But since nitric acid rather than ammonia was
needed for munitions, the oxygen of the air had to be
called into play. This process, as already explained,
is carried on by aid of a catalyzer, in this case platinum
wire. At Muscle Shoals there were 696 of these cata-
lyzer boxes. The ammonia gas, mixed with air to pro-

36 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

vide the necessary oxygen, was admitted at the top
and passed down through a sheet of platinum gauze
of 80 mesh to the inch, heated to incandescence by eleo-
tricity. In contact with this the ammonia is converted
into gaseous oxides of nitrogen (the familiar red fumes
of the laboratory) which, carried off in pipes, cooled and
dissolved in water, form nitric acid.

But since none of the national plants could be got
into action during the war, the United States was com-
pelled to draw upon South America for its supply.
The imports of Chilean saltpeter rose from half a
million tons in 1914 to a million and a half in 1917.
After peace was made the Department of War turned
over to the Department of Agriculture its surplus of
saltpeter, 150,000 tons, and it was sold to American
farmers at cost, $81 a ton.

For nitrogen plays a double role in human economy.
It appears like Brahma in two aspects, Vishnu the Pre-
server and Siva the Destroyer. Here I have been con-
sidering nitrogen in its maleficent aspect, its use in
war. We now turn to its beneficent aspect, its use in
peaoe.

m

FEEDING THE SOIL

Tlie Great War not only starved people : it starved
the land. Enough nitrogen was thrown away in some
indecisive battle on the Aisne to save India from a
famine. The population of Europe as a whole has not
been lessened by the war, but the soil has been robbed
of its power to support the population. A plant re-
quires certain chemical elements for its growth and
all of these must be within reach of its rootlets, for it
will accept no substitutes. A wheat stalk in France
before the war had placed at its feet nitrates from
Chile, phosphates from Florida and potash from Ger-
many. All these were shut off by the firing line and
the shortage of shipping.

Out of the eighty elements only thirteen are neces-*
sary for crops. Four of these are gases: hydrogen,
oxygen, nitrogen and chlorine. Five are metals: po-
tassium, magnesium, calcium, iron and sodium. Four
are non-metallic solids : carbon, sulfur, phosphorus and
silicon. Three of these, hydrogen, oxygen and carbon,
making up the bulk of the plant, are obtainable ad libi-
turn from the air and water. The other ten in the form
of salts are dissolved in the water that is sucked up
from the soil. The quantity needed by the plant is so
small and the quantity contained in the soil is so great
ihat ordinarily we need not bother about the supplj^

91

38 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

except in ease of three of them. They are nitrogen,
potassium and phosphorus. These would be useless or
fatal to plant life in the elemental form, but fixed in
neutral salt they are essential plant foods. A ton of
wheat takes away from the soil about 47 pounds of
nitrogen, 18 pounds of phosphoric acid and 12 pounds
of potash. If then the farmer does not restore this
much to his field every year he is drawing upon his
capital and this must lead to bankruptcy in the long
run.

So much is easy to see, but actually the question is
extremely complicated. When the German chemist,
Justus von Liebig, pointed out in 1840 the possibility
of maintaining soil fertility by the application of chemi-
cals it seemed at first as though the question were prac-
tically solved. Chemists assumed that all they had to
do was to analyze the soil and analyze the crop and
from this figure out, as easily as balancing a bank book,
just how much of each ingredient would have to be re-
stored to the soil every year. But somehow it did not
work out that way and the practical agriculturist, find-
ing that the formulas did not fit his farm, sneered at the
professors and whenever they cited Liebig to him he
irreverently transposed the syllables of the name. The
chemist when he went deeper into the subject saw that
he had to deal with the colloids, damp, unpleasant,
gummy bodies that he had hitherto fought shy of be-
cause they would not crystallize or filter. So the chem-
ist called to his aid the physicist on the one hand and
the biologist on the other and then they both had their
hands full. The physicist found that he had to deal
with a polyvariant system of solids, liquids and gases

FEEDING THE SOIL 39

mutually miscible in phases too numerous to be han-
died by Gibbs 's Rule. The biologist found that he had
to deal with the invisible flora and fauna of a new
world.

Plants obey the injunction of Tennyson and rise on
the stepping stones of their dead selves to higher
things. Each successive generation lives on what is
left of the last in the soil plus what it adds from the
air and sunshine. As soon as a leaf or tree trunk falls
to the ground it is taken in charge by a wrecking crew
composed of a myriad of microscopic organisms who
proceed to break it up into its component parts so these
can be used for building a new edifice. The process is
called "rotting'* and the product, the black, gummy
stuff of a fertile soil, is called '^humus.'* The plants,
that is, the higher plants, are not able to live on their
own proteids as the animals are. But there are lower
plants, certain kinds of bacteria, that can break up the
big complicated proteid molecules into their component
parts and reduce the nitrogen in them to ammonia or
ammonia-like compounds. Having done this they stop
and turn over the job to another set of bacteria to be
carried through the next step. For you must know
that soil society is as complex and specialized as that
above ground and the tiniest bacterium would die
rather than violate the union rules. The second set of
bacteria change the ammonia over to nitrites and then
a third set, the Amalgamated Union of Nitrate Work-
ers, steps in and completes the process of oxidation
with an efficiency that Ostwald might envy, for ninety-
six per cent, of the ammonia of the soil is converted
into nitrates. But if the conditions are not just right,

40 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

if the food is insufficient or unwholesome or if the air
that circulates through the soil is contaminated with
poison gases, the bacteria go on a strike. The farmer,
not seeing the thing from the standpoint of the bac-
teria, says the soil is **sick" and he proceeds to doctor
it according to his own notion of what ails it. First
perhaps he tries running in strike breakers. He goes
to one of the firms that makes a business of supplying
nitrogen-fixing bacteria from the scabs or nodules of
the clover roots and scatters these colonies over the
field. But if the living conditions remain bad the new-
comers will soon quit work too and the farmer loses his
money. If he is wise, then, he will remedy the condi-
tions, putting a better ventilation system in his soil
perhaps or neutralizing the sourness by means of lime
or killing off the ameboid banditti that prey upon the
peaceful bacteria engaged in the nitrogen industry. It
is not an easy job that the farmer has in keeping bil-
lions of billions of subterranean servants contented and
working together, but if he does not succeed at this he
wastes his seed and labor.

The layman regards the soil as a platform or anchor-
ing place on which to set plants. He measures its
value by its superficial area without considering its
contents, which is as absurd as to estimate a man's
wealth by the size of his safe. The difference in point
of view is well illustrated by the old story of the city
chap who was showing his farmer uncle the sights of
New York. When he took him to Central Park he tried
to astonish him by saying **This land is worth $500,000
an acre." The old farmer dug his toe into the ground,
kicked out a clod, broke it open, looked at it, spit on it

FEEDING THE SOIL 41

and squeezed it in his hand and then said, * 'Don't yon
believe it; 'tain't worth ten dollars an acre. Mighty
poor soil I call it." Both were right.

The modern agriculturist realizes that the soil is a
laboratory for the production of plant food and he ordi-
narily takes more pains to provide a balanced ration
for it than he does for his family. Of course the ne-
cessity of feeding the soil has been known ever since
man began to settle down and the ancient methods of
maintaining its fertility, though discovered acciden-
tally and followed blindly, were sound and eflficacious.
Virgil, who like Liberty Hyde Bailey was fond of pub-
lishing agricultural bulletins in poetry, wrote two thoU'
sand years ago :

But sweet vicissitudes of rest and toil

Make easy labor and renew the soil

Yet sprinkle sordid ashes all around

And load with fatt'ning dung thy fallow soil.

The ashes supplied the potash and the dung the ni-
trate and phosphate. Long before the discovery of
the nitrogen-fixing bacteria, the custom prevailed of
sowing pea-like plants every third year and then plow-
ing them under to enrich the soil. But such local sup-
plies were always inadequate and as soon as deposits of
fertilizers were discovered anywhere in the world they
were drawn upon. The richest of these was the Chin-
cha Islands off the coast of Peru, where millions of
penguins and pelicans had lived in a most untidy man-
ner for untold centuries. The guano composed of the
excrement of the birds mixed with the remains of dead
birds and the fishes they fed upon was piled up to a

42 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

depth of 120 feet. From this Isle of Penguins — ^which
is not that described by Anatole France — a billion dol-
lars* worth of guano was taken and the deposit was
soon exhausted.

Then the attention of the world was directed to the
mainland of Peru and Chile, where similar guano de-
posits had been accumulated and, not being washed
away on account of the lack of rain, had been deposited
as sodium nitrate, or "saltpeter." These beds were
discovered by a German, Taddeo Haenke, in 1809, but
it was not until the last quarter of the century that the
nitrates came into common use as a fertilizer. Since
then more than 53,000,000 tons have been taken out of
these beds and the exportation has risen to a rate of
2,500,000 to 3,000,000 tons a year. How much longer
they will last is a matter of opinion and opinion is
largely influenced by whether you have your money
invested in Chilean nitrate stock or in one of the new
synthetic processes for making nitrates. The United
States Department of Agriculture says the nitrate beds
will be exhausted in a few years. On the other hand
the Chilean Inspector General of Nitrate Deposits in
his latest official report says that they will last for two
hundred years at the present rate and that then there
are incalculable areas of low grade deposits, containing
less than eleven per cent., to be drawn upon.

Anyhow, the South American beds cannot long sup-
ply the world's need of nitrates and we shall some time
be starving unless creative chemistry comes to the res-
cue. In 1898 Sir William Crookes — the discoverer of
the "Crookes tubes," the radiometer and radiant mat-
ter— startled the British Association for the Advance<

FEEDING THE SOIL 43

ment af Science by declaring that the world was near-
ing the limit of wheat production and that by 1931 the
bread-eaters, the Caucasians, would have to turn to
other grains or restrict their population while the rice
and millet eaters of Asia would continue to increase.
Sir William was laughed at then as a sensationalist.
He was, but his sensations were apt to prove true and it
is already evident that he was too near right for com-
fort. Before we were half way to the date he set we
had two wheatless days a week, though that was be-
cause we persisted in shooting nitrates into the air.
The area producing wheat was by decades : ^

THE WHEAT FIELDS OP THE WORLD

Acres

1881-90 192,000,000

1890-1900 211,000,000

1900-10 242,000,000

Probable limit 300,000,000

If 300,000,000 acres can be brought under cultivation
for wheat and the average yield raised to twenty bush-
els to the acre, that will give enough to feed a billion
people if they eat six bushels a year as do the English.
Whether this maximum is correct or not there is evi-
dently some limit to the area which has suitable soil
and climate for growing wheat, so we are ultimately
thrown back upon Crookes's solution of the problem;
that is, we must increase the yield per acre and this
can only be done by the use of fertilizers and especially
by the fixation of atmospheric nitrogen. Crookes esti-

1 1 am quoting mostly Unstead's fifrures from tbe Geographical JouT'
nal of 1913. See also Dickson's "The Distribution of Mankind," la
Smithsonian Report, 1913.

44 CREATIVE CHEMISTEY

mated the average yield of wheat at 12.7 bushels to the
acre, which is more than it is in the new lands of the
United States, Australia and Russia, but less than in
Europe, where the soil is well fed. What can be done
to increase the yield may be seen from these figures :

GAIN IN THE YIELD OF WHEAT IN BUSHELS PER ACRE

1889-90 1913

Germany 19 35

Belgium 30 35

France 17 20

United Kingdom 28 32

United States 12 15

The greatest gain was made in Germany and we see
a reason for it in the fact that the German importation
of Chilean saltpeter was 55,000 tons in 1880 and 747,000
tons in 1913. In potatoes, too, Germany gets twice aa
big a crop from the same ground as we do, 223 bushels
per acre instead of our 113 bushels. But the United
States uses on the average only 28 pounds of fertilizer
per acre, while Europe uses 200.

It is clear that we cannot rely upon Chile, but make
nitrates for ourselves as Germany had to in war time.
In the first chapter we considered the new methods of
fixing the free nitrogen from the air. But the fixation
of nitrogen is a new business in this country and our
chief reliance so far has been the coke ovens. When
coal is heated in retorts or ovens for making coke or
gas a lot of ammonia comes off with the other products
of decomposition and is caught in the sulfuric acid
used to wash the gas as ammonium sulfate. Our
American coke-makers have been in the habit of letting

FEEDING THE SOIL

45

this escape into the air and consequently we have been
losing some 700,000 tons of ammonium salts every year,
enough to keep our land rich and give us all the explo-
sives we should need. But now they are reforming
and putting in ovens that save the by-products such a;S

Switzerland Kraiontf
Ital<j60&l1on*

Russia 9 riniond
Spain GrPorfu^l
Scondinavio
Other Count rin

Courtesy of Scientific American.

Consxuuption of potash for agricultural purposes in
diflferent countries

ammonia and coal tar, so in 1916 we got from this
source 325,000 tons a year.

Germany had a natural monopoly of potash as Chile
had a natural monopoly of nitrates. The agriculture
of Europe and America has been virtually dependent
upon these two sources of plant foods. Now when the
world was cleft in twain by the shock of August, 1914,
the Allied Powers had the nitrates and the Central
Powers had the potash. If Germany had not had up
her sleeve a new process for making nitrates she could
not long have carried on a war and doubtless would not
have ventured upon it. But the outside world had no

46

CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

sucli substitute for the German potash salts and has
not yet discovered one. Consequently the price of
potash in the United States jumped from $40 to $400
and the cost of food went up with it. Even under the
stimulus of prices ten times the normal and with chem-

Price

1913 I91A /9/S

/9/6 /9/T

pen
Ton
*soo

400

300

200

if!

n

1

(i

100

i
1

^

■

llllllll

llillll <

What happened to potash when the war broke out. This diagram
from the Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry of July, 1917,
shows how the supply of potassium muriate from Germany was shut oflf
in 1914 and how its price rose.

ists searching furnace crannies and bad lands the
United States was able to scrape up less than 10,000
tons of potash in 1916, and this was barely enough to
satisfy our needs for two weeks !

Yet potash compounds are as cheap as dirt. Pick
up a handful of gravel and you will be able to find much
of it feldspar or other mineral containing some ten per
cent, of potash. Unfortunately it is in combination
with silica, which is harder to break up than a
trust.

But ** constant washing wears away stones" and the

FEEDING THE SOIL ^

potash that the metallurgist finds too hard to extract
in his hottest furnace is washed out in the course oi
time through the dropping of the gentle rain from
heaven. "All rivers run to the sea" and so the sea
gets salt, all sorts of salts, principally sodium chloride
(our table salt) and next magnesium, calcium and po-
tassium chlorides or sulfates in this order of abun-
dance. But if we evaporate sea-water down to dry-
ness all these are left in a mix together and it is hard
to sort them out. Only patient Nature has time for it
and she only did on a large scale in one place, that is at
Stassfurt, Germany. It seems that in the days when
northwestern Prussia was undetermined whether it
should be sea or land it was flooded annually by sea-
water. As this slowly evaporated the dissolved salts
crystallized out at the critical points, leaving beds of
various combinations. Each year there would be de-
posited three to five inches of salts with a thin layer of
calcium sulfate or gypsum on top. Counting these an-
nual layers, like the rings on a stump, we find that the
Stassfurt beds were ten thousand years in the making.
They were first worked for their salt, common salt,
alone, but in 1837 the Prussian Government began pros-
pecting for new and deeper deposits and found, not the
clean rock salt that they wanted, but bittern, largely
magnesium sulfate or Epsom salt, which is not at all
nice for table use. This stuff was first thrown away
until it was realized that it was much more valuable for
the potash it contains than was the rook salt they were
after. Then the Germans began to purify the Stass-
furt salts and market them throughout the world.
They contain from fifteen to twenty-five per cent, of

48 CEEATIVE CHEMISTRY

magnesium chloride mixed with magnesium chloride in
* * carnallite, " with magnesium sulfate in **kainite" and
sodium chloride in ' ' sylvinite. ' ^ More than thirty
thousand miners and workmen are employed in the
Stassfurt works. There are some seventy distinct
establishments engaged in the business, but they are in
combination. In fact they are compelled to be, for the
German Government is as anxious to promote trusts
as the American Government is to prevent them. Once
the Stassfurt firms had a falling out and began a cut-
throat competition. But the German Government ob-
jects to its people cutting each other's throats. Ameri-
can dealers were getting unheard of bargains when the
German Government stepped in and compelled the com-
peting corporations to recombine under threat of put-
ting on an export duty that would eat up their profits.
The advantages of such business cooperation are spe-
cially shown in opening up a new market for an un-
known product as in the case of the introduction of
the Stassfurt salts into American agriculture. The
farmer in any country is apt to be set in his ways and
when it comes to inducing him to spend his hard-earned
money for chemicals that he never heard of and could
not pronounce he — quite rightly — has to be shown.
Well, he was shown. It was, if I remember right, early
in the nineties that the German Kali Syndikat began
operations in America and the United States Govern-
ment became its chief advertising agent. In every
state there was an agricultural experiment station and
these were provided liberally with illustrated literature
on Stassfurt salts with colored wall charts and sets of
samples and free sacks of salts for field experiments.

FEEDING THE SOIL 49

The station men, finding that they could rely upon the
scientific accuracy of the information supplied by Kali
and that the experiments worked out well, became en-
thusiastic advocates of potash fertilizers. The station
bulletins — ^which Uncle Sam was kind enough to carry
free to all the farmers of the state — sometimes were
worded so like the Kali Company advertising that the
company might have raised a complaint of plagiariz-
ing, i)iit they never did. The Chilean nitrates, which
are under British control, were later introduced by
similar methods through the agency of the state agri-
cultural experiment stations.

As a result of all this missionary work, which cost
the Kali Company $50,000 a year, the attention of a
large proportion of American farmers was turned to-
ward intensive farming and they began to realize the
necessity of feeding the soil that was feeding them.
They grew dependent upon these two foreign and
widely separated sources of supply. In the year be-
fore the war the United States imported a million tons
of Stassfurt salts, for which the farmers paid more
than $20,000,000. Then a declaration of American in-
dependence— the German embargo of 1915 — cut us off
from Stassfurt and for five years we had to rely upon
our own resources. We have seen how Germany — shut
off from Chile — solved the nitrogen problem for her
fields and munition plants. It was not so easy for us —
shut off from Germany — to solve the potash problem.

There is no more lack of potash in the rocks than
there is of nitrogen in the air, but the nitrogen is free
and has only to be caught and combined, while the pot-
ash is shut up in a granite prison from which it is hard

50 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

to get it free. It is not the percentage in the soil bnt
the percentage in the soil water that counts. A farmer
with his potash locked up in silicates is like the mer-
chant who has left the key of his safe at home in his
other trousers. He may be solvent, but he cannot meet
a sight draft. It is only solvent potash that passes
current.

In the days of our grandfathers we had not only
national independence but household independence.
Every homestead had its own potash plant and soap
factory. The frugal housewife dumped the maple
wood ashes of the fireplace into a hollow log set up on
end in the backyard. Water poured over the ashes
leached out the lye, which drained into a bucket be-
neath. This gave her a solution of pearl ash or potas-
sium carbonate whose concentration she tested with an
egg as a hydrometer. In the meantime she had been
saving up all the waste grease from the frying pan and
pork rinds from the plate and by trying out these she
got her soap fat. Then on a day set apart for this dis-
agreeable process in chemical technology she boiled the
fat and the lye together and got **soft soap,'" or as the
chemist would call it, potassium stearate. If she
wanted hard soap she ** salted it out'' with brine. The
sodium stearate being less soluble was precipitated to
the top and cooled into a solid cake that could be cut
into bars by pack thread. But the frugal housewife
threw away in the waste water what we now consider
the most valuable ingredients, the potash and the
glycerin.

But the old lye-leach is only to be found in ruins on
an abandoned farm and we no longer burn wood at the

FEEDING THE SOIL 51

rate of a log a night. In 1916 even under the stimnlns
of tenfold prices the amount of potash produced as
pearl ash was only 412 tons — and we need 300,000 tons
in some form. It would, of course, be very desirable
as a conservation measure if all the sawdust and waste
wood were utilized by charring it in retorts. The gas
makes a handy fuel. The tar washed from the gas
contains a lot of valuable products. And potash can be
leached out of the charcoal or from its ashes whenever
it is burned. But this at best would not go far toward
solving the problem of our national supply.

There are other potash-bearing wastes that might be
utilized. The cement mills which use feldspar in com-
bination with limestone give off a potash dust, very
much to the annoyance of their neighbors. This can
be collected by running the furnace clouds into large
settling chambers or long flues, where the dust may be
caught in bags, or washed out by water sprays or
thrown down by electricity. The blast furnaces for
iron also throw off potash-bearing fumes.

Our six-million-ton crop of sugar beets contains some
12,000 tons of nitrogen, 4000 tons of phosphoric acid
and 18,000 tons of potash, all of which is lost except
where the waste liquors from the sugar factory are
used in irrigating the beet land. The beet molasses,
after extracting all the sugar possible by means of
lime, leaves a waste liquor from which the potash can
be recovered by evaporation and charring and leaching
the residue. The Germans get 5000 tons of potassium
cyanide and as much ammonium sulfate annually from
the waste liquor of their beet sugar factories and if it
pays them to save this it ought to pay us where potash

52 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

is dearer. Various other industries can put in a bit
when Uncle Sam passes around the contribution basket
marked * * Potash for the Poor. ' ' Wool wastes and fish
refuse make valuable fertilizers, although they will not
go far toward solving the problem. If we saved all our
potash by-products they would not supply more than
fifteen per cent, of our needs.

Though no potash beds comparable to those of Stass-
furt have yet been discovered in the United States, yet
in Nebraska, Utah, California and other western states
there are a number of alkali lakes, wet or dry, contain-
ing a considerable amount of potash mixed with soda
salts. Of these deposits the largest is Searles Lake,
California. Here there are some twelve square miles
of salt crust some seventy feet deep and the brine as
pumped out contains about four per cent, of potassium
chloride. The quantity is sufficient to supply the coun-
try for over twenty years, but it is not an easy or cheap
job to separate the potassium from the sodium salts
which are five times more abundant. These being less
soluble than the potassium salts crystallize out first
when the brine is evaporated. The final crystalliza-
tion is done in vacuum pans as in getting sugar from
the cane juice. In this way the American Trona Cor-
poration is producing some 4500 tons of potash salts a
month besides a thousand tons of borax. The borax
which is contained in the brine to the extent of 1^^ per
cent, is removed from the fertilizer for a double reason*
It is salable by itself and it is detrimental to plant life.

Another mineral source of potash is alunite, which is
a sort of natural alum, or double sulfate of potassium
and aluminum, with about ten per cent, of potash. It

FEEDING THE SOIL 53

contains a lot of extra alumina, but after roasting in a
kiln the potassium sulfate can be leached out. The
alunite beds near Marysville, Utah, were worked for
all they were worth during the war, but the process does
not give potash cheap enough for our needs in ordinary;
times.

The tourist going through Wyoming on the Union
Pacific will have to the north of him what is marked on
the map as the **Leucite Hills." If he looks up the
word in the Unabridged that he carries in his satchel
he will find that leucite is a kind of lava and that it
contains potash. But he will also observe that the
potash is combined with alumina and silica, which are
hard to get out and useless when you get them out
One of the lavas of the Leucite Hills, that named from
its native state ''"Wyomingite," gives fifty-seven per
cent, of its potash in a soluble form on roasting with
alunite — but this costs too much. The same may be
said of all the potash feldspars and mica. They are
abundant enough, but until we find a way 'of utilizing
the by-products, say the silica in cement and the alumi-
num as a metal, they cannot solve our problem.

Since it is so hard to get potash from the land it has
been suggested that we harvest the sea. The experts
of the United States Department of Agriculture have
placed high hopes in the kelp or giant seaweed which
floats in great masses in the Pacific Ocean not far off
from the California coast. This is harvested with ocean
reapers run by gasoline engines and brought in barges
to the shore, where it may be dried and used locally as
a fertilizer or burned and the potassium chloride
leached out of the charcoal ashes. But it is hard to

54

CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

handle the bulky, slimy seaweed cheaply enough to get
out of it the small amount of potash it contains. So
efforts are now being made to get more out of the kelp
than the potash. Instead of burning the seaweed it is
fermented in vats producing acetic acid (vinegar).
From the resulting liquid can be obtained lime acetate,
potassium chloride, potassium iodide, acetone, ethyl
acetate (used as a solvent for guncotton) and algtn, a
gelatin-like gum.

PRODUCTION OF POTASH IN THE UNITED STATES

Source

Tons K,0

1916
1 Per cent.

of total
production

Tons K,0

1917

Per cent.

of total

production

Mineral Bources:

Natural brines

Alunite

Dust from cement
mills

Dust from blast fur-
naces

Organic Sources :

Kelp

Molasses residue from
distillers

Wood ashes

Waste liquors from
beet-sugar refiner-
ies

Miscellaneous indus-
trial wastes

3,994
1,850

1,556

1,845
412

63

41.1
19.0

16.0

19.0
4.2

20,652
2,402

1,621

185

3,752

2,846
621

369
305

63.4
7.3

6.0

0.6

10.9

8.8
1.9

1.1
1.0

Total

9,720

100.0

32,573

100.0

— From U. S. Bureau of Mines Report, 1918.
This table shows how inadequate was the reaction of the United
States to the war demand for potassium salts. The minimum yearly
requirements of the United States are estimated to be 250,000 tons of
potash.

This completes our survey of the visible sources of
potash in Anaerica. In 1917 pnder the pressure of the

FEEDING THE SOIL 56

embargo and unprecedented prices the output of potash
(K2O) in various forms was raised to 32,573 tons, but
this is only about a tenth as much as we needed. In
1918 potash production was further raised to 52,135
tons, chiefly through the increase of the output from
natural brines to 39,255 tons, nearly twice what it was
the year before. The rust in cotton and the resulting
decrease in yield during the war are laid to lack of
potash. Truck crops grown in soils deficient in potash
do not stand transportation well. The Bureau of
Animal Industry has shown in experiments in Aroos-
took County, Maine, that the addition of moderate
amounts of potash doubled the yield of potatoes.

Professor Ostwald, the great Leipzig chemist,
boasted in the war:

America went into the war like a man with a rope round
his neck which is in his enemy's hands and is pretty tightly
drawn. With its tremendous deposits Germany has a world
monopoly in potash, a point of immense value which cannot
be reckoned too highly when once this war is going to be set-
tled. It is in Germany's power to dictate which of the na-
tions shall have plenty of food and which shall starve.

If, indeed, some mineralogist or metallurgist wiU cut
that rope by showing us a supply of cheap potash we
will arect him a monument as big as Washington's.
But Ostwald is wrong in supposing that America is as
dependent as Germany upon potash. The bulk of our
food crops are at present raised without the use of any
fertilizers whatever.

As the cession of Lorraine in 1871 gave Germany the
phosphates she needed for fertilizers so the retroces-

66 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

sion of Alsace in 1919 gives France the potash she
needed for fertilizers. Ten years before the war a bed
of potash was discovered in the Forest of Monnebruck,
near Hartmannsweilerkopf , the peak for which French
and Germans contested so fiercely and so long. The
layer of potassium salts is 16^ feet thick and the total
deposit is estimated to be 275,000,000 tons of potash.
At any rate it is a formidable rival of Stassfurt and its
acquisition by France breaks the German monopoly.

When we turn to the consideration of the third plant
food we feel better. While the United States has no
such monopoly of phosphates as Germany had of pot-
ash and Chile had of nitrates we have an abundance
and to spare. Whereas we formerly imported about
$17,000,000 worth of potash from Germany and $20,-
000,000 worth of nitrates from Chile a year we exported
$7,000,000 worth of phosphates.

Whoever it was who first noticed that the grass grew
thicker around a buried bone he lived so long ago that
we cannot do honor to his powers of observation, but
ever since then — whenever it was — old bones have been
used as a fertilizer. But we long ago used up all the
buffalo bones we could find on the prairies and our
packing houses could not give us enough bone-meal to
go around, so we have had to draw upon the old bone-
yards of prehistoric animals. Deposits of lime phos-
phate of such origin were found in South Carolina in
1870 and in Florida in 1888. Since then the industry
has developed with amazing rapidity until in 1913 the
United States produced over three million tons of phos-
phates, nearly half of which was sent abroad. The
chifif source at present is the Florida pebbles, which

FEEDING THE SOIL 57i

are dredged up from the bottoms of lakes and rivers or
washed out from the banks of streams by a hydraulic
jet. The gravel is washed free from the sand and
clay, screened and dried, and then is ready for ship-
ment. The rock deposits of Florida and South Caro-
lina are more limited than the pebble beds and may be
exhausted in twenty-five or thirty years, but Tennessee
and Kentucky have a lot in reserve and behind them
are Idaho, Wyoming and other western states with
millions of acres of phosphate land, so in this respect
we are independent.

But even here the war hit us hard. For the calcium
phosphate as it comes from the ground is not altogether
available because it is not very soluble and the plants
can only use what they can get in the water that they
suck up from the soil. But if the phosphate is treated,
with sulfuric acid it becomes more soluble and this prod-
uct is sold as ' * superphosphate. ' ' The sulfuric acid is
made mostly from iron pyrite and this we have been
content to import, over 800,000 tons of it a year, largely
from Spain, although we have an abundance at home.
Since the shortage of shipping shut off the foreign sup-
ply we are using more of our own pyrite and also our
deposits of native sulfur along the Gulf coast. But as
a consequence of this sulfuric acid during the war went
up from $5 to $25 a ton and acidulated phosphates rose
correspondingly.

Germany is short on natural phosphates as she is
long on natural potash. But she has made up for it by
utilizing a by-product of her steelworks. When phos-
phorus occurs in iron ore, even in minute amounts, iC
makes the steel brittle. Much of the iron ores of

58 CREATIVE CHEMISTEY

Alsace-Lorraine were formerly considered unworkable
because of this impurity, but shortly after Germany
took these provinces from France in 1871 a method was
discovered by two British metallurgists, Thomas and
Oilchrist, by which the phosphorus is removed from the
iron in the process of converting it into steel. This
consists in lining the crucible or converter with lime
and magnesia, which takes up the phosphorus from the
melted iron. This slag lining, now rich in phosphates,
can be taken out and ground up for fertilizer. So the
phosphorus which used to be a detriment is now an
additional source of profit and this British invention
has enabled Germany to make use of the territory she
stole from France to outstrip England in the steel busi-
ness. In 1910 Germany produced 2,000,000 tons of
Thomas slag while only 160,000 tons were produced in
the United Kingdom. The open hearth process now
chiefly used in the United States gives an acid instead
of a basic phosphate slag, not suitable as a fertilizer.
The iron ore of America, with the exception of some of
the southern ores, carries so small a percentage of
phosphorus as to make a basic process inadvisable.

Recently the Germans have been experimenting with
a combined fertilizer, Schroder's potassium phosphate,
which is said to be as good as Thomas slag for phos-
phates and as good as Stassfurt salts for potash.
The American Cyanamid Company is just putting
out a similar product, **Ammo-Phos," in which the
ammonia can be varied from thirteen to twenty per
cent, and the phosphoric acid from twenty to forty-
seven per cent, so as to give the proportions desired
for any crop. We have then the possibility of getting

FEEDING THE SOIL 69

the three essential plant foods altogether in one com-
pound with the elimination of most of the extraneous
elements such as lime and magnesia, chlorids and sul-
fates.

For the last three hundred years the American peo-
ple have been living on the unearned increment of the
unoccupied land. But now that all our land has been
staked out in homesteads and we cannot turn to new
soil when we have used up the old, we must learn, as
the older races have learned, how to keep up the supply
of plant food. Only in this way can our population in-
crease and prosper. As we have seen, the phosphate
question need not bother us and we can see our way
clear toward solving the nitrate question. We gave
the Government $20,000,000 to experiment on the pro-
duction of nitrates from the air and the results will
serve for fields as well as firearms. But the question
of an independent supply of cheap potash is still un-
solved.

IV

COAL-TAE COLOES

If you pnt a bit of soft coal into a test tube (or, if you
have n't a test tube, into a clay tobacco pipe and lute it
over with clay) and heat it you will find a gas coming
out of the end of the tube that will burn with a yellow
smoky flame. After all the gas comes off you will find
in the bottom of the test tube a chunk of dry, porous
coke. These, then, are the two main products of the
destructive distillation of coal. But if you are an
unusually observant person, that is, if you are a bom
chemist with an eye to by-products, you will notice
along in the middle of the tube where it is neither too
hot nor too cold some dirty drops of water and some
black sticky stuff. If you are just an ordinary person,
you won't pay any attention to this because there is
only a little of it and because what you are after is the
coke and gas. You regard the nasty, smelly mess that
comes in between as merely a nuisance because it clogs
up and spoils your nice, clean tube.

Now that is the way the gas-makers and coke-
makers — being for the most part ordinary persons and
not born chemists — used to regard the water and tar
that got into their pipes. They washed it out so as to
have the gas clean and then ran it into the creek. But
the neighbors — espe^cially those who fished in the
stream below the gas-works — ^made a fuss about spoil-

00

COAL-TAE COLORS 61

ing the water, so the gas-men gave away the tar to the
boys for use in celebrating the Fourth of July and
election night or sold it for roofing.

But this same tar^ which for a hundred years was
thrown away and nearly half of which is thrown away
yet in the United States, turns out to be one of the most
useful things in the world. It is one of the strategic
points in war and commerce. It wounds and heals. It
supplies munitions and medicines. It is like the magic
purse of Fortunatus from which anything wished for
could be drawn. The chemist puts his hand into the
black mass and draws out all the colors of the rainbow.
This evil-smelling substance beats the rose in the pro-
duction of perfume and surpasses the honey-comb in
sweetness.

Bishop Berkeley, after having proved that all mat-
ter was in your mind, wrot€ a book to prove that wood
tar would cure all diseases. Nobody reads it now.
The name is enough to frighten them off: ^'Siris: A
Chain of Philosophical Eeflections and Inquiries Con-
cerning the Virtues of Tar Water. ' ^ He had a sort of
mystical idea that tar contained the quintessence of the
forest, the purified spirit of the trees, which could
somehow revive the spirit of man. People said he was
crazy on the subject, and doubtless he was, but the in-
teresting thing about it is that not even his active and
ingenious imagination could begin to suggest all of the
strange things that can be got out of tar, whether wood
or coal.

The reason why tar supplies all sorts of useful mate-
rial is because it is indeed the quintessence of the for-
est, of the forests of untold millenniums if it is coal tar.

€2 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

If you are acquainted with a village tinker, one of those
all-round mechanics who stiU survive in this age of spe-
cialization and can mend anything from a baby-carriage
to an automobile, you will know that he has on the floor
of his back shop a heap of broken machinery from which
he can get almost anything he wants, a copper wire, a
zinc plate, a brass screw or a steel rod. Now coal tar is
the scrap-heap of the vegetable kingdom. It contains
a little of almost everything that makes up trees. But
you must not imagine that all that comes out of coal
tar is contained in it. There are only about a dozen
primary products extracted from coal tar, but from
these the chemist is able to build up hundreds of thou-
sands of new substances. This is true creative chemis..
try, for most of these compounds are not to be found
in plants and never existed before they were made in
the laboratory. It used to be thought that organic
compounds, the products of vegetable and animal life,
could only be produced by organized beings, that they
were created out of inorganic matter by the magic
touch of some "vital principle.'* But since the chem-
ist has learned how, he finds it easier to make organic
than inorganic substances and he is confident that he
can reproduce any compound that he can analyze. He
cannot only imitate the manufacturing processes of
the plants and animals, but he can often beat them at
their own game.

When coal is heated in the open air it is burned up
and nothing but the ashes is left. But heat the coal in
an enclosed vessel, say a big fireclay retort, and it can-
not bum up because the oxygen of the air cannot get
to it. So it breaks up. All parts of it that can be vola-

COAL-TAR COLORS 63

tized at a high heat pass off through the outlet pipe and
nothing is left in the retort but coke, that is carbon
with the ash it contains. When the escaping vapors
reach a cool part of the outlet pipe the oily and tarry
matter condenses out. Then the gas is passed up
through a tower down which water spray is falling and
thus is washed free from ammonia and everything else
that is soluble in water.

This process is called ** destructive distillation.'^
What products come off depends not only upon the
composition of the particular variety of coal used, but
upon the heat, pressure and rapidity of distillation.
The way you run it depends upon what you are most
anxious to have. If you want illuminating gas you will
leave in it the benzene. If you are after the greatest
yield of tar products, you impoverish the gas hy taking
out the benzene and get a blue instead of a bright yellow
flame. If all you are after is cheap coke, you do not
bother about the by-products, but let them escape and
bum as they please. The tourist passing across the
coal region at night could see through his car window
the flames of hundreds of old-fashioned bee-hive coke-
ovens and if he were of economical mind he might re-
flect that this display of fireworks was costing the
country $75,000,000 a year besides consuming the irre-
placeable fuel supply of the future. But since the gas
was not needed outside of the cities and since the coal
tar, if it could be sold at all, brought only a cent or two
a gallon, how could the coke-makers be expected to
throw out their old bee-hive ovens and put in the expen-
sive retorts and towers necessary to the recovery of
the by-products? But within the last ten years the by-

64

CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

product ovens have come into use and now nearly half
our coke is made in them.

Although the products of destructive distillation
vary within wide limits, yet the following table may
serve to give an approximate idea of what may be got
from a ton of soft coal:

Gas, 12,000 cubic feet

,.^ , . , r ammonium sulfate

Liquor (Washings)-! (7-25 pounds)

'"benzene (10-20 pounds)
toluene (3 pounds)
xylene (IVi pounds)
phenol {% pound)
naphthalene (% pound)
anthracene (% poimd)
pitch (80 poimds)

Coke (1200-1500 pounds)

1 ton of coal may give-

Tar (120 poimds)

When the tar is redistilled we get, among other
things, the ten "crudes" which are fundamental mate-
rial for making dyes. Their names are : benzene, to-
luene, xylene, phenol, cresol, naphthalene, anthracene,
methyl anthracene, phenanthrene and carbazol.

There ! I had to introduce you to the whole receiving
line, but now that that ceremony is over we are at lib-
erty to do as we do at a reception, meet our old friends,
get acquainted with one or two more and turn our backs
on the rest. Two of them, I am sure, you've met be-
fore, phenol, which is common carbolic acid, and naph-
thalene, which we use for mothballs. But notice one
thing in passing, that not one of them is a dye. They
are all colorless liquids or white solids. Also they all
have an indescribable odor — all odors that you don't
know are indescribable — ^which gives them and their
progeny, even when odorless, the name of ** aromatic
compounds,"

COAL-TAE COLORS 65"

The most important of tlie ten because he is the
father of the family is benzene, otherwise called benzol,
but must not be confused with "benzine" spelled with
an i which we used to bum and clean our clothes with.
** Benzine" is a kind of gasoline, but benzene alias ben-
zol has quite another constitution, although it looks and
burns the same. Now the search for the constitution
of benzene is one of the most exciting chapters in chem-
istry; also one of the most intricate chapters, but, in
spite of that, I believe I can make the main point of it
clear even to those who have never studied chemistry —
provided they retain their childish liking for puzzles.
It is really much like putting together the old six-block
Chinese puzzle. The chemist can work better if he has
a picture of what he is working with. Now his unit is
the molecule, which is too small even to analyze with
the microscope, no matter how high powered. So he
makes up a sort of diagram of the molecule, and since
he knows the number of atoms and that they are some-
how attached to one another, he represents each atom
by the first letter of its name and the points of attach-
ment or bonds by straight lines connecting the atoms of
the different elements. Now it is one of the rules of the
game that all the bonds must be connected or hooked up
with atoms at both ends, that there shall be no free
hands reaching out into empty space. Carbon, for in-
stance, has four bonds and hydrogen only one. They
unite, therefore, in the proportion of one atom of car-
bon to four of hydrogen, or CH4, which is methane or
marsh gas and obviously the simplest of the hydro-
carbons. But we have more complex hydrocarbons
such as CqRi^j known as hexane. Now if you try to

$0 CREATIVE CHEMISTEY

draw the diagrams or structural formulas of these tw«
eompounds you will easily get

H HHHHHH

H-C-H H-C-C-C-C-C-C-H

k Ukkkk

methane hexane

Each carbon atom, you see, has its four hands out-
stretched and duly grasped by one-handed hydrogen
atoms or by neighboring carbon atoms in the chain.
We can have such chains as long as you please, thirty
or more in a chain ; they are all contained in kerosene
and paraffin.

So far the chemist found it easy to construct dia-
grams that would satisfy his sense of the fitness of
things, but when he found that benzene had the compo-
sition CgHg he was puzzled. If you try to draw the
picture of GqH.q you will get something like this :

Ukkkk

which is an absurdity because more than half of the
carbon hands are waving wildly around asking to be
held by something. Benzene, GJIq, evidently is like
hexane, CeHi4, in having a chain of six carbon atoms,
but it has dropped its H's like an Englishman. Eight
of the H's are missing.

Now one of the men who was worried over this ben-
zene puzzle was the German chemist, Kekule. One eve-
ning after working over the problem all day he was
sitting by the fire trying to rest, but he could not

COAL-TAR COLORS 67

throw it off his mind. The carbon and the hydrogen
atoms danced like imps on the carpet and as he watched
them through his half-closed eyes he suddenly saw that
the chain of six carbon atoms had joined at the ends
and formed a ring while the six hydrogen atoms were
holding on to the outside hands, in this fashion:

H

i

HO C-H

i

Professor Kekule saw at once that fhe demons of his
subconscious »elf had furnished him with a clue to the
labyrinth, and go it proved. We need not suppose that
the benzene molecule if we could see it would look any-
thing like this diagram of it, but the theory works and
that is all the scientist asks of any theory. By its u^
thousands of new compounds have been constructed
which have proved of inestimable value to man. The
modem chemist is not a discoverer, he is an inventor.
He sits down at his desk and draws a **Kekule ring*'
or rather hexagon. Then he rubs out an H and hooks
a nitro group (NO2) on to the carbon in place of it;
next he rubs out the O2 of the nitro group and puts in
Ha ; then he hitches on such other elements, or carbon
chains and rings as he likes. He works like an archi-
tect designing a house and when he gets a picture of
the proposed compounds to suit him he goes into the
laboratory to make it. First he takes down the bottle

<B

CEBATIVE CHEMISTEY

O
H "

II H "
N H-p-H

H

^ H H-N-H
H-C C-H

%

H

y

:c — c

^ o

S-O-Na
O

A molecule of a coil-tar

of benzene and boils
up some of this with
nitric acid and sul-
furic acid. This he
puts in the nitro
group and makes
nitro-benzene, CeHg-
NO2. He treats
this with hydrogen,
which displaces the
oxygen and gives
CeHgNHg or aniline,
which is the basis of
so many of these
compounds that they
are all commonly
called * * the aniline
dyes.'* But aniline
itself is not a dye.
It is a colorless or
brownish oil.

It is not neces-
sary to follow our
chemist any farther
now that we have
seen how he works,
but before we pass
on we will just look
at one of his pro-
ducts, not one of the
most complicated
but still complicated
-enouedb..

COAL-TAE COLORS 69r

The name of this is sodium ditolyl-disazo-beta-naph-
thylamine- 6 - sulf onic-beta-naphthylamine-3.6-disulfoii*
ate.

These chemical names of organic compounds are
discouraging to the beginner and amusing to the lay-
man, but that is because neither of them realizes that
they are not really words but formulas. They are
hyphenated because they come from Germany. The
name given above is no more of a mouthful than "a-
square-plus-two-a-b-plus-b-square'* or ** Third Assist-
ant Secretary of War to the President of the United
States of America.'* The trade name of this dye is
Brilliant Congo, but while that is handier to say it does
not mean anything. Nobody but an expert in dyes
would know what it was, while from the formula name
any chemist familiar with such compounds could draw
its picture, tell how it would behave and what it was
made from, or even make it. The old alchemist was a
secretive and pretentious person and used to invent
queer names for the purpose of mystifying and awing
the ignorant. But the chemist in dropping the al- has
dropped the idea of secrecy and his names, though
equally appalling to the layman, are designed to reveal
and not to conceal.

From this brief explanation the reader who has not
studied chemistry will, I think, be able to get some idea
of how these very intricate compounds are built up step
by step. A completed house is hard to understand, but
when we see the mason laying one brick on top of an-
other it does not seem so diflBcult, although if we tried
to do it we should not find it so easy as we think. Any-
how, let me give you a hint. K you want to make a

70

CEEATIVE CHEMISTBY

good impression on a chemist don't tell him that he
seems to you a sort of magician, master of a black art,

COAL

100 7o

COKE

72% of Coal

GAS

22%

otCod)

O

O

i5

c>

t

o

u.

UJ

a:

-Comparison of Coal and
Its Distillation Products

From Hesse's "The Industry of the Coal Tar Dyes," Journal of Indus'
trial and Engineering Chemistry, December, 1914

and all that nonsense. The chemist has been trying
for three hundred years to live down the reputation of
being inspired of the devil and it makes him mad to
have his past thrown up at him in this fashion. If his
tactless admirers would stop saying ** it is all a mys-

COAL-TAB COLORS 71

tery and a miracle to me, and I cannot understand it"
and pay attention to what lie is telling them they would
understand it and would find that it is no more of a
mystery or a miracle than anything else. You can
make an electrician mad in the same way by inter-
rupting his explanation of a dynamo by asking: **But
you cannot tell me what electricity really is." The
electrician does not care a rap what electricity ** really
is" — if there really is any meaning to that phrase.
All he wants to know is what he can do with it.

The tar obtained from the gas plant or the coke plant
has now to be redistilled, giving off the ten ** crudes"
already mentioned and leaving in the still sixty-five per
cent, of pitch, which may be used for roofing, paving
and the like. The ten primary products or crudes are
then converted into secondary products or *' intermedi-
ates" by processes like that for the conversion of ben-
zene into aniline. There are some three hundred of
these intermediates in use and from them are built up
more than three times as many dyes. The year before
the war the American custom house listed 5674 distinct
brands of synthetic dyes imported, chiefly from Ger-
many, but some of these were trade names for the same
product made by different firms or represented by dif-
ferent degrees of purity or form of preparation. Al-
though the number of possible products is unlimited
and over five thousand dyes are known, yet only about
nine hundred are in use. We can summarize the situa-
tion so :

Coal-tar->- 10 crude&->- 300 intermediates->- 900 dye8->- 5000 brands.

Or, to borrow the neat simile used by Dr. Bemhard G.

72 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

Hesse, it is like cloth-making where "ten fibers make
300 yams which are woven into 900 patterns."

The advantage of the artificial dyestuffs over those
found in nature lies in their variety and adaptability.
Practically any desired tint or shade can be made for
any particular fabric. If my lady wants a new kind of
green for her stockings or her hair she can have it.
Candies and jellies and drinks can be made more attrac-
tive and therefore more appetizing by varied colors.
Easter eggs and Easter bonnets take on new and
brighter hues.

More and more the chemist is becoming the architect
of his own fortunes. He does not make discoveries by
picking up a beaker and pouring into it a little from
each bottle on the shelf to see what happens. He gen-
erally knows what he is after, and he generally gets it,
although he is still often baffled and occasionally hap-
pens on something quite unexpected and perhaps more
valuable than what he was looking for. Columbus was
looking for India when he ran into an obstacle that
proved to be America. William Henry Perkin was
looking for quinine when he blundered into that rich
and undiscovered country, the aniline dyes. William
Henry was a queer boy. He had rather listen to a
chemistry lecture than eat. When he was attending
the City of London School at the age of thirteen there
was an extra course of lectures on chemistry given at
the noon recess, so he skipped his lunch to take them
in. Hearing that a German chemist named Hofmann
had opened a laboratory in the Royal College of Lon-
don he headed for that. Hofmann obviously had no
fear of forcing the young intellect prematurely. He

COAL-TAE COLORS 73

perhaps had never heard that ' ' the tender petals of the
adolescent mind must be allowed to open slowly. ' ' He
admitted young Perkin at the age of fifteen and started
him on research at the end of his second year. An
American student nowadays thinks he is lucky if he gets
started on his research five years older than Perkin.
Now if Hofmann had studied pedagogical psychology
he would have been informed that nothing chills the
ardor of the adolescent mind like being set at tasks
too great for its powers. If he had heard this and be-
lieved it, he would not have allowed Perkin to spend
two years in fruitless endeavors to isolate phenan-
threne from coal tar and to prepare artificial quinine —
and in that case Perkin would never have discovered
the aniline dyes. But Perkin, so far from being dis-
couraged, set up a private laboratory so he could work
over- time. ^Vhile working here during the Easter va-
cation of 1856 — the date is as well worth remembering
as 1066 — he was oxidizing some anihne oil when he got
what chemists most detest, a black, tarry mass instead
of nice, clean crystals. When he went to wash this out
with alcohol he was surprised to find that it gave a
beautiful purple solution. This was *' mauve," the
first of the aniline dyes.

The funny thing about it was that when Perkin tried
to repeat the experiment with purer aniline he could
not get his color. It was because he was working with
impure chemicals, with aniline containing a little tolui-
dine, that he discovered mauve. It was, as I said, a
lucky accident. But it was not accidental that the acci-
dent happened to the young fellow who spent his noon-
ings and vacations at the study of chemistry. A man

74 CREATIVE CHEMISTEY

may not find what he is looking for, but he never finds
anything unless he is looking for something.

Mauve was a product of creative chemistry, for it
was a substance that had never existed before. Per-
kin's next great triumph, ten years later, was in rival-
ing Nature in the manufacture of one of her own choice
products. This is alizarin, the coloring matter con-
tained in the madder root. It was an ancient and ori-
ental dyestuff, known as ** Turkey red" or by its Ara-
bic name of * * alizari. ' * When madder was introduced
into France it became a profitable crop and at one time
half a million tons a year were raised. A couple of
French chemists, Eobiquet and Colin, extracted from
madder its active principle, alizarin, in 1828, but it was
not until forty years later that it was discovered that
alizarin had for its base one of the coal-tar products,
anthracene. Then came a neck-and-neck race between
Perkin and his German rivals to see which could dis-
cover a cheap process for making alizarin from anthra-
cene. The German chemists beat him to the patent of-
fice by one day I Graebe and Liebermann filed their ap-
plication for a patent on the sulfuric acid process as No.
1936 on June 25, 1869. Perkin filed his for the same
process as No. 1948 on June 26. It had required
twenty years to determine the constitution of alizarin,
but within six months from its first synthesis the com-
mercial process was developed and within a few years
the sale of artificial alizarin reached $8,000,000 an-
nually. The madder fields of France were put to other
uses and even the French soldiers became dependent
on made-in-Germany dyes for their red trousers. The
British soldiers were placed in a similar situation as

GOAL-TAR COLORS 75

regards their red coats when after 1878 the azo scarlets
put the cochineal bug out of business.

The modem chemist has robbed royalty of its most
distinctive insignia, Tyrian purple. In ancient times
to be * * porphyrogene, " that is **bom to the purple,"
was like admission to the Almanach de Gotha at the
present time, for only princes or their wealthy rivals
could afford to pay $600 a pound for crimsoned linen.
The precious dye is secreted by a snail-like shellfish of
the eastern coast of the Mediterranean. From a tiny
sac behind the head a drop of thick whitish liquid,
smelling like garlic, can be extracted. If this is spread
upon cloth of any kind and exposed to air and sunlight
it turns first green, next blue and then purple. If the
cloth is washed with soap — that is, set by alkali — ^it
becomes a fast crimson, such as Catholic cardinals still
wear as princes of the church. The Phoenician mer-
chants made fortunes out of their monopoly, but after
the fall of Tyre it became one of **the lost arts" — and
accordingly considered by those whose faces are set
toward the past as much more wonderful than any of
the new arts. But in 1909 Friedlander put an end to
the superstition by analyzing Tyrian purple and find-
ing that it was already known. It was the same as a
dye that had been prepared five years before by Sachs
but had not come into commercial use because of its
inferiority to others in the market. It required 12,000
of the mollusks to supply the little material needed for
analysis, but once the chemist had identified it he did
not need to bother the Murex further, for he could make
it by the ton if he had wanted to. The coloring prin-
ciple turned out to be a di-brom indigo, that is the

76 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

same as the substance extracted from the Indian
plant, but with the additon of two atoms of bromine.
.Why a particular kind of a sheMsh should have got
the habit of extracting this rare element from sea
water and stowing it away in this peculiar form is
**one of those things no fellow can find out." But
according to the chemist the Murex mollusk made a
mistake in hitching the bromine to the wrong carbon
atoms. He finds as he would word it that the 6 : 6'di-
brom indigo secreted by the shellfish is not so good as
the 5:5'di-brom indigo now manufactured at a cheap
rate and in unlimited quantity. But we must not ex-
pect too much of a mollusk *s mind. In their cheapness
lies the offense of the aniline dyes in the minds of some
people. Our modern aristocrats would delight to be
entitled **porphyrogeniti" and to wear exclusive gowns
of ** purple and scarlet from the isles of Elishah" as
was done in Ezekiel's time, but when any shopgirl or
sailor can wear the royal color it spoils its beauty in
their eyes. Applied science accomplishes a real de-
mocracy such as legislation has ever failed to establish.

Any kind of dye found in nature can be made in the
laboratory whenever its composition is understood and
usually it can be made cheaper and purer than it can
be extracted from the plant. But to work out a profit-
able process for making it synthetically is sometimes a
task requiring high skill, persistent labor and heavy
expenditure. One of the latest and most striking of
these achievements of synthetic chemistry is the manu-
facture of indigo.

Indigo is one of the oldest and fastest of the dye-
stuffs. To see that it is both ancient and lasting look

COAL-TAR COLORS 77i

at the nnfaded blue cloths that enwrap an Egyptian
mummy. When Caesar conquered our British ances-
tors he found them tattooed with woad, the native in-
digo. But the chief source of indigo was, as its name
implies, India. In 1897 nearly a million acres in India
were growing the indigo plant and the annual value of
the crop was $20,000,000. Then the fall began and by
1914 India was producing only $300,000 worth ! What
had happened to destroy this profitable industry!
Some blight or insect? No, it was simply that the
Badische Anilin-und-Soda Fabrik had worked out a
practical process for making artificial indigo.

That indigo on breaking up gave off aniline was
discovered as early as 1840. In fact that was how ani-
line got its name, for when Fritzsche distilled indigo
with caustic soda he called the colorless distillate
"aniline,'* from the Arabic name for indigo, **anil"
or * * al-nil, ' ' that is, * * the blue-stuff. ' ' But how to re-
verse the process and get indigo from aniline puzzled
chemists for more than forty years until finally it was
solved by Adolf von Baeyer of Munich, who died in
1917 at the age of eighty-four. He worked on the prob-
lem of the constitution of indigo for fifteen years and
discovered several ways of making it. It is possible to
start from benzene, toluene or naphthalene. The first
process was the easiest, but if you will refer to the
products of the distillation of tar you will find that the
amount of toluene produced is less than the naphtha-
lene, which is hard to dispose of. That is, if a dye fac-
tory had worked out a process for making indigo from
toluene it would not be practicable because there was
not enough toluene produced to supply the demand for

78 CREATIVE OHEMISTEY

indigo. So the more complicated napthalene process
Was chosen in preference to the others in order to uti-
lize this by-product.

The Badische Anilin-und-Soda Fabrik spent $5,000,-
000 and seventeen years in chemical research before
they could make indigo, but they gained a monopoly
(or, to be exact, ninety-six per cent.) of the world's
production. A hundred years ago indigo cost as much
as $4 a pound. In 1914 we were paying fifteen cents a
pound for it. Even the pauper labor of India could not
compete with the German chemists at that price. At
the beginning of the present century Germany was pay-
ing more than $3,000,000 a year for indigo. Fourteen
years later Germany was selling indigo to the amount
of $12,600,000. Besides its cheapness, artificial indigo
is preferable because it is of uniform quality and
greater purity. Vegetable indigo contains from forty
to eighty per cent, of impurities, among them various
other tinctorial substances. Artificial indigo is made
pure and of any desired strength, so the dyers can
depend on it.

The value of the aniline colors lies in their infinite
variety. Some are fast, some will fade, some wiU
stand wear and weather as long as the fabric, some
will wash out or spot. Dyes can be made that will at-
tach themselves to wool, to silk or to cotton, and give
it any shade of any color. Ths» period of discovery by
accident has long gone by. The chemist nowadays de-
cides first just what kind of a dye he wants, and then
goes to work systematically to make it. He begins by
drawing a diagram of the molecule, double-linking ni-
trogen or carbon and oxygen atoms to give the required

COAL-TAR COLORS 79

intensity, putting in acid or basic radicals to fasten it
to the fiber, shifting the color back and forth along the
spectrum at will by introducing methyl groups, until he
gets it just to his liking.

Art can go ahead of nature in the dyestuff business.
Before man found that he could make all the dyes he
wanted from the tar he had been burning up at home
he searched the wide world over to find colors by which
he could make himself — or his wife — garments as beau-
tiful as those that arrayed the flower, the bird and the
butterfly. He sent divers down into the Mediterranean
to rob the murex of his purple. He sent ships to the
new world to get Brazil wood and to the oldest world
for indigo. He robbed the lady cochineal of her scar-
let coat. Why these peculiar substances were formed
only by these particular plants, mussels and insects it
is hard to understand. I don't know that Mrs. Cacti
Coccus derived any benefit from her scarlet uniform
when khaki would be safer, and I can 't imagine that to
a shellfish it was of advantage to turn red as it rots
or to an indigo plant that its leaves in decomposing
should turn blue. But anyhow, it was man that took
advantage of them until he learned how to make his
own dyestuffs.

Our independent ancestors got along so far as pos-
sible with what grew in the neighborhood. Sweetapple
bark gave a fine saffron yellow. Ribbons were given
the hue of the rose by poke berry juice. The Confed-
erates in their butternut-colored uniform were almost
as invisible as if in khaki or feldgrau. Madder was
cultivated in the kitchen garden. Only logwood from
Jamaica and indigo from India had to be imported.

80 CEEATIVE CHEMISTRY

That we are not so independent today is our own fault,
for we waste enough coal tar to supply ourselves and
other countries with all the new dyes needed. It is
essentially a question of economy and organization.
We have forgotten how to economize, but we have
learned how to organize.

The British Government gave the discoverer of
mauve a title, but it did not give him any support in
his endeavors to develop the industry, although Eng-
land led the world in textiles and needed more dyes
than any other country. So in 1874 Sir William Per-
kin relinquished the attempt to manufacture the dyea
he had discovered because, as he said, Oxford and Cam-
bridge refused to educate chemists or to carry on re-
search. Their students, trained in the classics for the
profession of being a gentleman, showed a decided
repugnance to the laboratory on account of its bad
smells. So when Hofmann went home he virtually
took the infant industry along with him to Germany,
where Ph.D. 's were cheap and plentiful and not afraid
of bad smells. There the business throve amazingly,
and by 1914 the Germans were manufacturing more
than three-fourths of all the coal-tar products of the
world and supplying material for most of the rest.
The British cursed the universities for thus imperil-
ing the nation through their narrowness and neglect;
but this accusation, though natural, was not altogether
fair, for at least half the blame should go to the British
dyer, who did not care where his colors came from, so
long as they were cheap. When finally the universities
did turn over a new leaf and began to educate chemists,
the manufacturers would not employ them. Before the

COAL-TAE COLORS Bli

war six English factories producing dyestuffs em-
ployed only 35 chemists altogether, while one German
color works, the Hochster Farbwerke, employed 307
expert chemists and 74 technologists.

This firm united with the six other leading dye com-
panies of Germany on January 1, 1916, to form a trust
to last for fifty years. During this time they will main-
tain uniform prices and uniform wage scales and hours
of labor, and exchange patents and secrets. They will
divide the foreign business pro rata and share the
profits. The German chemical works made big profits
during the war, mostly from munitions and medicines,
and will be, through this new combination, in a stronger
position than ever to push the export trade.

As a consequence of letting the dye business get away
from her, England found herself in a fix when war
broke out. She did not have dyes for her uniforms
and flags, and she did not have drugs for her wounded.
She could not take advantage of the blockade. to capture
the German trade in Asia and South America, because
she could not color her textiles. A blue cotton dyestuff
that sold before the war at sixty cents a pound, brought
$34 a pound. A bright pink rhodamine formerly
quoted at a dollar a pound jumped to $48. When one
keg of dye ordinarily worth $15 was put up at forced
auction sale in 1915 it was knocked down at $1500.
The Highlanders could not get the colors for their kilts
until some German dyes were smuggled into England.
The textile industries of Great Britain, that brought in
a billion dollars a year and employed one and a half
million workers, were crippled for lack of dyes. The
demand for high explosives from the front could not be

82 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

met because these also are largely coal-tar products.
Picric acid is both a dye and an explosive. It is made
from carbolic acid and the famous trinitrotoluene is
made from toluene, both of which you will find in the
list of the ten fundamental ** crudes.''

Both Great Britain and the United States realized
the danger of allowing Germany to recover her for-
mer monopoly, and both have shown a readiness to
cast overboard their traditional policies to meet this
emergency. The British Government has discovered
that a country without a tariff is a land without walls.
The American Government has discovered that an in-
dustry is not benefited by being cut up into small pieces.
Both governments are now doing all they can to build
up big concerns and to provide them with protection.
The British Government assisted in the formation of
a national company for the manufacture of synthetic
dyes by taking one-sixth of the stock and providing
$500,000 for a research laboratory. But this effort is
now reported to be **a great failure" because the Gov-
ernment put it in charge of the politicians instead of
the chemists.

The United States, like England, had become depend-
ent upon Germany for its dyestuffs. We imported
nine-tenths of what we used and most of those that
were produced here were made from imported interme-
diates. When the war broke out there were only seven
firms and 528 persons employed in the manufacture of
dyes in the United States. One of these, the Schoel-
kopf Aniline and Chemical Works, of Buffalo, deserves
mention, for it had stuck it out ever since 1879, and in
1914 was making 106 dyes. In June, 1917, this firm.

COAL-TAE COLORS 83

with the enconragement of the Government Bureau of
Foreign and Domestic Commerce, joined with some of
the other American producers to form a trade combinar
tion, the National Aniline and Chemical Company.
The Du Pont Company also entered the field on an
extensive scale and soon there were 118 concerns en-
gaged in it with great profit. Dliring the war $200,-
000,000 was invested in the domestic dyestuff industry.
To protect this industry Congress put on a specific duty
of five cents a pound and an ad valorem duty of 30
per cent, on imported dyestuffs ; but if, after five years,
American manufacturers are not producing 60 per cent,
in value of the domestic consumption, the protection is
to be removed. For some reason, not clearly under-
stood and therefore hotly discussed. Congress at thai
last moment struck off the specific duty from two of the
most important of the dyestuffs, indigo and alizarin,
^s well as from all medicinals and flavors.

The manufacture of dyes is not a big business, but it
i& a strategic business. Heligoland is not a big island,
but England would have been glad to buy it back during
the war at a high price per square yard. American
industries employing over two million men and women
and producing over three billion dollars ' worth of prod-
ucts a year are dependent upon dyes. Chief of these is
of course textiles, using more than half the dyes ; next
come leather, paper, paint and ink. We have been im-
porting more than $12,000,000 worth of coal-tar prod-
ucts a year, but the cottonseed oil we exported in 1912
would alone suflSce to pay that bill twice over. But
although the manufacture of dyes cannot be called a big
business, in comparison with some others, it is a pay-

84 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

ing business when well managed. The German con-
cerns paid on an average 22 per cent, dividends on their
capital and sometimes as high as 50 per cent. Most of
the standard dyes have been so long in use that the
patents are off and the processes are well enough
known. We have the coal tar and we have the chem-
ists, so there seems no good reason why we should not
make our own dyes, at least enough of them so we will
not be caught napping as we were in 1914. It was
decidedly humiliating for our Government to have to
beg Germany to sell us enough colors to print our
stamps and greenbacks and then have to beg Great
Britain for permission to bring them over by Dutch
ships.

The raw material for the production of coal-tar prod-
ucts we have in abundance if we will only take the
trouble to save it. In 1914 the crude light oil collected
from the coke-ovens would have produced only about
4,500,000 gallons of benzol and 1,500,000 gallons of to-
luol, but in 1917 this output was raised to 40,200,000
gallons of benzol and 10,200,000 of toluol. The toluol
was used mostly in the manufacture of trinitrotoluol
for use in Europe. When the war broke out in 1914 it
shut off our supply of phenol (carbolic acid) for which
we were dependent upon foreign sources. This threat-
ened not only to afflict us with headaches by depriving
us of aspirin but also to remove the consolation of
music, for phenol is used in making phonograph rec-
ords. Mr. Edison with his accustomed energy put up
a factory within a few weeks for the manufacture of
synthetic phenol. When we entered the war the need
for phenol became yet more imperative, for it was

COAL-TAR COLORS 85

needed to make picric acid for filling bombs. Tbis de-
mand was met, and in 1917 tbere were fifteen new
plants turning out 64,146,499 pounds of pbenol valued
at $23,719,805.

Some of tbe coal-tar products, as we see, serve many
purposes. For instance, picric acid appears in tbree
places in tbis book. It is a bigb explosive. It is a
powerful and permanent yellow dye as any one wbo
bas toucbed it knows. Tbirdly it is used as an anti-
septic to cover burned skin. Otber coal-tar dyes are
used for tbe same purpose, ''malacbite green," ** bril-
liant green," ** crystal violet," **etbyl violet" and
** Victoria blue," so a patient in a military bospital is
decorated like an Easter egg. During tbe last five
years surgeons bave unfortunately bad unprecedented
opportunities for tbe study of wounds and fortunately
tbey bave been unprecedentedly successful in finding
improved metbods of treating tbem. In former wars a
serious wound meant usually deatb or amputation.
Now nearly ninety per cent, of tbe wounded are able
to continue in tbe service. Tbe reason for tbis im-
provement is tbat medicines are now being made to
order instead of being gatbered ^'from Cbina to Peru."
Tbe old berb doctor picked up any strange plant tbat
be could find and tried it on any sick man tbat would let
bim. Tbis empirical metbod, tbougb bard on tbe pa-
tients, resulted in tbe course of five tbousand years in
tbe discovery of a number of useful remedies. But tbe
modern medicine man wben be knows tbe cause of tbe
disease is usually able to devise ways of counteracting
it directly. For instance, be knows, tbanks to Pasteur
and Metcbnikoff, tbat tbe cause of wound infection is

86 CKEATIVE CHEMISTRY

the bacterial enemies of man which swarm by the mil-
lion into any breach in his protective armor, the skin.
Now when a breach is made in a line of intrenchments
the defenders rush troops to the threatened spot for
two purposes, constructive and destructive, engineers
and warriors, the former to build up the rampart with
sandbags, the latter to kill the enemy. So when the
human body is invaded the blood brings to the breach
two kinds of defenders. One is the serum which neu-
tralizes the bacterial poison and by coagulating forms
a new skin or scab over the exposed flesh. The other
is the phagocytes or white corpuscles, the free lances
of our corporeal militia, which attack and kiU the in-
vading bacteria. The aim of the physician then is to
aid these defenders as much as possible without inter-
fering with them. Therefore the antiseptic he is seek-
ing is one that will assist the serum in protecting and
repairing the broken tissues and will kill the hostile
bacteria without killing the friendly phagocytes. Car-
bolic acid, the most familiar of the coal-tar antiseptics,
will destroy the bacteria when it is diluted with 250
parts of water, but unfortunately it puts a stop to the
fighting activities of the phagocytes when it is only
half that strength, or one to 500, so it cannot destroy
the infection without hindering the healing.

In this search for substances that would attack a
specific disease germ one of the leading investigators
was Prof. Paul Ehrlich, a German physician of the
Hebrew race. He found that the aniline dyes were
useful for staining slides under the microscope, for
they would pick out particular cells and leave others
xmcolored and from this starting point he worked out

COAL-TAR COLORS 87i

organic and metallic compounds which would destroy
the bacteria and parasites that cause some of the most
dreadful of diseases. A year after the war broke out
Professor Ehrlich died while working in his laboratory
on how to heal with coal-tar compounds the wounds in-
flicted by explosives from the same source.

One of the most valuable of the aniline antiseptics
employed by Ehrlich is flavine or, if the reader prefers
to call it by its full name, diaminomethylacridinium
chloride. Flavine, as its name implies, is a yellow dye
and will kill the germs causing ordinary abscesses when
in solution as dilute as one part of the dye to 200,000
parts of water, but it does not interfere with the bac-
tericidal action of the white blood corpuscles unless the
solution is 400 times as strong as this, that is one part
in 500. Unlike carbolic acid and other antiseptics it
is said to stimulate the serum instead of impairing its
activity. Another antiseptic of the coal-tar family
which has recently been brought into use by Dr. Dakin
of the Rockefeller Institute is that called by European
physicians chloramine-T and by American physicians
chlorazene and by chemists para-toluene-sodium-sulfo-
chloramide.

This may serve to illustrate how a chemist is able to
make such remedies as the doctor needs, instead of
depending upon the accidental by-products of plants.
On an earlier page I explained how by starting with
the simplest of ring-compounds, the benzene of coal
tar, we could get aniline. Suppose we go a step fur-
ther and boil the aniline oil with acetic acid, which is
the acid of vinegar minus its water. This easy proc-
ess gives us acetanilid, which when introduced into the

86 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

market some years ago under the name of ''antifebrin"*
made a fortune for its makers.

The making of medicines from coal tar began in 1874
when Kolbe made salicylic acid from carbolic acid.
Salicylic acid is a rheumatism remedy and had previ-
ously been extracted from willow bark. If now we
treat salicylic acid with concentrated acetic acid we
get ** aspirin.'* From aniline again are made **phen-
acetin," **antipyrin" and a lot of other drugs that have
become altogether too popular as headache remedies —
say rather ''headache relievers."

Another class of synthetics equally useful and like-
wise abused, are the soporifics, such as **sulphonal,"
** veronal" and **medinal." When it is not desired to
put the patient to sleep but merely to render insensible
a particular place, as when a tooth is to be pulled,
cocain may be used. This, like alcohol and morphine,
has proved a curse as well as a blessing and its sale
has had to be restricted because of the many victims to
the habit of using this drug. Cocain is obtained from
the leaves of the South American coca tree, but can
be made artificially from coal-tar products. The lab-
oratory is superior to the forest because other forms
of local anesthetics, such as eucain and novocain, can
be made that are better than the natural alkaloid be-
cause more effective and less poisonous.

I must not forget to mention another lot of coal-tar
derivatives in which some of my readers will take a
personal interest. That is the photographic develop-
ers. I am old enough to remember when we used to
develop our plates in ferrous sulfate solution and you
never saw nicer negatives than we got with it. But

COAL-TAR COLORS 89

when pyrogallic acid came in we switched over to that
even though it did stain our fingers and sometimes our
plates. Later came a swarm of new organic reducing
agents under various fancy names, such as metol, hydro
(short for hydro-quinone) and eikongen (**the image-
maker"). Every fellow fixed up his own formula and
called his fellow-members of the camera club fools for
not adopting it though he secretly hoped they would
not.

Under the double stimulus of patriotism and high
prices the American drug and dyestuff industry devel-
oped rapidly. In 1917 about as many pounds of dyes
were manufactured in America as were imported in
1913 and our exports of American-made dyes exceeded
in value our imports before the war. In 1914 the out-
put of American dyes was valued at $2,500,000. In 1917
it amounted to over $57,000,000. This does not mean
that the problem was solved, for the home products
were not equal in variety and sometimes not in quality
to those made in Germany. Many valuable dyes were
lacking and the cost was of course much higher.
Whether the American industry can compete with the
foreign in an open market and on equal terms is im-
possible to say because such conditions did not prevail
before the war and they are not going to prevail in the
future. Formerly the large German cartels through
their agents and branches in this country kept the busi-
ness in their own hands and now the American manu-
facturers are determined to maintain the independence
they have acquired. They will not depend hereafter
upon the tariff to cut off competition but have adopted
more effective measures. The 4500 German chemical

90 CKEATIVE CHEMISTRY

patents that had been seized by the Alien Property
Custodian were sold by him for $250,000 to the Chemi-
cal Foundation, an association of American manufac-
turers organized "for the Americanization of such in-
stitutions as may be affected thereby, for the exclusion
or elimination of alien interests hostile or detrimental
to said industries and for the advancement of chemical
and allied science and industry in the United States."
The Foundation has a large fighting fund so that it
**may be able to commence immediately and prosecute
with the utmost vigor infringement proceedings when-
ever the first German attempt shall hereafter be made
to import into this country."

So much mystery has been made of the achievements
of German chemists — as though the Teutonic brain had
a special lobe for that faculty, lacking in other crani-
ums — that I want to quote what Dr. Hesse says about
his first impressions of a German laboratory of indus-
trial research:

Directly after graduating from the University of Chicago
in 1896, I entered the employ of the largest coal-tar dye works
in the world at its plant in Germany and indeed in one of its
research laboratories. This was my first trip outside the
United States and it was, of course, an event of the first mag-
nitude for me to be in Europe, and, as a chemist, to be in
Genriny, in a German coal-tar dye plant, and to cap it all in
its i-esearch laboratory — a real sanctum sanctorum for chem-
ists. In a short time the daily routine wore the novelty off
my experience and I then settled down to calm analysis and
dispassionate appraisal of my surroundings and to compare
what was actually before aad around me with my expectations.

COAL-TAE COLORS 91

I found that the general laboratory equipment was no better
than what I had been accustomed to ; that my colleagues had
no better fundamental training than I had enjoyed nor any
better fact — or manipulative — equipment than I; that those
in charge of the work had no better general intellectual equip-
ment nor any more native ability than had my instructors ; in
short, there was nothing new about it all, nothing that we did
not have back home, nothing — except the specific problems
that were engaging their attention, and the special opportuni-
ties of attacking them. Those problems were of no higher
order of complexity than those I had been accustomed to for
years, in fact, most of them were not very complex from a
purely intellectual viewpoint. There was nothing inherently
uncanny, magical or wizardly about their occupation what-
ever. It was nothing but plain hard work and keeping ever-
lastingly at it. Now, what was the actual thing behind that
chemical laboratory that we did not have at home? It was
money, willing to back such activity, convinced that in the
final outcome, a profit would be made ; money, willing to take
university graduates expecting from them no special knowl-
edge other than a good and thorough grounding in scientific
research and provide them with opportunity to become special-
ists suited to the factory's needs.

It is evidently not impossible to make the United
States self-sufficient in the matter of coal-tar products.
We Ve got the tar ; we We got the men ; we 've got the
money, too. Whether such a policy would pay us in
the long run or whether it is necessary as a measure of
military or commercial self-defense is another question
that cannot here be decided. But whatever share we
may have in it the coal-tar industry has increased the
economy of civilization and added to the wealth of the

92 CKEATIVE CHEMISTEY

world by showing how a waste by-product could be
utilized for making new dyes and valuable medicines,
a better use for tar than as fuel for political bonfires
and aa clothing for the nakedness of social outcasts.

SYNTHETIC PEEFtTMES AND FLAVOES

The primitive man got his living out of such wild
plants and animals as he could find. Next he, or more
likely his wife, began to cultivate the plants and tame
the animals so as to insure a constant supply. This
was the first step toward civilization, for when men had
to settle down in a community (civitas) they had to
ameliorate their manners and make laws protecting
land and property. In this settled and orderly life
the plants and animals improved as well as man and
returned a hundredfold for the pains that their master
had taken in their training. But still man was de-
pendent upon the chance bounties of nature. He could
select, but he could not invent. He could cultivate, but
he could not create. If he wanted sugar he had to
send to the West Indies. If he wanted spices he had
to send to the East Indies. If he wanted indigo he
had to send to India. If he wanted a febrifuge he had
to send to Peru. If he wanted a fertilizer he had to
send to Chile. If he wanted rubber he had to send
to the Congo. If he wanted rubies he had to send to
Mandalay. If he wanted otto of roses he had to send
to Turkey. Man was not yet master of his envi-
ronment.

This period of cultivation, the second stage of civil-
ization, began before the dawn of history and lasted

93

94 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

until recent times. We might almost say up to the
twentieth century, for it was not until the fundamental
laws of heredity were discovered that man could origi-
nate new species of plants and animals according to a
predetermined plan by combining such characteristics
as he desired to perpetuate. And it was not until the
fundamental laws of chemistry were discovered that
man could originate new compounds more suitable to
his purpose than any to be found in nature. Since the
progress of mankind is continuous it is impossible to
draw a date line, unless a very jagged one, along the
frontier of human culture, but it is evident that we are
just entering upon the third era of evolution in which
man will make what he needs instead of trying to find
it somewhere. The new epoch has hardly dawned, yet
already a man may stay at home in New York or Lon-
don and make his own rubber and rubies, his own in-
digo and otto of roses. More than this, he can make
gems and colors and perfumes that never existed since
time began. The man of science has signed a declara-
tion of independence of the lower world and we are
now in the midst of the revolution.

Our eyes are dazzled by the dawn of the new era.
We know what the hunter and the horticulturist have
already done for man, but we cannot imagine what the
chemist can do. If we look ahead through the eyes of
one of the greatest of French chemists, Berthelot, this
is what we shall see :

The problem of food is a chemical problem. Whenever
energy can be obtained economically we can begin to make all
kinds of aliment, with carbon borrowed from carbonic acid,
hydrogen taken from the water and oxygen and nitrogea

SYNTHETIC PERFUMES AND FLAVOES 95

drawn from the air. . . . The day will come when each per-
son will carry for his nourishment his little nitrogenous tablet,
his pat of fatty matter, his package of starch or sugar, his
vial of aromatic spices suited to his personal taste ; all manu-
factured economically and in unlimited quantities; all inde-
pendent of irregular seasons, drought and rain, of the heat
that withers the plant and of the frost that blights the fruit ;
all free from pathogenic microbes, the origin of epidemics and
the enemies of human life. On that day chemistry will have
accomplished a world-wide revolution that cannot be esti-
mated. There will no longer be hills covered with vineyards
and fields filled with cattle. Man will gain in gentleness and
morality because he will cease to live by the carnage, and de-
struction of living creatures. . . . The earth will be covered
with grass, flowers and woods and in it the human race will
dwell in the abundance and joy of the legendary age of gold
— provided that a spiritual chemistry has been discovered
that changes the nature of man as profoundly as our chemis-
try transforms material nature.

But this is looking so far into the future that we can
trust no man's eyesight, not even Berthelot's. There
is apparently no impossibility about the manufacture
of synthetic food, but at present there is no apparent
probability of it. There is no likelihood that the labor-
atory will ever rival the wheat field. The cornstalk
will always be able to work cheaper than the chemist in
the manufacture of starch. But in rarer and choicer
products of nature the chemist has proved his ability
to compete and even to excel.

What have been from the dawn of history to the rise
of synthetic chemistry the most costly products of na-
ture? What could tempt a merchant to brave the
perils of a caravan journey over the deserts of Asia

96 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

beset with Arab robbers? What induced the PortU'
guese and Spanish mariners to risk their frail barks
on perilous waters of the Cape of Good Hope or the
Horn ? The chief prizes were perfumes, spices, drugs
and gems. And why these rather than what now con-
stitutes the bulk of oversea and overland commerce!
Because they were precious, portable and imperishable.
If the merchant got back safe after a year or two with
a little flask of otto of roses, a package of camphor and
a few pearls concealed in his garments his fortune was
made. If a single ship of the argosy sent out from
Lisbon came back with a load of sandalwood, indigo or
nutmeg it was regarded as a successful venture. You
know from reading the Bible, or if not that, from your
reading of Arabian Nights, that a few grains of frank-
incense or a few drops of perfumed oil were regarded
as gifts worthy the acceptance of a king or a god.
These products of the Orient were equally in demand
by the toilet and the temple. The unctorium was an
adjunct of the Roman bathroom. Kings had to be
greased and fumigated before they were thought fit to
sit upon a throne. There was a theory, not yet alto-
gether extinct, that medicines brought from a distance
were most efficacious, especially if, besides being expen-
sive, they tasted bad like myrrh or smelled bad like asa-
fetida. And if these failed to save the princely patient
he was embalmed in aromatics or, as we now call them,
antiseptics of the benzene series.

Today, as always, men are willing to pay high for
the titillation of the senses of smell and taste. The
African savage will trade off an ivory tusk for a piece
of soap reeking with synthetic musk. The clubman

SYNTHETIC PERFUMES AND FLAVORS 97

will pay $10 for a bottle of wine which consists mostly
of water with about ten per cent, of alcohol, worth a
cent or two, but contains an unweighable amount of the
** bouquet" that can only be produced on the sunny
slopes of Champagne or in the valley of the Rhine.
But very likely the reader is quite as extravagant, for
when one buys the natural violet perfumery he is pay-
ing at the rate of more than $10,000 a pound for the
odoriferous oil it contains ; the rest is mere water and
alcohol. But you would not want the pure undiluted
oil if you could get it, for it is unendurable. A single
whiff of it paralyzes your sense of smell for a time just
as a loud noise deafens you.

Of the five senses, three are physical and two chemi-
cal. By touch we discern pressures and surface tex-
tures. By hearing we receive impressions of certain
air waves and by sight of certain ether waves. But
smell and taste lead us to the heart of the molecule and
enable us to tell how the atoms are put together.
These twin senses stand like sentries at the portals of
the body, where they closely scrutinize everything that
enters. Sounds and sights may be disagreeable, but
they are never fatal. A man can live in a boiler fac-
tory or in a cubist art gallery, but he cannot live in a
room containing hydrogen sulfide. Since it is more
important to be warned of danger than guided to de-
lights our senses are made more sensitive to pain than
pleasure. We can detect by the smell one two-millionth
of a milligram of oil of roses or musk, but we can de-
tect one two-billionth of a milligram of mercaptan,
which is the vilest smelling compound that man has so
far invented. If you do not know how much a miUi-

98 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

gram is consider a drop picked up by the point of a
needle and imagine that divided into two billion partSo
Also try to estimate the weight of the odorous particles
that guide a dog to the fox or warn a deer of the pres-
ence of man. The unaided nostril can rival the spec-
troscope in the detection and analysis of unweighable
amounts of matter.

What we call flavor or savor is a joint effect of taste
and odor in which the latter predominates. There are
only four tastes of importance, acid, alkaline, bitter and
sweet. The acid, or sour taste, is the perception of
hydrogen atoms charged with positive electricity. Th«
alkaline, or soapy taste, is the perception of hydroxyl
radicles charged with negative electricity. The bitter
and sweet tastes and all the odors depend upon the
chemical constitution of the compound, but the laws of
the relation have not yet been worked out. Since these
sense organs, the taste and smell buds, are sunk in the
moist mucous membrane they can only be touched by
substances soluble in water, and to reach the sense of
smell they must also be volatile so as to be diffused in
the air inhaled by the nose. The ** taste *' of food is
mostly due to the volatile odors of it that creep up the
back-stairs into the olfactory chamber.

A chemist given an unknown substance would have to
make an elementary analysis and some tedious tests
to determine whether it contained methyl or ethyl
groups, whether it was an aldehyde or an ester, whether
the carbon atoms were singly or doubly linked and
whether it was an open chain or closed. But let him
get a whiff of it and he can give instantly a pretty
shrewd guess as to these points. His nose knows.

SYNTHETIC PEEFUMES AND FLAVORS 99

Although the chemist does not yet know enough to
tell for certain from looking at the structural formula
what sort of odor the compound would have or whether
it would have any, yet we can divide odoriferous sub-
stances into classes according to their constitution.
What are commonly known as **fruity'* odors belong
mostly to what the chemist calls the fatty or aliphatic
series. For instance, we may have in a ripe fruit an
alcohol (say ethyl or common alcohol) and an acid (say
acetic or vinegar ) and a combination of these, the ester
or organic salt (in this case ethyl acetate), which is
more odorous than either of its components. These
esters of the fatty acids give the characteristic savor to
many of our favorite fruits, candies and beverages.
The pear flavor, amyl acetate, is made from acetic acid
and amyl alcohol — though amyl alcohol (fusel oil) has
a detestable smell. Pineapple is ethyl butyrate — ^but
the acid part of it (butyric acid) is what gives Lim-
burg«r cheese its aroma. These essential oils are
easily made in the laboratory, but cannot be extracted
from the fruit for separate use.

If the carbon chain contains one or more double link-
ages we get the ** flowery'* perfumes. For instance,
here is the symbol of geraniol, the chief ingredient of
otto of roses :

(CH3),C = CHCH,CH,C(CHs), = CHCH^OH

The rose would smell as sweet under another name,
but it may be questioned whether it would stand being
called by the name of dimethyl-2-6-octadiene-2-6-ol-8.
Geraniol by oxidation goes into the aldehyde, citrai,
which occurs in lemons, oranges, and verbena flowers.

100 CEEATIVE CHEMISTEY

Anotlier compound of this group, linalool, is found in
lavender, bergamot and many flowers.

Geraniol, as you would see if you drew up its struc-
tural formula in the way I described in the last chapter,
contains a chain of six carbon atoms, that is, the same
number as make a benzene ring. Now if we shake up
geraniol and other compounds of this group (the diole-
fines) with diluted sulfuric acid the carbon chain hooks
up to form a benzene ring, but with the other carbon
atoms stretched across it; rather too complicated to
depict here. These ** bridged rings" of the formula
CgHg, or some multiple of that, constitute the impor-
tant group of the terpenes which occur in turpentine
and such wild and woodsy things as sage, lavender,
caraway, pine needles and eucalyptus. Going further
in this direction we are led into the realm of the heavy
oriental odors, patchouli, sandalwood, cedar, cubebs,
ginger and camphor. Camphor can now be made di-
rectly from turpentine so we may be independent of
Formosa and Borneo.

When we have a six carbon ring without double link-
ings (cyclo-aliphatic) or with one or two such, we get
soft and delicate perfumes like the violet (ionone and
irone). But when these pass into the benzene ring
with its three double linkages the odor becomes more
powerful and so characteristic that the name ** aro-
matic compound" has been extended to the entire class
of benzene derivatives, although many of them are
odorless. The essential oils of jasmine, orange blos-
soms, musk, heliotrope, tuberose, ylang ylang, etc., con-
sist mostly of this class and can be made from the com-
mon source of aromatic compounds, coal tar.

h

SYNTHETIC PEEFDMES AND FLAVORS 101

The synthetic flavors and perfumes are made in the
same way as the dyes by starting with some coal-tar
product or other crude material and building up the
molecule to the desired complexity. For instance, let
us start with phenol, the ill-smelling and poisonous
carbolic acid of disagreeable associations and evil
fame. Treat this to soda-water and it is transformed
into salicylic acid, a white odorless powder, used as a
preservative and as a rheumatism remedy. Add to
this methyl alcohol which is obtained by the destructive
distillation of wood and is much more poisonous than
ordinary ethyl alcohol. The alcohol and the acid
heated together will unite with the aid of a little sul-
furic acid and we get what the chemist calls methyl
salicylate and other people call oil of wintergreen, the
same as is found in wintergreen berries and birch bark.
We have inherited a taste for this from our pioneer
ancestors and we use it extensively to flavor our soft
drinks, gum, tooth paste and candy, but the Europeans
have not yet found out how nice it is.

But, starting with phenol again, let us heat it with
caustic alkali and chloroform. This gives us two new
compounds of the same composition, but differing a
little in the order of the atoms. If you refer back to
the diagram of the benzene ring which I gave in the
last chapter, you will see that there are six hydrogen
atoms attached to it. Now any or all these hydrogen
atoms may be replaced by other elements or groups and
what the product is depends not only on what the new
elements are, but where they are put. It is like spell-
ing words. The three letters t, r and a mean very dif-
ferent things according to whether they are put to-

102 CKEATIVE CHEMISTRY

gether as art, tar or rat. Or, to take a more apposite
illustration, every hostess knows that the success of her
dinner depends upon how she seats her guests around
the table. So in the case of aromatic compounds, a
little difference in the seating arrangement around the
benzene ring changes the character. The two deriva-
tives of phenol, which we are now considering, have
two substituting groups. One is — 0 — H (called the
hydroxyl group). The other is — CHO (called the al-
dehyde group). If these are opposite (called the para
position) we have an odorless white solid. If they are
side by side (called the ortho position) we have an oil
with the odor of meadowsweet. Treating the odorless
solid with methyl alcohol we get audepine (or anisio
aldehyde) which is the perfume of hawthorn blossoms.
But treating the other of the twin products, the fra-
grant oil, with dry acetic acid (''Perkin's reaction")
we get cumarin, which is the perfume part of the tonka
or tonquin beans that our forefathers used to carry in
their snuff boxes. One ounce of cumarin is equal to
four pounds of tonka beans. It smells sufficiently like
vanilla to be used as a substitute for it in cheap ex-
tracts. In perfumery it is known as * 'new mown hay. "
You may remember what I said on a former page
about the career of William Henry Perkin, the boy
who loved chemistry better than eating, and how he
discovered the coal-tar dyes. Well, it is also to his
ingenious mind that we owe the starting of the coal-
tar perfume business which has had almost as impor-
tant a development. Perkin made cumarin in 1868,
but this, like the dye industry, escaped from English
hands and flew over the North Sea. Before the war

SYNTHETIC PERFUMES AND FLAVORS 103

Oermany was exporting $1,500,000 worth of synthetic
perfumes a year. Part of these went to France, where
they were mixed and put up in fancy bottles with
French names and sold to Americans at fancy prices.

The real vanilla flavor, vanillin, was made by Tie-
mann in 1874. At first it sold for nearly $800 a pound,
but now it may be had for $10. How extensively it is
now used in chocolate, ice cream, soda water, cakes and
the like we all know. It should be noted that cumarin
and vanillin, however they may be made, are not imi-
tations, but identical with the chief constituent of the
tonka and vanilla beans and, of course, are equally
wholesome or harmless. But the nice palate can dis-
tinguish a richer flavor in the natural extracts, for
they contain small quantities of other savory ingredi-
ents.

A true perfume consists of a large number of odorif-
erous chemical compounds mixed in such proportions
as to produce a single harmonious eflFect upon the sense
of smell. In a fine brand of perfume may be com-
pounded a dozen or twenty different ingredients and
these, if they are natural essences, are complex mix-
tures of a dozen or so distinct substances. Perfumery
is one of the fine arts. The perfumer, like the orches-
tra leader, must know how to combine and coordinate
his instruments to produce the desired sensation. A
Wagnerian opera requires 103 musicians. A Strauss
opera requires 112. Now if the concert manager wants
to economize he will insist upon cutting down on the
most expensive musicians and dropping out some of
the others, say, the supernumerary violinists and the
man who blows a single blast or tinkles a triangle once

104 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

in the course of the evening. Only the trained ear will
detect the difference and the manager can make more
money.

Suppose our mercenary impresario were unable to
get into the concert hall of his famous rival. He would
then listen outside the window and analyze the sound
in this fashion : ** Fifty per cent, of the sound is made
by the tuba, 20 per cent, by the bass drum, 15 per cent,
by the 'cello and 10 per cent, by the clarinet. There are
some other instruments, but they are not loud and I
guess if we can leave them out nobody will know the
difference.'* So he makes up his orchestra out of
these four alone and many people do not know the
difference.

The cheap perfumer goes about it in the same way.
He analyzes, for instance, the otto or oil of roses which
cost during the war $400 a pound — if you could get it
at any price — and he finds that the chief ingredient is
geraniol, costing only $5, and next is citronelol, costing
$20; then comes nerol and others. So he makes up a
cheap brand of perfumery out of three or four such
compounds. But the genuine oil of roses, like other
natural essences, contains a dozen or more constituents
and to leave many of them out is like reducing an or-
chestra to a few loud-sounding instruments or a paint-
ing to a three-color print. A few years ago an attempt
was made to make music electrically by producing
separately each kind of sound vibration contained in
the instruments imitated. Theoretically that seems
easy, but practically the tone was not satisfactory be-
cause the tones and overtones of a full orchestra or
even of a single violin are too numerous and complex

SYNTHETIC PERFUMES AND FLAVORS 105

to be reproduced individually. So the synthetic per-
fumes have not driven out the natural perfumes, but,
on the contrary, have aided and stimulated the growth
of flowers for essences. The otto or attar of roses, fa-
vorite of the Persian monarchs and romances, has in
recent years come chiefly from Bulgaria. But wars are
not made with rosewater and the Bulgars for the last
five years have been engaged in other business than
cultivating their own gardens. The alembic or still
was invented by the Arabian alchemists for the purpose
of obtaining the essential oil or attar of roses. But
distillation, even with the aid of steam, is not alto-
gether satisfactory. For instance, the distilled rose oil
contains anywhere from 10 to 74 per cent, of a paraflBn
wax (stearopten) that is odorless and, on the other
hand, phenyl-ethyl alcohol, which is an important con-
stituent of the scent of roses, is broken up in the proc-
ess of distillation. So the perfumer can improve on
the natural or rather the distilled oil by leaving out
part of the paraffin and adding the missing alcohol.
Even the imported article taken direct from the still is
not always genuine, for the wily Bulgar sometimes ' in-
creases the yield" by sprinkling his roses in the vat
with synthetic geraniol just as the wily Italian pours a
barrel of American cottonseed oil over his olives in the
press.

Another method of extracting the scent of flowers is
by enfleurage, which takes advantage of the tendency
of fats to absorb odors. You know how butter set be-
side fish in the ice box will get a fishy flavor. In en-
fleurage moist air is carried up a tower passing alter-
nately over trays of fresh flowers, say violets, and over

106 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

glass plates covered with a thin layer of lard. The
perfumed lard may then be used as a pomade or the
perfume may be extracted by alcohol.

But many sweet flowers do not readily yield an essen-
tial oil, so in such oases we have to rely altogether upon
more or less successful substitutes. For instance, the
perfumes sold under the names of ** heliotrope," ''lily
of the valley," "lilac," "cyclamen," "honeysuckle,"
"sweet pea," "arbutus," "mayflower" and "mag-
nolia" are not produced from these flowers but are
simply imitations made from other essences, synthetic
or natural. Among the "thousand flowers" that con-
tribute to the "Eau de Mille Fleurs" are the civet cat,
the musk deer and the sperm whale. Some of the pub-
lished formulas for "Jockey Club" call for civet or
ambergris and those of "Lavender Water" for musk
and civet. The less said about the origin of these
three animal perfumes the better. Fortunately they
are becoming too expensive to use and are being dis-
placed by synthetic products more agreeable to a re-
fined imagination. The musk deer may now be saved
from extinction since we can make tri-nitro-butyl-
xylene from coal tar. This synthetic musk passes mus-
ter to human nostrils, but a cat will turn up her nose at
it. The synthetic musk is not only much cheaper than
the natural, but a dozen times as strong, or let us say,
goes a dozen times as far, for nobody wants it any
stronger.

Such powerful scents as these are only pleasant when
highly diluted, yet they are, as we have seen, essential
ingredients of the finest perfumes. For instance, the
natural oil of jasmine and other flowers contains traces

SYNTHETIC PERFUMES AND FLAVORS 107

of indols and skatols which have most disgusting odors.
Though our olfactory organs cannot detect their pres-
ence yet we perceive their absence so they have to be
put into the artificial perfume. Just so a brief but
violent discord in a piece of music or a glaring color
contrast in a painting may be necessary to the harmony
of the whole.

It is absurd to object to "artificial" perfumes, for
practically all perfumes now sold are artificial in the
sense of being compounded by the art of the perfumer
and whether the materials he uses are derived from
the flowers of yesteryear or of Carboniferous Era is
nobody's business but his. And he does not tell. The
materials can be purchased in the open market. Vari-
ous recipes can be found in the books. But every fa-
mous perfumer guards well the secret of his formulas
and hands it as a legacy to his posterity. The ancient
Roman family of Frangipani has been made immortal
by one such hereditary recipe. The Farina family still
claims to have the exclusive knowledge of how to make
Eau de Cologne. This famous perfume was first com-
pounded by an Italian, Giovanni Maria Farina, who
came to Cologne in 1709. It soon became fashionable
and was for a time the only scent allowed at some of
the German courts. The various published recipes
contain from six to a dozen ingredients, chiefly the oils
of neroli, rosemary, bergamot, lemon and lavender dis-
solved in very pure alcohol and allowed to age like wine.
The invention, in 1895, of artificial neroli (orange flow-
ers) has improved the product.

French perfumery, like the German, had its origin
in Italy, when Catherine de' Medici came to Paris as

108 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

the bride of Henri II. She brought with her, among
other artists, her perfumer, Sieur Toubarelli, who es-
tablished himself in the flowery land of Grasse. Here
for four hundred years the industry has remained
rooted and the family formulas have been handed down
from generation to generation. In the city of Grasse
there were at the outbreak of the war fifty establish-
ments making perfumes. The French perfumer does
not confine himself to a single sense. He appeals as
well to sight and sound and association. He adds to
the attractiveness of his creation by a quaintly shaped
bottle, an artistic box and an enticing name such as
**Dans les Nues,*' **Le Coeur de Jeannette," **Nuit de
Chine," ''Un Air Embaume," *'Le Vertige," ''Bon
Vieux Temps," **L'Heure Bleue," **Nuit d 'Amour,"
**Quelques Fleurs," "Djer-Kiss."

The requirements of a successful scent are very
strict. A perfume must be lasting, but not strong.
All its ingredients must continue to evaporate in the
same proportion, otherwise it will change odor and
deteriorate. Scents kill one another as colors do. The
minutest trace of some impurity or foreign odor may
spoil the whole effect. To mix the ingredients in a
vessel of any metal but aluminum or even to filter
through a tin funnel is likely to impair the perfume.
The odoriferous compounds are very sensitive and un-
stable bodies, otherwise they would have no effect upon
the olfactory organ. The combination that would be
suitable for a toilet water would not be good for a tal-
cum powder and might spoil in a soap. Perfumery is
used even in the ** scentless" powders and soaps. In
fact it is now used more extensively, if less intensively.

SYNTHETIC PEEFUMES AND FLAVORS 109

than ever before in the history of the world. During
the Unwashed Ages, commonly called the Dark Ages,
between the destruction of the Roman baths and the
construction of the modem bathroom, the art of the
perfumer, like all the fine arts, suffered an eclipse.
*'The odor of sanctity" was in highest esteem and
what that odor was may be imagined from reading the
lives of the saints. But in the course of centuries the
refinements of life began to seep back into Europe from
the East by means of the Arabs and Crusaders, and
chemistry, then chiefly the art of cosmetics, began to
revive. When science, the greatest democratizing
agent on earth, got into action it elevated the poor to the
ranks of kings and priests in the delights of the palate
and the nose. We should not despise these delights,
for the pleasure they confer is greater, in amount
at least, than that of the so-called higher senses. We
eat three times a day ; some of us drink of tener ; few of
us visit the concert hall or the art gallery as often as
we do the dining room. Then, too, these primitive
senses have a stronger influence upon our emotional
nature than those acquired later in the course of evo-
lution. As Kipling puts it :

Smells are surer than sounds or sights
To make your heart-strings crack.

CELLULOSE

Organic compounds, on which onr life £ind living de-
pend, consist chiefly of four elements: carbon, hydro-
gen, oxygen and nitrogen. These compounds are
sometimes hard to analyze, but when once the chemist
has ascertained their constitution he can usually makie
them out of their elements — if he wants to. He will
not want to do it as a business unless it pays and it
will not pay unless the manufacturing process is
cheaper than the natural process. This depends pri-
marily upon the cost of the crude materials. What,
then, is the market price of these four elements? Oxy-
gen and nitrogen are free as air, and as we have seen in
the second chapter, their direct combination by the elec-
tric spark is possible. Hydrogen is free in the form of
water but expensive to extricate by means of the elec-
tric current. But we need more carbon than anything
else and where shall we get that ? Bits of crystallized
carbon can be picked up in South Africa and else-
where, but those who can afford to buy them prefer
to wear them rather than use them in making synthetic
food. Graphite is rare and hard to melt. We must
then have recourse to the compounds of carbon. The
simplest of these, carbon dioxide, exists in the air but
only four parts in ten thousand by volume. To ex-
tract the carbon and get it into combination with the
other elements would be a difficult and expensive

110

CELLULOSE 111

process. Here, then, we must call in cheap labor, the
cheapest of all laborers, the plants. Pine trees on the
highlands and cotton plants on the lowlands keep their
green traps set all the day long and with the captured
carbon dioxide build up cellulose. If, then, man wants
free carbon he can best get it by charring wood in
a kiln or digging np that which has been charred
in nature's kiln during the Carboniferous Era. But
there is no reason why he should want to go back to
elemental carbon when he can have it already com-
bined with hydrogen in the remains of modem or fossil
vegetation. The synthetic products on which modem
chemistry prides itself, such as vanillin, camphor and
rubber, are not built up out of their elements, C, H
and 0, although they might be as a laboratory stunt.
Instead of that the raw material of the organic chemist
is chiefly cellulose, or the products of its recent or re-
mote destructive distillation, tar and oil.

It is unnecessary to tell the reader what cellulose
is since he now holds a specimen of it in his hand,
pretty pure cellulose except for the sizing and t-he
specks of carbon that mar the whiteness of its surface.
This utilization of cellulose is the chief cause of the
difference between the modem world and the ancient,
for what is called the invention of printing is essen-
tially the inventing of paper. The Romans made type
to stamp their coins and lead pipes with and if they
had had paper to print upon the world might have
escaped the Dark Ages. But the clay tablets of the
Babylonians were cumbersome ; the wax tablets of the
Greeks were perishable ; the papyrus of the Egyptians
was fragile; parchment was expensive and penning

112 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

was slow, so it was not until literature was put on a
paper basis that democratic education became pos-
sible. At the present time sheepskin is only used for
diplomas, treaties and other antiquated documents.
And even if your diploma is written in Latin it is
likely to be made of sulfated cellulose.

The textile industry has followed the same law of
development that I have indicated in the other in-
dustries. Here again we find the three stages of
progress, (1) utilization of natural products, (2) cul-
tivation of natural products, (3) manufacture of arti^
ficial products. The ancients were dependent upon
plants, animals and insects for their fibers. China
used silk, Greece and Rome used wool, Egj^t used
flax and India used cotton. In the course of cultiva-
tion for three thousand years the animal and vegetable
fibers were lengthened and strengthened and cheap-
ened. But at last man has risen to the level of the
worm and can spin threads to suit himself. He can
now rival the wasp in the making of paper. He is no
longer dependent upon the flax and the cotton plant,
but grinds up trees to get his cellulose. A New York
newspaper uses up nearly 2000 acres of forest a year.
The United States grinds up about five million cords
of wood a year in the manufacture of pulp for paper
and other purposes.

In making ''mechanical pulp" the blocks of wood,
mostly spruce and hemlock, are simply pressed side-
wise of the grain against wet grindstones. But in wood
fiber the cellulose is in part combined with lignin,
which is worse than useless. To break up the ligno-
oellulose combine chemicals are used. The logs for

CELLULOSE 113

this are not ground fine, but cut up by disk obippers.
The chips are digested for several hours under heat
and pressure with acid or alkali. There are three
processes in vogue. In the most common process the'
reagent is calcium sulfite, made by passing sulfur
fumes (SOo) into lime water. In another process a
solution of caustic of soda is used to disintegrate the
wood. The third, known as the ** sulfate" process,
should rather be called the sulfide process since the
active agent is an alkaline solution of sodium sulfide
made by roasting sodium sulfate with the carbonaceous
matter extracted from the wood. This sulfate process,
though the most recent of the three, is being increas-
ingly employed in this country, for by means of it the
resinous pine wood of the South can be worked up
and the final product, known as kraft paper because
it is strong, is used for wrapping.

But whatever the process we get nearly pure
cellulose which, as you can see by examining this page
under a microscope, consists of a tangled web of thin
white fibers, the remains of the original cell walls.
Owing to the severe treatment it has undergone wood
pulp paper does not last so long as the linen rag paper
used by our ancestors. The pages of the newspapers,
magazines and books printed nowadays are likely to
become brown and brittle in a few years, no great loss
for the most part since they have served their pur-
pose, though it is a pity that a few copies of the worst
of them could not be printed on permanent paper for
preservation in libraries so that future generations
could congratulate themselves on their progress in
.civilization.

114 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

But in our absorption in the printed page we must
not forget the other uses of paper. The paper cloth-
ing, so often prophesied, has not yet arrived. Even
paper collars have gone out of fashion — if they ever
were in. In Germany during the war paper was used
for socks, shirts and shoes as well as handkerchiefs
and napkins but it could not stand wear and washing.
Our sanitary engineers have set us to drinking out
of sharp-edged paper cups and we blot our faces in-
stead of wiping them. Twine is spun of paper and fur-
niture made of the twine, a rival of rattan. Cloth and
matting woven of paper yarn are being used for burlap
and grass in the making of bags and suitcases.

Here, however, we are not so much interested in
manufactures of cellulose itself, that is, wood, paper
and cotton, as we are in its chemical derivatives.
Cellulose, as we can see from the symbol, CgHioOg, is
composed of the three elements of carbon, hydrogen
and oxygen. These are present in the same propor-
tion as in starch (CeHioOg), while glucose or grape
sugar (CgHiaOe) has one molecule of water more.
But glucose is soluble in cold water and starch is sol-
uble in hot, while cellulose is soluble in neither. Con-
sequently cellulose cannot serve us for food, although
some of the vegetarian animals, notably the goat, have
a digestive apparatus that can handle it. In Finland
and Germany birch wood pulp and straw were used not
only as an ingredient of cattle food but also put into
war bread. It is not likely, however, that the human
stomach even under the pressure of famine is able to
get much nutriment out of sawdust. But by digesting
with dilute acid sawdust can be transformed into

CELLULOSE 115

BUgars and these by fermentation into alcohol, so it
would be possible for a man after be has read his
morning paper to get drunk on it.

If the cellulose, instead of being digested a long
time in dilute acid, is dipped into a solution of sulfuric
acid (50 to 80 per cent.) and then washed and dried
it acquires a hard, tough and translucent coating that
makes it water-proof and grease-proof. This is the
** parchment paper" that has largely replaced sheep-
skin. Strong alkali has a similar effect to strong acid.
In 1844 John Mercer, a Lancashire calico printer, dis-
covered that by passing cotton cloth or yam through
a cold 30 per cent, solution of caustic soda the fiber is
shortened and strengthened. For over forty years
little attention was paid to this discovery, but when it
was found that if the material was stretched so that
it could not shrink on drying the twisted ribbons of the
cotton fiber were changed into smooth-walled cylinders
like silk, the process came into general use and nowa-
days much that passes for silk is ** mercerized" cotton.

Another step was taken when Cross of London dis-
covered that when the mercerized cotton was treated
with carbon disulfide it was dissolved to a yellow
liquid. This liquid contains the cellulose in solution
as a cellulose xanthate and on acidifying or heating
the cellulose is recovered in a hydrated form. If this
yellow solution of cellulose is squirted out of tubes
through extremely minute holes into acidulated water,
each tiny stream becomes instantly solidified into a
silky thread which may be spun and woven like that
ejected from the spinneret of the silkworm. The
^origin of natural silk, if we think about it. rather de-

116 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

tracts from the pleasure of wearing it, and if "he who
needlessly sets foot upon a worm" is to be avoided as
a friend we must hope that the advance of the artificial
silk industry will be rapid enough to relieve us of the
necessity of boiling thousands of baby worms in their
eradles whenever we want silk stockings.

On a plain rush hurdle a silkworm lay
"When a proud young princess came that way.
The haughty daughter of a lordly king
Threw a sidelong glance at the humble thing,
Little thinking she walked in pride
In the winding sheet where the silkworm died.

But so far we have not reached a stage where we can
altogether dispense with the services of the silkworms
The viscose threads made by the process look as well
as silk, but they are not so strong, especially when wet.

Besides the viscose method there are several other
methods of getting cellulose into solution so that arti-
ficial fibers may be made from it. A strong solution of
zinc chloride will serve and this process used to be em-
ployed for making the threads to be charred into carbon
filaments for incandescent bulbs. Cellulose is also sol-
uble in an ammoniacal solution of copper hydroxide.
The liquid thus formed is squirted through a fine nozzle
into a precipitating solution of caustic soda and glu-
cose, which brings back the cellulose to its original
form.

In the chapter on explosives I explained how cellulose
treated with nitric acid in the presence of sulfuric acid
was nitrated. The cellulose molecule having three hy*
droxyl ( — OH) groups, can take up one, two or three

CELLULOSE 117

nitrate groups ( — ONO2). The higher nitrates are
known as guncotton and form the basis of modern dy-
namite and smokeless powder. The lower nitrates,
known as pyroxylin, are less explosive, although still
very inflammable. All these nitrates are, like the orig-
inal cellulose, insoluble in water, but unlike the original
cellulose, soluble in a mixture of ether and alcohol.
The solution is called collodion and is now in common
use to spread a new skin over a wound. The great war
might be traced back to Nobel's cut finger. Alfred
Nobel was a Swedish chemist — and a pacifist. One day
while working in the laboratory he cut his finger, as
chemists are apt to do, and, again as chemists are apt
to do, he dissolved some guncotton in ether-alcohol and
swabbed it on the wound. At this point, however, his
conduct diverges from the ordinary, for instead of
standing idle, impatiently waving his hand in the air to
dry the film as most people, including chemists, are apt
to do, he put his mind on it and it occurred to him that
this sticky stuff, slowly hardening to an elastic mass,
might be just the thing he was hunting as an absorbent
and solidifier of nitroglycerin. So instead of throwing
away the extra collodion that he had made he mixed
it with nitroglycerin and found that it set to a jelly.
The "blasting gelatin" thus discovered proved to be so
insensitive to shock that it could be safely transported
or fired from a cannon. This was the first of the high
explosives that have been the chief factor in modem
warfare.

But an the whole, collodion has healed more wounds
than it has caused besides being of infinite service to
mankind otherwise. It has made modem photography

118 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

possible, for the film we use in the camera and moving
picture projector consists of a gelatin coating on a
pyroxylin backing. If collodion is forced through fine
glass tubes instead of through a slit, it comes out a
thread instead of a film. If the collodion jet is run into
a vat of cold water the ether and alcohol dissolve ; if it
is run into a chamber of warm air they evaporate.
The thread of nitrated cellulose may be rendered less
inflammable by taking out the nitrate groups by treat-
ment with ammonium or calcium sulfide. This restores
the original cellulose, but now it is an endless thread
of any desired thickness, whereas the native fiber was
in size and length adapted to the needs of the cotton-
seed instead of the needs of man. The old motto, **If
you want a thing done the way you want it you must
do it yourself," explains why the chemist has been
called in to supplement the work of nature in catering
to human wants.

Instead of nitric acid we may use strong acetic acid
to dissolve the cotton. The resulting cellulose acetates
are less inflammable than the nitrates, but they are
more brittle and more expensive. Motion picture films
made from them can be used in any hall without the ne-
cessity of imprisoning the operator in a fire-proof box
where if anything happens he can burn up all by him-
self without disturbing the audience. The cellulose
acetates are being used for auto goggles and gas masks
as well as for windows in leather curtains and trans-
parent coverings for index cards. A new use that has
lately become important is the varnishing of aeroplane
wings, as it does not readily absorb water or catch fire

CELLULOSE lig''

and makes the cloth taut and air-tight. Aeroplane
wings can be made of cellulose acetate sheets as trans*
parent as those of a dragon-fly and not easy to see
against the sky.

The nitrates, sulfates and acetates are the salts or
esters of the respective acids, but recently true ethers
or oxides of cellulose have been prepared that may
prove still better since they contain no acid radicle and
are neutral and stable.

These are in brief the chief processes for making
what is commonly but quite improperly called ** arti-
ficial silk." They are not the same substance as silk-
worm silk and ought not to be — though they sometimes
are — sold as such. They are none of them as strong
r,s the silk fiber when wet, although if I should venture
to say which of the various makes weakens the most on
wetting I should get myself into trouble. I will only
say that if you have a grudge against some fisherman
give him a fly line of artificial silk, 'most any kind.

The nitrate process was discovered by Count Hilaire
de Chardonnet while he was at the Polytechnic School
of Paris, and he devoted his life and his fortune trying
to perfect it. Samples of the artificial silk were exhib-
ited at the Paris Exposition in 1889 and two years
later he started a factory at Basangon. In 1892, Cross
and Bevan, English chemists, discovered the viscose
or xanthate process, and later the acetate process. But
although all four of these processes were invented in
France and England, Germany reaped most benefit
from the new industry, which was bringing into that
country $6,000,000 a year before the war. The largest

120 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

producer in the world was the Vereinigte Glanzstoff%
Fabriken of Elberfeld, which was paying annual divi-
dends of 34 per cent, in 1914.

The raw materials, as may be seen, are cheap and
abundant, merely cellulose, salt, sulfur, carbon, air and
water. Any kind of cellulose can be used, cotton waste,
rags, paper, or even wood pulp. The processes are va-
rious, the names of the products are numerous and the
uses are innumerable. Even the most inattentive must
have noticed the widespread employment of these new
forms of cellulose. We can buy from a street barrow
for fifteen cents near-silk neckties that look as well as
those sold for seventy-five. As for wear — well, they
all of them wear till after we get tired of wearing them.
Paper "vulcanized" by being run through a 30 per
cent, solution of zinc chloride and subjected to hy-
draulic pressure comes out hard and horny and may be
used for trunks and suit cases. Viscose tubes for sau-
sage containers are more sanitary and appetizing than
the customary casings. Viscose replaces ramie or cot-
ton in the Welsbach gas mantles. Viscose film, trans-
parent and a thousandth of an inch thick (cellophane),
serves for candy wrappers. Cellulose acetate cylin-
ders spun out of larger orifices than silk are trying—
not very successfully as yet — to compete with hog's
bristles and horsehair. Stir powdered metals into the
cellulose solution and you have the Bayko yam.
Bayko (fiomthe manufacturers, Farbenfabriken vorm.
Friedr. Bayer and Company) is one of those telescoped
names like Sooony, Nylic, Fominco, Alco, Ropeco, Ri-
pans, Penn-Yan, Anzac, Dagor, Dora and Cadets, which
will be the despair of future philologers.

CELLULOSE 121

Soluble cellulose may enable us in time to dispense
with the weaver as well as the silk-worm. It may by
one operation give us fabrics instead of threads. A
machine has been invented for manufacturing net and
lace, the liquid material being poured on one side of a
roller and the fabric being reeled off on the other side.
The process seems capable of indefinite extension and
application to various sorts of woven, knit and reticu-
lated goods. The raw material is cotton waste and the
finished fabric is a good substitute for silk. As in the
process of making artificial silk the cellulose is dis-
solved in a cupro-ammoniacal solution, but instead of
being forced out through minute openings to form
threads, as in that process, the paste is allowed to flow
upon a revolving cylinder which is engraved with the
pattern of the desired textile. A scraper removes the
excess and the turning of the cylinder brings the paste
in the engraved lines down into a bath which solidi-
fies it.

Tulle or net is now what is chiefly being turned out,
but the engraved design may be as elaborate and artis-
tic as desired, and various materials can be used.
Since the threads wherever they cross are united, the
fabric is naturally stronger than the ordinary. It is
all of a piece and not composed of parts. In short, we
seem to be on the eve of a revolution in textiles that is
the same as that taking place in building materials.
Our concrete structures, however great, are all one
stone. They are not built up out of blocks, but cast
as a whole.

Lace has always been the aristocrat among textiles.
It has maintained its exclusiveness hitherto by being

122 CEEATIVE CHEMISTRY

based upon hand labor. In no other way could one get
so much painful, patient toil put into such a light and
portable form. A filmy thing twined about a neck or
dropping from a wrist represented years of work by
poor peasant girls or pallid, unpaid nuns. A visit to a
lace factory, even to the public rooms where the worn-
out women were not to be seen, is enough to make one
resolve never to purchase any such thing made by hand
again. But our good resolutions do not last long and
in time we forget the strained eyes and bowed backs,
or, what is worse, value our bit of lace all the more be-
cause it means that some poor woman has put her life
and health into it, netting and weaving, purling and
knotting, twining and twisting, throwing and drawing,
thread by thread, day after day, until her eyes can no
longer see and her fingers have become stiffened.

But man is not naturally cruel. He does not really
enjoy being a slave driver, either of human or animal
slaves, although he can be hardened to it with shocking
ease if there seems no other way of getting what he
wants. So he usually welcomes that Great Liberator,
the Machine. He prefers to drive the tireless engine
than to whip the straining horsee. He had rather see
the farmer riding at ease in a mowing machine than
bending his back over a scythe.

The Machine is not only the Great Liberator, it is the
Great Leveler also. It is the most powerful of the
forces for democracy. An aristocracy can hardly be
maintained except by distinction in dress, and distinc-
tion in dress can only be maintained by sumptuary laws
or costliness. Sumptuary laws are unconstitutional
in this country, hence the stress laid upon costliness.

CELLULOSE 123

But machinery tends to bring styles and fabrics within
the reach of all. The shopgirl is almost as well dressed
on the street as her rich customer. The man who buys
ready-made clothing is only a few weeks behind the
vanguard of the fashion. There is often no difference
perceptible to the ordinary eye between cheap and
high-priced clothing once the price tag is off. Jewels
as a portable form of concentrated costliness have been
in favor from the earliest ages, but now they are losing
their factitious value through the advance of invention.
Eubies of unprecedented size, not imitation, but genuine
rubies, can now be manufactured at reasonable rates.
And now we may hope that lace may soon be within
the reach of all, not merely lace of the established
forms, but new and more varied and intricate and
beautiful designs, such as the imagination has been
able to conceive, but the hand cannot execute.

Dissolving nitrocellulose in ether and alcohol we get
the collodion varnish that we are all familiar with since
we have used it on our cut fingers. Spread it on cloth
instead of your skin and it makes a very good leather
substitute. As we all know to our cost the number of
animals to be skinned has not increased so rapidly in
recent years as the number of feet to be shod. After
having gone barefoot for a million years or so the ma-
jority of mankind have decided to wear shoes and this
change in fashion comes at a time, roughly speaking,
when pasture land is getting scarce. Also there are
books to be bound and other new things to be done for
which leather is needed. The war has intensified the
stringency ; so has feminine fashion. The conventions
require that the shoe-tops extend nearly to skirt-bottom

124 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

and this means tliat an inch or so must be added to the
shoe-top every year. Consequent to this rise in leather
we have to pay as much for one shoe as we used to pay
for a pair.

Here, then, is a chance for Necessity to exercise her
maternal function. And she has responded nobly. A
progeny of new substances have been brought forth
and, what is most encouraging to see, they are no
longer trying to worm their way into favor as surrep-
titious surrogates under the names of * * leatheret, * '
**leatherine," **leatheroid'* and ** leather- this-or- that**
but come out boldly under names of their own coinage
and declare themselves not an imitation, not even a
substitute, but "better than leather.'* This policy has
had the curious result of compelling the cowhide men
to take full pages in the magazines to call attention to
the forgotten virtues of good old-fashioned sole-
leather! There are now upon the market synthetio
shoes that a vegetarian could wear with a clear con-
science. The soles are made of some rubber composi-
tion; the uppers of cellulose fabric (canvas) coated
with a cellulose solution such as I have described.

Each firm keeps its own process for such substance
a dead secret, but without prying into these we
can learn enough to satisfy our legitimate curiosity.
The first of the artificial fabrics was the old-fash-
ioned and still indispensable oil-cloth, that is canvas
painted or printed with linseed oil carrying the desired
pigments. Linseed oil belongs to the class of com-
pounds that the chemist calls "unsaturated" and the
psychologist would call "unsatisfied.'* They take up
oxygen from the air and become solid, hence are called

CELLULOSE 125

the ** drying oils,'* although this does not mean that
they lose water, for they have not any to lose. Later,
ground cork was mixed with the linseed oil and then it
went by its Latin name, "linoleum."

The next step was to cut loose altogether from the
natural oils and use for the varnish a solution of some
of the cellulose esters, usually the nitrate (pyroxylin or
guncotton), more rarely the acetate. As a solvent the
ether-alcohol mixture forming collodion was, as we
have seen, the first to be employed, but now various
other solvents are in use, among them castor oil, methyl
alcohol, acetone, and the acetates of amyl or ethyl.
Some of these will be recognized as belonging to the
fruit essences that we considered in Chapter V, and
doubtless most of us have perceived an odor as of over-
ripe pears, bananas or apples mysteriously emanating
from a newly lacquered radiator. With powdered
bronze, imitation gold, aluminum or something of the
kind a metallic finish can be put on any surface.

Canvas coated or impregnated with such soluble cel-
lulose gives us new flexible and durable fabrics that
have other advantages over leather besides being
cheaper and more abundant. Without such material
for curtains and cushions the automobile business
would have been sorely hampered. It promises to pro-
vide us with a book binding that will not crumble to
powder in the course of twenty years. Linen collars
may be water-proofed and possibly Dame Fashion —
being a fickle lady — may some day relent and let us
wear such sanitary and economical neckwear. For
shoes, purses, belts and the like the cellulose varnish
or veneer is usually colored and stamped to resemble

126 CEEATIVE CHEMISTEY

the grain of any kind of leather desired, even snake or
alligator.

If instead of dissolving the cellulose nitrate and
spreading it on fabric we combine it with camphor we
get celluloid, a plastic solid capable of innumerable
applications. But that is another story and must be
reserved for the next chapter.

But before leaving the subject of cellulose proper I
must refer back again to its chief source, wood. We
inherited from the Indians a well-wooded continent.
But the pioneer carried an ax on his shoulder and
began using it immediately. For three hundred years
the trees have been cut down faster than they could
grow, first to clear the land, next for fuel, then for
lumber and lastly for paper. Consequently we are
within sight of a shortage of wood as we are of coal and
oil. But the coal and oil are irrecoverable while the
wood may be regrown, though it would require another
three hundred years and more to grow some of the
trees we have cut down. For fuel a pound of coal is
about equal to two pounds of wood, and a pound of
gasoline to three pounds of wood in heating value, so
there would be a great loss in efficiency and economy if
the world had to go back to a wood basis. But when
that time shall come, as, of course, it must come some
time, the wood will doubtless not be burned in its nat-
nral state but will be converted into hydrogen and
carbon monoxide in a gas producer or will be distilled
in closed ovens giving charcoal and gas and saving the
by-products, the tar and acid liquors. As it is now the
lumberman wastes two-thirds of every tree he cuts
down. The rest is left in the forest as stump and tops

CELLULOSE 12?:

or thrown out at the mill as sawdust and slabs. The
slabs and other scraps may be used as fuel or worked
up into small wood articles like laths and clothes-pins.
The sawdust is burned or left to rot. But it is possible,
although it may not be profitable, to save all this waste.

In a former chapter I showed the advantages of the
introduction of by-product coke-ovens. The same
principle applies to wood as to coal. If a cord of wood
(128 cubic feet) is subjected to a process of destructive
distillation it yields about 50 bus'hels of charcoal, 11,500
cubic feet of gas, 25 gallons of tar, 10 gallons of crude
wood alcohol and 200 pounds of crude acetate of lime.
Eesinous woods such as pine and fir distilled with steam
give turpentine and rosin. The acetate of lime gives
acetic acid and acetone. The wood (methyl) alcohol is
almost as useful as grain (ethyl) alcohol in arts and
industry and has the advantage of killing off those who
drink it promptly instead of slowly.

The chemist is an economical soul. He is never con-
tent until he has converted every kind of waste product
into some kind of profitable by-product. He now has
his glittering eye fixed upon the mountains of sawdust
that pile up about the lumber mills. He also has a
notion that he can beat lumber for some purposes.

vn

SYNTHETIC PLASTICS

In the last chapter I told how Alfred Nobel cut his
finger and, daubing it over with collodion, was led to
the discovery of high explosive, dynamite. I remarked
that the first part of this process — the hurting and the
healing of the finger — might happen to anybody but not
everybody would be led to discovery thereby. That is
true enough, but we must not think that the Swedish
chemist was the only observant man in the world.
About this same time a young man in Albany, named
John Wesley Hyatt, got a sore finger and resorted to
the same remedy and was led to as great a discovery.
His father was a blacksmith and his education was con-
fined to what he could get at the seminary of Eddy-
town, New York, before he was sixteen. At that age
he set out for the West to make his fortune. He made
it, but after a long, hard struggle. His trade of type-
setter gave him a living in Illinois, New York or wher-
ever he wanted to go, but he was not content with his
wages or his hours. However, he did not strike to re-
duce his hours or increase his wages. On the contrary,
he increased his working timo and used it to increase
his income. He spent his nights and Sundays in mak-
ing billiard balls, not at all the sort of thing you would
expect of a young man of his Christian name. But
working with billiard balls is more profitable than play-

128

SYNTHETIC PLASTICS 129

ing with them — though that is not the sort of thing you
would expect a man of my surname to say. Hyatt had
seen in the papers an offer of a prize of $10,000 for the
discovery of a satisfactory substitute for ivory in the
making of billiard balls and he set out to get that prize.
I don 't know whether he ever got it or not, but I have
in my hand a newly pu!>iished circular announcing that
Mr. Hyatt has now perfected a process for making bil-
liard balls "better than ivory.'* Meantime he has
turned out several hundred other inventions, many of
them much more useful and profitable, but I imagine
that he takes less satisfaction in any of them than he
does in having solved the problem that he undertook
fifty years ago.

The reason for the prize was that the game on the
billiard table was getting more popular and the game in
the African jungle was getting scarcer, especially ele-
phants having tusks more than 2 7/16 inches in diam-
eter. The raising of elephants is not an industry that
promises as quick returns as raising chickens or Bel-
gian hares. To make a ball having exactly the weight,
color and resiliency to which billiard players have be-
come accustomed seemed an impossibility. Hyatt
tried compressed wood, but while he did not succeed
in making billiard balls he did build up a profitable
business in stamped checkers and dominoes.

Setting type in the way they did it in the sixties was
hard on the hands. And if the skin got worn thin or
broken the dirty lead type were liable to infect the
fingers. One day in 1863 Hyatt, finding his fingers
were getting raw, went to the cupboard where was kept
the ** liquid cuticle" used by the printers. But when

130 OBEATIVE CHEMISTRY

he got there he found it was bare, for the vial had
tipped over — ^you know how easily they tip over — and
the collodion had run out and solidified on the shelf.
Possibly Hyatt was annoyed, but if so he did not waste
time raging around the office to find out who tipped
over that bottle. Instead he pulled off from the wood
a bit of the dried film as big as his thumb nail and
examined it with that '* 'satiable curtiosity," as Kip-
ling calls it, which is characteristic of the bom in-
ventor. He found it tough and elastic and it occurred
to him that it might be worth $10,000. It turned out to
be worth many times that.

Collodion, as I have explained in previous chapters,
is a solution in ether and alcohol of guncotton (other-
wise known as pyroxylin or nitrocellulose), which is
made by the action of nitric acid on cotton. Hyatt
tried mixing the collodion with ivory powder, also
using it to cover balls of the necessary weight and so-
lidity, but they did not work very well and besides were
explosive. A Colorado saloon keeper wrote in to com-
plain that one of the billiard players had touched a
ball with a lighted cigar, which set it off and every man
in the room had drawn his gun.

The trouble with the dissolved guncotton was that it
could not be molded. It did not swell up and set; it
merely dried up and shrunk. When the solvent evapo-
rated it left a wrinkled, shriveled, homy film, satisfac-
tory to the surgeon but not to the man who wanted to
make balls and hairpins and knife handles out of it.
In England Alexander Parkes began working on the
problem in 1855 and stuck to it for ten years before he,
or rather his backers, gave up. He tried mixing in

SYNTHETIC PLASTICS 131

various things to stiffen up the pyroxylin. Of these,
camphor, which he tried in 1865, worked the best, but
since he used castor oil to soften the mass articles made
of "parkesine" did not hold up in all weathers.

Another Englishman, Daniel Spill, an associate of
Parkes, took up the problem where he had dropped it
and turned out a better product, ** xylonite," though
still sticking to the idea that castor oil was necessary
to get the two solids, the guncotton and the camphor,
together.

But Hyatt, hearing that camphor could be used and
not knowing enough about what others had done to fol-
low their false trails, simply mixed his camphor and
guncotton together without any solvent and put the
mixture in a hot press. The two solids dissolved one
another and when the press was opened there was a
clear, solid, homogeneous block of — ^what he named —
^'celluloid.'* The problem was solved and in the sim-
plest imaginable way. Tissue paper, that is, cellulose,
is treated with nitric acid in the presence of sulfuric
acid. The nitration is not carried so far as to produce
the guncotton used in explosives but only far enough to
make a soluble nitrocellulose or pyroxylin. This is
pulped and mixed with half the quantity of camphor,
pressed into cakes and dried. If this mixture is put
into steam-heated molds and subjected to hydraulic
pressure it takes any desired form. The process re-
mains essentially the same as was worked out by the
Hyatt brothers in the factory they set up in Newark in
1872 and some of their original machines are still in
use. But this protean plastic takes innumerable forms
and almost as many names. Each factory has its own

132 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

secrets and lays claim to peculiar merits. The fnnda-
mental product itself is not patented, so trade names
are copyrighted to protect the product. I have al-
ready mentioned three, **parkesine,'* "xylonite'^ and
** celluloid," and I may add, without exhausting the list
of species belonging to this genus, **viscoloid," *4ith-
oxyl," **fiberloid," **coraline," ''eburite," **pulver-
oid," "ivorine," "pergamoid," **duroid," **ivortus,"
** crystalloid," ^Hransparene," *'litnoid," "petroid,"
**pasbosene," "cellonite" and "pyraHn."

Celluloid can be given any color or colors by mixing
in aniline dyes or metallic pigments. The color may be
confined to the surface or to the interior or pervade the
whole. If the nitrated tissue paper is bleached the cel-
luloid is transparent or colorless. In that case it is
necessary to add an antacid such as urea to prevent its
getting yellow or opaque. To make it opaque and less
inflammable oxides or chlorides of zinc, aluminum,
magnesium, etc., are mixed in.

Without going into the question of their variations
and relative merits we may consider the advantages of
the pyroxylin plastics in general. Here we have a new
substance, the product of the creative genius of man,
and therefore adaptable to his needs. It is hard but
light, tough but elastic, easily made and tolerably
cheap. Heated to the boiling point of water it becomes
soft and flexible. It can be turned, carved, ground,
polished, bent, pressed, stamped, molded or blown. To
make a block of any desired size simply pile up the
sheets and put them in a hot press. To get sheets of
any desired thickness, simply shave them off the block.
To make a tube of any desired size, shape or thickness

SYNTHETIC PLASTICS 133

squirt ont the mixture through a ring-shaped hole or
roll the sheets around a hot bar. Cut the tube into
sections and you have rings to be shaped and stamped
into box bodies or napkin rings. Print words or pic-
tures on a celluloid sheet, put a thin transparent sheet
over it and weld them together, then you have some-
thing like the horn book of our ancestors, but better.

Nowadays such things as celluloid and pyralin can
be sold under their own name, but in the early days the
artificial plastics, like every new thing, had to resort to
camouflage, a very humiliating expedient since in some
cases they were better than the material they were
forced to imitate. Tortoise shell, for instance, cracks,
splits and twists, but a '* tortoise shelP' comb of cellu-
loid looks as well and lasts better. Horn articles are
limited to size of the ceratinous appendages that can be
borne on the animal's head, but an imitation of horn
can be made of any thickness by wrapping celluloid
sheets about a cone. Ivory, which also has a laminated
structure, may be imitated by rolling together alternate
white opaque and colorless translucent sheets. Some
of the sheets are wrinkled in order to produce the knots
and irregularities of the grain of natural ivory. Man's
chief difficulty in all such work is to imitate the imper-
fections of nature. His whites are too white, his sur-
faces are too smooth, his shapes are too regular, his
products are too pure.

The precious red coral of the Mediterranean can be
perfectly imitated by taking a cast of a coral branch
and filling in the mold with celluloid of the same color
and hardness. The clear luster of amber, the dead
black of ebony, the cloudiness of onyx, the opalescence

lU CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

of alabaster, the glow of camelian — once confined to
the selfish enjoyment of the rich — are now within the
reach of every one, thanks to this chameleon material.
Mosaics may be multiplied indefinitely by laying to-
gether sheets and sticks of celluloid, suitably cut and
colored to make up the picture, fusing the mass, anrf
then shaving off thin layers from the end. That chef
d^osuvre of the Venetian glass makers, the Battle of
Isus, from the House of the Faun in Pompeii, can be
reproduced as fast as the machine can shave them off
the block. And the tesserae do not fall out like those
you bought on the Rialto.

The process thus does for mosaics, ivory and coral
what printing does for pictures. It is a mechanical
multiplier and only by such means can we ever attain
to a state of democratic luxury. The product, in cases
where the imitation is accurate, is equally valuable
except to those who delight in thinking that coral in-
sects, Italian craftsmen and elephants have been labor-
ing for years to put a trinket into their hands. The
Lord may be trusted to deal with such selfish souls ac-
cording to their deserts.

But it is very low praise for a synthetic product that
it can pass itself off, more or less acceptably, as a natu-
ral product. If that is all we could do without it. It
must be an improvement in some respects on anything
to be found in nature or it does not represent a real
advance. So celluloid and its congeners are not con-
fined to the shapes of shell and coral and crystal, or to
the grain of ivory and wood and horn, the colors of
amber and amethyst and lapis lazuli, but can be given

SYNTHETIC PLASTICS 135

forms and tej^tures and tints that were never known
before 1869.

Let me see now, have I mentioned all the uses of cel-
luloid? Oh, no, there are handles for canes, umbrellas,
mirrors and brushes, knives, whistles, toys, blown ani-
mals, card cases, chains, charms, brooches, badges,
bracelets, rings, book bindings, hairpins, campaign but-
tons, cuff and collar buttons, cuffs, collars and dickies,
tags, cups, knobs, paper cutters, picture frames, chess-
men, pool balls, ping pong balls, piano keys, dental
plates, masks for disfigured faces, penholders, eyeglass
frames, goggles, playing cards — and you can carry on
the list as far as you like.

Celluloid has its disadvantages. You may mold, you
may color the stuff as you will, the scent of the cam-
phor will cling around it still. This is not usually
objectionable except where the celluloid is trying to
pass itself off for something else, in which case it de-
serves no sympathy. It is attacked and dissolved by
hot acids and alkalies. It softens up when heated,
which is handy in shaping it though not so desirable
afterward. But the worst of its failings is its combus-
tibility. It is not explosive, but it takes fire from a
flame and burns furiously with clouds of black smoke. ^

But celluloid is only one of many plastic substance,
that have been introduced to the present generation.
A new and important group of them is now being
opened up, the so-called *' condensation products." If
you will take down any old volume of chemical research
you will find occasionally words to this effect: **The
reaction resulted in nothing but an insoluble resin

136 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

which was not further investigated." Such a passage
would be marked with a tear if chemists were given to
crying over their failures. For it is the epitaph of a
buried hope. It likely meant the loss of months of
labor. The reason the chemist did not do anything
further with the gummy stuff that stuck up his test
tube was because he did not know what to do with it.
It could not be dissolved, it could not be crystallized,
it could not be distilled, therefore it could not be puri-
fied, analyzed and identified.

What had happened was in most cases this. The
molecule of the compound that the chemist was trying
to make had combined with others of its kind to form
a molecule too big to be managed by such means.
Financiers call the process a "merger." Chemists call
it "polymerization.** The resin was a molecular
trust, indissoluble, uncontrollable and contaminating
everything it touched.

But chemists — like governments — have learned wis-
dom in recent years. They have not yet discovered in
all cases how to undo the process of polymerization, or,
if you prefer the financial phrase, how to unscramble
the eggs. But they have found that these molecular
mergers are very useful things in their way. For in-
stance there is a liquid known as isoprene (CgHg).
This on heating or standing turns into a gum, that is
nothing less than rubber, which is some multiple of
CsHg.

For another instance there is formaldehyde, an acrid
smelling gas, used as a disinfectant. This has the sim-
plest possible formula for a carbohydrate, CHgO. But
in the leaf of a plant this molecule multiplies itself by

SYNTHETIC PLASTICS IST

six and turns into a sweet solid glucose (CeHigOg), or
with the loss of water into starch (CgHioOg) or cellulose

(CeH.oO,).

But formaldehyde is so insatiate that it not only com-
bines with itself but seizes upon other substances, par-
ticularly those having an acquisitive nature like its
own. Such a substance is carbolic acid (phenol) which,
as we all know, is used as a disinfectant like formalde-
hyde because it, too, has the power of attacking decom-
posable organic matter. Now Prof. Adolf von Baeyer
discovered in 1872 that when phenol and formaldehyde
were brought into contact they seized upon one another
and formed a combine of unusual tenacity, that is, a
resin. But as I have said, chemists in those days were
shy of resins. Kleeberg in 1891 tried to make some-
thing out of it and W. H. Story in 1895 went so far as
to name the product **resinite," but nothing came of it
until 1909 when L. H. Baekeland undertook a serious
and systematic study of this reaction in New York.
Baekeland was a Belgian chemist, born at Ghent in
1863 and professor at Bruges. While a student at|
Ghent he took up photography as a hobby and began to
work on the problem of doing away with the dark-room
by producing a printing paper that could be developed
under ordinary light. When he came over to America
in 1889 he brought his idea with him and four years
later turned out **Velox," with which doubtless the
reader is familiar. Velox was never patented because,
as Dr. Baekeland explained in his speech of accept-
ance of the Perkin medal from the chemists of Amer-
ica, lawsuits are too expensive. Manufacturers seem
to be coming generally to the opinion that a synthetic

138 CEEATIVE CHEMISTEY

name copyrighted as a trademark affords better pro.
tection than a patent.

Later Dr. Baekeland turned his attention to the
phenol condensation products, working gradually up
from test tubes to ton vats according to his motto:
* * Make your mistakes on a small scale and your profits
on a large scale. ' * He found that when equal weights
of phenol and formaldehyde were mixed and warmed in
the presence of an alkaline catalytic agent the solution
separated into two layers, the upper aqueous and the
lower a resinous precipitate. This resin was soft, vis-
cous and soluble in alcohol or acetone. But if it was
heated under pressure it changed into another and a
new kind of resin that was hard, inelastic, unplastic,
infusible and insoluble. The chemical name of this
product is ** polymerized oxybenzyl methylene glycol
anhydride, ' ' but nobody calls it that, not even chemists.
It is called **Bakelite" after its inventor.

The two stages in its preparation are convenient in
many ways. For instance, porous wood may be soaked
in the soft resin and then by heat and pressure it is
changed to the bakelite form and the wood comes out
with a hard finish that may be given the brilliant polish
of Japanese lacquer. Paper, cardboard, cloth, wood
pulp, sawdust, asbestos and the like may be impreg-
nated with the resin, producing tough and hard mate-
rial suitable for various purposes. Brass work
painted with it and then baked at 300° F. acquires a
lacquered surface that is unaffected by soap. Forced
in powder or sheet form into molds under a pressure
of 1200 to 2000 pounds to the square inch it takes the
most delicate impressions. Billiard balls of bakelite

SYNTHETIC PLASTICS 139

are claimed to be better than ivory because, having no
grain, they do not swell unequally with heat and hu-
midity and so lose their sphericity. Pipestems and
beads of bakelite have the clear brilliancy of amber and
greater strength. Fountain pens made of it are trans-
parent so you can see how much ink you have left. A
new and enlarging field for bakelite and allied products
is the making of noiseless gears for automobiles and
other machinery, also of air-plane propellers.

Celluloid is more plastic and elastic than bakelite.
It is therefore more easily worked in sheets and small
objects. Celluloid can be made perfectly transparent
and colorless while bakelite is confined to the range
between a clear amber and an opaque brown or black.
On the other hand bakelite has the advantage in being
tasteless, odorless, inert, insoluble and non-inflamma-
ble. This last quality and its high electrical resistance
'give bakelite its chief field of usefulness. Electricity
was discovered by the Greeks, who found that amber
(electron) when rubbed would pick up straws. This
means simply that amber, like all such resinous sub-
stances, natural or artificial, is a non-conductor or di-
electric and does not carry off and scatter the electric-
ity collected on the surface by the friction. Bakelite is
used in its liquid form for impregnating coils to keep
the wires from shortcircuiting and in its solid form for
commutators, magnetos, switch blocks, distributors,
and all sorts of electrical apparatus for automobiles,
telephones, wireless telegraphy, electric lighting, etc.

Bakelite, however, is only one of an indefinite num-
ber of such condensation products. As Baeyer said
long ago : **It seems that all the aldehydes will, under

140 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

suitable circumstances, unite with the aromatic hydro-
carbons to form resins." So instead of phenol, other
coal tar products such as cresol, naphthol or benzene
itself may be used. The carbon links ( — CHg — , meth-
ylene) necessary to hook these carbon rings together
may be obtained from other substances than the aide-
hydes, for instance from the amines, or ammonia de-
rivatives. Three chemists, L. V. Redman, A. J. Weith
and F. P. Broek, working in 1910 on the Industrial
Fellowships of the late Robert Kennedy Duncan at the
University of Kansas, developed a process i^mng for-
min instead of formaldehyde. Formin — or, if you in-
sist upon its full name, hexa-methylene-tetramine — is a
sugar-like substance with a fish-like smell. This mixed
^ith crystallized carbolic acid and slightly warmed
melts to a golden liquid that sets on pouring into molds.
It is still plastic and can be bent into any desired shape,
but on further heating it becomes hard without the need
of pressure. Ammonia is given off in this process in-
stead of water which is the by-product in the case of
formaldehyde. The product is similar to bakelite, ex-
actly how similar is a question that the courts will have
to decide. The inventors threatened to call it Phenyl-
endeka-saligeno-saligenin, but, rightly fearing that this
would interfere with its salability, they have named it
**redmanol."

A phenolic condensation product closely related to
bakelite and redmanol is condensite, the invention of
Jonas Walter Aylesworth. Aylesworth was trained
in what he referred to as "the greatest university of
the world, the Edison laboratory." He entered this
university at the age of nineteen at a salary of $3 »

SYNTHETIC PLASTICS 141

week, but Edison soon found that he had in his new boy
an assistant who could stand being shut up in the labor-
atory working day and night as long as he could.
After nine years of close association with Edison he .
set up a little laboratory in his own back yard to work
out new plastics. He found that by acting on naph-
thalene— the moth-ball stuff — ^with chlorine he got a
series of useful products called ''halo waxes.'* The
lower chlorinated products are oils, which may be used
for impregnating paper or soft wood, making it non-
inflammable and impregnable to water. If four atoms
of chlorine enter the naphthalene molecule the product
is a hard wax that rings like a metal.

Condensite is anhydrous and infusible, and like its
rivals finds its chief employment in the insulation parts
of electrical apparatus. The records of the Edison
phonograph are made of it. So are the buttons of our
blue- jackets. The Government at the outbreak of the
war ordered 40,000 goggles in condensite frames to
protect the eyes of our gunners from the glare and acid
fumes.

The various synthetics played an important part in
the war. According to an ancient military pun the
endurance of soldiers depends upon the strength of
their soles. The new compound rubber soles were
found useful in our army and the Germans attribute
their success in making a little leather go a long way
during the late war to the use of a new synthetic tan-
ning material known as * * neradol. ' ' There are various
forms of this. Some are phenolic condensation prod-
ucts of formaldehyde like those we have been consid-
ering, but some use coal-tar compounds having no

142 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

phenol groups, such as naphthalene sulfonic acid.
These are now being made in England under such
names as "paradol,'^ **cresyntan" and ''syntan.'*
They have the advantage of the natural tannins such
as bark in that they are of known strength and can
be varied to suit.

This very grasping compound, formaldehyde, will
attack almost anything, even molecules many times its
size. Gelatinous and albuminous substances of all
sorts are solidified by it. Glue, skimmed milk, blood,
eggs, yeast, brewer *s slops, may by this magic agent be
rescued from waste and reappear in our buttons, hair-
pins, roofing, phonographs, shoes or shoe-polish. The
French have made great use of casein hardened by for-
maldehyde into what is known as **galalith" (i. e., milk-
stone). This is harder than celluloid and non-inflam-
mable, but has the disadvantages of being more brittle
and of absorbing moisture. A mixture of casein and
celluloid has something of the merits of both.

The Japanese, as we should expect, are using the
juice of the soy bean, familiar as a condiment to all
who patronize chop-sueys or use Worcestershire sauce.
The soy glucine coagulated by formalin gives a plastic
said to be better and cheaper than celluloid. Its in-
ventor, S. Sato, of Sendai University, has named it,
according to American precedent, **Satolite," and has
organized a million-dollar Satolite Company at Muko-
jima.

The algin extracted from the Pacific kelp can be
used as a rubber surrogate for waterproofing cloth.
[When combined with heavier alkaline bases it forms a
tough aud elastic substance that can be rolled into

SYNTHETIC PLASTICS 143

transparent sheets like celluloid or turned into buttons
and knife handles.

In Australia when the war shut off the supply of tin
the Government commission appointed to devise means
of preserving fruits recommended the use of cardboard
containers varnished with ' ' magramite. " This is a
name the Australians coined for synthetic resin made
from phenol and formaldehyde like bakelite. Magra-
mite dissolved in alcohol is painted on the cardboard
cans and when these are stoved the coating becomes
insoluble.

Tarasoff has made a series of condensation products
from phenol and formaldehyde with the addition of sul-
fonated oils. These are formed by the action of sul-
furic acid on coconut, castor, cottonseed or mineral
oils- The products of this combination are white plas-
tics, opaque, insoluble and infusible.

Since I am here chiefly concerned with "Creative
Chemistry, ' * that is, with the art of making substances
not found in nature, I have not spoken of shellac, as-
phaltum, rosin, ozocerite and the innumerable gums,
resins and waxes, animal, mineral and vegetable, that
are used either by themselves or in combination with
the synthetics. "What particular * ' dope " or * ' mud ' ' is
used to coat a canvas or form a telephone receiver is
often hard to find out. The manufacturer finds secrecy
safer than the patent oflBce and the chemist of a rival
establishment is apt to be baffled in his attempt to ana-
lyze and imitate. But we of the outside world are not
concerned with this, though we are interested in the
manifold applications of these new materials.

There seems to be no limit to these compounds and

144 CREATIVE CHEMISTEY

every week the journals report new processes and pat-
ents. But we must not allow the new ones to crowd
out the remembrance of the oldest and most famous
of the synthetic plasters, hard rubber, to which a sepa-
rate chapter must be devoted.

vm

THE EACE FOR RUBBER

There is one law that regulates all animate and in-
animate things. It is formulated in various ways, for
instance :

Running down a hill is easy. In Latin it reads,
facilis descensus Averni. Herbert Spencer calls it the
dissolution of definite coherent heterogeneity into in-
definite incoherent homogeneity. Mother Goose ex-
presses it in the fable of Humpty Dumpty, and the busi-
ness man extracts the moral as, ** You can't unscramble
an egg.^* The theologian calls it the dogma of
natural depravity. The physicist calls it the second
law of thermodynamics. Clausius formulates it as
*'The entropy of the world tends toward a maxi-
mum." It is easier to smash up than to build up.
Children find that this is true of theil toys ; the Bolshe-
viki have found that it is true of a civilization. So,
too, the chemist knows analysis is eafjier than synthesis
and that creative chemistry is the highest branch of hia
art.

This explains why chemists discovered how to take
rubber apart over sixty years before they could find
out how to put it together. The first is easy. Just
put some raw rubber into a retort and heat it. If you
can stand the odor you will observe the caoutchouc
decomposing and a benzine-like liquid distilling over.

145

146 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

This is called "isoprene." Any Freshmaii chemist
could write the reaction for this operation. It is
simply

CioHi, V 2CBHg

caoutchouc isoprene

That is, one molecule of the gum splits up into two
molecules of the liquid. It is just as easy to write the
reaction in the reverse directions, as 2 isoprene —^ 1
caoutchouc, but nobody could make it go in that direc-
tion. Yet it could be done. It had been done. But
the man who did it did not know how he did it and
could not do it again. Professor Tilden in May, 1892,
read a paper before the Birmingham Philosophical
Society in which he said:

I was surprised a few weeks ago at finding the contents of
the bottles containing isoprene from turpentine entirely
changed in appearance. In place of a limpid, colorless liquid
the bottles contained a dense syrup in which were floating
several large masses of a yellowish color. Upon examination
this turned out to be India rubber.

But neither Professor Tilden nor any one else could
repeat this accidental metamorphosis. It was tanta-
lizing, for the world was willing to pay $2,000,000,000
a year for rubber and the forests of the Amazon and
Congo were failing to meet the demand. A large
share of these millions would have gone to any chemist
who could find out how to make synthetic rubber and
make it cheaply enough. With such a reward of fame
and fortune the competition among chemists was in-
tense. It took the form of an international contest
in which England and Germany were neck and neck.

THE EACE FOE EUBBEB

Uf

Courtesy of the "India Rubber World."

What goes into rubber and what is made out of it

148 CREATIVE CHEMISTEY

The English, who had been beaten by the Germans
in the dye business where they had the start, were
determined not to lose in this. Prof. W. H. Perkin,
of Manchester University, was one of the most eager,
for he was inspired by a personal grudge against the
Germans as well as by patriotism and scientific zeal.
It was his father who had, fifty years before, dis-
covered mauve, the first of the anilin dyes, but England
could not hold the business and its rich rewards went
over to Germany. So in 1909 a corps of chemists
set to work under Professor Perkin in the Manchester
laboratories to solve the problem of synthetic rubber.
What reagent could be found that would reverse the
reaction and convert the liquid isoprene into the solid
rubber? It was discovered, by accident, we may say,
but it should be understood that such advantageous
accidents happen only to those who are working for
them and know how to utilize them. In July, 1910,
Dr. Matthews, who had charge of the research, set
some isoprene to drying over metallic sodium, a
common laboratory method of freeing a liquid from the
last traces of water. In September he found that the
flask was filled with a solid mass of real rubber instead
of the volatile colorless liquid he had put into it.

Twenty years before the discovery would have been
useless, for sodium was then a rare and costly metal,
a little of it in a sealed glass tube being passed around
the chemistry class once a year as a curiosity, or a
tiny bit cut off and dropped in water to see what a fuss
it made. But nowadays metallic sodium is cheaply
produced by the aid of electricity. The difficulty lay
rather in the cost of the raw material, isoprene. In

THE RACE FOB RUBBER 149

industrial chemistry it is not snflficient that a thing
can be made ; it must be made to pay. Isoprene could
be obtained from turpentine, but this was too expen-
sive and limited in supply. It would merely mean the
destruction of pine forests instead of rubber forests.
Starch was finally decided upon as the best material,
since this can be obtained for about a cent a pound
from potatoes, corn and many other sources. Here,
however, the chemist came to the end of his rope and
had to call the bacteriologist to his aid. The splitting
of the starch molecule is too big a job for man; only
the lower organisms, the yeast plant, for example,
know enough to do that. Owing perhaps to the
entente cordiale a French biologist was called into the
combination, Professor Fernbach, of the Pasteur
Institute, and after eighteen months ' hard work he diS'
covered a process of fermentation by which a large
amount of fusel oil can be obtained from any starchy
stuff. Hitherto the aim in fermentation and distilla-
tion had been to obtain as small a proportion of fusel
as possible, for fusel oil is a mixture of the heavier al-
cohols, all of them more poisonous and malodorous than
common alcohol. But here, as has often happened in
the history of industrial chemistry, the by-product
turned out to be more valuable than the product.
[From fusel oil by the use of chlorine isoprene can be
prepared, so the chain was complete.

But meanwhile the Germans had been making equal
progress. In 1905 Prof. Karl Harries, of Berlin,
found out the name of the caoutchouc molecule. This
discovery was to the chemists what the architect's
plan of a house is to the builder. They knew then

150 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

what they were trying to construct and could go about
their task intelligently.

Mark Twain said that he could understand some-
thing about how astronomers could measure the
distance of the planets, calculate their weights and so
forth, but he never could see how they could find
out their names even with the largest telescopes. This
is a joke in astronomy but it is not in chemistry. For
when the chemist finds out the structure of a com-
pound he gives it a name which means that. The stuff
came to be called ** caoutchouc," because that was the
way the Spaniards of Columbus's time caught the
Indian word **cahuchu.'* When Dr. Priestley called
it "India rubber" he told merely where it came from
and what it was good for. But when Harries named
it **l-5-dimethyl-cyclo-octadien-l-5" any chemist could
draw a picture of it and give a guess as to how it
could be made. Even a person without any knowledge
of chemistry can get the main point of it by merely
looking at this diagram:

c c— c c c— o

isoprene turns into caoutchouc

I have dropped the 16 H's or hydrogen atoms of the
formula for simplicity's sake. They simply hook on
wherever they can. You will see that the isoprene
consists of a chain of four carbon atoms (represented
by the C's) with an extra carbon on the side. In the
transformation of this colorless liquid into soft rubber

THE RACE FOR BUBBEB 151

two of the double linkages break and so permit the two
chains of 4 C's to unite to form one ring of eight.
If you have ever played ring-around-a-rosy you will
get the idea. In Chapter IV I explained that the
aniliu dyes are built up upon the benzene ring of six
carbon atoms. The rubber ring consists of eight at
least and probably more. Any substance containing
that peculiar carbon chain with two double links
C=C — C=C can double up — polymerize, the chemist
calls it — ^into a rubber-like substance. So we may
have many kinds of rubber, some of which may prove
to be more useful than that which happens to be found
in nature.

With the structural formula of Harries as a clue
chemists all over the world plunged into the problem
with renewed hope. The famous Bayer dye works at
Elberfeld took it up and there in August, 1909, Dr.
Fritz Hofmann worked out a process for the convert-
ing of pure isoprene into rubber by heat. Then in
1910 Harries happened upon the same sodium reac-
tion as Matthews, but when he came to get it patented
he found that the Englishman had beaten him to the
patent oflBce by a few weeks.

This Anglo-German rivalry came to a dramatic
climax in 1912 at the great hall of the College of the
City of New York when Dr. Carl Duisberg, of the
Elberfeld factory, delivered an address on the latest
achievements of the chemical industry before the
Eighth — and the last for a long time — ^International
Congress of Applied Chemistry. Duisberg insisted
upon talking in German, although more of his auditors
would have understood him in English. He laid full

152 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

emphasis upon German achievements and cast doubt
upon the claim of **the Englishman Tilden" to have
prepared artificial rubber in the eighties. Perkin, of
Manchester, confronted him with his new process for
making rubber from potatoes, but Duisberg countered
by proudly displaying two automobile tires made of
synthetic rubber with which he had made a thousand-
mile run.

The intense antagonism between the British and
German chemists at this congress was felt by all
present, but we did not foresee that in two years from
that date they would be engaged in manufacturing
poison gas to fire at one another. It was, however,
realized that more was at stake than personal reputa-
tion and national prestige. Under pressure of the
new demand for automobiles the price of rubber
jumped from $1.25 to $3 a pound in 1910, and millions
had been invested in plantations. If Professor Perkin
was right when he told the congress that by his process
rubber could be made for less than 25 cents a pound
it meant that these plantations would go the way of
the indigo plantations when the Germans succeeded
in making artificial indigo. If Dr. Duisberg was right
when he told the congress that synthetic rubber would
** certainly appear on the market in a very short time,'*
it meant that Germany in war or peace would become
independent of Brazil in the matter of rubber as she
had become independent of Chile in the matter of
nitrates.

As it turned out both scientists were too sanguine.
Synthetic rubber has not proved capable of displacing
natural rubber by underbidding it nor even of replac-

THE KACE FOR RUBBER 153

ing natural rubber when this is shut out. When Ger-
many was blockaded and the success of her armies
depended on rubber, price was no object. Three
Danish sailors who were caught by United States
officials trying to smuggle dental rubber into Germany
confessed that they had been selling it there for gas
masks at $73 a pound. The German gas masks in the
latter part of the war were made without rubber and
were frail and leaky. They could not have withstood
the new gases which American chemists were prepar-
ing on an unprecedented scale. Every scrap of old
rubber in Germany was saved and worked over and
over and diluted with fillers and surrogates to the
limit of elasticity. Spring tires were substituted for
pneumatics. So it is evident that the supply of
synthetic rubber could not have been adequate or
satisfactory. Neither, on the other hand, hav« the
British made a success of the Perkin process, although
they spent $200,000 on it in the first two years. But,
of course, there was not the same necessity for it as
in the case of Germany, for England had practically
a monopoly of the world's supply of natural rubber
either through owning plantations or controlling ship-
ping. If rubber could not be manufactured profitably
in Germany when the demand was imperative and
price no consideration it can hardly be expected to
compete with the natural under peace conditions.

The problem of synthetic rubber has then been solved
scientifically but not industrially. It can be made but
cannot be made to pay. The difficulty is to find a cheap
enough material to start with. We can make rubber
out of potatoes — ^but potatoes have other uses. It

154 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

would require more land and more valuable land to
raise the potatoes than to raise the rubber. We can
get isoprene by the distillation of turpentine — but why
not bleed a rubber tree as well as a pine tree ! Turpen-
tine is neither cheap nor abundant enough. Any kind
of wood, sawdust for instance, can be utilized by con-
verting the cellulose over into sugar and fermenting
this to alcohol, but the process is not likely to prove
profitable. Petroleum when cracked up to make gaso-
line gives isoprene or other double-bond compounds
that go over into some form of rubber.

But the mosi interesting and most promising of all
is the complete inorganic synthesis that dispenses with
the aid of vegetation and starts with coal and lime.
These heated together in the electric furnace form
calcium carbide and this, as every automobilist knows,
gives acetylene by contact with water. From this gas
isoprene can be made and the isoprene converted into
rubber by sodium, or acid or alkali or simple heating.
Acetone, which is also made from acetylene, can be
converted directly into rubber by fuming sulfuric acid.
This seems to have been the process chiefly used by the
Germans during the war. Several carbide factories
were devoted to it. But the intermediate and by-
products of the process, such as alcohol, acetic acid
and acetone, were in as much demand for war pur-
poses as rubber. The Germans made some rubber
from pitch imported from Sweden. They also found
a useful substitute in aluminum naphthenate made
from Baku petroleum, for it is elastic and plastic and
can be vulcanized.

So although rubber can be made in many different

THE RACE FOR RUBBER 155

ways it is not profitable to make it in any of them. We
have to rely still upon the natural product, but we can
greatly improve upon the way nature produces it.
When the call came for more rubber for the electrical
and automobile industries the first attempt to increase
the supply was to put pressure upon the natives to
bring in more of the latex. As a consequence the trees
were bled to death and sometimes also the natives.
The Belgian atrocities in the Congo shocked the civi-
lized world and at Putumayo on the upper Amazon the
same cause produced the same horrible effects. But no
matter what cruelty was practiced the tropical forests
could not be made to yield a sufficient increase, so the
cultivation of the rubber was begun by far-sighted
men in Dutch Java, Sumatra and Borneo and in British
Malaya and Ceylon.

Brazil, feeling secure in the possession of a natural
monopoly, made no effort to compete with these
parvenus. It cost about as much to gather rubber
from the Amazon forests as it did to raise it on a Malay
plantation, that is, 25 cents a pound. The Brazilian
Government clapped on another 25 cents export duty
and spent the money lavishly. In 1911 the treasury
of Para took in $2,000,000 from the rubber tax and a
good share of the money was spent on a magnificent
new theater at Manaos — not on setting out rubber
trees. The result of this rivalry between the collector
and the cultivator is shown by the fact that in the
decade 1907-1917 the world's output of plantation
rubber increased from 1000 to 204,000 tons, while the
output of wild rubber decreased from 68,000 to 53,000.
Besides this the plantation rubber is a cleaner and

156 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

more even product, carefully coagulated by acetic acid
instead of being smoked over a forest fire. It comes
in pale yellow sheets instead of big black balls loaded
with the dirt or sticks and stones that the honest Indian
sometimes adds to make a bigger lump. What 's
better, the man who milks the rubber trees on a planta-
tion may live at home where he can be decently looked
after. The agriculturist and the chemist may do what
the philanthropist and statesman could not accomplish :
put an end to the cruelties involved in the international
struggle for ** black gold."

The United States uses three-fourths of the world *s
rubber output and grows none of it. What is the
use of tropical possessions if we do not make use of
them? The Philippines could grow all our rubber and
keep a $300,000,000 business under our flag. Santo
Domingo, where rubber was first discovered, is now
under our supervision and could be enriched by the
industry. The Guianas, where the rubber tree was
first studied, might be purchased. It is chiefly for lack
of a definite colonial policy that our rubber industry,
by far the largest in the world, has to be dependent
upon foreign sources for all its raw materials. Be-
cause the Philippines are likely to be cast off at any
moment, American maufacturers are placing their
plantations in the Dutch or British possessions. The
Goodyear Company has secured a concession of 20,000
acres near Medan in Dutch Sumatra.

While the United States is planning to relinquish
its Pacific possessions the British have more than
doubled their holdings in New Guinea by the acquisi-
tion of Kaiser Wilhelm's Land, good rubber country.

THE EACE FOB RUBBER 157i

The British Malay States in 1917 exported over $118,-
000,000 worth of plantation-grown rubber and could
have sold more if shipping had not been short and pro-
duction restricted. Fully 90 per cent, of the cultivated
rubber is now grown in British colonies or on British
plantations in the Dutch East Indies. To protect this
monopoly an act has been passed preventing foreigners
from buying more land in the Malay Peninsula. The
Japanese have acquired there 50,000 acres, on which
they are growing more than a million dollars* worth
of rubber a year. The British Tropical Life says
of the American invasion: **As America is so ex-
tremely wealthy Uncle Sam can well afford to continue
to buy our rubber as he has been doing instead of
coming in to produce rubber to reduce his competition
as a buyer in the world's market." The Malaya
estates calculate to pay a dividend of 20 per cent, on
the investment with rubber selling at 30 cents a pound
and every two cents additional on the price brings
a further 3i/2 per cent, dividend. The output is re-
stricted by the Rubber Growers' Association so as to
keep the price up to 50-70 cents. When the planta-
tions first came into bearing in 1910 rubber was bring-
ing nearly $3 a pound, and since it can be produced
at less than 30 cents a pound we can imagine the profits
of the early birds.

The fact that the world's rubber trade was in the
control of Great Britain caused America great anxiety
and financial loss in the early part of the war when
the British Government, suspecting — ^not without rea-
son— that some American rubber goods were getting
into Germany through neutral nations, suddenly shut

158 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

off our supply. This threatened to kill the fourth larg-
est of our industries and it was only by the submission
of American rubber dealers to the closest supervision
and restriction by the British authorities that they
were allowed to continue their business. Sir Francis
Hopwood, in laying down these regulations, gave
emphatic warning "that in case any manufacturer,
importer or dealer came under suspicion his permits
should be immediately revoked. Reinstatement will
be slow and difficult. The British Government will
cancel first and investigate afterward." Of course
the British had a right to say under what conditions
they should sell their rubber and we cannot blame them
for taking such precautions to prevent its getting to
their enemies, but it placed the United States in a
humiliating position and if we had not been in sym-
pathy with their side it would have aroused more re-
sentment than it did. But it made evident the de-*
sirability of having at least part of our supply under
our own control and, if possible, within our own
country. Rubber is not rare in nature, for it is con-
tained in almost every milky juice. Every country boy
knows that he can get a self -feeding mucilage brush by
cutting off a milkweed stalk. The only native source so
far utilized is the guayule, which grows wild on the des-
erts of the Mexican and the American border. The
plant was discovered in 1852 by Dr. J. M. Bigelow near
Escondido Creek, Texas. Professor Asa Gray de-
scribed it and named it Parthenium argentatum, or
the silver Pallas. When chopped up and macerated
guayule gives a satisfactory quality of caoutchouc in
profitable amounts. In 1911 seven thousand tons of

THE KACE FOE. RUBBER 159

guayule were imported from Mexico; in 1917 only
seventeen hundred tons. Why this falling off! Be-
cause the eager exploiters had killed the goose that
laid the golden egg, or in phiin language, pulled up
the plant by the roots. Now guayule is being culti-
vated and is reaped instead of being uprooted. Ex-
periments at the Tucson laboratory have recently re-
moved the difficulty of getting the seed to germinate
under cultivation. This seems the most promising of
the home-grown plants and, until artificial rubber can
be made profitable, gives us the only chance of being
in part independent of oversea supply.

There are various other gums found in nature that
can for some purposes be substituted for caoutchouc,
Gutta percha, for instance, is pliable and tough though
not very elastic. It becomes plastic by heat so it can
be molded, but unlike rubber it cannot be hardened by
heating with sulfur. A lump of gutta percha was
brought from Java in 1766 and placed in a British
museum, where it lay for nearly a hundred years be-
fore it occurred to anybody to do anything with it
except to look at it. But a German electrician, Sie-
mens, discovered in 1847 that gutta percha was valu-
able for insulating telegraph lines and it found exten-
sive employment in submarine cables as well as for
golf balls, and the like.

Balata, which is found in the forests of the Guianas,
is between gutta percha and rubber, not so good for
insulation but useful for shoe soles and machine belts.
The bark of the tree is so thick that the latex does not
run off like caoutchouc when the bark is cut. So the
bark has to be cut off and squeezed in hand presses.

160 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

Formerly this meant cutting down the tree, but now
alternate strips of the bark are cut off and squeezed
so the tree continues to live.

When Columbus discovered Santo Domingo he found
the natives playing with balls made from the gum of
the caoutchouc tree. The soldiers of Pizarro, when
they conquered Inca-Land, adopted the Peruvian cus-
tom of smearing caoutchouc over their coats to keep out
the rain. A French scientist, M. de la Condamine, who
went to South America to measure the earth, came back
in 1745 with some specimens of caoutchouc from Para
as well as quinine from Peru. The vessel on which he
returned, the brig Minerva, had a narrow escape from
capture by an English cruiser, for Great Britain was
jealous of any trespassing on her American sphere of
influence. The Old World need not have waited for
the discovery of the New, for the rubber tree grows
wild in Annam as well as Brazil, but none of the Asi-
atics seems to have discovered any of the many uses of
the .iuice that exudes from breaks in the bark.

The first practical use that was made of it gave it the
name that has stuck to it in English ever since. Ma-
gellan announced in 1772 that it was good to remove
pencil marks. A lump of it was sent over from France
to Priestley, the clergyman chemist who discovered
oxygen and was mobbed out of Manchester for being a
republican and took refuge in Pennsylvania. He cut
the lump into little cubes and gave them to his friends
to eradicate their mistakes in writing or figuring.
Then they asked him what the queer things were and
he said that they were ** India rubbers. '^

The Peruvian natives had used caoutchouc for water

THE RACE FOR RUBBER 161

proof clothing, shoes, bottles and syringes, but Europe
was slow to take it up, for the stuff was too sticky and
smelled too bad in hot weather to become fashionable
in fastidious circles. In 1825 Mackintosh made his
name immortal by putting a layer of rubber between
two cloths.

A German chemist, Ludersdorf, discovered in 1832
that the gum could be hardened by treating it with
sulfur dissolved in turpentine. But it was left to a
[Yankee inventor, Charles Goodyear, of Connecticut, to
work out a practical solution of the problem. A friend
of his, Hayward, told him that it had been revealed to
him in a dream that sulfur would harden rubber, but
unfortunately the angel or defunct chemist who in-
spired the vision failed to reveal the details of the
process. So Hayward sold out his dream to Good-
year, who spent all his own money and all he could
borrow from his friends trying to convert it into a real-
ity. He worked for ten years on the problem before
the ** lucky accident" came to him. One day in 1839
he happened to drop on the hot stove of the kitchen that
he used as a laboratory a mixture of caoutchouc and
sulfur. To his surprise he saw the two substances fuse
together into something new. Instead of the soft,
tacky gum and the yellow, brittle brimstone he had the
tough, stable, elastic solid that has done so much since
to make our footing and wheeling safe, swift and noise-
less. The gumshoes or galoshes that he was then en-
abled to make still go by the name of ** rubbers" in
this country, although we do not use them for pencil
erasers.

Goodyear found that he could vary this "vulcanized

162 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

rubber" at will. By adding a little more sulfur he got
a hard substance which, however, could be softened by
heat so as to be molded into any form wanted. Out of
this "hard rubber*' ** vulcanite" or "ebonite" were
made combs, hairpins, penholders and the like, and it
has not yet been superseded for some purposes by any
of its recent rivals, the synthetic resins.

The new form of rubber made by the Germans,
methyl rubber, is said to be a superior substitute for
the hard variety but not satisfactory for the soft. The
electrical resistance of the synthetic product is 20 per
cent, higher than the natural, so it is excellent for insu-
lation, but it is inferior in elasticity. In the latter part
of the war the methyl rubber was manufactured at the
rate of 165 tons a month.

The first pneumatic tires, known then as "patent
aerial wheels," were invented by Robert William
Thomson of London in 1846. On the following year a
carriage equipped with them was seen in the streets
of New York City. But the pneumatic tire did not
come into use until after 1888, when an Irish horse-
doctor, John Boyd Dunlop, of Belfast, tied a rubber
tube around the wheels of his little son's velocipede.
Within seven years after that a $25,000,000 corpora-
tion was manufacturing Dunlop tires. Later America
took the lead in this business. In 1913 the United
States exported $3,000,000 worth of tires and tubes.
In 1917 the American exports rose to $13,000,000, not
counting what went to the Allies. The number of
pneumatic tires sold in 1917 is estimated at 18,000,000,
which at an average cost of $25 would amount to $450,-
000,000.

THE EACE FOR RUBBER 163

No matter how much synthetic rubber may be manu-
facturer or how many rubber trees are set out there is
no danger of glutting the market, for as the price falls
the uses of rubber become more numerous. One can
think of a thousand ways in which rubber could be
used if it were only cheap enough. In the form of pads
and springs and tires it would do much to render traffic
noiseless. Even the elevated railroad and the subway
might be opened to conversation, and the city made
habitable for mild voiced and gentle folk. It would
make one 's step sure, noiseless and springy, whether it
was used individualistically as rubber heels or coUec-
tivistically as carpeting and paving. In roofing and
siding and paint it would make our buildings warmer
and more durable. It would reduce the cost and per-
mit the extension of electrical appliances of almost all
kinds. In short, there is hardly any other material
whose abundance would contribute more to our comfort
and convenience. Noise is an automatic alarm indi-
cating lost motion and wasted energy. Silence is
economy and resiliency is superior to resistance. A
gumshoe outlasts a hobnailed sole and a rubber tube
full of air is better than a steel tire.

IX

THE RIVAL SUGARS

The ancient Greeks, being an inquisitive and acquisi-
tive people, were fond of collecting tales of strange
lands. They did not care much whether the stories
were true or not so long as they were interesting.
Among the marvels that the Greeks heard from the Far
East two of the strangest were that in India there were
plants that bore wool without sheep and reeds that bore
honey without bees. These incredible tales turned out
to be true and in the course of time Europe began to
get a little calico from Calicut and a kind of edible
gravel that the Arabs who brought it called **sukkar."
But of course only kings and queens could afford to
dress in calico and have sugar prescribed for them
when they were sick.

Fortunately, however, in the course of time the
Arabs invaded Spain and forced upon the unwilling
inhabitants of Europe such instrumentalities of higher
civilization as arithmetic and algebra, soap and sugar.
Later the Spaniards by an act of equally unwarranted
and beneficent aggression carried the sugar cane to the
Caribbean, where it thrived amazingly. The West In-
dies then became a rival of the East Indies as a treas-
ure-house of tropical wealth and for several centuries
the Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, English, Danes and
French fought like wildcats to gain possession of this

164

THE EIVAL SUGARS 165

little nest of islands and the routes leading thereunto.
The English finally overcame all these enemies,
whether they fought her singly or combined. Great
Britain became mistress of the seas and took such
Caribbean lands as she wanted. But in the end her
continental foes came out ahead, for they rendered her
victory valueless. They were defeated in geography
but they won in chemistry. Canning boasted that '*the
New World had been called into existence to redress
the balance of the Old.'* Napoleon might have boasted
that he had called in the sugar beet to balance the sugar
cane. France was then, as Germany was a century
later, threatening to dominate the world. England,
then as in the Great War, shut o& from the seas the
shipping of the aggressive power. France then, like
Germany later, felt most keenly the lack of tropical
products, chief among which, then but not in the recent
crisis, was sugar. The cause of this vital change is
that in 1747 Marggraf, a Berlin chemist, discovered
that it was possible to extract sugar from beets. There
was only a little sugar in the beet root then, some six
per cent., and what he got out was dirty and bitter.
One of his pupils in 1801 set up a beet sugar factory
near Breslau under the patronage of the King of Prus-
sia, but the industry was not a success until Napoleon
took it up and in 1810 offered a prize of a million francs
for a practical process. How the French did make fun
of him for this crazy notion ! In a comic paper of that
day you will find a cartoon of Napoleon in the nursery
beside the cradle of his son and heir, the King of
Rome — known to the readers of Rostand as I'Aiglon.
The Emperor is squeezing the juice of a beet into his

166 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

coffee and the nurse has put a beet into the mouth of
the infant King, saying: **Suck, dear, suck. Tour
father says it 's sugar.**

In like manner did the wits ridicule Franklin for
fooling with electricity, Eumf ord for trying to improve
chimneys, Parmentier for thinking potatoes were fit to
eat, and Jefferson for believing that something might
be made of the country west of the Mississippi. In all
ages ridicule has been the chief weapon of conserva-
tism. If you want to know what line human progress
will take in the future read the funny papers of today
and see what they are fighting. The satire of every
century from Aristophanes to the latest vaudeville has
been directed against those who are trying to make the
world wiser or better, against the teacher and the
preacher, the scientist and the reformer.

In spite of the ridicule showered upon it the despised
beet year by year gained in sweetness of heart. The
percentage of sugar rose from six to eighteen and by
improved methods of extraction became finally as pure
and palatable as the sugar of the cane. An acre of
Oerman beets produces more sugar than an acre of
Louisiana cane. Continental Europe waxed wealthy
while the British West Indies sank into decay. As the
beets of Europe became sweeter the population of the
islands became blacker. Before the war England was
paying out $125,000,000 for sugar, and more than two-
thirds of this money was going to Germany and Aus-
tria-Hungary. Fostered by scientific study, protected
by tariff duties, and stimulated by export bounties, the
beet sugar industry became one of the financial forces
of the world. The English at home, especially the mar»

THE EIVAL SUGARS

167

malade-makers, at first rejoiced at the idea of getting
sugar for less than cost at the expense of her conti-
nental rivals. But the suffering colonies took another

H«) SHOww Lxmni cr ELBCPcm Bett SuiMR F/ummcs-ALSo Bmi£ ucs AT C^

EsTRurcD imT0tc-Thm(FWamj)'sPMxrTmB?ii«T)CWARv«sRt(iun)wnmiB«nii£Ln3

Courtesy American Sugar Refining Co.

view of the situation. In 1888 a conference of the
powers called at London agreed to stop competing by
the pernicious practice of export bounties, but France
and the United States refused to enter, so the agree-
ment fell through. Another conference ten years later
likewise failed, but when the parvenu beet sugar ven-
tured to invade the historic home of the cane the limit
of toleration had been reached. The Council of India
put on countervailing duties to protect their home-
grown cane from the bounty-fed beet. This forced the
calling of a convention at Binissels in 1903 "to equal-
ize the conditions of competition between beet sugar
and cane sugar of the various countries, ' * at which the
powers agreed to a mutual suppression of bounties.
Beet sugar then divided the world's market equally

168 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

with cane sugar and the two rivals stayed substantially
neck and neck nntil the Great War came. This shut
out from England the product of Germany, Austria-
Hungary, Belgium, northern France and Russia and
took the farmers from their fields. The battle lines of
the Central Powers enclosed the land which used to
grow a third of the world's supply of sugar. In 1913
the beet and the cane each supplied about nine million
tons of sugar. In 1917 the output of cane sugar was
11,200,000 and of beet sugar 5,300,000 tons. Conse-
quently the Old World had to draw upon the New.
Cuba, on which the United States used to depend for
half its sugar supply, sent over 700,000 tons of raw
sugar to England in 1916. The United States sent as
much more refined sugar. The lack of shipping inter*
f ered with our getting sugar from our tropical depend-
encies, Hawaii, Porto Rico and the Philippines. The
homegrown beets give us only a fifth and the cane of
Louisiana and Texas only a fifteenth of the sugar we
need. As a result we were obliged to file a claim in
advance to get a pound of sugar from the corner gro-
cery and then we were apt to be put off with rock
candy, muscovado or honey. Lemon drops proved use-
ful for Russian tea and the ''long sweetening" of our
forefathers came again into vogue in the form of vari-
ous syrups. The United States was accustomed to
consume almost a fifth of all the sugar produced in the
world — and then we could not get it.

The shortage made us realize how dependent we have
become upon sugar. Yet it was, as we have seen, prac-
tically unknown to the ancients and only within the
present generation has it become an essential factor in

© Underwood & Underwood

IN MAKING GARDEN HOSE THE HUBBER IS FORMED INTO A TUBE BY THE
MACHINE ON THE RIGHT AND COII.ED ON THE TABLE TO THE LEFT

THE RIVAL SUGARS

169

onr diet. As soon as the chemist made it possible to
produce sugar at a reasonable price all nations began

H-,

PHYSICAL
SELECTION

PHYSICAL J^ PHYSICAL. CHEMICAU
AHO — »l^~ AND

I CHEMICAL I PHYSI0L06ICAL SELeCTKM

ijELECTIOH I

How the sugar beet has gained enormously in sugar content und^
chemical control

to buy it in proportion to their means. Americans, as
the wealthiest people in the world, ate the most, ninety
pounds a year on the average for every man, woman
and child. In other words we ate our weight of sugar
every year. The English consumed nearly as much
as the Americans; the French and Germans about

170 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

half as much ; the Balkan peoples less than ten pounds
per annum ; and the African savages none.

Pure white sugar is the first and greatest contribu-
tion of chemistry to the world ^s dietary. It is unique
in being a single definite chemical compound, sucrose,
C12H22O11. All natural nutriments are more or less
complex mixtures. Many of them, like wheat or milk
or fruit, contain in various proportions all of the three
factors of foods, the fats, the proteids and the carbohy-
drates, as well as water and the minerals and other
ingredients necessary to life. But sugar is a simple
substance, like water or salt, and like them is incapable
of sustaining life alone, although unlike them it is nu-
tritious. In fact, except the fats there is no more
nutritious food than sugar, pound for pound, for it con-
tains no water and no waste. It is therefore the quick-
est and usually the cheapest means of supplying bodily
energy. But as may be seen from its formula as given
above it contains only three elements, carbon, hydro-
gen and oxygen, and omits nitrogen and other elements
necessary to the body. An engine requires not only
coal but also lubricating oil, water and bits of steel and
brass to keep it in repair. But as a source of the
energy needed in our strenuous life sugar has no equal
and only one rival, alcohol. Alcohol is the offspring of
sugar, a degenerate descendant that retains but few of
the good qualities of its sire and has acquired some evil
traits of its own. Alcohol, like sugar, may serve to
furnish the energy of a steam engine or a human body.
Used as a fuel alcohol has certain advantages, but used
as a food it has the disqualification of deranging the
bodily mechanism. Even a little alcohol will impair

THE RIVAL SUGARS 171

the accuracy and speed of thought and action, while a
large quantity, as we all know from observation if not
experience, will produce temporary incapacitation.

When man feeds on sugar he splits it up by the aid
of air into water and carbon dioxide in this fashion ;

C„Hj,On+ 120, -y 11H,0 +12C0,
cane sugar oxygen water carbon dioxide

"When sugar is burned the reaction is just the same.

But when the yeast plant feeds on sugar it carries
the process only part way and instead of water the
product is alcohol, a very different thing, so they say
who have tried both as beverages. The yeast or fer-
mentation reaction is this :

C,,HaOn+ H,0 ->► 4C,H,0 +4C0,
cane sugar water alcohol carbon dioxide

Alcohol then is the first product of the decomposi-
tion of sugar, a dangerous half-way house. The twin
product, carbon dioxide or carbonic acid, is a gas of
slightly sour taste which gives an attractive tang and
effervescence to the beer, wine, cider or champagne.
That is to say, one of these twins is a pestilential fel-
low and the other is decidedly agreeable. Yet for sev-
eral thousand years mankind took to the first and let
the second for the most part escape into the air. But
when the chemist appeared on the scene he discovered
a way of separating the two and bottling the harmless
one for those who prefer it. An increasing number of
people were found to prefer it, so the American soda-
water fountain is gradually driving Demon Rum out
of the civilized world. The brewer nowadays ca-ters to
two classes of customers. He bottles up the beer with

172 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

the alcohol and a little carbonic acid in it for the saloon
and he catches the rest of the carbonic acid that he
used to waste and sells it to the drug stores for soda-
water or uses it to charge some non-alcoholic beer of his
own.

This catering to rival trades is not an uncommon
thing with the chemist. As we have seen, the synthetic
perfumes are used to improve the natural perfumes.
Cottonseed is separated into oil and meal ; the oil going
to make margarin and the meal going to feed the cows
that produce butter. Some people have been drinking
coffee, although they do not like the taste of it, because
they want the stimulating effect of its alkaloid, caffein.
Other people liked the warmth and flavor of coffee but
find that caffein does not agree with them. Formerly
one had to take the coffee whole or let it alone. Now
one can have his choice, for the caffein is extracted for
use in certain popular cold drinks and the rest of the
bean sold as caffein-free coffee.

Most of the ''soft drinks'^ that are now gradually
displacing the hard ones consist of sugar, water and
carbonic acid, with various flavors, chiefly the esters of
the fatty and aromatic acids, such as I described in a
previous chapter. These are still usually made from
fruits and spices and in some cases the law or public
opinion requires this, but eventually, I presume, the
synthetic flavors will displace the natural and then we
shall get rid of such extraneous and indigestible matter
as seeds, skins and bark. Suppose the world had al-
ways been used to synthetic and hence seedless figs,
strawberries and blackberries. Suppose then some
manufacturer of fig paste or strawberry jam should put

THE RIVAL SUGARS 173

in ten per cent, of little round hard wooden nodules,
just the sort to get stuck between the teeth or caught
in the vermiform appendix. How long would it be
before he was sent to jail for adulterating food? But
neither jail nor boycott has any reformatory effect on
Nature.

Nature is quite human in that respect. But you can
reform Nature as you can human beings by looking out
for heredity and culture. In this way Mother Nature
has been quite cured of her bad habit of putting seeds
in bananas and oranges. Figs she still persists in
adulterating with particles of cellulose as nutritious as
sawdust. But we can circumvent the old lady at this.
I got on Christmas a package of figs from California
without a seed in them. Somebody had taken out all
the seeds — it must have been a big job — and then put
the figs together again as natural looking as life and
very much better tasting.

Sugar and alcohol are both found in Nature ; sugar in
the ripe fruit, alcohol when it begins to decay. But it
was the chemist who discovered how to extract them.
He first worked with alcohol and unfortunately suc-
ceeded.

Previous to the invention of the still by the
Arabian chemists man could not get drunk as quickly
as he wanted to because his liquors were limited to
what the yeast plant could stand without intoxication.
When the alcoholic content of wine or beer rose to
seventeen per cent, at the most the process of fermen-
tation stopped because the yeast plants got drunk and
quit ** working." That meant that a man confined to
ordinary wine or beer had to drink ten or twenty

174 CEEATIVE CHEMISTRY

quarts of water to get one quart of the stuff he Was
after, and he had no liking for water.

So the chemist helped him out of this difficulty and
got him into worse trouble by distilling the wine. The
more volatile part that came over first contained the
flavor and most of the alcohol. In this way he could
get liquors like brandy and whisky, rum and gin, con-
taining from thirty to eighty per cent, of alcohol. This
was the origin of the modern liquor problem. The
wine of the ancients was strong enough to knock out
Noah and put the companions of Socrates under the
table, but it was not until distilled liquors came in that
alcoholism became chronic, epidemic and ruinous to
whole populations.

But the chemist later tried to undo the ruin he had
quite inadvertently wrought by introducing alcohol into
the world. One of his most successful measures was
the production of cheap and pure sugar which, as we
have seen, has become a large factor in the dietary of
civilized countries. As a country sobers up it takes to
sugar as a "self-starter" to provide the energy needed
for the strenuous life. A five o 'clock candy is a better
restorative than a five o'clock highball or even a five
o'clock tea, for it is a true nutrient instead of a mere
stimulant. It is a matter of common observation that
those who like sweets usually do not like alcohoL
Women, for instance, are apt to eat candy but do
not commonly take to alcoholic beverages. Look
around you at a banquet table and you wiU generally
find that those who turn down their wine glasses gen-
erally take two lumps in their demi-tasses. We often
hear it said that whenever a candy store opens up a

THE RIVAL SUGARS 175

saloon in the same block closes up. Our grandmothers
used to warn their daughters: "Don't marry a man
who does not i»mnt sugar in his tea. He is likely to
take to drink." So, young man, when next you give
a box of candy to your best girl and she offers you
some, don't decline it. Eat it and pretend to like it,
at least, for it is quite possible that she looked into a
physiology and is trying you out. You never can tell
what girls are up to.

In the army and navy ration the same change has
taken place as in the popular dietary. The ration of
rum has been mostly replaced by an equivalent amount
of candy or marmalade. Instead of the tippling
trooper of former days we have **the chocolate sol-
dier." No previous war in history has been fought
80 largely on sugar and so little on alcohol as the last
one. When the war reduced the supply and increased
the demand we all felt the sugar famine and it became
R mark of patriotism to refuse candy and to drink cof-
fee unsweetened. This, however, is not, as some think,
the mere curtailment of a superfluous or harmful lux-
ury, the sacrifice of a pleasant sensation. It is a real
deprivation and a serious loss to national nutrition.
For there is no reason to think the constantly rising
curve of sugar consumption has yet reached its maxi-
mum or optimum. Individuals overeat, but not the
population as a whole. According to experiments of
the Department of Agriculture men doing heavy labor
may add three-quarters of a pound of sugar to their
daily diet without any deleterious effects. This is at
the rate of 275 pounds a year, which is three times the
average consumption of England and America. But

i

17« CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

the Department does not state how much a girl doing
nothing ought to eat between meals.

Of the 2500 to 3500 calories of energy required to
keep a man going for a day the best source of supply
is the carbohydrates, that is, the sugars and starches.
The fats are more concentrated but are more expen-
sive and less easily assimilable. The proteins are
also more expensive and their decomposition products
are more apt to clog up the system. Common sugar
is almost an ideal food. Cheap, clean, white, por-
ta'ble, imperishable, unadulterated, pleasant-tasting,
germ-free, highly nutritious, completely soluble, al-
together digestible, easily assimilable, requires no
cooking and leaves no residue. Its only fault is its
perfection. It is so pure that a man cannot live on
it. Four square lumps give one hundred calories
of energy. But twenty-five or thirty-five times that
amount would not constitue a day's ration, in fact
one would ultimately starve on such fare. It would
be like supplying an army with an abundance of pow-
der but neglecting to provide any bullets, clothing or
food. To make sugar the sole food is impossible. To
make it the main food is unwise. It is quite proper
for man to separate out the distinct ingredients of nat-
ural products — to extract the butter from the milk, the
casein from the cheese, the sugar from the cane — but
he must not forget to combine them again at each meal
with the other essential foodstuffs in their proper
proportion.

Smgar is not a synthetic product and the business
of the chemist has been merely to extract and purify it.
But this is not so simple as it seems and every sugar

THE EIVAL SUGARS 17^

factory has had to have its chemist. He has analyzed
every mother beet for a hundred years. He has
watched every step of the process from the cane to the
crystal lest the sucrose should invert to the less sweet
and non-crystallizable glucose. He has tested with
polarized light every shipment of sugar that has passed
through the custom house, much to the mystification of
congressmen who have often wondered at the money
and argumentation expended in a tariff discussion over
the question of the precise angle of rotation af the
plane of vibration of infinitesimal waves in a hypo-
thetical ether.

The reason for this painstaking is that therp are
dozens of different sugars, so much alike that they are
difficult to separate. They are all composed of the
same three elements, C, H and 0, and often in the same
proportion. Sometimes two sugars differ only in that
one has a right-handed and the other a left-handed
twist to its molecule. They bear the same resemblance
to one another as the two gloves of a pair. Cane sugar
and beet sugar are when completely purified the same
substance, that is, sucrose, C12H22O11. The brown and
straw-colored sugars, which our forefathers used and
which we took to using during the war, are essentially
the same but have not been so completely freed from
moisture and the coloring and flavoring matter of the
cane juice. Maple sugar is mostly sucrose. So partly is
honey. Candies are made chiefly of sucrose with the ad-
dition of glucose, gums or starch, to give them the neces-
sary consistency and of such colors and flavors, natural
or synthetic, as may be desired. Practically all candy,
even the cheapest, is nowadays free from deleterious

178 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

ingredients in the manufacture, though it is liable to
become contaminated in the handling. In fact sugar
is about the only food that is never adulterated. It
would be hard to find anything cheaper to add to it that
would not be easily detected. ** Sanding the sugar,'*
the crime of which grocers are generally accused, is the
one they are least likely to be guilty of.

Besides the big family of sugars which are all more
or less sweet, similar in structure and about equally
nutritious, there are, very curiously, other chemical
compounds of altogether different composition which
taste like sugar but are not nutritious at all. One
of these is a coal-tar derivative, discovered acci-
dentally by an American student of chemistry, Ira
Remsen, afterward president of Johns Hopkins
University, and named by him *' saccharin. * * This
has the composition C6H4COSO2NH, and as you
may observe from the symbol it contains sulfur (S)
and nitrogen (N) and the benzene ring (C0H4) that are
not found in any of the sugars. It is several hundred
times sweeter than sugar, though it has also a slightly
bitter aftertaste. A minute quantity of it can there-
fore take the place of a large amount of sugar in
syrups, candies and preserves, so because it lends itself
readily to deception its use in food has been prohibited
in the United States and other countries. But during
the war, on account of the shortage of sugar, it came
again into use. The European governments encour-
aged what they formerly tried to prevent, and it be-
came customary in Germany or Italy to carry about a
package of saccharin tablets in the pocket and drop one
or two into the tea or coffee. Such reversals of ad-

THE RIVAL SUGARS 179

iidnistrative attitude are not uncommon. When the
use of hops in beer was new it was prohibited by Brit-
ish law. But hops became customary nevertheless and
now the law requires hops to be used in beer. When
workingmen first wanted to form unions, laws were
passed to prevent them. But now, in Australia for
instance, the laws require workingmen to form unions.
Governments naturally tend to a conservative reaction
against anything new.

It is amusing to turn back to the pure food agitation
of ten years ago and read the sensational articles in
the newspapers about the poisonous nature of this
dangerous drug, saccharin, in view of the fact that it is
being used by millions of people in Europe in amounts
greater than once seemed to upset the tender stomachs
of the Washington ** poison squads." But saccharin
does not appear to be responsible for any fatalities yet,
though people are said to be heartily sick of it. And
well they may be, for it is not a substitute for sugar
except to the sense of taste. Glucose may correctly be
called a substitute for sucrose as margarin for butter,
since they not only taste much the same but have about
the same food value. But to serve saccharin in the
place of sugar is like giving a rubber bone to a dog.
It is reported from Europe that the constant use of
saccharin gives one eventually a distaste for all sweets.
This is quite likely, although it means the reversal
within a few years of prehistoric food habits. Man-
kind has always associated sweetness with food value,
for there are few sweet things found in nature except
the sugars. We think we eat sugar because it is sweet.
But we do not. We eat it because it is good for us.

180 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

The reason it tastes sweet to us is because it is good
for us. So man makes a virtue out of necessity, a
pleasure out of duty, which is the essence of ethics.

In the ancient days of Ind the great Raja Trishanku
possessed an earthly paradise that had been con-
structed for his delectation by a magician. Thereia
grew all manner of beautiful flowers, savory herbs and
delicious fruits such as had never been known before
outside heaven. Of them all the Raja and his harems
liked none better than the reed from which they could
suck honey. But Indra, being a jealous god, was wroth
when he looked down and beheld mere mortals enjoying
such delights. So he willed the destruction of the en-
chanted garden. With drought and tempest it was
devastated, with fire and hail, until not a leaf was left
of its luxuriant vegetation and the ground was bare as
a threshing floor. But the roots of the sugar cane are
not destroyed though the stalk be cut down; so when
men ventured to enter the desert where once had been
this garden of Eden, they found the cane had grown up
again and they carried away cuttings of it and culti-
vated it in their gardens. Thus it happened that the
nectar of the gods descended first to monarchs and
their favorites, then was spread among the people and
carried abroad to other lands until now any child with
a penny in his hand may buy of the best of it. So it
has been with many things. So may it be with all
things.

s

WHAT COMES FROM CORN

The discovery of America dowered mankind witli a
world of new flora. The early explorers in their haste
to gather up gold paid little attention to the more valn-
ahle products of field and forest, hut in the course of
centuries their usefulness has become universally rec-
ognized. The potato and tomato, which Europe at first
considered as unfit for food or even as poisonous, have
now become indispensable among all classes. New
World drugs like quinine and cocaine have been
adopted into every pharmacopeia. Cocoa is proving
a rival of tea and coffee, and even the banana has made
its appearance in European markets. Tobacco and
chicle occupy the nostrils and jaws of a large part of
the human race. Maize and rubber are become the
common property of mankind, but still may be called
American. The United States alone raises four-fifths
of the com and uses three-fourths of the caoutchouc of
the world.

All flesh is grass. This may be taken in a dietary as
well as a metaphorical sense. The graminaceae pro-
vide the greater part of the sustenance of man and
beast; hay and cereals, wheat, oats, rye, barley, rice,
sugar cane, sorghum and com. From an American
viewpoint the greatest of these, physically and finan-
cially, is com. The com crop of the United States for
1917, amounting to 3,159,000,000 bushels, brought in

182 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

more money than the wheat, cotton, potato and rye
crops all together.

When Columbus reached the West Indies he found
the savages playing with rubber balls, smoking incense
sticks of tobacco and eating cakes made of a new grain
that they called mahiz. When Pizarro invaded Peru
he found this same cereal used by the natives not only
for food but also for making alcoholic liquor, in spite of
the efforts of the Incas to enforce prohibition. When
the Pilgrim Fathers penetrated into the woods back of
Plymouth Harbor they discovered a cache of Indian
com. So throughout the three Americas, from Canada
to Peru, com was king and it has proved worthy to rank
with the rival cereals of other continents, the wheat of
Europe and the rice of Asia. But food habits are hard
to change and for the most part the people of the Old
World are still ignorant of the delights of hasty pud-
ding and Indian pudding, of hoe-cake and hominy, of
sweet com and popcorn. I remember thirty years ago
seeing on a London stand a heap of dejected popcorn
balls labeled "Novel American Confection. Please
Try One.'* But nobody complied with this pitiful ap-
peal but me and I was sorry that I did. Americans
used to respond with a shipload of com whenever an
appeal came from famine sufferers in Armenia, Russia,
Ireland, India or Austria, but their generosity was
chilled when they found that their gift was resented as
an insult or as an attempt to poison the impoverished
population, who declared that they would rather die
than eat it — and some of them did. Our Department
of Agriculture sent maize missionaries to Europe with

WHAT COMES FROM COEN 183

farmers and millers as educators and expert cooks to
serve free flapjacks and pones, but the propaganda
made little impression and today Americans are urged
to eat more of their own com because the famished
families of the war-stricken region will not touch it.
Just so the beggars of Munich revolted at potato soup
when the pioneer of American food chemists, Rumf ord,
attempted to introduce this transatlantic dish.

But here we are not so much concerned with com
foods as we are with its manufactured products. If
you split a kernel in two you will find that it consists of
three parts: a hard and homy hull on the outside, a
small oily and nitrogenous germ at the point, and a
white body consisting mostly of starch. Each of these
is worked up into various products, as may be seen
from the accompanying table. The hull forms bran
and may be mixed with the gluten as a cattle food.
The com steeped for several days with sulfurous acid
is disintegrated and on being ground the germs are
floated off, the gluten or nitrogenous portion washed
out, the starch grains settled down and the residue
pressed together as oil cake fodder. The refined oil
from the germ is marketed as a table or cooking oil
under the name of "Mazola" and comes into competi-
tion with olive, peanut and cottonseed oil in the making
of vegetable substitutes for lard and butter. Inferior
grades may be used for soaps or for glycerin and per-
haps nitroglycerin. A bushel of com yields a pound or
more of oil. From the com germ also is extracted a
gum called **paragol" that forms an acceptable substi-
tute for rubber in certain uses. The **red rubber*'

184

CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

sponges and the eraser tips to pencils may be made of
it and it can contribute some twenty per cent, to the
synthetic soles of shoes.

Corn kernel

germ

' starcli

body

CORN PRODUCTS

table oil
dyers' oil
com oil J soap

glycerin

_rubber substitute
oil cake
oil meal cattle food

hydrolyzed .

gluten

. hull bran

rtable starch

laundry starcli

''dextrose

glucose

maltose

corn syrup

hydrol

tanaers' sugar

cerelose

white dextrin

canary dextrin

British gum

envelop dextrin

foundry dextrin

amidex

fvegetable glue
-| vegetable casein

[gluten meal

Starch, which constitutes fifty-five per cent, of the
com kernel, can be converted into a variety of products
for dietary and industrial uses. As found in corn, po-
tatoes or any other vegetables starch consists of small,
round, white, hard grains, tasteless, and insoluble in
cold water. But hot water converts it into a soluble,
sticky form which may serve for starching clothes or
making cornstarch pudding. Carrying the process fur-
ther with the aid of a little acid or other catalyst it
bkkes up water and goes over into a sugar^. dojrJrosei,

WHAT COMES FROM CORN 185

commonly called ** glucose." Expressed in chemical
shorthand this reaction is

C,Hi„0» +H,0->-C.H„0,
starch water dextrose

This reaction is carried out on forty million bushela
of com a year in the United States. The ''starch
milk," that is, the starch grains washed out from the
disintegrated com kernel by water, is digested in large
pressure tanks under fifty pounds of steam with a few
tenths of one per cent, of hydrochloric acid until the
required degree of conversion is reached. Then the
remaining acid is neutralized by caustic soda and
thereby converted into common salt, which in this small
amount does not interfere but rather enhances the taste.
The product is the commercial glucose or corn syrup,
which may if desired be evaporated to a white powder.
It is a mixture of three derivatives of starch in about
this proportion:

Maltose 45 -per cent.

Dextrose 20 per cent.

Dextrin 35 per cent.

There are also present three- or four-tenths of one
per cent, salt and as much of the com protein and a
variable amount of water. It will be noticed that the
glucose (dextrose), which gives name to the whole, is
the least of the three ingredients.

Maltose, or malt sugar, has the same composition as
cane sugar (C12II22O11), but is not nearly so sweet.
Dextrin, or starch paste, is not sweet at all. Dextrose
or glucose is otherwise known as grape sugar, for it is
commonly found in grapes and other ripe fruits. It

186 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

forms half of honey and it is one of the two products
into which cane sugar splits up when we take it into the
mouth. It is not so sweet as cane sugar and cannot be
60 readily crystallized, which, however, is not alto-
gether a disadvantage.

The process of changing starch into dextrose that
takes place in the great steam kettles of the glucose
factory is essentially the same as that which takes place
in the ripening of fruit and in the digestion of starch.
A large part of our nutriment, therefore, consists of
glucose either eaten as such in ripe fruits or produced
in the mouth or stomach by the decomposition of the
starch of unripe fruit, vegetables and cereals. Glucose
may be regarded as a predigested food. In spite of
this well-known fact we still sometimes read **poor
food** articles in which glucose is denounced as a dan-
gerous adulterant and even classed as a poison.

The other ingredients of commercial glucose, the
maltose and dextrin, have of course the same food value
as the dextrose, since they are made over into dextrose
in the process of digestion. Whether the glucose syrup
is fit to eat depends, like anything else, on how it is
made. If, as was formerly sometimes the case, sulfuric
acid was used to effect the conversion of the starch or
sulfurous acid to bleach the glucose and these acids
were not altogether eliminated, the product might be
unwholesome or worse. Some years ago in England
there was a mysterious epidemic of arsenical poisoning
among beer drinkers. On tracing it back it was found
that the beer had been made from glucose which had
been made from sulfuric acid which had been made
from sulfur which had been made from a batch of iron

WHAT COMES FROM CORN 18T

pyrites which contained a little arsenic. The replace-
ment of sulfuric acid by hydrochloric has done away
with that danger and the glucose now produced is pure.

The old recipe for home-made candy called for the
addition of a little vinegar to the sugar syrup to pre-
vent ''graining.'* The purpose of the acid was of
course to invert part of the cane sugar to glucose so as
to keep it from crystallizing out again. The profes-
sional candy-maker now uses the corn glucose for that
purpose, so if we accuse him of ** adulteration" on that
ground we must levy the same accusation against our
grandmothers. The introduction of glucose into candy
manufacture has not injured but greatly increased the
sale of sugar for the same purpose. This is not an
uncommon effect of scientific progress, for as we have
observed, the introduction of synthetic perfumes has
stimulated the production of odoriferous flowers and
the price of butter has gone up with the introduction
of margarin. So, too, there are more weavers em-
ployed and they get higher wages than in the days when
they smashed up the first weaving machines, and the
same is true of printers and typesetting machines.
The popular animosity displayed toward any new
achievement of applied science is never justified, for it
benefits not only the world as a whole but usually even
those interests with which it seems at first to conflict.

The chemist is an economizer. It is his special busi-
ness to hunt up waste products and make them usefuL
He was, for instance, worried over the waste of the
cores and skins and scraps that were being thrown
away when apples were put up. Apple pulp contains
pectin, which is what makes jelly jell, and berries and

188 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

fmits that are short of it will refuse to *'jell." But
using these for their iflavor he adds apple pulp for
pectin and glucose for smoothness and sugar for sweet-
ness and, if necessary, synthetic dyes for color, he is
able to put on the market a variety of jellies, jams and
marmalades at very low price. The same principle
applies here as in the case of all compounded food
products. If they are made in cleanly fashion, contain
no harmful ingredients and are truthfully labeled there
is no reason for objecting to them. But if the rnanu*
facturer goes so far as to put strawberry seeds — or
hayseed — into his artificial "strawberry jam" I think
that might properly be called adulteration, for it is imi-
tating the imperfections of nature, and man ought to
be too proud to do that.

The old-fashioned open kettle molasses consisted
mostly of glucose and other invert sugars together
with such cane sugar as could not be crystallized out.
But when the vacuum pan was introduced the molasses
was impoverished of its sweetness and beet sugar does
not yield any molasses. So we now have in its place
the com syrups consisting of about 85 per cent, of glu-
cose and 15 per cent, of sugar flavored with maple or
vanillin or whatever we like. It is encouraging to see
the bill boards proclaiming the virtues of **Karo"
syrup and ''Mazola" oil when only a few years ago the
products of our national cereal were without honor in
their own country.

Many other products besides foods are made from
com starch. Dextrin serves in place of the old **gum
arable" for the mucilage of our envelopes and stamps.
Another form of dextrin sold as **Kordex" is used to

WHAT COMES FROM CORN 189

hold together the sand of the cores of castings. After
the casting has been made the scorched core can be
shaken out. Glucose is used in place of sugar as a
filler for cheap soaps and for leather.

Altogether more than a hundred dilferent commer-
cial products are now made from com, not counting
cob pipes. Every year the factories of the United
States work up over 50,000,000 bushels of com into
800,000,000 pounds of corn symp, 600,000,000 pounds
of starch, 230,000,000 pounds of corn sugar, 625,000,000
pounds of gluten feed, 90,000,000 pounds of oil and
90,000,000 pounds of oil cake.

Two million bushels of cobs are wasted every year in
the United States. Can't something be made out of
them? This is the question that is agitating the chem-
ists of the Carbohydrate Laboratory of the Depart-
ment of Agriculture at Washington. They have found
it possible to work up the corn cobs into glucose and
xylose by heating with acid. But glucose can be more
cheaply obtained from other starchy or woody mate-
rials and they cannot find a market for the xylose.
This is a sort of a sugar but only about half as sweet
as that from cane. Who can invent a use for itt
More promising is the discovery by this laboratory that
by digesting the cobs with hot water there can be ex-
tracted about 30 per cent, of a gum suitable for bill
posting and labeling.

Since the starches and sugars belong to the same
class of compounds as the celluloses they also can be
acted upon by nitric acid with the production of explo-
sive* like guncotton. Nitro-sugar has not come into
common use, but nitro-starch is found to be one of;

190 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

safest of the high explosives. On account of the dan-
ger of decomposition and spontaneous explosion from
the presence of foreign substances the materials in
explosives must be of the purest possible. It was for-
merly thought that tapioca must be imported from Java
for making nitro^tarch. But during the war when
shipping was short, the War Department found that it
could be made better and cheaper from our home-grown
com starch. When the war closed the United States
was making 1,720,000 pounds of nitro-starch a month
for loading hand grenades. So, too, the Post Office
Department discovered that it could use mucilage
made of com dextrin as well as that which used to be
made from tapioca. This is progress in the right di-
rection. It would be well to divert some of the ener«
getic efforts now devoted to the increase of commerce
to the discovery of ways of reducing the need for com-
merce by the development of home products. There is
no merit in simply hauling things around the world.

In the last chapter we saw how dextrose or glucose
could be converted by fermentation into alcohol. Since
com starch, as we have here seen, can be converted into
dextrose, it can serve as a source of alcohol. This was,
in fact, one of the earliest misuses to which com was
put, and before the war put a stop to it 34,000,000
bushels went to the making of whisky in the United
States every year, not counting the moonshiners' out-
put. But even though we left off drinking whisky the
distillers could still thrive. Mars is more thirsty than
Bacchus. The output of alcohol, denatured for indus-
trial purposes, is more than three times what it Was
before the war, and the price has risen from 30 cents a

WHAT COMES FROM CORN 191!

gallon to 67 cents. This may make it profitable to
utilize sugars, starches and cellulose that formerly were
out of the question. According to the calculations of
the Forest Products Laboratory of Madison it costs
from 37 to 44 cents a gallon to make alcohol from com,
but it may be made from sawdust at a cost of from 14
to 20 cents. This is not *'wood alcohol" (that is,
methyl alcohol, CH4O) such as is made by the destruc-
tive distillation of wood, but genuine ''grain alcohol'*
(ethyl alcohol, CgHgO), such as is made by the fermen-
tation of glucose or other sugar. The first step in the
process is to digest the sawdust or chips with dilute
sulfuric acid under heat and pressure. This converts
the cellulose (wood fiber) in large part into glucose
("com sugar") which may be extracted by hot water
in a diffusion battery as in extracting the sugar from
beet chips. This glucose solution may then be fer-
mented by yeast and the resulting alcohol distilled off.
The process is perfectly practicable but has yet to be
proved profitable. But the sulfite liquors of the paper
mills are being worked up successfully into industrial
alcohol.

The rapidly approaching exhaustion of our oil fields
which the war has accelerated leads us to look around to
see what we can get to take the place of gasoline. One
of the most promising of the suggested substitutes is
alcohol. The United States is exceptionally rich in
mineral oil, but some countries, for instance England,
Germany, France and Australia, have little or none.
The Australian Advisory Council of Science, called to
Gonsider the problem, recommends alcohol for station-
ary engines and motor oars. Alcohol has the disadvaii*

192 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

tage of being less volatile than gasoline so it is hard ta
start up the engine from the cold. But the lower vola-
tility and ignition point of alcohol are an advantage in
that it can be put under a pressure of 150 pounds to the
square inch. A pound of gasoline contains fifty per
cent, more potential energy than a pound of alcohol,
but since the alcohol vapor can be put under twice the
compression of the gasoline and requires only one-third
the amount of air, the thermal efficiency of an alcohol
engine may be fifty per cent, higher than that of a gaso-
line engine. Alcohol also has several other conven-
iences that can count in its favor. In the case of in-
complete combustion the cylinders are less likely to be
clogged with carbon and the escaping gases do not have
the offensive odor of the gasoline smoke. Alcohol does
not ignite so easily as gasoline and the fire is more
readily put out, for water thrown upon blazing alcohol
dilutes it and puts out the flame while gasoline floats
on water and the fire is spread by it. It is possible to
increase the inflammability of alcohol by mixing with it
some hydrocarbon such as gasoline, benzene or acety-
lene. In the Taylor-White process the vapor from loW'
grade alcohol containing 17 per cent, water is passed
over calcium carbide. This takes out the water and
adds acetylene gas, making a suitable mixture for an
internal combustion engine.

Alcohol can be made from anything of a starchy,
sugary or woody nature, that is, from the main sub-
stance of all vegetation. If we start with wood (cellu-
lose) we convert it first into sugar (glucose) and, of
oour«e, we could stop here and use it for food instead

WHAT COMES FROM CORN 193

of carrying it on into alcohol. This provides one fac-
tor of our food, the carbohydrate, but by growing the
yeast plants on glucose and feeding them with nitrates
made from the air we can get the protein and fat. So
it is quite possible to live on sawdust, although it would
be too expensive a diet for anybody but a millionaire,
and he would not enjoy it. Glucose has been made
from formaldehyde and this in turn made from carbon,
hydrogen and oxygen, so the synthetic production of
food from the elements is not such an absurdity as it
was thought when Berthelot suggested it half a cen-
tury ago.

The first step in the making of alcohol is to change
the starch over into sugar. This transformation is ef-
fected in the natural course of sprouting by which the
insoluble starch stored up in the seed is converted into
the soluble glucose for the sap of the growing plant.
This malting process is that mainly made use of in the
production of alcohol from grain. But there are other
ways of effecting the change. It may be done by
heating with acid as we have seen, or according to a
method now being developed the final conversion may
be accomplished by mold instead of malt. In applying
this method, known as the amylo process, to com, the
meal is mixed with twice its weight of water, acidified
with hydrochloric acid and steamed. The mash is then
cooled down somewhat, diluted with sterilized water
and innoculated with the mucor filaments. As the
mash molds the starch is gradually changed over to
glucose and if this is the product desired the process
may be stopped at this point. But if alcohol is wanted

194 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

yeast is added to ferment the sugar. By keeping it al-
kaline and treating with the proper bacteria a high
yield of glycerin can be obtained.

In the fermentation process for making alcoholic
liquors a little glycerin is produced as a by-product.
Glycerin, otherwise called glycerol, is intermediate be-
tween sugar and alcohol. Its molecule contains three
carbon atoms, while glucose has six and alcohol two.
It is possible to increase the yield of glycerin if desired
by varying the form of fermentation. This was de-
sired most earnestly in Germany during the war, for
the British blockade shut off the importation of the
fats and oils from which the Germans extracted the
glycerin for their nitroglycerin. Under pressure of
this necessity they worked out a process of getting
glycerin in quantity from sugar and, news of this being
brought to this country by Dr. Alonzo Taylor, the
United States Treasury Department set up a special
laboratory to work out this problem. John R. Eoff and
other chemists working in this laboratory succeeded in
getting a yield of twenty per cent, of glycerin by fer-
menting black strap molasses or other syrup with Cali-
fornia wine yeast. During the fermentation it is neces-
sary to neutralize the acetic acid formed with sodium
or calcium carbonate. It was estimated that glycerin
could be made from waste sugars at about a quarter of
its war-time cost, but it is doubtful whether the process
would be profitable at normal prices.

We can, if we like, dispense with either yeast or bac-
teria in the production of glycerin. Glucose syrup sus-
pended in oil under steam pressure with finely divided
nickel as a catalyst and treated with nascent hydrogen

WHAT COMES FEOM CORN 195

will take up the hydrogen and be converted into gly-
cerin. But the yield is poor and the process expensive.
Food serves substantially the same purpose in the
body as fuel in the engine. It provides the energy for
work. The carbohydrates, that is the sugars, starches
and celluloses, can all be used as fuels and can all —
even, as we have seen, the cellulose — ^be used as foods.
The final products, water and carbon dioxide, are in
both cases the same and necessarily therefore the
amount of energy produced is the same in the body as
in the engine. Com is a good example of the equiva-
lence of the two sources of energy. There are few bet-
ter foods and no better fuels. I can remember the good
old days in Kansas when we had com to bum. It was
both an economy and a luxury, for — at ten cents a
bushel — it was cheaper than coal or wood and prefer-
able to either at any price. The long yellow ears, eacb
wrapped in its own kindling, could be handled without
crocking the fingers. Each kernel as it crackled sent
out a blazing jet of oil and the cobs left a :fine bed of
coals for the corn popper to be shaken over. Drift*
wood and the pyrotechnic fuel they make now by soak-
ing sticks in strontium and copper salts cannot compare
with the old-fashioned corn-fed fire in beauty and the
power of evoking visions. Doubtless such luxury
would be condemned as wicked nowadays, but those
who have known the calorific value of corn would find
it hard to abandon it altogether, and I fancy that the
Western farmer *s wife, when she has an extra batch
of baking to do, will still steal a few ears from the criK

XI

SOLIDIFIED SUNSHINE

All life and all that life accomplishes depend upon
the supply of solar energy stored in the form of food.
The chief sources of this vital energy are the fats and
the sugars. The former contain two and a quarter
times the potential energy of the latter. Both, when
completely purified, consist of nothing but carbon, hy-
drogen and oxygen; elements that are to be found
freely everywhere in air and water. So when the
sunny southland exports fats and oils, starches and
sugar, it is then sending away nothing material but
what comes back to it in the next wind. What it is
sending to the regions of more slanting sunshine is
merely some of the surplus of the radiant energy it haa
received so abundantly, compacted for convenience into
a portable and edible form.

In previous chapters I have dealt with some of the
uses of cotton, its employment for cloth, for paper, for
artificial fibers, for explosives, and for plastics. But
I have ignored the thing that cotton is attached to and
for which, in the economy of nature, the fibers are
formed; that is, the seed. It is as though I had de-
scribed the aeroplane and ignored the aviator whom it
was designed to carry. But in this neglect I am but
following the example of the human race, which for
three thousand years used the fiber but made no use
of the seed except to plant the next crop.

196

SOLIDIFIED SUNSHINE 19T

Just as mankind is now divided into the two great
classes, the wheat-eaters and the rice-eaters, so the
ancient world was divided into the wool-wearers and
the cotton-wearers. The people of India wore cotton;
the Europeans wore wool. When the Greeks under
Alexander fought their way to the Far East they were
surprised to find wool growing on trees. Later travel-
ers returning from Cathay told of the same marvel
and travelers who stayed at home and wrote about what
they had not seen, like Sir John Maundeville, misunder-
stood these reports and elaborated a legend of a tree
that bore live lambs as fruit. Here, for instance, is
how a French poetical botanist, Delacroix, described
it in 1791, as translated from his Latin verse:

Upon a stalk is fixed a living brute,

A rooted plant bears quadruped for fruit;

It has a fleece, nor does it want for eyes,

And from its brows two wooly horns arise.

The rude and simple country people say ^

It is an animal that sleeps by day

And wakes at night, though rooted to the ground,

To feed on grass within its reach around.

But modem commerce broke down the barrier be-
tween East and West. A new cotton country, the best
in the world, was discovered in America. Cotton in-
vaded England and after a hard fight, with fists as well
as finance, wool was beaten in its chief stronghold.
Cotton became King and the wool-sack in the House of
Lords lost its symbolic significance.

Still two-thirds of the cotton crop, the seed, was
Wasted and it is only within the last fifty years that

198 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

methods of using it have been developed to any extent.
The cotton crop of the United States for 1917
amounted to about 11,000,000 bales of 500 pounds each.
When the Great War broke out and no cotton could be
exported to Germany and little to England the South
was in despair, for cotton went down to five or six cents
a pound. The national Government, regardless of
states* rights, was called upon for aid and everybody
was besought to **buy a bale." Those who responded
to this patriotic appeal were well rewarded, for cotton

« h 0) u g 08 S

WSi

SOLIDIFIED SUNSHINE

199

rose as the war went on and sold at twenty-nine cents a
pound.

200 CEEATIVE CHEMISTRY

But the chemist has added some $150,000,000 a yea*
to the value of the crop by discovering ways of utilizing
the cottonseed that used to be thrown away or burned
as fuel. The genealogical table of the progeny of the
cottonseed herewith printed will give some idea of their
variety. If you will examine a cottonseed you will see
first that there is a fine fuzz of cotton fiber sticking to
it. These linters can be removed by machinery and
used for any purpose where length of fiber is not essen-
tial. For instance, they may be nitrated as described
in previous articles and used for making smokeless
powder or celluloid.

On cutting open the seed you will observe that it con-
sists of an oily, mealy kernel encased in a thin brown
hull. The hulls, amounting to 700 or 900 pounds in a
ton of seed, were formerly burned. Now, however,
they bring from $4 to $10 a ton because they can be
ground up into cattle-feed or paper stock or used as
fertilizer.

The kernel of the cottonseed on being pressed yields
a yellow oil and leaves a mealy cake. This last, mixed
with the hulls, makes a good fodder for fattening cattle.
Also, adding twenty-five per cent, of the refined cotton-
seed meal to our war bread made it more nutritious and
no less palatable. Cottonseed meal contains about
forty per cent, of protein and is therefore a highly
concentrated and very valuable feeding stuff. Before
the war we were exporting nearly half a million tons
of cottonseed meal to Europe, chiefiy to Germany and
Denmark, where it is used for dairy cows. The British
yeoman, his country's pride, has not yet been won over
to the use of any such newfangled fodder and oonse-,

SOLIDIFIED SUNSHINE 201

quently the British manufacturer could not compete
with his continental rivals in the seed-crushing busi-
ness, for he could not dispose of his meal-cake by-
product as did they.

Let us now turn to the most valuable of the cotton-
seed products, the oil. The seed contains about twenty
per cent, of oil, most of which can be squeezed out of
the hot seeds by hydraulic pressure. It comes out as a
red liquid of a disagreeable odor. This is decolorized,
deodorized and otherwise purified in various ways : by
treatment with alkalies or acids, by blowing air and
steam through it, by shaking up with fuller 's earth, by
settling and filtering. The refined product is a yellow
oil, suitable for table use. Formerly, on account of the
popular prejudice against any novel food products, it
used to masquerade as olive oil. Now, however, it
boldly competes with its ancient rival in the lands of
the olive tree and America ships some 700,000 barrels
of cottonseed oil a year to the Mediterranean. The
Turkish Grovemment tried to check the spread of cot-
tonseed oil by calling it an adulterant and prohibiting
its mixture with olive oil. The result was that the sale
of Turkish olive oil fell off because people found its
flavor too strong when undiluted. Italy imports cot-
tonseed oil and exports her olive oil. Denmark im-
ports cottonseed meal and margarine and exports her
butter.

Northern nations are accustomed to hard fats and
do not take to oils for cooking or table use as do the
southerners. Butter and lard are preferred to olive oil
and ghee. But this does not rule out cottonseed. It
can be combined with the hard fats of animal or vege-;

202 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

table origin in margarine or it may itself be hardened
by hydrogen.

To understand this interesting reaction which is pro-
foundly affecting international relations it will be nec-
essary to dip into the chemistry of the subject. Here
are the symbols of the chief ingredients of the fats and
oils. Please look at them.

Linoleic acid CigHgjOa

Oleic acid CigHg^Oj

Stearic acid CigHaoOj

Bon 't skip these because you have not studied chem-
istry. That *s why I am giving them to you. If you
had studied chemistry you would know them without
my telling. Just examine them and you will discover
the secret. You wiU see that all three are composed of
the same elements, carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. No-
tice next the number of atoms of each element as indi-
cated by the little low figures on the right of each letter.
You observe that all three contain the same number of
atoms of carbon and oxygen but differ in the amount
of hydrogen. This trifling difference in composition
makes a great difference in behavior. The less the
hydrogen the lower the melting point. Or to say the
same thing in other words, fatty substances low in hy-
drogen are apt to be liquids and those with a full com-
plement of hydrogen atoms are apt to be solids at the
ordinary temperature of the air. It is common to call
the former **oils" and the latter **fats," but that im-
plies too great a dissimilarity, for the distinction de-
pends on whether we are living in the tropics or the
arctic. It is better, therefore, to lump them all to-

SOLIDIFIED SUNSHINE 203

gether and call them **soft fats" and "hard fats," re-
spectively.

Fats of the third order, the stearic gronp, are called
** saturated" because they have taken up all the hydro-
gen they can hold. Fats of the other two groups are
called ** unsaturated." The first, which have the least
hydrogen, are the most eager for more. If hydrogen is
not handy they will take up other things, for instance
oxygen. Linseed oil, which consists largely, as the
name implies, of linoleic acid, will absorb oxygen on
exposure to the air and become hard. That is why it is '
used in painting. Such oils are called ** drying" oils,
although the hardening process is not really drying,
since they contain no water, but is oxidation. The
** semi-drying oils," those that will harden somewhat on
exposure to the air, include the oils of cottonseed, com,
sesame, soy bean and castor bean. Olive oil and peanut
oil are ** non-drying" and contain oleic compounds
(olein). The hard fats, such as stearin, palmitin and
margarin, are mostly of animal origin, tallow and lard,
though coconut and palm oil contain a large proportion
of such saturated compounds.

Though the chemist talks of the fatty ** acids," no-
body else would call them so because they are not sour.
But they do behave like the acids in forming salts with
bases. The alkali salts of the fatty acids are known to
us as soaps. In the natural fats they exist not as free
acids but as salts of an organic base, glycerin, as I ex-
plained in a previous chapter. The natural fats and
oils consist of complex mixtures of the glycerin com-
pounds of these acids (known as olein, stearin, etc.), as
weU as various others of a similar sort. If you will

204 CREATIVE CHEMISTEY

set a bottle of salad oil in the ice-box you will see it
separate into two parts. The white, crystalline solid
that separates out is largely stearin. The part that
remains liquid is largely olein. You might separate
them by filtering it cold and if then you tried to sell the
two products you would find that the hard fat would
bring a higher price than the oil, either for food or
soap. If you tried to keep them you would find that the
hard fat kept neutral and ** sweet" longer than the
other. You may remember that the perfumes (as well
as their odorous opposites) were mostly unsaturated
compounds. So we find that it is the free and unsatu-
rated fatty acids that cause butter and oil to become
rank and rancid.

Obviously, then, we could make money if we could
turn soft, unsaturated fats like olein into hard, satu-
rated fats like stearin. Referring to the symbols we
see that all that is needed to effect the change is to get
the former to unite with hydrogen. This requires a
little coaxing. The coaxer is called a catalyst. A cata-
lyst, as I have previously explained, is a substance that
by its mere presence causes the union of two other sub-
stances that might otherwise remain separate. For
that reason the catalyst is referred to as **a chemical
parson." Finely divided metals have a strong cata'
lytic action. Platinum sponge is excellent but too ex-:
pensive. So in this case nickel is used. A nickel salt
mixed with charcoal or pumice is reduced to the metals
lie state by heating in a current of hydrogen. Then it
is dropped into the tank of oil and hydrogen gas is
blown through. The hydrogen may be obtained by
splitting water into its two components, hydrogen and

SOLIDIFIED SUNSHINE 205

oxygen, by means of the electrical current, or by passr
ing steam over spongy iron which takes out the oxygen.
The stream of hydrogen blown through the hot oil con-
verts the linoleic acid to oleic and then the oleic into
stearic. If you figured up the weights from the sym-
bols given above you would find that it takes about one
pound of hydrogen to convert a hundred pounds of olein
to stearin and the cost is only about one cent a pound.
The nickel is unchanged and is easily separated. A
trace of nickel may remain in the product, but as it is
very much less than the amount dissolved when food
is cooked in nickel-plated vessels it cannot be regarded
as harmful.

Even more unsaturated fats may be hydrogenated.
Fish oil has hitherto been almost unusable because of
its powerful and persistent odor. This is chiefly due
to a fatty acid which properly bears the uneuphonioua
name of clupanodonic acid and has the composition of
CisHagOa. By comparing this with the symbol of thcC
odorless stearic acid, CigHagOa, you will se6 that all thh
rank fish oil lacks to make it respectable is eight hydros
gen atoms. A Japanese chemist, Tsujimoto, has dis
covered how to add them and now the reformed fish oil
under the names of *'talgol" and "candelite'* server
for lubricant and even enters higher circles as a soap oi
food.

This process of hardening fats by hydrogenation rC;
suited from the experiments of a French chemist. Pro-*
f essor Sabatier of Toulouse, in the last years of the last
century, but, as in many other cases, the Germans were
the first to take it up and profit by it. Before the war
the copra or coconut oil from the British Asia^ colo^

206 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

nies of India, Ceylon and Malaya went to Grermany at
the rate of $15,000,000 a year. The palm kernels grown
in British West Africa were shipped, not to Liverpool,
but to Hamburg, $19,000,000 worth annually. Here the
oil was pressed out and used for margarin and the
residual cake used for feeding cows produced butter or
for feeding hogs produced lard. Half of the copra
raised in the British possessions was sent to Germany
and half of the oil from it was resold to the British
margarin candle and soap makers at a handsome profit.
The British chemists were not blind to this, but they
could do nothing, first because the English politician
was wedded to free trade, second, because the English
farmer would not use oil cake for his stock. France
was in a similar situation. Marseilles produced 15,-
500,000 gallons of oil from peanuts grown largely in
the French African colonies — ^but shipped the oil-oake
on to Hamburg. Meanwhile the Germans, in pursuit
of their policy of attaining economic independence,
were striving to develop their own tropical territory.
The subjects of King George who because they had the
misfortune to live in India were excluded from the
British South African dominions or mistreated when
they did come, were invited to come to German East
Africa and set to raising peanuts in rivalry to French
Senegal and British Coromandel. Before the war Ger-
many got half of the Egyptian cottonseed and half of
the Philippine copra. That is one of the reasons why
German warships tried to check Dewey at Manila in
1898 and German troops tried to conquer Egypt in 1915.
But the tide of war set the other way and the German
plantations of palmnuts and peanuts in Africa havel

SOLIDIFIED SUNSHINE 2071

come into British possession and now the British Grov-
emment is starting an educational campaign to teach
their farmers to feed oil cake like the Germans and
their people to eat peanuts like the Americans.

The Germans shut off from the tropical fats supply
were hard up for food and for soap, for lubricants and
for munitions. Every person was given a fat card that
reduced his weekly allowance to the minimum. Millers
were required to remove the germs from their cereals
and deliver them to the war department. Children
were set to gathering horse-chestnuts, elderberries,
linden-balls, grape seeds, cherry stones and sunflower
heads, for these contain from six to twenty per cent, of
oil. Even the blue-bottle fly — hitherto an idle creature
for whom Beelzebub found mischief — was conscripted
into the national service and set to laying eggs by the
billion on fish refuse. Within a few days there is a
crop of larvaB which, to quote the ''Chemische Zentral-
blatt," yields forty-five grams per kilogram of a yellow
oil. This product, we should hope, is used for axle-
grease and nitroglycerin, although properly purified it
would be as nutritious as any other — to one who has no
imagination. Driven to such straits Germany would
have given a good deal for one of those tropical islands
that we are so careless about.

It might have been supposed that since the United
States possessed the best land in the world for the pro-
duction of cottonseed, coconuts, peanuts and com that
it would have led all other countries in the utilization
of vegetable oils for food. That this country has not
so used its advantage is due to the fact that the new
products have not merely had to overcome popular

208 CREATIVB CHEMISTRY

conservatism, ignorance and prejudice — hard things to
fight in any case — but have been deliberately checked
and hampered by the state and national governments in
defense of vested interests. The farmer vote is a
power that no politician likes to defy and the dairy
business in every state was thoroughly organized. In
New York the oleomargarin industry that in 1879 was
turning out products valued at more than $5,000,000 a
year was completely crushed out by state legislation.^
The output of the United States, which in 1902 had
risen to 126,000,000 pounds, was cut down to 43,000,000
pounds in 1909 by federal legislation. According to
the disingenuous custom of American lawmakers the
Act of 1902 was passed through Congress as a "revenue
measure," although it meant a loss to the Government
of more than three million dollars a year over what
might be produced by a straight two cents a pound tax.
A wholesale dealer in oleomargarin was made to pay a
higher license than a wholesale liquor dealer. The
federal law put a tax of ten cents a pound on yellow
oleomargarin and a quarter of a cent a pound on the
uncolored. But people — doubtless from pure preju-
dice— prefer a yellow spread for their bread, so the
economical housewife has to work over her oleomar-
garin with the annatto which is given to her when she
buys a package or, if the law prohibits this, which she
is permitted to steal from an open box on the grocer's
counter. A plausible pretext for such legislation is
afforded by the fact that the butter substitutes are so
much like butter that they cannot be easily distin-
guished from it unless the use of annatto is permitted

» United States Abstract of Census of Manufactures, 1914, p. 34.

SOLIDIFIED SUNSHINE 209

to butter and prohibited to its competitors. Fradulent
sales of substitutes of any kind ought to be prevented,
but the recent pure food legislation in America has
shown that it is possible to secure truthful labeling
■without resorting to such drastic measures. In Europe
the laws against substitution were very strict, but not
devised to restrict the industry. Consequently the
margarin output of Germany doubled in the five years
preceding the war and the output of England tripled.
In Denmark the consumption of margarin rose from
8.8 pounds per capita in 1890 to 32.6 pounds in 1912.
Yet the butter business, Denmark's pride, was not in-
jured, and Germany and England imported more butter
than ever before. Now that the price of butter in
America has gone over the seventy-five cent mark Con-
gress may conclude that it no longer needs to be pro-
tected against competition.

The "compound lards" or "lard compounds," con-
sisting usually of cottonseed oil and oleo-stearin, al-
though the latter may now be replaced by hardened oil,
met with the same popular prejudice and attempted
legislative interference, but succeeded more easily in
coming into common use under such names as "Cotto-
suet," "Kream Krisp," "Kuxit," "Komo," "Cotto-
lene" and "Crisco."

Oleomargarin, now generally abbreviated to mar-
garin, originated, like many other inventions, in mili-
tary necessity. The French Government in 1869 of-
fered a prize for a butter substitute for the army that
should be cheaper and better than butter in that it did
not spoil so easily. The prize was won by a French
chemist, Mege-Mouries, who found that by chilling beef

210 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

fat the solid stearin could be separated from an oil
(oleo) which was the substantially same as that in milk
and hence in butter. Neutral lard acts the same.

This discovery of how to separate the hard and soft
fats was followed by improved methods for purifying
them and later by the process for converting the soft
into the hard fats by hydrogenation. The net result
was to put into the hands of the chemist the ability to
draw his materials at will from any land and from the
vegetable and animal kingdoms and to combine them as
he will to make new fat foods for every use ; hard for
summer, soft for winter; solid for the northerners and
liquid for the southerners; white, yellow or any other
color, and flavored to suit the taste. The Hindu can
eat no fat from the sacred cow ; the Mohammedan and
the Jew can eat no fat from the abhorred pig ; the vege-
tarian will touch neither; other people will take both.
No matter, all can be accommodated.

All the fats and oils, though they consist of scores of
different compounds, have practically the same food
value when freed from the extraneous matter that gives
them their characteristic flavors. They are all prac-
tically tasteless and colorless. The various vegetable
and animal oils and fats have about the same digesti-
bility, 98 per cent.,^ and are all ordinarily completely
utilized in the body, supplying it with two and a quarter
times as much energy as any other food.

It does not follow, however, that there is no differ-
ence in the products. The margarin men accuse butter
of harboring tuberculosis germs from which their prod-
uct, because it has been heated or is made from vege-*

*Uiuted States Department of Agriculture, Bulletin No. 505.

SOLIDIFIED SUNSHINE 211

taMe fats, is free. The butter men retort that mar-
garin is lacking in vitamines, those mysterious sub-
stances which in minute amounts are necessary for life
and especially for growth. Both the claim and the
objection lose a large part of their force where the
margarin, as is customarily the case, is mixed with
butter or churned up with milk to give it the familiar
flavor. But the difficulty can be easily overcome. The
milk used for either butter or margarin should be free
or freed from disease germs. If margarin is alto-
gether substituted for butter, the necessary vitamines
may be sufficiently provided by milk, eggs and greens.
Owing to these new processes all the fatty substances
of all lands have been brought into competition with
each other. In such a contest the vegetable is likely to
beat the animal and the southern to win over the north^.
em zones. In Europe before the war the proportion
of the various ingredients used to make butter substi-
tutes was as follows :

AVERAGE COMPOSITION OP EUROPEAN MARGARIN

Per Cent

Animal hard fats 25

Vegetable hard fats 35

Copra 29

Palm-kernel 6

Vegetable soft fats 26

Cottonseed 13

Peanut 6

Sesame 6

Soya-bean 1

Water, milk, salt - 14

100

212 CREATIVE CHEMISTEY

This is not the composition of any particular brand
but the average of them all. The use of a certain
amount of the oil of the sesame seed is required by the
laws of Germany and Denmark because it can be easily
detected by a chemical color test and so serves to pre-
vent the margarin containing it from being sold as
butter. **Open sesame!" is the password to these
markets. Remembering that margarin originally was
made up entirely of animal fats, soft and hard, we can
see from the above figures how rapidly they are being
displaced by the vegetable fats. The cottonseed and
peanut oils have replaced the original oleo oil and the
tropical oils from the coconut (copra) and African
palm are crowding out the animal hard fats. Since
now we can harden at will any of the vegetable oils it
is possible to get along altogether without animal fats.
Such vegetable margarins were originally prepared for
sale in India, but proved unexpectedly popular in Eu-
rope, and are now being introduced into America.
They are sold under various trade names suggesting
their origin, such as "palmira," **palmona,'* **milko-
nut," **cocose," ** coconut oleomargarin" and "nucoa
nut margarin." The last named is stated to be made
of coconut oil (for the hard fat) and peanut oil (for the
soft fat), churned up with a culture of pasteurized milk
(to impart the butter flavor). The law requires such a
product to be branded * ' oleomargarine ' ' although it is
not. Such cases of compulsory mislabeling are not
rare. You remember the "Pigs is Pigs" story.

Peanut butter has won its way into the American
menu without any camouflage whatever, and as a salad
oil it is almost equally frank about its lowly origin.

SOLIDIFIED SUNSHINE 213

This nut, which grows on a vine instead of a tree, and
is dug from the ground like potatoes instead of being
picked with a pole, goes by various names according to
locality, peanuts, ground-nuts, monkey-nuts, arachides
and goobers. As it takes the place of cotton oil in
some of its products so it takes its place in the fields
and oilmills of Texas left vacant by the bollweevil.
The once despised peanut added some $56,000,000 to
the wealth of the South in 1916. The peanut is rich in
the richest of foods, some 50 per cent, of oil and 30 per
cent, of protein. The latter can be worked up into meat
substitutes that will make the vegetarian cease to envy
his omnivorous neighbor. Thanks largely to the chem-
ist who has opened these new fields of usefulness, th&
peanut-raiser got $1.25 a bushel in 1917 instead of the
30 cents that he got four years before.

It would be impossible to enumerate all the available
sources of vegetable oils, for all seeds and nuts contain
more or less fatty matter and as we become more
economical we shall utilize of what we now throw away.
The germ of the com kernel, once discarded in the
manufacture of starch, now yields a popular table oil.
From tomato seeds, one of the waste products of the
canning factory, can be extracted 22 per cent, of an
edible oil. Oats contain 7 per cent, of oil. From rape
seed the Japanese get 20,000 tons of oil a year. To
the sources previously mentioned may be added pump-
kin seeds, poppy seeds, raspberry seeds, tobacco seeds,
cockleburs, hazelnuts, walnuts, beechnuts and acorns.

The oil-bearing seeds of the tropics are innumerable
and will become increasingly essential to the inhabi-
tants of northern lands. It was the realization of this

214 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

that brought on the struggle of the great powers fof
the possession of tropical territory which, for years
before, they did not think worth while raising a flag
over. No country in the future can consider itself safe
unless it has secure access to such sources. We had a
eharp lesson in this during the war. Palm oil, it seems,
is necessary for the manufacture of tinplate, an indus-
try that was built up in the United States by the Mc-
Kinley tariff. The British possessions in West Africa
were the chief source of palm oil and the Germans had
the handling of it. During the war the British Govern-
ment assumed control of the palm oil products of the
British and German colonies and prohibited their ex-
port to other countries than England. Americans pro-
tested and beseeched, but in vain. The British held,
s^uite correctly, that they needed all the oil they could
get for food and lubrication and nitroglycerin. But
the British also needed canned meat from America for
their soldiers and when it was at length brought to their
attention that the packers could not ship meat unless
they had cans and that cans could not be made without
tin and that tin could not be made without palm oil the
British Government consented to let us buy a little of
their palm oil. The lesson is that of Voltaire's story,
**Candide,'' '*Let us cultivate our own garden*' — and
plant a few palm trees in it — also rubber trees, but that
is another story.

The international struggle for oil led to the partition
of the Pacific as the struggle for rubber led to the par-
tition of Africa. Theodor Weber, as Stevenson says,
** harried the Samoans" to get copra much as King
Leopold of Belgium harried the Congoese to get

SOLIDIFIED SUNSHINB 215

caoutchouc. It was Weber who first fully realized that
the South Sea islands, formerly given over to cannibals,
pirates and missionaries, might be made immensely
valuable through the cultivation of the coconut palms.
"When the ripe coconut is split open and exposed to the
sun the meat dries up and shrivels and in this form,
called *' copra," it can be cut out and shipped to the
factory where the oil is extracted and refined. Weber
while German Consul in Samoa was also manager of
what was locally known as **the long-handled concern"
(Deutsche Handels und Plantagen GesellscJmft der
Sudsee Inseln zu Hamhurp) , a pioneer commercial and
semi-oflScial corporation that played a part in the Pa-
cific somewhat like the British Hudson Bay Company
in Canada or East India Company in Hindustan.
Through the agency of this corporation on the start
Germany acquired a virtual monopoly of the transpor-
tation and refining of coconut oil and would have be-
come the dominant power in the Pacific if she had not
been checked by force of arms. In Apia Bay in 1889
and again in Manila Bay in 1898 an American fleet
faced a German fleet ready for action while a British
warship lay between. So we rescued the Philippines
and Samoa from German rule and in 1914 German
power was eliminated from the Pacific. During the ten
years before the war, the production of copra in the
German islands more than doubled and this was only
the beginning of the business. Now these islands have
been divided up among Australia, New Zealand and
Japan, and these countries are planning to take care of
the copra.
But although we get no extension of territory from

216 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

the war we still have the Philippines and some of the
Samoan Islands, and these are capable of great devel-
opment. From her share of the Samoan Islands Ger-
many got a million dollars' worth of copra and we
might get more from ours. The Philippines now lead
the world in the production of copra, but Java is a close
second and Ceylon not far behind. If we do not look
out we will be beaten both by the Dutch and the British,
for they are undertaking the cultivation of the coconut
on a larger scale and in a more systematic way. Ac-
cording to an official bulletin of the Philippine Govern-
ment a coconut plantation should bring in ** dividends
ranging from 10 to 75 per cent, from the tenth to the
hundredth year.'* And this being printed in 1913 fig-
ured the price of copra at 3^^ cents, whereas it brought
4^ cents in 1918, so the prospect is still more encourag-
ing. The copra is half fat and can be cheaply shipped
to America, where it can be crushed in the southern oil-
mills when they are not busy on cottonseed or peanuts.
But even this cost of transportation can be reduced by
extracting the oil in the islands and shipping it in bulk
like petroleum in tank steamers.

In the year ending June, 1918, the United States im-
ported from the Philippines 155,000,000 pounds of coco-
nut oil worth $18,000,000 and 220,000,000 pounds of
copra worth $10,000,000. But this was about half our
total importations; the rest of it we had to get from
foreign countries. Panama palms may give us a little
relief from this dependence on foreign sources. In
1917 we imported 19,000,000 whole coconuts from Paa-
tima valued at $700,000.

A new form of fat that has rapidly come into otu;

SOLIDIFIED SUNSHINE 217

market is the oil of the soya or soy bean. In 1918 wo
imported over 300,000,000 pounds of soy-bean oil,
mostly from Manchuria. The oil is used in manufac-
ture of substitutes for butter, lard, cheese, milk and
cream, as well as for soap and paint. The soy-bean can
be raised in the United States wherever corn can be
grown and provides provender for man and beast.
The soy meal left after the extraction of the oil makes
a good cattle food and the fermented juice affords the
shoya sauce made familiar to us through the popularity
of the chop-suey restaurants.

As meat and dairy products become scarcer and
dearer we shall become increasingly dependent upon
the vegetable fats. We should therefore devise means
of saving what we now throw away, raise as much as we
can under our own flag, keep open avenues for our
foreign supply and encourage our cooks to make u»e
of th« new products invented by our chemists.

CHAPTER Xn

FIGHTING WITH FUMES

The Germans opened the war using projectiles seven-
teen inches in diameter. They closed it using projee-
tiles one one-hundred millionth of an inch in diameter.
And the latter were more effective than the former.
As the dimensions were reduced from molar to mole-
cular the battle became more intense. For when the
Big Bertha had shot its bolt, that was the end of it.
"Whomever it hit was hurt, but after that the steel frag-
ments of the shell lay on the ground harmless and
inert. The men in the dugouts could hear the shells
whistle overhead without alarm. But the poison gas
could penetrate where the rifle ball could not. The
malignant molecules seemed to search out their victims.
They crept through the crevices of the subterranean
shelters. They hunted for the pinholes in the face
masks. They lay in wait for days in the trenches for
the soldiers* return as a cat watches at the hole of a
mouse. The cannon ball could be seen and heard.
The poison gas was invisible and inaudible, and some-
times even the chemical sense which nature has given
man for his protection, the sense of smell, failed to give
warning of the approach of the foe.

The smaller the matter that man can deal with the
more he can get out of it. So long as man was depend-
^,Xit for power upon wind and water his working aapaa*.

218

FIGHTING WITH FUMES 219

ity was very limited. But as soon as he passed over
the border line from physics into chemistry and learned
how to use the molecule, his efficiency in work and war-
fare was multiplied manifold. The molecular bom-
bardment of the piston by steam or the gases of com-
bustion runs his engines and propels his cars. The
first man who wanted to kill another from a safe dis-
tance threw the stone by his arm's strength. David
added to his arm the centrifugal force of a sling when
he slew Goliath. The Romans improved on this by
concentrating in a catapult the strength of a score of
slaves and casting stone cannon balls to the top of the
city wall. But finally man got closer to nature's se-
cret and discovered that by loosing a swarm of gase-
ous molecules he could throw his projectile seventy*
five miles and then by the same force burst it into
flying fragments. There is no smaller projectile than
the atom unless our belligerent chemists can find a way
of using the electron stream of the cathode ray. But
this so far has figured only in the pages of our scien-
tific romancers and has not yet appeared on the battle-
field. If, however, man could tap the reservoir of
sub-atomic energy he need do no more work and would
make no more war, for unlimited powers of construc-
tion and destruction would be at his command. The
forces of the infinitesimal are infinite.

The reason why a gas is so active is because it is so
egoistic. Psychologically interpreted, a gas consists
of particles having the utmost aversion to one another.
Each tries to get as far away from every other as it can.
There is no cohesive force ; no attractive impulse ; noth-
ing to draw them together except the all too feeblft'

220 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

power of gravitation. The hotter they get the more
they try to disperse and so the gas expands. The gas
represents the extreme of individualism as steel repre-
sents the extreme of collectivism. The combination of
the two works wonders. A hot gas in a steel cylinder
is the most powerful agency known to man, and by
means of it he accomplishes his greatest achievements
in peace or war time.

The projectile is thrown from the gun by the expan-
sive force of the gases released from the powder and
when it reaches its destination it is blown to pieces by
the same force. This is the end of it if it is a shell of
the old-fashioned sort, for the gases of combustion
mingle harmlessly with the air of which they are nor-
mal constituents. But if it is a poison gas shell each
molecule as it is released goes off straight into the air
with a speed twice that of the cannon ball and carries
death with it. A man may be hit by a heavy piece of
lead or iron and still survive, but an unweighable
amount of lethal gas may be fatal to him.

Most of the novelties of the war were merely exten-
sions of what was already known. To increase the cali-
ber of a cannon from 38 to 42 centimeters or its range
from 30 to 75 miles does indeed make necessary a de-
cided change in tactics, but it is not comparable to the
revolution effected by the introduction of new weapons
of unprecedented power such as airplanes, submarines,
tanks, high explosives or poison gas. If any army had
been as well equipped with these in the beginning as all
armies were at the end it might easily have won the
war. That is to say, if the general staff of any of the
powers had had the foresight and confidence to develop

FIGHTING WITH FUMES 221

find practise these modes of warfare on a large scale in
advance it wonld have been irresistible against an
enemy unprepared to meet them. But no military
genius appeared on either side with suflScient courage
and imagination to work out such schemes in secret
before trying them out on a small scale in the open.
Consequently the enemy had fair warning and ample
time to learn how to meet them and methods of defense
developed concurrently with methods of attack. For
instance, consider the motor fortresses to which Luden-
dorff ascribes his defeat. The British first sent out a
few clumsy tanks against the German lines. Then they
set about making a lot of stronger and livelier ones,
but by the time these were ready the Germans had field
guns to smash them and chain fences with concrete
posts to stop them. On the other hand, if the Germans
had followed up their advantage when they first set the
cloud of chlorine floating over the battlefield of Ypres
they might have won the war in the spring of 1915 in-
stead of losing it in the fall of 1918. For the British
were unprepared and unprotected against the silent
death that swept down upon them on the 22nd of April,
1915. What happened then is best told by Sir Arthur
Conan Doyle in his ** History of the Great War.'*

From the base of the German trenches over a considerable
length there appeared jets of whitish vapor, which gathered
and swirled until they settled into a definite low cloud-bank,
greenish-brown below and yellow above, where it reflected the
rays of the sinking sun. This ominous bank of vapor, im-
pelled by a northern breeze, drifted swiftly across the space
which separated the two lines. The French troops, staring
orer the top of their parapet at this curious screen which en-

222 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

sured them a temporary relief from fire, were observed snfl-
denly to throw up their hands, to clutch at their throats, and
to fall to the ground in the agonies of asphyxiation. Many
lay where they had fallen, while their comrades, absolutely
helpless against this diabolical agency, rushed madly out of?
the mephitie mist and made for the rear, over-running the
lines of trenches behind them. Many of them never halted
until they had reached Ypres, while others rushed westwards
and put the canal between themselves and the enemy. The
Germans, meanwhile, advanced, and took possession of the
successive lines of trenches, tenanted only by the dead gar-
risons, whose blackened faces, contorted figures, and lips
fringed with the blood and foam from their bursting lungs,
showed the agonies in which they had died. Some thousands
of stupefied prisoners, eight batteries of French field-guns,
and four British 4.7 's, which had been placed in a wood be-
hind the French position, were the trophies won by this dis-
graceful victory.

Under the shattering blow which they had received, a blow
particularly demoralizing to African troops, with their fears
of magic and the unknown, it was impossible to rally them
effectually until the next day. It is to be remembered in ex.
planation of this disorganization that it was the first experi-
ence of these poison tactics, and that the troops engaged re-
ceived the gas in a very much more severe form than our own
men on the right of Langemarck. For a time there was a
gap five miles broad in the front of the position of the Allies,
and there were many hours during which there was no sub-
stantial force between the Germans and Ypres. They wasted
their time, however, in consolidating their ground, and the
chance of a great coup passed forever. They had sold their
souls as soldiers, but the Devil's price was a poor one. Had
they had a corps of cavalry ready, and pushed them through
the gap, it would have been the most dangerous moment of
the war.

FiaHTING WITH FUMES 223

A deserter had come over from the German side a
week before and told them that cylinders of poison gas
had been laid in the front trenches, but no one believed
him or paid any attention to his tale. War was then, in
the Englishman's opinion, a gentleman's game, the
royal sport, and poison was prohibited by the Hague
rules. But the Germans were not playing the game ac-
cording to the rules, so the British soldiers were stran-
gled in their own trenches and fell easy victims to the
advancing foe. Within half an hour after the gas was
turned on 80 per cent, of the opposing troops were
knocked out. The Canadians, with wet handkerchiefs
over their faces, closed in to stop the gap, but if the
Germans had been prepared for such success they could
have cleared the way to the coast. But after such trials
the Germans stopped the use of free chlorine and began
the preparation of more poisonous gases. In some way
that may not be revealed till the secret history of the
war is published, the British Intelligence Department
obtained a copy of the lecture notes of the instructions
to the German staff giving details of the new system
of gas warfare to be started in December. Among the
compounds named was phosgene, a gas so lethal that
one part in ten thousand of air may be fatal. The
antidote for it is hexamethylene tetramine. This is not
something the soldier — or anybody else — is accustomed
to carry around with him, but the British having had a
chance to cram up in advance on the stolen lecture
notes were ready with gas helmets soaked in the re-
agent with the long name.

The Germans rejoiced when gas bombs took the
place of bayonets because this was a field in which in-

224 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

telligence counted for more than brute force and in
which therefore they expected to be supreme. As usual
they were right in their major premise but wrong in
their conclusion, owing to the egoism of their implicit
minor premise. It does indeed give the advantage to
skill and science, but the Germans were beaten at their
own game, for by the end of the war the United States
was able to turn out toxic gases at a rate of 200 tons a
day, while the output of Germany or England was only
about 30 tons. A gas plant was started at Edgewood,
Maryland, in November, 1917. By March it was filling
shell and before the war put a stop to its activities in
the fall it was producing 1,300,000 pounds of chlorin,
1,000,000 pounds of ohlorpicrin, 1,300,000 pounds of
phosgene and 700,000 pounds of mustard gas a month.
Chlorine, the first gas used, is unpleasantly familiar
to every one who has entered a chemical laboratory or
who has smelled the breath of bleaching powder. It is
a greenish-yellow gas made from common salt. The
Germans employed it at Ypres by laying cylinders of
the liquefied gas in the trenches, about a yard apart,
and running a lead discharge pipe over the parapet.
"When the stop cocks are turned the gas streams out
and since it is two and a half times as heavy as air it
rolls over the ground like a noisome mist. It works
best when the ground slopes gently down toward the
enemy and when the wind blows in that direction at a
rate between four and twelve miles an hour. But the
wind, being strictly neutral, may change its direction
without warning and then the gases turn back in their
flight and attack their own side, something that rifle
bullets have never been known to do.

FIGHTING WITH FUMES 225

Because free chlorine would not stay put and was de-
pendent on the favor of the wind for its effect, it was
later employed, not as an elemental gas, but in some
volatile liquid that could be fired in a shell and so re-
leased at any particular point far back of the front
trenches.

The most commonly used of these compounds was
phosgene, which, as the reader can see by inspection of
its formula, COCI2, consists of chlorine (CI) combined
with carbon monoxide (CO), the cause of deaths from
illuminating gas. These two poisonous gases, chlorine
and carbon monoxide, when mixed together, will not
readily unite, but if a ray of sunlight falls upon the
mixture they combine at once. For this reason John
Davy, who discovered the compound over a hundred
years ago, named it phosgene, that is, "produced by
light." The same roots recur in hydrogen, so named
because it is *' produced from water," and phosphorus,
because it is a "light-bearer."

In its modem manufacture the catalyzer or instiga-
tor of the combination is not sunlight but porous car-
bon. This is packed in iron boxes eight feet long,
through which the mixture of the two gases was forced.
Carbon monoxide may be made by burning coke with
a supply of air insuflBcient for complete combustion,
but in order to get the pure gas necessary for the
phosgene common air was not used, but instead pure
oxygen extracted from it by a liquid air plant.

Phosgene is a gas that may be condensed easily to a
liquid by cooling it down to 46 degrees Fahrenheit.
A mixture of three-quarters chlorine with one-quarter
phosgene has been found most effective. By itself

226 CREATIVE CHEMISTEY

phosgene has an inoffensive odor somewhat like green
com and so may fail to arouse apprehension until a
toxic concentration is reached. But even small doses
have such an effect upon the heart action for days after-
ward that a slight exertion may prove fatal.

The compound manufactured in largest amount in
America was chlorpicrin. This, like the others, is not
so unfamiliar as it seems. As may be seen from its
formula, CCI3NO2, it is formed by joining the nitric
acid radical (NO2), found in all explosives, with the
main part of chloroform (HCCI3). This is not quite
so poisonous as phosgene, but it has the advantage
that it causes nausea and vomiting. The soldier so
affected is forced to take off his gas mask and then may
fall victim to more toxic gases sent over simultane-
ously.

Chlorpicrin is a Hquid and is commonly loaded in a
shell or bomb with 20 per cent, of tin chloride, which
produces dense white fumes that go through gas masks.
It is made from picric add (trinitrophenol), one of
the best known of the high explosives, by treatment
with chlorine. The chlorine is obtained, as it is in the
household, from common bleaching powder, or *' chlo-
ride of Hme.'* This is mixed with water to form a
cream in a steel still 18 feet high and 8 feet in diameter.
A solution of calcium picrate, that is, the lime salt of
picric acid, is pumped in and as the reaction begins
the mixture heats up and the chlorpicrin distils over
with the steam. When the distillate is condensed the
chlorpicrin, being the heavier liquid, settles out under
the layer of water and may be drawn off to fill tiie
shell.

FIGHTING WITH FUMES 227

Much of what a student learns in the chemical labora-
tory he is apt to forget in later life if he does not fol-
low it up. But there are two gases that he always re-
members, chlorine and hydrogen sulfide. He is lucky
if he has escaped being choked by the former or sick-
ened by the latter. He can imagine what the effect
would be if two offensive fumes could be combined
without losing their offensive features. Now a com-
bination something like this is the so-called mustard
gas, which is not a gas and is not made from mustard.
But it is easily gasified, and oil of mustard is about
as near as Nature dare come to making such sinful
stuff. It was first made by Guthrie, an Englishman,
in 1860, and rediscovered by a German chemist, Victor
Meyer, in 1886, but he found it so dangerous to work
with that he abandoned the investigation. Nobody
else cared to take it up, for nobody could see any use
for it. So it remained in innocuous desuetude, a mere
name in ''Beilstein's Dictionary," together with the
thousands of other organic compounds that have been
invented and never utilized. But on July 12, 1917,
the British holding the line at Ypres were besprinkled
with this villainous substance. Its success was so
great that the Germans henceforth made it their maiu
reliance and soon the Allies followed suit. In one
offensive of ten days the Germans are said to have
used a million shells containing 2500 tons of mustard
gas.

The making of so dangerous a compound on a large
scale was one of the most difficult tasks set before the
chemists of this and oth«r countries, yet it was suc-
cessfully solved. The raw materials are chlorine, al-

I

228 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

cohol and sulfur. The alcohol is passed with steam
through a vertical iron tube filled with kaolin and
heated. This converts the alcohol into a gas known
as ethylene (C2H4). Passing a stream of chlorine gas
into a tank of melted sulfur produces sulfur mono-
chloride and this treated with the ethylene makes the
"mustard." The final reaction was carried on at the
Edgewood Arsenal in seven airtight tanks or "re-
actors," each having a capacity of 30,000 pounds. The
ethylene gas being led into the tank and distributed
through the liquid sulfur chloride by porous blocks
or fine nozzles, the two chemicals combined to form
what is officially named " di-chlor-di-ethyl-sulfide "
{CIC2H4SC2H4CI). This, however, is too big a mouth-
ful, so even the chemists were glad to fall in with the
commonalty and call it "mustard gas."

The effectiveness of "mustard" depends upon its
persistence. It is a stable liquid, evaporating slowly
and not easily decomposed. It lingers about trenches
and dugouts and impregnates soil and cloth for days.
Gas masks do not afford complete protection, for even
if they are impenetrable they must be taken off some
time and the gas lies in wait for that time. In some
cases the masks were worn continuously for twelve
hours after the attack, but when they were removed
the soldiers were overpowered by the poison. A place
may seem to be free from it but when the sun heats up
the ground the liquid volatilizes and the vapor soaks
through the clothing. As the men become warmed
up by work their skin is blistered, especially under the
armpits. The mustard acts like steam, producing
bums that range from a mere reddening to serious

FIGHTING WITH FUMES 229

ulcerations, always painful and incapacitating, but if
treated promptly in the hospital rarely causing death
or permanent scars. The gas attacks the eyes, throat,
nose and lungs and may lead to bronchitis or pneu-
monia. It was found necessary at the front to put all
the clothing of the soldiers into the sterilizing ovens
every night to remove all traces of mustard. General
Johnson and his staff in the 77th Division were pois-
oned in their dugouts because they tried to alleviate
the discomfort of their camp cots by bedding taken
from a neighboring village that had been shelled the
day before.

Of the 925 cases requiring medical attention at the
Edgewood Arsenal 674 were due to mustard. During
the month of August 3^ per cent, of the mustard plant
force were sent to the hospital each day on the average.
But the record of the Edgewood Arsenal is a striking
demonstration of what can be done in the prevention
of industrial accidents by the exercise of scientific pru-
dence. In spite of the fact that from three to eleven
thousand men were employed at the plant for the year
1918 and turned out some twenty thousand tons of the
most poisonous gases known to man, there were only
three fatalities and not a single case of blindness.

Besides the four toxic gases previously described,
chlorine, phosgene, chlorpicrin and mustard, various
other compounds have been and many others might
be made. A list of those employed in the present war
enumerates thirty, among them compounds of bromine,
arsenic and cyanogen that may prove more formidable
than any so far used. American chemists kept very
mum during the war but occasionally one could not

230 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

refrain from saying: "If the Kaiser knew what I
know he would surrender unconditionally by tele-
graph." No doubt the science of chemical warfare
is in its infancy and every foresighted power has
concealed weapons of its own in reserve. One deadly
compound, whose identity has not yet been disclosed,
is known as ** Lewisite," from Professor Lewis of
Northwestern, who was manufacturing it at the rate
of ten tons a day in the ** Mouse Trap" stockade near
Cleveland.

Throughout the history of warfare the art of de-
fense has kept pace with the art of offense and the
courage of man has never failed, no matter to what
new danger he was exposed. As each new gas em-
ployed by the enemy was detected it became the busi»
ness of our chemists to discover some method of ab-
sorbing or neutralizing it. Porous charcoal, best made
from such dense wood as coconut shells, was packed
in the respirator box together with layers of such
chemicals as will catch the gases to be expected. Char-
coal absorbs large quantities of any gas. Soda lime
and potassium permanganate and nickel salts were
among the neutralizers used.

The mask is fitted tightly about the face or over the
head with rubber. The nostrils are kept closed with a
clip so breathing must be done through the mouth and
no air can be inhaled except that passing through
the absorbent cylinder. Men within five miles of the
front were required to wear the masks slung on their
chests so they could be put on within six seconds. A
well-made mask with a fresh box afforded almost com-
plete immunity for a time and the soldiers learned

FIGHTING WITH FUMES 231

witiiiii a few days to handle their masks adroitly. So
the problem of defense against this new offensive was
solved satisfactorily, while no such adequate protection
against the older weapons of bayonet and shrapnel has
yet been devised.

Then the problem of the offense was to catch the
opponent with his mask off or to make him take it off.
Here the lachrymators and the stemutators, the tear
gases and the sneeze gases, came into play. Phenyl-
carbylamine chloride would make the bravest soldier
weep on the battlefield with the abandonment of a
Greek hero. Di-phenyl-chloro-arsine would set him
sneezing. The Germans alternated these with diabol-
ical ingenuity so as to catch us unawares. Some shells
gave off voluminous smoke or a vile stench without
doing much harm, but by the time our men got used to
these and grew careless about their masks a few shells
of some extremely poisonous gas were mixed with them.

The ideal gas for belligerent purposes would be
odorless, colorless and invisible, toxic even when di-
luted by a million parts of air, not set on fire or ex-
ploded by the detonator of the shell, not decomposed
by water, not readily absorbed, stable enough to stand
storage for six months and capable of being manufac-
tured by the thousands of tons. No one gas will serve
all aims. For instance, phosgene being very volatile
and quickly dissipated is thrown into trenches that are
soon to be taken while mustard gas being very tenacious
could not be employed in such a case for the trenches
could not be occupied if they were captured.

The extensive use of poison gas in warfare by all
the belligerents is a vindication of the American pro-

232 CREATIVE CHEMISTEY

test at the Hague Conference against its prohibition.
At the First Conference of 1899 Captain Mahan argued
very sensibly that gas shells were no worse than other
projectiles and might indeed prove more merciful and
that it was illogical to prohibit a weapon merely be-
cause of its novelty. The British delegates voted with
the Americans in opposition to the clause 'Hhe con-
tracting piirties agree to abstain from the use of pro-
jectiles the sole object of which is the diffusion of
asphyxiating or deleterious gases.'* But both Great
Britain and Germany later agreed to the provision.
The use of poison gas by Germany without warning
was therefore an act of treachery and a violation of
her pledge, but the United States has consistently re-
fused to bind herself to any such restriction. The facts
reported by General Amos A. Fries, in command of the
overseas branch of the American Chemical Warfare
Service, give ample support to the American conten-
tion at The Hague :

Out of 1000 gas casualties there are from 30 to 40 fatalities,
while out of 1000 high explosive casualties the number of
fatalities run from 200 to 250. "While exact figures are as
yet not available concerning the men permanently crippled
or blinded by high explosives one has only to witness the
debarkation of a shipload of troops to be convinced that the
number is very large. On the other hand there is, so far
as known at present, not a single case of permanent disability
or blindness among our troops due to gas and this in face of
the fact that the Germans used relatively large quantities of
this material.

In the light of these facts the prejudice against the use of
gas must gradually give way; for the statement made to the

FIGHTING WITH FUMES 233

effect that its use is contrary to the principles of humanity
will apply with far greater force to the use of high explosives.
As a matter of fact, for certain purposes toxic gas is an ideal
agent. For example, it is difficult to imagine any agent more
effective or more humane that may be used to render an
opposing battery ineffective or to protect retreating troops.

Captain Mahan's argument at The Hague against
the proposed prohibition of poison gas is so cogent and
well expressed that it has been quoted in treatises on
international law ever since. These reasons were,
briefly :

1. That no shell emitting such gases is as yet in practical
use or has undergone adequate experiment; consequently, a
vote taken now would be taken in ignorance of the facts as to
whether the results would be of a decisive character or whether
injury in excess of that necessary to attain the end of warfare
— the immediate disabling of the enemy — would be inflicted.
2. That the reproach of cruelty and perfidy, addressed against
these supposed shells, was equally uttered formerly against
firearms and torpedoes, both of which are now erpployed with-
out scruple. Until we know the effects of such asphyxiating
shells, there was no saying whether they would be more or less
merciful than missiles now permitted. That it was illogical,
and not demonstrably humane, to be tender about asphyxiating
men with gas, when all are prepared to admit that it was al-
lowable to blow the bottom out of an ironclad at midnight,
throwing four or five hundred into the sea, to be choked by
"water, with scarcely the remotest chance of escape.

As Captain Mahan says, the same objection has been
raised at the introduction of each new weapon of war,
even though it proved to be no more cruel than the
old. The modem rifle ball, swift and small and ster-

234 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

ilized by heat, does not make so bad a wound as tho
ancient sword and spear, but we all remember how
gunpowder was regarded by the dandies of Hotspur's
time:

And it was great pity, so it was,
This villainous saltpeter should be digg'd
Out of the bowels of the harmless earth
Which many a good tall fellow had destroy 'd
So cowardly; and but for these vile guns
He would himself have been a soldier.

The real reason for the instinctive aversion mani-
fested against any new arm or mode of attack is that it
reveals to us the intrinsic horror of war. We naturally
revolt against premeditated homicide, but we have be«
come so accustomed to the sword and latterly to the
rifle that they do not shock us as they ought when we
think of what they are made for. The Constitution of
the United States prohibits the infliction of "cruel and
unusual punishments." The two adjectives were ap-
parently used almost synonymously, as though any
**unusual'* punishment were necessarily "cruel," and
so indeed it strikes us. But our ingenious lawyers
were able to persuade the courts that electrocution,
though unknown to the Fathers and undeniably "un-
usual, ' * was not unconstitutional. Dumdum bullets are
rightfully ruled out because they inflict frightful and
often incurable wounds, and the aim of humane warfare
is to disable the enemy, not permanently to injure him.

In spite of the opposition of the American and Brit-
ish delegates the First Hague Conference adopted the
clause, "The contracting powers agree to abstain from
ih» use of projectiles the [sole] object of which is

FIGHTING WITH FUMES 235

She diffusion of asphyxiating or deleterious gases.**
The word "sole" (unique) which appears in the origi-
nal French text of The Hague convention is left out
of the official English translation. This is a strange
omission considering that the French and British de-
fended their use of explosives which diffuse asphyxiat-
ing and deleterious gases on the ground that this was
not the **sole" purpose of the bombs but merely an
accidental effect of the nitric powder used.

The Hague Congress of 1907 placed in its rules for
war: **It is expressly forbidden to employ poisons
or poisonous weapons." But such attempts to rule
out new and more effective means of warfare are
likely to prove futile in any serious conflict and the
restriction gives the advantage to the most unscrupu-
lous side. We Americans, if ever we give our ass^it
to such an agreement, would of course keep it, but our
enemy — ^whoever he may be in the future — ^will be, as
he always has been, utterly without principle and will
not hesitate to employ any weapon against us. Be-
sides, as the Germans held, chemical warfare favors
the army that is most intelligent, resourceful and disci-
plined and the nation that stands highest in science
and industry. This advantage, let us hope, wiU be on
our side.

CHAPTEE XIII

PEODUCTS OF THE ELECTRIC FUBNACB

The control of man over the materials of nature
has been vastly enhanced by the recent extension of
the range of temperature at his command. When
Fahrenheit stuck the bulb of Ijis thermometer into a
mixture of snow and salt he thought he had reached
the nadir of temperature, so he scratched a mark on
the tube where the mercury stood and called it zero.
But we know that absolute zero, the total absence of
heat, is 459 of Fahrenheit's degrees lower than his
zero point. The modem scientist can get close to that
lowest limit by making use of the cooling by the ex-
pansion principle. He first liquefies air under pres-
sure and then releasing the pressure allows it to boil
off. A tube of hydrogen immersed in the liquid air
as it evaporates is cooled down until it can be liquefied.
Then the boiling hydrogen is used to liquefy helium,
and as this boils off it lowers the temperature to within
three or four degrees of absolute zero.

The early metallurgist had no hotter a fire than he
could make by blowing charcoal with a bellows. This
was barely enough for the smelting of iron. But by
the bringing of two carbon rods together, as in the ele&.
trie arc light, we can get enough heat to volatilize the
carbon at the tips, and this means over 7000 degrees
Fahrenheit. By putting a pressure of twenty atmos-
pheres onto the arc light we can raise it to perhaps

236

PRODUCTS OF ELECTRIC FURNACE 237

14,000 degrees, which is 3000 degrees hotter than the
sun. This gives the modern man a working range of
about 14,500 degrees, so it is no wonder that he can
perform miracles.

When a builder wants to make an old house over into
a new one he takes it apart brick by brick and stone
by stone, then he puts them together in such new fash-
ion as he likes. The electric furnace enables the chem-
ist to take his materials apart in the same way. As
the temperature rises the chemical and physical forces
that hold a body together gradually weaken. First
the solid loosens up and becomes a liquid, then this
breaks bonds and becomes a gas. Compounds break
up into their elements. The elemental molecules break
up into their component atoms and finally these begin
to throw off corpuscles of negative electricity eighteen
hundred times smaller than the smallest atom. These
electrons appear to be the building stones of the uni-
verse. No indication of any smaller units has been
discovered, although we need not assume that in the
electron science has delivered, what has been called, its
**ultim-atom." The Greeks called the elemental par-
ticles of matter ''atoms** because they esteemed them
** indivisible," but now in the light of the X-ray we can
witness the disintegration of the atom into electrons.
All the chemical and physical properties of matter,
except perhaps weight, seem to depend upon the num-
ber and movement of the negative and positive elec-
trons and by their rearrangement one element may
be transformed into another.

So the electric furnace, where the highest attainable

238 CEEATIVE CHEMISTRY

temperattire is combined with the divisive and directive
force of the current, is a magical machine for accom-
plishment of the metamorphoses desired by the creative
chemist. A hundred years ago Davy, by dipping the
poles of his battery into melted soda lye, saw forming
on one of them a shining globule like quicksilver. It
was the metal sodium, never before seen by man. Now-
adays this process of electrolysis (electric loosening)
is carried out daily by the ton at Niagara.

The reverse process, electro-synthesis (electric com-
bining), is equally simple and even more important.
By passing a strong electric current through a mixture
of lime and coke the metal calcium disengages itself
from the oxygen of the lime and attaches itself to the
carbon. Or, to put it briefly,

CaO

+

3C

->- CaC,

+ CO

lime

coke

calcium
carbide

carbon
monoxide

This reaction is of peculiar importance because it
bridges the gulf between the organic and inorganic
worlds. It was formerly supposed that the substances
found in plants and animals, mostly complex com-
pounds of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, could only be
produced by ' * vital forces. ' ' If this were true it meant
that chemistry was limited to the mineral kingdom
and to the extraction of such carbon compounds as
happened to exist ready formed in the vegetable and
animal kingdoms. But fortunately this barrier to hu-
man achievement proved purely illusory. The organic
field, once man had broken into it, proved easier to
:work in than the inorganic

PRODUCTS OF ELECTRIC FURNACE 239

But it must be confessed that man is dreadfully
clumsy about it yet. He takes a thousand horsepower
engine and an electric furnace at several thousand de-
grees to get carbon into combination with hydrogen
while the little green leaf in the sunshine does it quietly
without getting hot about it. Evidently man is work-
ing as wastefuUy as when he used a thousand slaves
to drag a stone to the pyramid or burned down a house
to roast a pig. Not until his laboratory is as cool and
calm and comfortable as the forest and the field can the
chemist call himself completely successful.

But in spite of his clumsiness the chemist is actually
making things that he wants and cannot get elsewhere.
The calcium carbide that he manufactures from in-
organic material serves as the raw material for pro-
ducing all sorts of organic compounds. The electric
furnace was first employed on a large scale by the
Cowles Electric Smelting and Aluminum Company at
Cleveland in 1885. On the dump were found certain
lumps of porous gray stone which, dropped into water,
gave off a gas that exploded at touch of a match with
a splendid bang and flare. This gas was acetylene,
and we can represent the reaction thus :

CaC, + 2H,0 ->- C^, + CaO,H,

calcium added to water givea acetylene and slaked lime
carbide

We are all familiar with this reaction now, for it is
acetylene that gives the dazzling light of the automo-
biles and of the automatic signal buoys of the seacoast.
When burned with pure oxygen instead of air it gives
the hottest of chemical flames, hotter even than the
oxy-hydrogen blowpipe. For although a given weight

240 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

of hydrogen will give off more heat when it bums than
carbon will, yet acetylene will give off more heat than
either of its elements or both of them when they are
separate. This is because acetylene has stored up
heat in its formation instead of giving it off as in most
reactions, or to put it in chemical language, acetylene
is an endothermic compound. It has required energy
to bring the H and the C together, therefore it does
not require energy to separate them, but, on the con-
trary, energy is released when they are separated.
That is to say, acetylene is explosive not only when
mixed with air as coal gas is but by itself. Under a
suitable impulse acetylene will break up into its origi-
nal carbon and hydrogen with great violence. It ex-
plodes with twice as much force without air as ordinary
coal gas with air. It forms an explosive compound
with copper, so it has to be kept out of contact with
brass tubes and stopcocks. But compressed in steel
cylinders and dissolved in acetone, it is safe and com-
monly used for welding and melting. It is a marvelous
though not an unusual sight on city streets to see a
man with blue glasses on cutting down through a steel
rail with an oxy-acetylene blowpipe as easily as a car-
penter saws off a board. With such a flame he can
carve out a pattern in a steel plate in a way that re-
minds me of the days when I used to make brackets
with a scroll saw out of cigar boxes. The torch will
travel through a steel plate an inch or two thick at a
rate of six to ten inches a minute.

The temperatures attainable with various fuels in
the compound blowpipe are said to be :

PEODUCTS OF ELECTEIC FUENACE 241

Acetylene with oxygen 7878° F.

Hydrogen with oxygen 6785° F.

Coal gas with oxygen. 6575° F.

Gasoline with oxygen 5788° F.

If we compare the formula of acetylene, CgHg, with
that of ethylene, C2H4, or with ethane, CgHg, we see
that acetylene could take on two or four more atoms.
It is evidently what the chemists call an ** unsaturated'*
compound, one that has not reached its limit of hydro-
genation. It is therefore a very active and ener-
getic compound, ready to pick up on the slightest
instigation hydrogen or oxygen or chlorine or any
other elements that happen to be handy. This is why
it is so useful as a starting point for synthetic chem-
istry.

To build up from this simple substance, acetylene,
the higher compounds of carbon and oxygen it is neces-
sary to call in the aid of that mysterious agency, the
catalyst. Acetylene is not always acted upon by water,
as we know, for we see it bubbling up through the water
when prepared from the carbide. But if to the water
be added a little acid and a mercury salt, the acetylene
gas will unite with the water forming a new compound,
acetaldehyde. We can show the change most simply
in this fashion :

C2H, + H,o ->- C,H«0
acetylene added to water -forms acetaldehyde

Acetaldehyde is not of much importance in itself, but
is useful as a transition. If its vapor mixed with hy-
drogen is passed over finely divided nickel, serving as

242 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

a catalyst, the two unite and we have alcohol, according
to this reaction :

C,H40 + H, ->>• C,H,0

acetaldehyde added to hydrogen forms alcohol

Alcohol we are all familiar with — some of us too
familiar, but the prohibition laws will correct that.
The point to be noted is that the alcohol we have made
from such unpromising materials as limestone and coal
is exactly the same alcohol as is obtained by the fer-
mentation of fruits and grains by the yeast plant as in
wine and beer. It is not a substitute or imitation. It
is not the wood spirits (methyl alcohol, CH4O), pro-
duced by the destructive distillation of wood, equally
serviceable as a solvent or fuel, but undrinkable and
poisonous.

Now, as we all know, cider and wine when exposed
to the air gradually turn into vinegar, that is, by the
growth of bacteria the alcohol is oxidized to acetic acid.
We can, if we like, dispense with the bacteria and speed
up the process by employing a catalyst. Acetaldehyde,
which is halfway between alcohol and acid, may also be
easily oxidized to acetic acid. The relationship is read-
ily seen by this :

c^o — y c,H«o — y- c,h,o,

alcohol acetaldehyde acetic acid

Acetic acid, familiar to us in a diluted and flavored
form as vinegar, is when concentrated of great value
in industry, especially as a solvent. I have already
referred to its use in combination with cellulose as a
**dope" for varnishing airplane canvas or making non-
inflammable film for motion pictures. Its combinatioD

PEODUCTS OF ELECTRIC FURNACE 243

with lime, calcium acetate, when heated gives acetone,
which, as may be seen from its formula (CaHgO) is
closely related to the other compounds we have been
considering, but it is neither an alcohol nor an acid.
It is extensively employed as a solvent.

Acetone is not only useful for dissolving solids but
it will under pressure dissolve many times its volume
of gaseous acetylene. This is a convenient way of
transporting and handling acetylene for lighting or
welding.

If instead of simply mixing the acetone and acety-
lene in a solution we combine them chemically we can
get isoprene, which is the mother substance of ordinary
India rubber. From acetone also is made the **war
rubber" of the Germans (methyl rubber), which I have
mentioned in a previous chapter. The Germans had
been getting about half their supply of acetone from
American acetate of lime and this was of course shut
off. That which was produced in Germany by the dis-
tillation of beech wood was not even enough for the
high explosives needed at the front. So the Germans
resorted to rottiivg potatoes — or rather let us say, since
it sounds better— to the cultivation of Bacillus ma-
cerans. This particular bacillus converts the starch
of the potato into two-thirds alcohol and one-third
acetone. But soon potatoes got too scarce to be used
up in this fashion, so the Germans turned to calcium
carbide as a source of acetone and before the war ended
they had a factory capable of manufacturing 2000 tons
of methyl rubber a year. Thip shows the advantage
of having several strings to a bow^

The reason why acetylene is such an active and ac-

244 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

quisitive thing the chemist explains, or rather ex-
presses, by picturing its structure in this shape ;

H— c— c— H

Now the carbon atoms are holding each other's hands
because they have nothing else to do. There are no
other elements around to hitch on to. But the two car-
bons of acetylene readily loosen up and keeping the
connection between them by a single bond reach out
in this fashion with their two disengaged arms and
grab whatever alien atoms happen to be in the vi-
cinity :

H— c— C-H
I I

Carbon atoms belong to the quadrumani like the
monkeys, so they are peculiarly fitted to forming chains
and rings. This accounts for the variety and complex-
ity of the carbon compounds.

So when acetylene gas mixed with other gases is
passed over a catalyst, such as a heated mass of iron
ore or clay (hydrates or silicates of iron or aluminum),
it forms all sorts of curious combinations. In the pres--
ence of steam we may get such simple compounds as
acetic acid, acetone and the like. But when three acety-
lene molecules join to form a ring of six carbon atoms
we get compounds of the benzene series such as were
described in the chapter on the coal-tar colors. If am-
monia is mixed with acetylene we may get rings with
the nitrogen atom in place of one of the carbons, like
the pyridins and quinolins, pungent bases such as are
found in opium and tobacco. Or if hydrogen sulfide is
Tuixed with the acetylene we may get thioDheaes. whioh

PRODUCTS OF ELECTRIC FURNACE 246

have sulfur in the ring. So, starting with the simple
combination of two atoms of carbon with two of hydro-
gen, we can get directly by this single process some of
the most complicated compounds of the organic world,
as well as many others not found in nature.

In the development of the electric furnace America
played a pioneer part. Provost Smith of the Univer-
sity of Pennsylvania, who is the best authority on the
history of chemistry in America, claims for Robert
Hare, a Philadelphia chemist born in 1781, the honor
of constructing the first electrical furnace. With this
crude apparatus and with no greater electromotive
force than could be attained from a voltaic pile, he con-
verted charcoal into graphite, volatilized phosphorus
from its compounds, isolated metallic calcium and
synthesized calcium carbide. It is to Hare also that
we owe the invention in 1801 of the oxy-hydrogen blow-
pipe, which nowadays is used with acetylene as well as
hydrogen. With this instrument he was able to fuse
strontia and volatilize platinum.

But the electrical furnace could not be used on a
commercial scale until the dynamo replaced the battery
as a source of electricity. The industrial development
of the electrical furnace centered about the search for a
cheap method of preparing aluminum. This is the me-
tallic base of clay and therefore is common enough.
But clay, as we know from its use in making porcelain,
is very infusible and difficult to decompose. Sixty
years ago aluminum was priced at $140 a pound, but
one would have had difficulty in buying such a large
quantity as a pound at any price. At international
expositions a small bar of it might be seen in a case

246 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

labeled ** silver from clay.'* Mechanics were anxioaa
to get the new metal, for it was light and untarnishable,
but the metallurgists could not furnish it to them at a
low enough price. In order to extract it from clay a
more active metal, sodium, was essential. But sodium
also was rare and expensive. In those days a professor
of chemistry used to keep a little stick of it in a bottle
under kerosene and once a year he whittled off a piece
the size of a pea and threw it into water to show the
class how it sizzled and gave off hydrogen. The way
to get cheaper aluminum was, it seemed, to get cheaper
sodium and Hamilton Young Castner set himself at
this problem. He was a Brooklyn boy, a student of
Chandler's at Columbia. You can see the bronze tab-
let in his honor at the entrance of Havemeyer HalL
In 1886 he produced metallic sodium by mixing caustic
soda with iron and charcoal in an iron pot and heating
in a gas furnace. Before this experiment sodium sold
at $2 a pound ; after it sodium sold at twenty cents il
pound.

But although Castner had succeeded in his experi-
ment he was defeated in his object. For while he was
perfecting the sodium process for making aluminum
the electrolytic process for getting aluminum directly
was discovered in Oberlin. So the $250,000 plant of
the ** Aluminium Company Ltd." that Castner had got
erected at Birmingham, England, did not make alumi-
num at all, but produced sodium for other purposes
instead. Castner then turned his attention to the elec-
trolytic method of producing sodium by the use of the
power of Niagara Falls, electric power. Here in 1894
he succeeded in separating common salt into its oom-B

PEODUCTS OF ELECTRIC FURNACE 247

ponent elements, chlorine and sodium, by passing the
electric current through brine and collecting the sodium
in the mercury floor of the cell. The sodium by the
action of water goes into caustic soda. Nowadays
sodium and chlorine and their components are made in
enormous quantities by the decomposition of salt.
The United States Government in 1918 procured nearly
4,000,000 pounds of chlorine for gas warfare.

The discovery of the electrical process of making
aluminum that displaced the sodium method was due
to Charles M. Hall. He was the son of a Congrega-
tional minister and as a boy took a fancy to chemistry
through happening upon an old textbook of that science
in his father's library. He never knew who the author
was, for the cover and title page had been torn off.
The obstacle in the way of the electrolytic production
of aluminium was, as I have said, because its compounds
were so hard to melt that the current could not pass
through. In 1886, when Hall was twenty-two, he solved
the problem in the laboratory of Oberlin College with
no other apparatus than a small crucible, a gasoline
burner to heat it with and a galvanic battery to supply
the electricity. He found that a Greenland mineral,
known as cryolite (a double fluoride of sodium and
aluminum), was readily fused and would dissolve
alumina (aluminum oxide). When an electric current
■was passed through the melted mass the metal alumi-
num would collect at one of the poles.

In working out the process and defending his claims
Hall used up all his own money, his brother's and his
uncle's, but he won out in the end and Judge Taft held
that his patent had priority over the French claim of

248 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

Herault. On his death, a few years ago, Hall left his
large fortune to his Alma Mater, Oberlin.

Two other young men from Ohio, Alfred and Eugene
Cowles, with whom Hall was for a time associated,
were the first to develop the wide possibilities of the
electric furnace on a commercial scale. In 1885 they
started the Cowles Electric Smelting and Aluminum
Company at Lockport, New York, using Niagara
power. The various aluminum bronzes made by ab-
sorbing the electrolyzed aluminum in copper attracted
immediate attention by their beauty and usefulness in
electrical work and later the company turned out other
products besides aluminum, such as calcium carbide,
phosphorus, and carborundum. They got carborun-
dum as early as 1885 but miscalled it ''crystallized
silicon," so its introduction was left to E. A. Acheson,
who was a graduate of Edison's laboratory. In
1891 he packed clay and charcoal into an iron bowl, con-
nected it to a dynamo and stuck into the mixture an
electric light carbon connected to the other pole of the
dynamo. When he pulled out the rod he found its end
encrusted with glittering crystals of an unknown sub-
stance. They were blue and black and iridescent, ex-
ceedingly hard and very beautiful. He sold them at
first by the carat at a rate that would amount to $560 a
pound. They were as well worth buying as diamond
dust, but those who purchased them must have re-
gretted it, for much finer crystals were soon on sale at
ten cents a pound. The mysterious substance turned
out to be a compound of carbon and silicon, the sim-
plest possible compound, one atom of each, CSi. Ache-
sim set up a factory at Niagara, where he made it in

H 3 g

° S

1

i7 ...

1 n

'«
t

^

ir^l™ ,

s

u. o

3 E-5
« ^ o

o c_:
pj if

a6

S K •=.

PKODUCTS OF ELECTRIC FURNACE 249

ten-ton batches. The furnace consisted simply of s(
brick box fifteen feet long and seven feet wide and
deep, with big carbon electrodes at the ends. Between
them was packed a mixture of coke to supply the car-
bon, sand to supply the silicon, sawdust to make the
mass porous and salt to make it fusible.

The first American electric furnace, constructed by Robert Hare of
Philadelphia. From "Chemistry in America," by Edgar Fahs Smith

The substance thus produced at Niagara Falls is
known as "carborundum" south of the American-Cana-
dian boundary and as ** cry stolon" north of this line,
as "carbolon" by another firm, and as ** silicon car-
bide" by chemists the world over. Since it is next to
the diamond in hardness it takes off metal faster than
emery (aluminum oxide), using less power and wasting

250 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

less heat in futile fireworks. It is used for grindstones
of all sizes, including those the dentist uses on your
teeth. It has revolutionized shop-practice, for articles
can be ground into shape better and quicker than they
can be cut. What is more, the artificial abrasives do
not injure the lungs of the operatives like sandstone.
The output of artificial abrasives in the United States
and Canada for 1917 was :

Tons Value

Silicon carbide 8,323 $1,074,152

AlumiQum oxide 48,463 6,969,387

A new use for carborundum was found during the
war when Uncle Sam assumed the role of Jove as
** cloud-compeller." Acting on carborundum with
chlorine — also, you remember, a product of electrical
dissolution — the chlorine displaces the carbon, forming
silicon tetra-chloride (SiCl4), a colorless liquid resem-
bling chloroform. When this comes in contact with
moist air it gives off thick, white fumes, for water de-
composes it, giving a white powder (silicon hydroxide)
and hydrochloric acid. If ammonia is present the acid
will unite with it, giving further white fumes of the salt,
ammonium chloride. So a mixture of two parts of sili-
con chloride with one part of dry ammonia was used
in the war to produce smoke-screens for the conceal-
ment of the movements of troops, batteries and vessels
or put in shells so the outlook could see where they
burst and so get the range. Titanium tetra-chloride, a
similar substance, proved 50 per cent, better than sili-
con, but phosphorus — ^which also we get from the ele^
trie furnace — ^was the most effective mistifier of alL

PEODUCTS OF ELECTRIC FURNACE 251

Before the introduction of the artificial abrasives fine
grinding was mostly done by emery, which is an impure
form of aluminum oxide found in nature. A purer
form is made from the mineral bauxite by driving off
its combined water. Bauxite is the ore from which is
made the pure aluminum oxide used in the electric fur-
nace for the production of metallic aluminum. For-
merly we imported a large part of our bauxite from
France, but when the war shut off this source we de-
veloped our domestic fields in Arkansas, Alabama and
Georgia, and these are now producing half a million
tons a year. Bauxite simply fused in the electric fur-
nace makes a better abrasive than the natural emery
or corundum, and it is sold for this purpose under the
name of "aloxite," '^alundum," "exolon," **lionite'*
or "coralox." When the fused bauxite is worked up
with a bonding material into crucibles or mufiles and
baked in a kiln it forms the alundum refractory ware.
Since alundum is porous and not attacked by acids it
is used for filtering hot and corrosive liquid's that would
eat up filter-paper. Carborundum or crystolon is also
made up into refractory ware for high temperature
work. When the fused mass of the carborundum fur-
nace is broken up there is found surrounding the car-
borundum core a similar substance though not quite
50 hard and infusible, known as ** carborundum sand"
or "siloxicon." This is mixed with fireclay and used
for furnace linings.

Many new forms of refractories have come into use
to meet the demands of the new high temperature work.
The essentials are that it should not melt or crumble
it high heat and shoulu not expand and contract greatly/

252 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

under changes of temperature (low coefficient of
thermal expansion). Whether it is desirable that it
should heat through readily or slowly (coefficient of
thermal conductivity) depends on whether it is wanted
as a crucible or as a furnace lining. Lime (calcium
oxide) fuses only at the highest heat of the electric fur-
nace, but it breaks down into dust. Magnesia (magne-
sium oxide) is better and is most extensively employed.
For every ton of steel produced five pounds of mag-
nesite is needed. Formerly we imported 90 per cent,
of our supply from Austria, but now we get it from
California and Washington. In 1913 the American
production of magnesite was only 9600 tons. In 1918
it was 225,000. Zirconia (zirconium oxide) is still
more refractory and in spite of its greater cost zirkite
is coming into use as a lining for electric furnaces.

Silicon is next to oxygen the commonest element in
the world. It forms a quarter of the earth's crust, yet
it is unfamiliar to most of us. That is because it is
always found combined with oxygen in the form of
silica as quartz crystal or sand. This used to be con-
sidered too refractory to be blown but is found to be
easily manipulable at the high temperatures now at the
command of the glass-blower. So the chemist rejoices
in flasks that he can heat red hot in the Bunsen burner
and then plunge into ice water without breaking, and
the cook can bake and serve in a dish of *'pyrex,'*
which is 80 per cent, silica.

At the beginning of the twentieth century minute
specimens of silicon were sold as laboratory curiosities
at the price of $100 an ounce. Two years later it was
turned out by the barrelful at Niagara as an accidental

PEODUCTS OF ELECTRIC FURNACE 253

by-product and could not find a market at ten cents a
pound. Silicon from the electric furnace appears in
the form of hard, glittering metallic crystals.

An alloy of iron and silicon, ferro-silicon, made by
heating a mixture of iron ore, sand and coke in the
electrical furnace, is used as a deoxidizing agent in the
manufacture of steel.

Since silicon has been robbed with difficulty of its
oxygen it takes it on again with great avidity. This
has been made use of in the making of hydrogen. A
mixture of silicon (or of the ferro-silicon alloy contain-
ing 90 per cent, of silicon) with soda and slaked lime is
inert, compact and can be transported to any point
where hydrogen is needed, say at a battle front. Then
the **hydrogenite," as the mixture is named, is ignited
by a hot iron ball and goes off like thermit with the
production of great heat and the evolution of a vast
volume of hydrogen gas. Or the ferro-silicon may be
simply burned in an atmosphere of steam in a closed
tank after ignition with a pinch of gunpdwder. The
iron and the silicon revert to their oxides while the
hydrogen of the water is set free. The French *'sili-
kol" method consists in treating silicon with a 40 per
cent, solution of soda.

Another source of hydrogen originating with the
electric furnace is **hydrolith," which consists of cal-
cium hydride. Metallic calcium is prepared from lime
in the electric furnace. Then pieces of the calcium are
spread out in an oven heated by electricity and a cur-
rent of dry hydrogen passed through. The gas is ab-
sorbed by the metal, forming the hydride (CaHg).
This is packed up in cans and when hydrogen is desired

254 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

it is simply dropped into water, when it gives off the
gas just as calcium carbide gives off acetylene.

This last reaction was also used in Germany for fill-
ing Zeppelins. For calcium carbide is convenient and
portable and acetylene, when it is once started, as by
an electric shock, decomposes spontaneously by its own
internal heat into hydrogen and carbon. The latter is
left as a fine, pure lampblack, suitable for printer's ink.

Napoleon, who was always on the lookout for new
inventions that could be utilized for military purposes,
seized immediately upon the balloon as an observation
station. Within a few years after the first ascent had
been made in Paris Napoleon took balloons and ap-
paratus for generating hydrogen with him on his **ar-
cheological expedition" to Egypt in which he hoped
to conquer Asia. But the British fleet in the Mediter-
ranean put a stop to this experiment by intercepting
the ship, and military aviation waited until the Great
War for its full development. This caused a sudden
demand for immense quantities of hydrogen and all
manner of means was taken to get it. Water is easily
decomposed into hydrogen and oxygen by passing an
electric current through it. In various electrolytical
processes hydrogen has been a wasted by-product since
the balloon demand was slight and it was more bother
than it was worth to collect and purify the hydrogen.
Another way of getting hydrogen in quantity is by pass-
ing steam over red-hot coke. This produces the blue
water-gas, which contains about 50 per cent, hydrogen,
40 per cent, carbon monoxide and the rest nitrogen
and carbon dioxide. The last is removed by running
the mixed gases through lime. Then the nitrogen and

PEODUCTS OF ELECTEIC FUENACE 25^

carbon monoxide are frozen out in an air-liquefying
apparatus and the hydrogen escapes to the storage
tank. The liquefied carbon monoxide, allowed to re-
gain its gaseous form, is used in an internal combus-
tion engine to run the plant.

There are then many ways of producing hydrogen,
but it is so light and bulky that it is difficult to get it'
where it is wanted. The American Government in the
war made use of steel cylinders each holding 161 cubic
feet of the gas under a pressure of 2000 pounds per
square inch. Even the hydrogen used by the troops
in France was shipped from America in this form.
For field use the ferro-silicon and soda process was
adopted. A portable generator of this type was ca-
pable of producing 10,000 cubic feet of the gas per
hour.

The discovery by a Kansas chemist of natural
sources of helium may make it possible to free balloon-
ing of its great danger, for helium is non-inflammable
and almost as light as hydrogen.

Other uses of hydrogen besides ballooning have al-
ready been referred to in other chapters. It is com-
bined with nitrogen to form synthetic ammonia. It
is combined with oxygen in the oxy-hydrogen blowpipe
to produce heat. It is combined with vegetable and
animal oils to convert them into solid fats. There is
also the possibility of using it as a fuel in the internal
combustion engine in place of gasoline, but for this
purpose we must find some way of getting hydrogen
portable or producible in a compact form.

Aluminum, like silicon, sodium and calcium, has been
rescued by violence from its attachment to oxygen and

256 CREATIVE CHEMISTEY

like these metals it reverts with readiness to its former
affinity. Dr. Goldschmidt made use of this reaction in
his thermit process. Powdered aluminum is mixed
with iron oxide (rust). If the mixture is heated at any
point a furious struggle takes place throughout the
whole mass between the iron and the aluminum as to
which metal shall get the oxygen, and the aluminum
always comes out ahead. The temperature runs up to
some 6000 degrees Fahrenheit within thirty seconds
and the freed iron, completely liquefied, runs down into
the bottom of the crucible, where it may be drawn oif by
opening a trap door. The newly formed aluminum
oxide (alumina) floats as slag on top. The applica-
tions of the thermit process are innumerable. If, for
instance, it is desired to mend a broken rail or crank
shaft without moving it from its place, the two ends are
brought together or fixed at the proper distance apart.
A crucible filled with the thermit mixture is set up
above the joint and the thermit ignited with a priming
of aluminum and barium peroxide to start it off. The
barium peroxide having a superabundance of oxygen
gives it up readily and the aluminum thus encouraged
attacks the iron oxide and robs it of its oxygen. As
soon as the iron is melted it is run off through the bot-
tom of the crucible and fills the space between the rail
ends, being kept from spreading by a mold of refrac-
tory material such as magnesite. The two ends of the
rail are therefore joined by a section of the same size,
shape, substance and strength as themselves. The
same process can be used for mending a fracture or
supplying a missing fragment of a steel casting of any
size, such as a ship 's propeller or a cogwheel.

PKODUCTS OF ELECTRIC FURNACE 257

For smaller work thermit has two rivals, the oxy-
acetylene torch and electric welding. The former haa
been described and the latter is rather out of the range
of this volume, although I may mention that in the lat-
ter part of 1918 there was launched from a British
shipyard the first rivetless steel vessel. In this the
steel plates forming the shell, bulkheads and floors are
welded instead of being fastened together by rivets.
There are three methods of doing this depending upon
the thickness of the plates and the sort of strain they
are subject to. The plates may be overlapped and
tacked together at intervals by pressing the two elec-
trodes on opposite sides of the same point until the spot
is suflSciently heated to fuse together the plates here.
Or roller electrodes may be drawn slowly along the
line of the desired weld, fusing the plates together con-
tinuously as they go. Or, thirdly, the plates may be
butt-welded by being pushed together edge to edge
wittout overlapping and the electric current being
passed from one plate to the other heats up the joint
where the conductivity is interrupted.

It will be observed that the thermit process is essen-
tially like the ordinary blast furnace process of smelt-
ing iron and other metals except that aluminum is used
instead of carbon to take the oxygen away from the
metal in the ore. This has an advantage in case car-
bon-free metals are desired and the process is used for
producing manganese, tungsten, titanium, molybdenum,
vanadium and their alloys with iron and copper.

During the war thermit found a new and terrible
employment, as it was used by the airmen for setting
buildings on fire and exploding ammunition dumps.

258 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

The German incendiary bombs consisted of a per-
forated steel nose-piece, a tail to keep it falling straight
and a cylindrical body which contained a tube of ther-
mit packed around with mineral wax containing po-
tassium perchlorate. The fuse was ignited as the mis-
sile was released and the thermit, as it heated up,
melted the wax and allowed it to flow out together with
the liquid iron through the holes in the nose-piece.
The American incendiary bombs were of a still more
malignant type. They weighed about forty pounds
apiece and were charged with oil emulsion, thermit
^nd metallic sodium. Sodium decomposes water so
that if any attempt were made to put out with a hose
a fire started by one of these bombs the stream of water
would be instantaneously changed into a jet of blazing
hydrogen.

Besides its use in combining and separating differ-
ent elements the electric furnace is able to change a
single element into its various forms. Carbon, for in-
stance, is found in three very distinct forms: in hard,
transparent and colorless crystals as the diamond, in
black, opaque, metallic scales as graphite, and in shape-
less masses and powder as charcoal, coke, lampblack,
and the like. In the intense heat of the electric arc
these forms are convertible one into the other accord-
ing to the conditions. Since the third form is the
cheapest the object is to change it into one of the other
two. Graphite, plumbago or **blacklead,** as it is still
sometimes called, is not found in many places and more
rarely found pure. The supply was not equal to the
demand until Acheson worked out the process of mak-
ing it by packing powdered anthracite between the eleo*

PRODUCTS OF ELECTRIC FURNACE 259

trodes of his furnace. In this way graphite can be
cheaply produced in any desired quantity and quality.

Since graphite is infusible and incombustible except
at exceedingly high temperatures, it is extensively used
for crucibles and electrodes. These electrodes are
made in all sizes for the various forms of electric lamps
and furnaces from rods one-sixteenth of an inch in
diameter to bars a foot thick and six feet long. It is
graphite mixed with fine clay to give it the desired
degree of hardness that forms the filling of our *4ead'*
pencils. Finely ground and flocculent graphite treated
•with tannin may be held in suspension in liquids and
even pass through filter-paper. The mixture with wa-
ter is sold under the name of **aquadag," with oil as
**oildag" and with grease as **gredag," for lubrication.
The smooth, slippery scales of graphite in suspension
slide over each other easily and keep the bearings from
rubbing against each other.

The other and more diflScult metamorphosis of car-
bon, the transformation of charcoal into diamond, was
successfully accomplished by Moissan in 1894. Henri
Moissan was a toxicologist, that is to say, a Professor
of Poisoning, in the Paris School of Pharmacy, who
took to experimenting with the electric furnace in his
leisure hours and did more to demonstrate its possi-
bilities than any other man. With it he isdiated fluo-
rine, most active of the elements, and he prepared for
the first time in their purity many of the rare metals
that have since found industrial employment. He also
made the carbides of the various metals, including the
now common calcium carbide. Among the problems
"ttiat he undertook and solved was the manufacture of

260 CKEATIVE CHEMISTRY

artificial diamonds. He first made pure charcoal by
burning sugar. This Was packed with iron in the
hollow of a block of lime into which extended from op-
posite sides the carbon rods connected to the dynamo.
When the iron had melted and dissolved all the carbon
it could, Moissan dumped it into water or better into
melted lead or into a hole in a copper block, for this
cooled it most rapidly. After a crust was formed it
was left to solidify slowly. The sudden cooling of the
iron on the outside subjected the carbon, which was held
in solution, to intense pressure and when the bit of
iron was dissolved in acid some of the carbon was found
to be crystallized as diamond, although most of it was
graphite. To be sure, the diamonds were hardly big
enough to be seen with the naked eye, but since Mois-
san 's aim was to make diamonds, not big diamonds, he
ceased his efforts at this point.

To produce large diamonds the carbon would have to
be liquefied in considerable quantity and kept in that
state while it slowly crystallized. But that could only
be accomplished at a temperature and pressure and
duration unattainable as yet. Under ordinary at-
mospheric pressure carbon passes over from the solid
to the gaseous phase without passing through the
liquid, just as snow on a cold, clear day will evaporate
without melting.

Probably some one in the future will take up the
problem where Moissan dropped it and find out how
to make diamonds of any size. But it is not a ques-
tion that greatly interests either the scientist or the
industrialist because there is not much to be learned
from it and not much to be made out of it. If the in-

PEODUCTS OF ELECTEIC FUENACE 2SX

ventor of a process for making cheap diamonds could
keep his electric furnace secretly in his cellar and mar-
ket his diamonds cautiously he might get rich out of
it, but he would not dare to turn out very large stones
or too many of them, for if a suspicion got around that
he was making them the price would fall to almost noth-
ing even if he did sell another one. For the high
price of the diamond is purely fictitious. It is in the
first place kept up by limiting the output of the nat-
ural stone by the combination of dealers and, further,
the diamond is valued not for its usefulness or beauty
but by its real or supposed rarity. Chesterton says:
**A11 is gold that glitters, for the glitter is the gold.*'
This is not so true of ^old, for if gold were as cheap as
nickel it would be very valuable, since we should gold-
plate our machinery, our ships, our bridges and our
roofs. But if diamonds were cheap they would be good
for nothing except grindstones and drills. An imita-
tion diamond made of heavy glass (paste) cannot be
distinguished from the genuine gem except by an ex-
pert. It sparkles about as brilliantly, for its refractive
index is nearly as high. The reason why it is not
priced so highly is because the natural stone has pre-
sumably been obtained through the toil and sweat of
hundreds of negroes searching in the blue ground of
the Transvaal for many months. It is valued exclu-
sively by its cost. To wear a diamond necklace is the
same as hanging a certified check for $100,000 by a
string around the neck.

Eeal values are enhanced by reduction in the cost of
the price of production. Fictitious values are de-
stroyed_by it. Aluminum at twenty-five cents a pound

262 CREATIVE CHEMISTEY

is immensely more valuable to the world than when it
is a curiosity in the chemist's cabinet and priced at
$160 a pound.

So the scope of the electric furnace reaches from the
mostly but comparatively valueless diamond to the
cheap but indispensable steel. As F. J. Tone says, if
the automobile manufacturers were deprived of Ni-
agara products, the abrasives, aluminum, acetylene for
welding and high-speed tool steel, a factory now turn-
ing out five hundred cars a day would be reduced to one
hundred. I have here been chiefly concerned with elec-
tricity as effecting chemical changes in combining or
separating elements, but I must not omit to mention
its rapidly extending use as a source of heat, as in the
production and casting of steel. In 1908 there were
only fifty-five tons of steel produced by the electric
furnace in the United States, but by 1918 this had risen
to 511,364 tons. And besides ordinary steel the elec-
tric furnace has given us alloys of iron with the once
* * rare metals ' ' that have created a new science of metal-
lurgy.

CHAPTER XIV

JVfETALS, OLP AND NEW

The primitive metallurgist could only make use of
such metals as he found free in nature, that is, such aa
had not been attacked and corroded by the ubiquitous
oxygen. These were primarily gold or copper, though
possibly some original genius may have happened upon
a bit of meteoric iron and pounded it out into a sword.
But when man found that the red ocher he had hitherto
used only as a cosmetic could be made to yield iron by
melting it with charcoal he opened a new era in civiliza-
tion, though doubtless the ocher artists of that day
denounced him as a utilitarian and deplored the deca-
dence of the times.

Iron is one of the most timid of metals. It has a
great disinclination to be alone. It is also one of the
most altruistic of the elements. It likes almost every
other element better than itself. It has an especial
affection for oxygen, and, since this is in both air and
water, and these are everywhere, iron is not long with-
out a mate. The result of this union goes by various
names in the mineralogical and chemical worlds, but
in common language, which is quite good enough for
our purpose, it is called iron rust.

Not many of us have ever seen iron, the pure metal,
soft, ductile and white like silver. As soon as it is
exposed to the air it veils itself with a thin film of
rust and becomes black and then red. For that reason

261

264

CREATIV3E CHEMISTRY

there is practically no iron in the v/orld except What
man has made. It is rarer than gold, than diamonds j
we find in the earth no nuggets or crystals of it the
size of the fist as we find of these. But occasionally

SaRv/ /

By courtesy Mineral Foote-Notes.

From Agricola's "De Re Metallica 1550." Primitive furnace for
smelting iron ore.

there fall down upon us out of the clear sky great
chunks of it weighing tons. These meteorites are the
mavericks of the universe. We do not know where
they come from or what sun or planet they belonged
to. They are our only visitors from space, and if all
%\ie other spheres are like these fragments we know

METALS, OLD AND NEW 265

we are alone in the universe. For they contain rustless
iron, and where iron does not rust man cannot live,
nor can any other animal or any plant.

Iron rusts for the same reason that a stone rolls down
hill, because it gets rid of its energy that way. All
things in the universe are constantly trying to get rid
of energy except man, who is always trying to get mors
of it. Or, on second thought, we see that man is the
greatest spendthrift of all, for he wants to expend so
much more energy than he has that he borrows from
the winds, the streams and the coal in the rocks. He
robs minerals and plants of the energy which they have
stored up to spend for their own purposes, just as he
robs the bee of its honey and the silk worm of its
cocoon.

Man's chief business is in reversing the processes of
nature. That is the way he gets his living. And one
of his greatest triumphs was when he discovered how
to undo iron rust and get the metal out of it. In the
four thousand years since he first did this he has accom-
plished more than in the millions of years before.
Without knowing the value of iron rust man could at-
tain only to the culture of the Aztecs and Incas, the
ancient Egyptians and Assyrians.

The prosperity of modern states is dependent on
the amount of iron rust which they possess and utilize.
England, United States, Germany, all nations are com-
peting to see which can dig the most iron rust out of
the ground and make out of it railroads, bridges, build-
ings, machinery, battleships and such other tools and
toys and then let them relapse into rust again. Civ-
ilization can be measured by the amount of iron rusted

266 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

per capita, or better, by the amount rescued from rust.
But we are devoting so much space to the considera-
tion of the material aspects of iron that we are like to
neglect its esthetic and ethical uses. The beauty of
nature is very largely dependent upon the fact that
iron rust and, in fact, all the common compounds of
iron are colored. Few elements can assume so many
tints. Look at the paint pot canons of the Yellowstone.
Cheap glass bottles turn out brown, green, blue, yellow
or black, according to the amount and kind of iron
they contain. We build a house of cream-colored brick,
varied with speckled brick and adorned with terra cotta
ornaments of red, yellow and green, all due to iron.
Iron rusts, therefore it must be painted; but what is
there better to paint it with than iron rust itself? It
is cheap and durable, for it cannot rust any more than
a dead man can die. And what is also of importance,
it is a good, strong, clean looking, endurable color.
"Whenever we take a trip on the railroad and see the
miles of cars, the acres of roofing and wall, the towns
full of brick buildings, we rejoice that iron rust is red,
not white or some less satisfying color.

We do not know why it is so. Zinc and aluminum
are metals very much like iron in chemical properties,
but all their gaits are colorless. Why is it that the
most useful of the metals forms the most beautiful com-
pounds? Some say. Providence; some say, chance;
some say nothing. But if it had not been so we would
have lost most of the beauty of rocks and trees and
human beings. For the leaves and the flowers would
all be white, and all the men and women would look
like walking corpses. Without color in the flower wh^t

METALS, OLD AND NEW 267

would the bees and painters do? If all the grass and
trees were white, it would be like winter all the year
round. If we had white blood in our veins like some
of the insects it would be hard lines for our poets.
And what would become of our morality if we could not
blush?

"As for me, I thrill to see

The bloom a velvet cheek discloses!
Made of dust! I well believe it,
So are lilies, so are roses.'*

Aq etiolated earth would be hardly worth living in.

The chlorophyll of the leaves and the hemoglobin
oT the blood are similar in constitution. Chlorophyll
contains magnesium in place of Iron but iron is neces-
eary to its formation. We all know how pale a plant
gets if its soil is short of iron. It is the iron in the
leaves that enables the plants to store up the energy of
the sunshine for their own use and ours. It is the iron
in our blood that enables us to get the irofi out of iron
rust and make it into machines to supplement our fee-
ble hands. Iron is for us internally the carrier of
energy, just as in the form of a trolley wire or of a
third rail it conveys power to the electric car. With-
draw the iron from the blood as indicated by the
pallor of the cheeks, and we become weak, faint and
finally die. If the amount of iron in the blood gets
too small the disease germs that are always attacking
us are no longer destroyed, but multiply without check
and conquer us. When the iron ceases to work
eflficiently we are killed by the poison we ourselves
generate.

268 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

Counting the number of iron-bearing corpuscles in
the blood is now a common method of determining dis-
ease. It might also be useful in moral diagnosis. A
microscopical and chemical laboratory attached to the
courtroom would give information of more value than
some of the evidence now obtained. For the anemic
and the florid vices need very different treatment. An
excess or a deficiency of iron in the body is liable to
result in criminality. A chemical system of morals
might be developed on this basis. Among the ferrugi-
nous sins would be placed murder, violence and licen-
tiousness. Among the non-ferruginous, cowardice,
sloth and lying. The former would be mostly sins of
commission, the latter, sins of omission. The virtues
could, of course, be similarly classified ; the ferruginous
virtues would include courage, self-reliance and hope-
fulness; the non-ferruginous, peaceableness, meekness
and chastity. According to this ethical criterion the
moral man would be defined as one whose conduct is
better than we should expect f roan the per cent, of iron
in his blood.

The reason why iron is able to serve this unique pur-
pose of conveying life-giving air to all parts of the
body is because it rusts so readily. Oxidation and de-
oxidation proceed so quietly that the tenderest cells
are fed without injury. The blood changes from red
to blue and vice versa with greater ease and rapidity
than in the corresponding altemations of social status
in a democracy. It is because iron is so rustable that
it is so useful. The factories with big scrap-heaps of
rusting machinery are making the most money. The
pyramids are the most enduring structures raised by

METALS, OLD AND NEW 269

ihe hand of man, but they have not sheltered so many
people in their forty centuries as our skyscrapers that
are already rusting.

"We have to carry on this eternal conflict against rust
because oxygen is the most ubiquitous of the elements
and iron can only escape its ardent embraces by hiding
away in the center of the earth. The united elements,
known to the chemist as iron oxide and to the outside
world as rust, are among the commonest of compounds
and their colors, yellow and red like the Spanish flag,
are displayed on every mountainside. From the time
of Tubal Cain man has ceaselessly labored to divorce
these elements and, having once separated them, to
keep them apart so that the iron may be retained in his
service. But here, as usual, man is fighting against
nature and his gains, as always, are only temporary.
Sooner or later his vigilance is circumvented and the
metal that he has extricated by the fiery furnace re-
turns to its natural affinity. The flint arrowheads, the
bronze spearpoints, the gold ornaments, Ihe wooden
idols of prehistoric man are still to be seen in our
museums, but his earliest steel swords have long since
crumbled into dust.

Every year the blast furnaces of the world release
72,000,000 tons of iron from its oxides and every year
a large part, said to be a quarter of that amount, re-
verts to its primeval forms. If so, then man after five
thousand years of metallurgical industry has barely
got three years ahead of nature, and should he cease
his efforts for a generation there would be little left
to show that man had ever learned to extract iron from
its ores. The old question, **Wbat becomes of all thd

270 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

pins?'* may be as well asked of rails, pipes and thresh'
ing machiaes. The end of all iron is the same. How-
ever many may be its metamorphoses while in the serv-
ice of man it relapses at last into its original state of
oxidation. To save a pound of iron from corrosion is
then as much a benefit to the world as to produce an-
other pound from the ore. In fact it is of much greater
benefit, for it takes four pounds of coal to produce one
pound of steel, so whenever a piece of iron is allowed
to oxidize it means that four times as much coal must
be oxidized in order to replace it. And the beds of
coal will be exhausted before the beds of iron ore.

If we are ever to get ahead, if we are to gain any
respite from this enormous waste of labor and natural
resources, we must find ways of preventing the iron
which we have obtained and fashioned into useful tools
from being lost through oxidation. Now there is only
one way of keeping iron and oxygen from uniting and
that is to keep them apart. A very thin dividing wall
will serve for the purpose, for instance, a film of oiL
But ordinary oil will rub off, so it is better to cover the
surface with an oil-like linseed which oxidizes to a hard
elastic and adhesive coating. If with linseed oil we
mix iron oxide or some other pigment we have a paint
that wiU protect iron perfectly so long as it is un-
broken. But let the paint wear off or crack so that air
can get at the iron, then rust will form and spread
underneath the paint on all sides. The same is true
of the porcelain-like enamel with which our kitchen
iron ware is nowadays coated. So long as the enamel
holds it is all right but once it is broken through at
any point it begins to scale off and gets into our food.

METALS, OLD AND NEW 271

Obviously it would be better for some purposes if
we could coat our iron with another and less easily
oxidized metal than with such dissimilar substances as
paint or porcelain. Now the nearest relative to iron
is nickel, and a layer of this of any desired thickness
may be easily deposited by electricity upon any surface
however irregular. Nickel takes a bright polish and
keeps it well, so nickel plating has become the favorite
method of protection for small objects where the ex-
pense is not prohibitive. Copper plating is used for
fine wires. A sheet of iron dipped in melted tin comes
out coated with a thin adhesive layer of the latter metal.
Such tinned plate commonly known as **tin" has be-
come the favorite material for pans and cans. But if
the tin is scratched the iron beneath rusts more rap-
idly than if the tin were not there, for an electrolytic
action is set up and the iron, being the negative ele-
ment of the couple, suffers at the expense of the tin.

With zinc it is quite the opposite. Zinc is negative
toward iron, so when the two are in contact and ex-
posed to the weather the zinc is oxidized first. A zinc
plating affords the protection of a Swiss Guard, it holds
out as long as possible and when broken it perishes to
the last atom before it lets the oxygen get at the iron.
The zinc may be applied in four different ways. (1)
It may be deposited by electrolysis as in nickel plating,
but the zinc coating is more apt to be porous. (2) The
sheets or articles may be dipped in a bath of melted
zinc. This gives us the familiar ** galvanized iron,'*
the most useful and when well done the most effective
of rust preventives. Besides these older methods of
applying zinc there are now two new ones. (3) One

272 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

is the Schoop process by which a wire of zinc or otlner
metal is fed into an oxyhydrogen air blast of such heat
and power that it is projected as a spray of minute
drops with the speed of bullets and any object sub-
jected to the bombardment of this metallic mist receives
a coating as thick as desired. The zinc spray is so fine
and cool that it may be received on cloth, lace, or the
bare hand. The Schoop metallizing process has re-
cently been improved by the use of the electric current
instead of the blowpipe for melting the metal. Two
zinc wires connected with any electric system, prefer-
ably the direct, are fed into the ** pistol." Where the
wires meet an electric arc is set up and the melted zinc
is sprayed out by a jet of compressed air. (4) In the
Sherardizing process the articles are put into a tight
drum with zinc dust and heated to 800° F. The zino
at this temperature attacks the iron and forms a series
of alloys ranging from pure zinc on the top to pure
iron at the bottom of the coating. Even if this cracks
in part the iron is more or less protected from corro-
sion so long as any zinc remains. Aluminum is used
similarly in the calorizing process for coating iron,
copper or brass. First a surface alloy is formed by
heating the metal with aluminum powder. Then the
temperature is raised to a high degree so as to cause
the aluminum on the surface to diffuse into the metal
and afterwards it is again baked in contact with alumi-
num dust which puts upon it a protective plating of the
pure aluminum which does not oxidize.

Another way of protecting iron ware from rusting
is to rust it. This is a sort of prophylactic method like
that adopted by modem medicine where inoculation

METALS, OLD AND NEW 273

with a mild culture prevents a serious attack of the
disease. The action of air and water on iron forms a
series of compounds and mixtures of them. Those that
contain least oxygen are hard, black and magnetic like
iron itself. Those that have most oxygen are red and
yellow powders. By putting on a tight coating of the
black oxide we can prevent or hinder the oxidation from
going on into the pulverulent stage. This is done in
several ways. In the Bower-Barff process the articles
to be treated are put into a closed retort and a current
of superheated steam passed through for twenty min-
utes followed by a current of producer gas (carbon
monoxide), to reduce any higher oxides that may have
been formed. In the Gesner process a current of gaso-
line vapor is used as the reducing agent. The blueing
of watch hands, buckles and the like may be done by
dipping them into an oxidizing bath such as melted
saltpeter. But in order to afford complete protection
the layer of black oxide must be thickened by repeat-
ing the process which adds to the time and expense.
This causes a slight enlargement and the high tem-
perature often warps the ware so it is not suitable for
nicely adjusted parts of machinery and of course tools
would lose their temper by the heat.

A new method of rust proofing which is free from
these disadvantages is the phosphate process invented
by Thomas Watts Coslett, an English chemist, in 1907,
and developed in America by the Parker Company of
Detroit. This consists simply in dipping the sheet iron
or articles into a tank filled with a dilute solution of
iron phosphate heated nearly to the boiling point by
steam pipes. Bubbles of hydrogen stream off rapidly

274 CREATIVE CHEMISTBY

at first, then slower, and at the end of half an honr or
longer the action ceases, and the process is complete.
What has happened is that the iron has been converted
into a basic iron phosphate to a depth depending
upon the density of articles processed. Any one who
has studied elementary qualitative analysis will re-
member that when he added ammonia to his ** un-
known^' solution, iron and phosphoric acid, if present,
were precipitated together, or in other words, iron
phosphate is insoluble except in acids. Therefore a
superficial film of such phosphate will protect the iron
underneath except from acids. This film is not a coat-
ing added on the outside like paint and enamel or tin
and nickel plate. It is therefore not apt to scale off
and it does not increase the size of the article. No
high heat is required as in the Sherardizing and Bower-
Barff processes, so steel tools can be treated without
losing their temper or edge.

The deposit consisting of ferrous and ferric phos-
phates mixed with black iron oxide may be varied in
composition, texture and color. It is ordinarily a dull
gray and oiling gives a soft mat black more in accord-
ance with modem taste than the shiny nickel plating
that delighted our fathers. Even the military nowa-
days show more quiet taste than formerly and have
abandoned their glittering accoutrements.

The phosphate bath is not expensive and can be used
continuously for months by adding more of the con-
centrated solution to keep up the strength and remov-
ing the sludge that is precipitated. Besides the iron
the solution contains the phosphates of other metals
such as calcium or strontium, manganese, molybdenuniv

METALS, OLD AND NEW 275

or tungsten, according to the particular purpose.
Since the phosphating solution does not act on nickel
it may be used on articles that have been partly nickel-
plated so there may be produced, for instance, a bright
raised design against a dull black background. Then,
too, the surface left by the Parker process is finely
etched so it affords a good attachment for paint or
enamel if further protection is needed. Even if the
enamel does crack, the iron beneath is not so apt to
rust and scale off the coating.

These, then, are some of the methods which are now
being used to combat our eternal enemy, the rust that
doth corrupt. All of them are useful in their several
ways. No one of them is best for all purposes. The
claim of ** rust-proof " is no more to be taken seriously
than ** fire-proof.*' We should rather, if we were
finical, have to speak of "rust-resisting" coatings as
we do of *' slow-burning" buildings. Nature is in-
sidious and unceasing in her efforts to bring to ruip
the achievements of mankind and we need all the
weapons we can find to frustrate her destructive deter-
mination.

But it is not enough for us to make iron superficially
resistant to rust from the atmosphere. We should
like also to make it so that it would withstand corro-
sion by acids, then it could be used in place of the large
and expensive platinum or porcelain evaporating pans
and similar utensils employed in chemical works. This
requirement also has been met in the non-corrosive
forms of iron, which have come into use within the last
five years. One of these, "tantiron," invented by a
British metallurgist, Robert N. Lennox, in 1912, con-

276 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

tains 15 per cent, of silicon. Similar products are
known as "duriron" and *'Buflokast" in America,
**metilure" in France, "ileanite" in Italy and *'neu-
traleisen'' in Germany. It is a silvery- white close-
grained iron, very hard and rather brittle, somewhat
like cast iron but with silicon as the main additional
Ingredient in place of carbon. It is difficult to cut or
drill but may be ground into shape by the new abra-
sives. It is rustproof and is not attacked by sulfuric,
nitric or acetic acid, hot or cold, diluted or concen-
trated. It does not resist so well hydrochloric acid or
sulfur dioxide or alkalies.

The value of iron lies in its versatility. It is a dozen
metals in one. It can be made hard or soft, brittle or
malleable, tough or weak, resistant or flexible, elastic
or pliant, magnetic or non-magnetic, more or less con-
ductive to electricity, by slight changes of composition
or mere differences of treatment. No wonder that the
medieval mind ascribed these mysterious transforma-
tions to witchcraft. But the modern micrometallur-
gist, by etching the surface oY steel and photographing
it, shows it up as composite as a block of granite. He
is then able to pick out its component minerals, ferrite,
austenite, martensite, pearlite, graphite, cementite, and
to show how their abundance, shape and arrangement
contribute to the strength or weakness of the specimen.
The last of these constituents, cementite, is a definite
chemical compound, an iron carbide, FcaC, containing
6.6 per cent, of carbon, so hard as to scratch glass, very
brittle, and imparting these properties to hardened
steel and cast iron.

With this knowledge at his disposal the iron-maker

METALS, OLD AND NEWi 277

can work with his eyes open and so regulate his melt
as to cause these various constituents to crystallize out
as he wants them to. Besides, he is no longer confined
to the alloys of iron and carbon. He has ransacked the
chemical dictionary to find new elements to add to his
alloys, and some of these rarities have proved to pos-
sess great practical value. Vanadium, for instance,
used to be put into a fine print paragraph in the back of
the chemistry book, where the class did not get to it
until the term closed. Yet if it had not been for va-
nadium steel we should have no Ford cars. Tungsten,
too, was relegated to the rear, and if the student re-
membered it at all it was because it bothered him to
understand why its symbol should be W instead of T.
But the student of today studies his lesson in the light
ol a tungsten wire and relieves his mind by listening to
a phonograph record played with a **tungs-tone"
stylus. When I was assistant in chemistry an *' analy-
sis'' of steel con8isted merely in the determination of
its percentage of carbon, and I used to take Saturday
for it so I could have time enough to complete the com-
bustion. Now the chemists of a steel works ' laboratory
may have to determine also the tungsten, chromium,
vanadium, titanium, nickel, cobalt, phosphorus, molyb-
denum, manganese, silicon and sulfur, any or all of
them, and be spry about it, because if they do not get
the report out within fifteen minutes while the steel is
melting in the electrical furnace the whole batch of 75
tons may go wrong. I 'm glad I quit the laboratory
before they got to speeding up chemists so.

The quality of the steel depends upon the presence
and the relative proportions of these ingredients, and

278 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

a variation of a tenth of 1 per cent, in certain of them
will make a different metal out of it. For instance, the
steel becomes stronger and tougher as the proportion
of nickel is increased up to about 15 per cent. Raising
the percentage to 25 we get an alloy that does not rus^
or corrode and is non-magnetic, although both its com-
ponent metals, iron and nickel, are by themselves at-
tracted by the magnet. With 36 per cent, nickel and
5 per cent, manganese we get the alloy known as
"invar,** because it expands and contracts very little
with changes of temperature, A bar of the best form
of invar will expand less than one-millionth part of its
length for a rise of one degree Centigrade at ordinary
atmospheric temperature. For this reason it is used
in watches and measuring instruments. The alloy of
iron with 46 per cent, nickel is called "platinite" be-
cause its rate of expansion and contraction is the same
as platinum and glass, and so it can be used to replace
the platinum wire passing through the glass of aa
electric light bulb.

A manganese steel of 11 to 14 per cent, is too hard to
be machined. It has to be cast or ground into shape
and is used for burglar-proof safes and armor plate.
Chrome steel is also hard and tough and finds use in
files, ball bearings and projectiles. Titanium, which
the iron-maker used to regard as his implacable enemy,
has been drafted into service as a deoxidizer, increas-
ing the strength and elasticity of the steel. It is re-
ported from France that the addition of three-tenths
of 1 per cent, of zirconium to nickel steel has made it
more resis-tant to the German perforating bullets than

METALS, OLD AND NEW, 279

any steel hitherto known. The new "stainless" cut-
lery contains 12 to 14 per cent, of chromium.

With the introduction of harder steels came the need
of tougher tools to work them. Now the virtue of a
good tool steel is the same as of a good man. It must
be able to get hot without losing its temper. Steel of
the old-fashioned sort, as everybody knows, gets its
temper by being heated to redness and suddenly cooled
by quenching or plunging it into water or oil. But
when the point gets heated up again, as it does by
friction in a lathe, it softens and loses its cutting edge.
So the necessity of keeping the tool cool limited the
speed of the machine.

But about 1868 a Sheffield metallurgist, Kobert F.
Mushet, found that a piece of steel he was working
with did not require quenching to harden it. He had
it analyzed to discover the meaning of this peculiarity
and learned that it contained tungsten, a rare metal
unrecognized in the metallurgy of that day. Further
investigation showed that steel to which tungsten and
manganese or chromium had been added was tougher
and retained its temper at high temperature better than
ordinary carbon steel. Tools made from it could be
worked up to a white heat without losing their cutting
power. The new tools of this type invented by ** Effi-
ciency** Taylor at the Bethlehem Steel Works in the
nineties have revolutionized shop practice the world
over. A tool of the old sort could not cut at a rate
faster than thirty feet a minute without overheating,
but the new tungsten tools will plow through steel ten
, times as fast and can cut away a ton of the material in

^80 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

An hour. By means of these high-speed tools the
United States was able to turn out five times the muni-
tions that it could otherwise have done in the same
time. On the other hand, if Germany alone had pos-
sessed the secret of the modem steels no power could
have withstood her. A slight superiority in metal-
lurgy has been the deciding factor in many a battle.
Those of my readers who have had the advantages of
Sunday school training will recall the case described
in I Samuel 13 :19-22.

By means of these new metals armor plate has been
made invulnerable — except to projectiles pointed with
similar material. Flying has been made possible
through engines weighing no more than two pounds
per horse power. The cylinders of combustion engines
and the casing of cannon have been made to withstand
the unprecedented pressure and corrosive action of the
fiery gases evolved within. Castings are made so hard
that they cannot be cut — save with tools of the same
i3ort. In the high-speed tools now used 20 or 30 per
<jent. of the iron is displaced by other ingredients ; for
example, tungsten from 14 to 25 per cent., chromium
from 2 to 7 per cent., vanadium from % to ly^ per cent.,
carbon from .6 to .8 per cent., with perhaps cobalt up to
4 per cent. Molybdenum or uranium may replace part
of the tungsten.

Some of the newer alloys for high-speed tools con-
tain no iron at all. That which bears the poetic name
of star-stone, stellite, is composed of chromium, cobalt
and tungsten in varying proportions. Stellite keeps a
liard cutting edge and gets tougher as it gets hotter.
It is very hard and as good for jewelry as platinum

METALS, OLD AND NEW 281

except that it is not so expensive. Cooperite, its rival,
is an alloy of nickel and zirconium, stronger, lighter
and cheaper than stellite.

Before the war nearly half of the world 's supply of
tungsten ore (wolframite) came from Burma. But
although Burma had belonged to the British for a hun-
dred years they had not developed its mineral resources
and the tungsten trade was monopolized by the Ger-
mans. All the ore was shipped to G-ermany and the
British Admiralty was content to buy from the Ger-
mans what tungsten was needed for armor plate and
heavy guns. When the war broke out the British had
the ore supply, but were unable at first to work it be-
cause they were not familiar with the processes. Ger-
many, being short of tungsten, had to sneak over a little
from Baltimore in the submarine Deutschland. In the
United States before the war tungsten ore was selling
at $6.50 a unit, but by the beginning of 1916 it had
jumped to $85 a unit. A unit is 1 per cent, of tungsten
trioxide to the ton, that is, twenty pounds. Boulder
County, Colorado, and San Bernardino, California,
then had mining booms, reminding one of older times.
Between May and December, 1918, there was manufac-
tured in the United States more than 45,500,000 pounds
of tungsten steel containing some 8,000,000 pounds of
tungsten.

If tungsten ores were more abundant and the metal
more easily manipulated, it would displace steel for
many purposes. It is harder than steel or even quartz.
It never rusts and is insoluble in acids. Its expansion
by heat is one-third that of iron. It is more than twice
aa. heavy as iron and its melting point is twice as high«

282 CREATIVE CHEMISTEY

Its electrical resistance is half that of iron and its ten-
sile strength is a third greater than the strongest steel.
It can be worked into wire .0002 of an inch in diameter,
almost too thin to be seen, but as strong as copper wire
ten times the size.

The tungsten wires in the electric lamps are about
,03 of an inch in diameter, and they give three times
the light for the same consumption of electricity as the
old carbon filament. The American manufacturers of
the tungsten bulb have very appropriately named their
lamp "Mazda" after the light god of the Zoroastrians.
To get the tungsten into wire form was a problem that
long baffled the inventors of the world, for it was too
refractory to be melted in mass and too brittle to be
drawn. Dr. W. D. Coolidge succeeded in accomplish-
ing the feat in 1912 by reducing the tungstic acid by
hydrogen and molding the metallic powder into a has
by pressure. This is raised to a white heat in the elec-
tric furnace, taken out and rolled down, and the process
repeated some fifty times, until the wire is small enough
so it can be drawn at a red heat through diamond dies
of successively smaller apertures.

The German method of making the lamp filaments is
to squirt a mixture of tungsten powder and thorium
oxide through a perforated diamond of the desired
diameter. The filament so produced is drawn through
a chamber heated to 2500° C. at a velocity of eight feet
an hour, which crystallizes the tungsten into a continu-
ous thread.

The first metallic filament used in the electric light
on a commercial scale was made of tantalum, the metal
of Tantalus. In the period 1905-1911 over 100,000,000

METALS, OLD AND NEW 283

tantalus lamps were sold, bnt tungsten displaced them
as soon as that metal could be drawn into wire.

A recent rival of tungsten both as a filament for
lamps and hardener for steel is molybdenum. One
pound of this metal will impart more resiliency to steel
than three or four pounds of tungsten. The molybde-
num steel, because it does not easily crack, is said to be
serviceable for armor-piercing shells, gun linings, air-
plane struts, automobile axles and propeller shafts.
In combination with its rival as a tungsten-molybdenum
alloy it is capable of taking the place of the intolerably
expensive platinum, for it resists corrosion when used
for spark plugs and tooth plugs. European steel men
have taken to molybdenum more than Americans. The
salts of this metal can be used in dyeing and photog-
raphy.

Calcium, magnesium and aluminum, common enough
in their compounds, have only come into use as metals
since the invention of the electric furnace. Now the
photographer uses magnesium powder for his flashlight
when he wants to take a picture of his friends inside
the house, and the aviator uses it when he wants to take
a picture of his enemies on the open field. The flares
prepared by our Government for the war consist of a
sheet iron cylinder, four feet long and six inches thick,
containing a stick of magnesium attached to a tightly
rolled silk parachute twenty feet in diameter when
expanded. The whole weighed 32 pounds. On being
dropped from the plane by pressing a button, the rush
of air set spinning a pinwheel at the bottom which
ignited the magnesium stick and detonated a charge of
black powder sufficient to throw off the case and release

284 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

the parachute. The burning flare gave off a light of
320,000 candle power lasting for ten minutes as the
parachute slowly descended. This illuminated the
ground on the darkest night sufficiently for the airman
to aim his bombs or to take photographs.

The addition of 5 or 10 per cent, of magnesium to
aluminum gives an alloy (magnalium) that is almost
as light as aluminum and almost as strong as steel.
An alloy of 90 per cent, aluminum and 10 per cent,
calcium is lighter and harder than aluminum and more
resistant to corrosion. The latest German airplane,
the ** Junker,'* was made entirely of duralumin. Even
the wings were formed of corrugated sheets of this
alloy instead of the usual doped cotton-cloth. Duralu-
min is composed of about 85 per cent, of aluminum, 5
per cent, of copper, 5 per cent, of zinc and 2 per cent,
of tin.

When platinum was first discovered it was so cheap
that ingots of it were gilded and sold as gold bricks to
unwary purchasers. The Russian Grovernment used it
as we use nickel, for making small coins. But this is an
exception to the rule that the demand creates the sup-
ply. Platinum is really a **rare metal," not merely an
unfamiliar one. Nowhere except in the Urals is it
found in quantity, and since it seems indispensable in
chemical and electrical appliances, the price has con-
tinually gone up. Russia collapsed into chaos just
when the war work made the heaviest demand for plati-
num, so the governments had to put a stop to its use for
jewelry and photography. The **gold brick'* scheme
would now have to be reversed, for gold is used as a
cheaper metal to * * adulterate * ' platinum. All the mem-

METALS, OLD AND NEW 285

bers of the platinum family, formerly ignored, were
pressed into service, palladium, rhodium, osmium, irid-
ium, and these, alloyed with gold or silver, were em-
ployed more or less satisfactorily by the dentist, chem-
ist and electrician as substitutes for the platinum of
which they had been deprived. One of these alloys,
composed of 20 per cent, palladium and 80 per cent.
gold, and bearing the telescoped name of ''palau" (pal-
ladium au-rum) makes very acceptable crucibles for the
laboratory and only costs half as much as platinum.
**Rhotanium" is a similar alloy recently introduced.
The points of our gold pens are tipped with an osmium-
iridium alloy. It is a pity that this family of noble
metals is so restricted, for they are unsurpassed in
tenacity and incorruptibility. They could be of great
service to the world in war and peace. As the **Bad
Child" says in his ''Book of Beasts":

I shoot the hippopotamus with bullets made of platinum.
Because if I use leaden ones, his hide is sure to flatten 'em.

Along in the latter half of the last century chemists
had begun to perceive certain regularities and relation-
ships among the various elements, so they conceived
the idea that some sort of a pigeon-hole scheme might
be devised in which the elements could be filed away in
the order of their atomic weights so that one could see
just how a certain element, known or unknown, would
behave from merely observing its position in the series.
Mendeleef, a Russian chemist, devised the most in-
genious of such systems called the ''periodic law" and
gave proof that there was something in his theory by

286 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

predicting the properties of three metallic elements,
then unknown but for which his arrangement showed
three empty pigeon-holes. Sixteen years later all three
of these predicted elements had been discovered, one
by a Frenchman, one by a German and one by a Scan-
dinavian, and named from patriotic impulse, gallium,
germanium and scandium. This was a triumph of sci-
entific prescience as striking as the mathematical proof
of the existence of the planet Neptune by Leverrier
before it had been found by the telescope.

But although Mendeleef's law told "the truth," it
gradually became evident that it did not tell "the whole
truth and nothing but the truth,*' as the lawyers put it.
As usually happens in the history of science the hypoth-
esis was found not to explain things so simply and
completely as was at first assumed. The anomalies in
the arrangement did not disappear on closer study, but
stuck out more conspicuously. Though Mendeleef had
pointed out three missing links, he had failed to make
provision for a whole group of elements since discov-
ered, the inert gases of the helium-argon group. As
we now know, the scheme was built upon the false as-
sumptions that the elements are immutable and that
their atomic weights are invariable.

The elements that the chemists had most difficulty in
sorting out and identifying were the heavy metals
found in the "rare earths.*' There were about twenty
of them so mixed up together and so much alike as to
baffle all ordinary means of separating them. For a
hundred years chemists worked over them and quar-
reled over them before they discovered that they had
a commercial value. It was a problem as remote from

METALS, OLD AND NEW 287

practicality as any that could be conceived. The man
in the street did not see why chemists should care
whether there were two didymiums any more than why
theologians should care whether there were two Isaiahs.
But all of a sudden, in 1885, the chemical puzzle became
a business proposition. The rare earths became house-
hold utensils and it made a big difference with our
monthly gas bills whether the ceria and the thoria in
the burner mantles were absolutely pure or contained
traces of some of the other elements that were so dif-
ficult to separate.

This sudden change of venue from pure to applied
science came about through a Viennese chemist, Dr.^
Carl Auer, later and in consequence known as Baron
Auer von Welsbach. He was trying to sort out the
rare earths by means of the spectroscopic method,
which consists ordinarily in dipping a platinum wire
into a solution of the unknown substance and holding
it in a colorless gas flame. As it burns off, each ele-
ment gives a characteristic color to the flame, which is
seen as a series of lines when looked at through the
spectroscope. But the flash of the flame from the plati-
num wire was too brief to be studied, so Dr. Auer hit
upon the plan of soaking a thread in the liquid and
putting this in the gas jet. The cotton of course
burned off at once, but the earths held together and
when heated gave off a brilliant white light, very much
like the calcium or limelight which is produced by heat-
ing a stick of quicklime in the oxy-hydrogen flame.
But these rare earths do not require any such intense
heat as that, for they will glow in an ordinary gas jet.

So the Welsbach mantle burner came into use every-

288 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

where and rescued the coal gas business from the de-
struction threatened by the electric light. It was no
longer necessary to enrich the gas with oil to make its
flame luminous, for a cheaper fuel gas such as is used
for a gas stove will give, with a mantle, a fine white
light of much higher candle power than the ordinary
gas jet. The mantles are knit in narrow cylinders on
machines, cut off at suitable lengths, soaked in a solu-
tion of the salts of the rare earths and dried. Artificial
silk (viscose) has been found better than cotton thread
for the mantles, for it is solid, not hollow, more uniform
in quality and continuous instead of being broken up
into one-inch fibers. There is a great deal of difference
in the quality of these mantles, as every one who has
used them knows. Some that give a bright glow at
first with the gas-cock only half open will soon break
up or grow dull and require more gas to get any kind
of a light out of them. Others will last long and grow
better to the last. Slight impurities in the earths or
the gas will speedily spoil the light. The best results
are obtained from a mixture of 99 parts thoria and 1
part ceria. It is the ceria that gives the light, yet a
little more of it will lower the luminosity.

The non-chemical reader is apt to be confused by the
strange names and their varied terminations, but he
need not be when he learns that new metals are given
names ending in -um, such as sodium, cerium, thorium,
and that their oxides (compounds with oxygen, the
earths) are given the termination -a, like soda, ceria,
thoria. So when he sees a name ending in -um let him
picture to himself a metal, any metal since they mostly
look alike, lead or silver, for example. And when he

METALS, OLD AND NEW 289

comes across a name ending in -a he may imagine a
white powder like lime. Thorium, for instance, is, as
its name implies, a metal named after the thunder god
Thor, to whom we dedicate one day in each week,
Thursday. Cerium gets its name from the Roman
goddess of agriculture by way of the asteroid.

The chief sources of the material for the Welsbach
burners is monazite, a glittering yellow sand composed
of phosphate of cerium with some 5 per cent, of thor-
ium. In 1916 the United States imported 2,500,000
pounds of monazite from Brazil and India, most of
which used to go to Germany. In 1895 we got over a
million and a half pounds from the Carolinas, but the
foreign sand is richer and cheaper. The price of the
salts of the rare metals fluctuates wildly. In 1895 thor-
ium nitrate sold at $200 a pound; in 1913 it fell to $2.60,
and in 1916 it rose to $8.

Since the monazite contains more cerium than thor-
ium and the mantles made from it contain more thorium
than cerium, there is a superfluity of cerium. The
manufacturers give away a pound of cerium salts with
every purchase of a hundred pounds of thorium salts.
It annoyed Welsbach to see the cerium residues thrown
away and accumulating around his mantle factory, so
he set out to find some use for it. He reduced the
mixed earths to a metallic form and found that it gave
off a shower of sparks when scratched. An alloy of
cerium with 30 or 35 per cent, of iron proved the best
and was put on the market in the form of automatic
lighters. A big business was soon built up in Austria
on the basis of this obscure chemical element rescued
from the dump-heap. The sale of the cerite lighters

290 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

in France threatened to upset the finances of the re-
public, which derived large revenue from its monopoly
of match-making, so the French Government imposed a
tax upon every man who carried one. American tour-
ists who bought these lighters in Germany used to be
much annoyed at being held up on the French frontier
and compelled to take out a license. During the war
the cerium sparklers were much used in the trenches
for lighting cigarettes, but — as those who have seen
**The Better 'Ole" will know — they sometimes fail to
strike fire. Auer-metal or cerium-iron alloy was used
in munitions to ignite hand grenades and to blazon the
flight of trailer shells. There are many other pyro-
phoric (light-producing) alloys, including steel, which
our ancestors used with flint before matches and per-
cussion caps were invented.

There are more than fifty metals known and not
half of them have come into common use, so there is
still plenty of room for the expansion of the science of
metallurgy. If the reader has not forgotten his arith-
metic of permutations he can calculate how many dif-
ferent alloys may be formed by varying the combina-
tions and proportions of these fifty. We have seen
how quickly elements formerly known only to chem-
ists— and to some of them known only by name — ^have
become indispensable in our daily life. Any one of
those still unutilized may be found to have peculiar
properties that fit it for filling a long unfelt want in
modem civilization.

Who, for instance, will find a use for gallium, the
metal of France? It was described in 1869 by Men-
deleef in advance of its advent and has been known in,

METALS, OLD AND NEW 291

person since 1875, but has not yet been set to work.
It is such a remarkable metal that it must be good for
something. If you saw it in a museum case on a cold
day you might take it to be a piece of aluminum, but if
the curator let you hold it in your hand — which he
won't — ^it would melt and run over the floor like mer-
cury. The melting point is 87° Fahr. It might be
used in thermometers for measuring temperatures
above the boiling point of mercury were it not for the
peculiar fact that gallium wets glass so it sticks to the
side of the tube instead of forming a clear convex curve
on top like mercury.

Then there is columbium, the American metal. It is
strange that an element named after Columbia should
prove so impractical. Columbium is a metal closely
resembling tantalum and tantalum found a use as elec-
tric light filaments. A columbium l<amp should appeal
to our patriotism.

The so-called "rare elements'* are really abundant
enough considering the earth's crust as a whole, though
they are so thinly scattered that they are usually over-
looked and hard to extract. But whenever one of them
is found valuable it is soon found available. A sys-
tematic search generally reveals it somewhere in suffi-
cient quantity to be worked. Who, then, will be the
first to discover a use for indium, germanium, terbium,
thulium, lanthanum, neodymium, scandium, samarium
and others as unknown to us as tungsten was to our
fathers 1

As evidence of the statement that if does not matter
how rare an element may be it will come into common
use if it is found to be commonly useful, we may refer

292 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

to radium. A good rich specimen of radium ore, pitch-
blende, may contain as much as one part in 4,000,000.
Madame Curie, the brilliant Polish Parisian, had to
work for years before she could prove to the world that
such an element existed and for years afterwards be-
fore she could get the metal out. Yet now we can all
afford a bit of radium to light up our watdh dials in the
dark. The amount needed for this is infinitesimal. If
it were more it would scorch our skins, for radium is an
element in eruption. The atom throws off corpuscles
at intervals as a Roman candle throws off blazing balls.
Some of these particles, the alpha rays, are atoms of
another element, helium, charged with positive elec-
tricity and are ejected with a velocity of 18,000 miles
a seoond. Some of them, the beta rays, are negative
electrons, only about one seven-thousandth the size of
the others, but are ejected with almost the speed of
light, 186,000 miles a second. If one of the alpha pro-
jectiles strikes a slice of zinc sulfide it makes a splash
of light big enough to be seen with a microscope, so we
can now follow the flight of a single atom. The lumi-
nous watch dials consist of a coating of zinc sulfide
under continual bombardment by the radium projec-
tiles. Sir William Crookes invented this radium light
apparatus and called it a ** spinthariscope, " which is
Greek for ** spark-seer. "

Evidently if radium is so wasteful of its substance it
cannot last forever nor could it have forever existed^
The elements then are not necessarily eternal and im*
mutable, as used to be supposed. They have a natural
length of life ; they are born and die and propagate, at
least some of them do. Radium, for instance, is the

METALS, OLD AND NEW 293

offspring of ionium, which is the great-great-grandson
of uranium, the heaviest of known elements. Putting
this chemical genealogy into biblical language we might
say: Uranium lived 5,000,000,000 years and begot
Uranium XI, which lived 24.6 days and begot Uranium
X2, which lived 69 seconds and begot Uranium 2,
which lived 2,000,000 years and begot Ionium, which
lived 200,000 years and begot Radium, which lived 1850
years and begot Niton, which lived 3.85 days and begot
Radium A, which lived 3 minutes and begot Radium
B, which lived 26.8 minutes and begot Radium C, which
lived 19.5 minutes and begot Radium D, which lived 12
years and begot Radium E, which lived 5 days and
begot Polonium, which lived 136 days and begot Lead.
The figures I have given are the times when half thfe
parent substance has gone over into the next genera-
tion. It will be seen that the chemist is even more lib-
i^ral in his allowance of longevity than was Moses with
the patriarchs. It appears from the above that half of
the radium in any given specimen will be transformed
in about 2000 years. Half of what is left will disap-
pear in the next 2000 years, half of that in the next
2000 and so on. The reader can figure out for himself
when it will all be gone. He will then have the answer
to the old Eleatic conundrum of when Achilles will over
take the tortoise. But we may say that after 100,000
years there would not be left any radium worth men-
tioning, or in other words practically all the radium now
in existence is younger than the human race. The lead
that is found in uranium and has presumably descended
from uranium, behaves like other lead but is lighter.
Its atomic weight is only 206, while ordinary lead

294 CREAI^IVE CHEMlSTllY

weighs 207. It appears then that the saane chemical
element may have different atomic weights according
to its ancestry, while on the other hand different chemi-
cal elements may have the same atomic weight. This
would have seemed shocking heresy to the chemists of
the last century, who prided themselves on the immu-
tability of the elements and did not take into considera-
tion their past life or heredity. The study of these
radioactive elements has led to a new atomic theory.
I suppose most of us in our youth used to imagine the
atom as a httle round hard ball, but now it is conceived
as a sort of solar system with an electropositive nu-
cleus acting as the sun and negative electrons revolving
around it like the planets. The number of free posi-
tive electrons in the nucleus varies from one in hydro-
gen to 92 in uranium. This leaves room for 92 possible
elements and of these all but six are more or less cer-
tainly known and definitely placed in the scheme. The
atom, of uranium, weighing 238 times the atom of hy-
drogen, is the heaviest known and therefore the ulti-
mate limit of the elements, though it is possible that
elements may be found beyond it just as the planet
Neptune was discovered outside the orbit of Uranus.
Considering the position of uranium and its numerous
progeny as mentioned above, it is quite appropriate
that this element should bear the name of the father of
all the gods.

In these radioactive elements we have come upon
sources of energy such as was never dreamed of in our
philosophy. The most striking peculiarity of radium
is that it is always a little warmer than its surround-
ings, no matter how warm these may be. Slowly,

METALS, OLD AND NEW 295

spontaneously and continuously, it decomposes and we
know no way of hastening or of checking it. "Whether
it is cooled in liquefied air or heated to its melting
point the change goes on just the same. An ounce of
radium salt will give out enough heat in one hour to
melt an ounce of ice and in the next hour will raise this
water to the boiling paint, and so on again and again
without cessation for years, a fire without fuel, a real-
ization of the philosopher's lamp that the alchemists
sought in vain. The total energy so emitted is mil-
lions of times greater than that produced by any chemi-
cal combination such as the union of oxygen and hy-
drogen to form water. From the heavy white salt
ttiere is continually rising a taint fire-mist like the
mll-o'-the-wisp over a swamp. This gas is known as
the emanation or niton, ''the shining one." A pound
of niton would give off energy at the rate of 23,000
horsepower; fine stuff to run a steamer, one would
think, but we must remember that it does not last. By
the sixth day the power would have fallen off by half.
Besides, no one would dare to serve as engineer, for the
radiation will rot away the flesh of a living man who
comes near it, causing gnawing ulcers or curing them.
It will not only break down the complex and delicate
molecules of organic matter but will attack the atom it-
self, changing, it is believed, one element into another,
again the fulfilment of a dream of the alchemists. And
its rays, unseen and unf elt by us, are yet strong enough
to penetrate an armorplate and photograph what is
behind it.

But radium is not the most mysterious of the ele-
ments but the least so. It is giving out the secret that

296 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

the other elements have kept. It suggests to us that
all the other elements in proportion to their weight have
concealed within them similar stores of energy. As-
tronomers have long dazzled our imaginations by calcu-
lating the horsepower of the world, making us feel
cheap in talking about our steam engines and dynamos
when a minutest fraction of the waste dynamic energy
of the solar system would make us all as rich as mil-
lionaires. But the heavenly bodies are too big for us
to utilize in this practical fashion.

And now the chemists have become as exasperating
as the astronomers, for they give us a glimpse of incal-
culable wealth in the meanest substance. For wealth
is measured by the available energy of the world, and
if a few ounces of anything would drive an engine or
manufacture nitrogenous fertilizer from the air all our
troubles would be over. Kipling in his sketch, *'With
the Night Mail," and Wells in his novel, ''The World
Set Free," stretched their imaginations in trying to
tell us what it would mean to have command of this
power, but they are a little hazy in their descriptions
of the machinery by which it is utilized. The atom is
as much beyond our reach as the moon. We cannot rob
its vault of the treasure.

READING REFERENCES

The foregoing pages will not have achieved their aim un-
less their readers have become sufficiently interested in the
developments of industrial chemistry to desire to pursue the
subject further in some of its branches. Assuming such in-
terest has been aroused, I am giving below a few references to
books and articles which may serve to set the reader upon the
right track for additional information. To follow the rapid
progress of applied science it is necessary to read continu-
ously such periodicals as the Journal of Industrial and Engi-
neering Chemistry (NeW York), Metallurgical and Chemical
Engineering (New York), Journal of the Society of Chemi-
cal Industry (London), Chemical Abstracts (published by
the American Chemical Society, Easton, Pa.), and the vari-
ous journals devoted to special trades. The reader may need
to be reminded that the United States Government publishes
for free distribution or at low price annual volumes or spe-
cial reports dealing with science and industry. Among these
may be mentioned "Yearbook of the Department of Agricul-
ture"; "Mineral Resources of the United States," published
by the United States Geological Survey in two annual vol-
umes, Vol. I on the metals and Vol. II on the non-metals;
the "Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution," con-
taining selected articles on pure and applied science; the
daily "Commerce Reports" and special bulletins of Depart-
ment of Commerce. Write for lists of publications of these
departments.

The following books on industrial chemistry in general are
recommended for reading and reference : * * The Chemistry of
Commerce" and "Some Chemical Problems of To-Day" by

297

298 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

Eobert Kennedy Duncan (Harpers, N. Y.), "Modem Chem-
istry and Its Wonders" by Martin (Van Nostrand), ** Chem-
ical Discovery and Invention in the Twentieth Century" by
Sir William A. Tilden (Dutton, N. Y.), ** Discoveries and In-
ventions of the Twentieth Century" by Edward Cressy (Dut-
ton), "Industrial Chemistry" by Allen Rogers (Van Nos-
trand) .

"Everyman's Chemistry" by Ell wood Hendrick (Harpers,
Modem Science Series) is written in a lively style and as-
sumes no previous knowledge of chemistry from the reader.
The chapters on cellulose, gums, sugars and oils are particu-
larly interesting. "Chemistry of Familiar Things" by S. S.
Sadtler (Lippincott) is both comprehensive and compre-
hensible.

The following are intended for young readers but are not
to be despised by their elders who may wish to start in on an
easy up-grade: "Chemistry of Common Things" (AUyn &
Bacon, Boston) is a popular high school text-book but differ-
ing from most text-books in being readable and attractive.
Its descriptions of industrial processes are brief but clear.
The "Achievements of Chemical Science" by James C. Philip
(Macmillan) is a handy little book, easy reading for pupils.
"Introduction to the Study of Science" by W. P. Smith and
,B. G. Jewett (Macmillan) touches upon chemical topics in a
simple way.

On the history of commerce and the effect of inventions on
society the following titles may be suggested: "Outlines of
Industrial History" by E. Cressy (Macmillan) ; "The Origin
of Invention," a study of primitive industry, by O. T. Mason
(Scribner) ; "The Romance of Commerce" by Gordon Sel-
bridge (Lane) ; "Industrial and Commercial Geography" or
"Commerce and Industry" by J. Russell Smith (Holt);
"Handbook of Commercial Geography" by G. G. Chisholm
(Longmans).

The newer theories of chemistry and the constitution of the

BEADING KEFERENCES 299

atom are explained in "The Realities of Modern Science** by
John Mills (Macmillan), and "The Electron" by R. A. Milli-
kan (University of Chicago Press), but both require a knowl-
edge of mathematics. The little book on "Matter and
Energy" by Frederick Soddy (Holt) is better adapted to the
general reader. The most recent text-book is the "Introduc-
tion to General Chemistry" by H. N. McCoy and E. M. Terry.
(Chicago, 1919.)

CHAPTER n

The reader who may be interested in following up this sub-
ject will find reference^ to all the literature in the summary
by Helen R. Hosmer, of the Research Laboratory of the Gen»
eral Electric Company, in the Journal of Industrial and Engu
Tieering Chemistry, New York, for April, 1917. Bucher's pa-
per may be found in the same journal for March, and the issue
for September contains a full report of the action of U. S.
Government and a comparison of the various processes. Send
fifteen cents to the U. S. Department of Commerce (or to the
nearest custom house) for Bulletin No. 52, Special Agents
Series on "Utilization of Atmospheric Nitrogen" by T. H.
Norton. The Smithsonian Institution of Washington has is-
sued a pamphlet on "Sources of Nitrogen Compounds in the
United States. ' * In the 1913 report of the Smithsonian Insti-
tution there are two fine articles on this subject : * ' The Manu-
facture of Nitrates from the Atmosphere" and "The Distri-
bution of Mankind," which discusses Sir William Crookes*
prediction of the exhaustion of wheat land. The D. Van Nos-
trand Co., New York, publishes a monograph on "Fixation of
Atmospheric Nitrogen" by J. Knox, also "TNT and Other
Nitrotoluenes" by G. C. Smith. The American Cyanamid
Company, New York, gives out some attractive literature on
their process.

"American Munitions 1917-1918," the report of Benedict
Crowell, Director of Munitions, to the Secretary of War, gives

300 CREATIVE CHEMISTEY

a fully illustrated account of the manufacture of arms, ex-
plosives and toxic gases. Our war experience in the * * Oxida-
tion of Ammonia" is told by C. L. Parsons in Journal of In-
dustrial and Engineering Chemistry, June, 1919, and various
other articles on the government munition work appeared in
the same journal in the first half of 1919. **The Muscle
Shoals Nitrate Plant" in Chemical and Metallurgical Engi-
neering, January, 1919.

CHAPTER m

The Department of Agriculture or your congressman will
send you literature on the production and use of fertilizM«.
From your state agricultural experiment station you can pro-
cure information as to local needs and products. Consult tiie
articles on potash salts and phosphate rock in the latest vol-
ume of "Mineral Eesources of the United States," Part II
Non-Metals (published free by the U. S. Geological Survey).
Also consult the latest Yearbook of the Department of Agri-
culture. For self-instruction, problems and experiments get
"Extension Course in Soils," Bulletin No. 355, U. S. Dept.
of Agric. A list of all government publications on * * Soil and
Fertilizers" is sent free by Superintendent of Documents,
Washington. The Journal of 'Industrial and Engineering
Chemistry for July, 1917, publishes an article by W. C.
Ebaugh on "Potash and a World Emergency," and various
articles on American sources of potash appeared in the same
Journal October, 1918, and February, 1918. Bulletin 102,
Part 2, of the United States National Museum contains aa.
interpretation of the fertilizer situation in 1917 by J. B.
Poque. On new potash deposits in Alsace and elsewhere see
Scientific American Supplement, September 14, 1918.

CHAPTER IV

Send ten cents to the Department of Commerce, Washing-
ton, for "Dyestuffs for American Textile and Oth«r Indus-

BEADING REFEKENCES 301

tries," by Thomas H. Norton, Special Agents' Series, No. 96.
A more technical bulletin by the same author is "Artificial
Dyestuffs Used in the United States," Special Agents' Series,
No. 121, thirty cents. ''Dyestuff Situation in U. S.," Special
Agents' Series, No. Ill, five cents. ** Coal-Tar Products," by
H. G. Porter, Technical Paper 89, Bureau of Mines, Depart-
ment of the Interior, five cents. "Wealth in Waste," by
Waldemar Kaempfert, McCUire's, April, 1917. "The Evo-
lution of Artificial Dyestuffs," by Thomas H. Norton, Scien-
Ufic American, July 21, 1917. "Germany's Commercial Pre-
paredness for Peace," by James Armstrong, Scientific Ameri-
can, January 29, 1916. "The Conquest of Commerce" and
"American Made," by Edwin E. Slosson in The Independent
of September 6 and October 11, 1915. The H. Koppers Com-
pany, Pittsburgh, give out an illustrated pamphlet on their
** By-Product Coke and Gas Ovens." The addresses delivered
during the war on * * The Aniline Color, Dyestuff and Chemical
Conditions, " by I. F. Stone, president of the National Aniline
and Chemical Company, have been collected in a volume by
the author. For "Dyestuffs as Medicinal Agents" by G.
Heyl, see Color Trade Journal, vol. 4, p. 73, 1919. "The
Chemistry of Synthetic Drugs" by Percy May, and "Color
in Relation to Chemical Constitution" by E. R. Watson are
published in Longmans' "Monographs on Industrial Chem-
istry." "Enemy Property in the United States" by A.
Mitchell Palmer in Saturday Evening Post, July 19, 1919,
tells of how Germany monopolized chemical industry. "The
Carbonization of Coal" by V. B. Lewis (Van Nostrand, 1912).
"Research in the Tar Dye Industry" by B. C. Hesse in Jour-
nal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry, September,
1916.

Kekule tells how he discovered the constitution of benzene
in the Berichte der Deutschen chemischen Gesellschaft,
V. XXIII, I, p. 1306. I have quoted it with some other in-
ttanees of dream discoveries in The Independent of Jan. 26,

302 CREATIVE CHEMISTKY

1918. Even this innocent scientific vision has not escaped
the foul touch of the Freudians. Dr. Alfred Robitsek in
**Symbolisches Denken in der chemischen Forschung," Imago,
V. I, p. 83, has deduced from it that Kekule was morally
guilty of the crime of CEdipus as well as minor misdemeanors.

CHAPTER V

Read up on the methods of extracting perfumes from flow-
ers in any encyclopedia or in Duncan's "Chemistry of Com-
merce" or Tilden's "Chemical Discovery in the Twentieth
Century" or Rogers' "Industrial Chemistry."

The pamphlet containing a synopsis of the lectures by the
late Alois von Isakovics on "Synthetic Perfumes and Fla-
vors, ' ' published by the Synfleur Scientific Laboratories, Mon-
ticello, New York, is immensely interesting. Van Dyk & Co.,
.New York, issue a pamphlet on the composition of oil of rose.
Gildemeister's "The Volatile Oils" is excellent on the history
©f the subject. Walter's "Manual for the Essence Industry"
(Wiley) gives methods and recipes. Parry's "Chemistry of
Essential Oils and Artificial Perfumes," 1918 edition.
** Chemistry and Odoriferous Bodies Since 1914" by 6. Satie
in Chemie et Industrie, vol. II, p. 271, 393. "Odor and
Chemical Constitution," Chemical Abstracts, 1917, p. 3171^
and Journal of Society for Chemical Industry, v. 36, p. 942.

CHAPTER VI

The bulletin on "By-Products of the Lumber Industry" by
H. K. Benson (published by Department of Commerce, Wash-
ington, 10 cents) contains a description of paper-making and
wood distillation. There is a good article on cellulose prod-
nets by H, S. Mork in Journal of the Franklin Institute, Sep-
tember, 1917, and in Paper, September 26, 1917. The Gov-
ernment Forest Products Laboratory at Madison, Wisconsin,
publishes technical papers on distillation of wood, etc. The
Forest Service of the U. S. Department of Agriculture is the

BEADING REFERENCES 303

chief source of information on forestry. The standard author-
ity is Cross and Bevans' "Cellulose." For the acetates see
the eighth volume of Worden's "Technology of the Cellulose
Esters."

CHAPTER Vn

The speeches made when Hyatt was awarded the Perkin
medal by the American Chemical Society for the discovery of
celluloid may be found in the Journal of the Society of Chem-
ical Industry for 1914, p. 225. In 1916 Baekeland received
the same medal, and the proceedings are reported in the same
Journal, v. 35, p. 285.

A comprehensive technical paper with bibliography on
"Synthetic Resins" by L. V. Redman appeared in the Journal
of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry, January, 1914.
The controversy over patent rights may be followed in the
aame Journal, v. 8 (1915), p. 1171, and v. 9 (1916), p. 2Q'Z,
The "Effects of Heat on Celluloid" have been examined \yy
the Bureau of Standards, Washington (Technological Paper
No. 98), abstract in Scientific American Supplement, June 29,
1918.

For casein see Tague*s article in Rogers* "Industrial Chem-
istry" (Van Nostrand). See also Worden's "Nitrocellulose
Industry" and "Technology of the Cellulose Esters" (Van
Nostrand); Hodgson's "Celluloid" and Cross and Bevan's
"Cellulose."

For references to recent research and new patent specifica-
tions on artificial plastics, resins, rubber, leather, wood, etc.,
see the current numbers of Chemical Abstracts (Easton, Pa.)
and such journals as the India Rubber Journal, Paper, Tex-
tile World, Leather World and Journal of American Leather
Chemical Association.

The General Bakelite Company, New York, the Redmanol
Products Company, Chicago, the Condensite Company, Bloom-
field, N. J., the Arlington Company, New York (handling

304 CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

pyralin), give out advertising literature regarding their re.
spective products.

CHAPTER vm

Sir William Tilden's "Chemical Discovery and Invention
in the Twentieth Century" (E. P. Button & Co.) contains a
readable chapter on rubber with references to his own dis-
covery. The "Wonder Book of Rubber," issued by the B. F.
Goodrich Rubber Company, Akron, Ohio, gives an interesting
account of their industry. lies: "Leading American In-
ventors" (Henry Holt & Co.) contains a life of Goodyear,
the discoverer of vulcanization. Potts: "Chemistry of the
Rubber Industry, 1912." The Rubber Industry: Report of
the International Rubber Congress, 1914. Pond : ' ' Review of
Pioneer Work in Rubber Synthesis ' ' in Journal of the Ameri-
can Chemical Society, 1914. King: "Synthetic Rubber" in
Metallurgical and Chemical Engineering, May 1, 1917. Cas-
tellan: "L 'Industrie caoutchouciere, " doctor's thesis, Uni ver-
ity of Paris, 1915. The India Rubber World, New York, all
numbers, especially * ' What I Saw in the Philippines, ' ' by the
Editor, 1917. Pearson: "Production of Guayule Rubber,"
Commerce Reports, 1918, and India Rubber World, 1919.
"Historical Sketch of Chemistry of Rubber" by S. C. Brad-
ford in Science Progress, v. II, p. 1.

CHAPTER IX

"The Cane Sugar Industry" (Bulletin No. 53, Miscellane-
ous Series, Department of Commerce, 50 cents) gives agricul-
tural and manufacturing costs in Hawaii, Porto Rico, Louisi-
ana and Cuba.

"Sugar and Its Value as Food," by Mary Hinman Abel.
(Farmer's Bulletin No. 535, Department of Agriculture^
free. )

"Production of Sugar in the United States and Foreign

BEADING REFERENCES 305

Countries/* by Perry Elliott. (Department of Agriculiure,
10 cents.)

''Conditions in the Sugar Market January to October,
1917," a pamphlet published by the American Sugar Refining
Company, 117 WaU Street, New York, gives an admirable suri
yey of the present situation as seen by the refiners.

"Cuban Cane Sugar," by Robert Wiles, 1916 (Indian-
apolis: Bobbs-Merrill Co., 75 cents), an attractive little bodfec
in simple language.

"The "World's Cane Sugar Industry, Past and Present," bj^
(H. C. P. Geering.

"The Story of Sugar," by Prof. G. T. Surface of Yalej
XAppleton, 1910). A very interesting and reliable book.

The "Digestibility of Glucose" is discussed in Journal of
Industrial and Engmeering Chemistry, August, 1917,
"Utilization of Beet Molasses" in Metallurgical and Chemical
Engineering, April 5, 1917*

GHAPTEB Z

"Maize," by Edward Alber (Bulletin of the Pan-Americafl
Union, January, 1915).

"Glucose," by Geo. W. Rolfe (Scientifie American Supple-
fnent, May 15 or November 6, 1915, and in Roger's "Indus-
trial Chemistry").

On making ethyl alcohol from wood, see Bulletin No. 110,
Special Agents' Series, Department of Commerce (10 cents),
and an article by F. "W. Kressmann in Metallurgical and Chem^
ical Engineering, July 15, 1916. On the manufacture and
uses of industrial alcohol the Department of Agriculture has
issued for free distribution Farmer's Bulletin 269 and 424,
and Department Bulletin 182.

On the "Utilization of Com Cobs," see Journal of Ind^-
'trial and Engineering Cheimstry, Nov., 1918. For John Willi*
throp's experiment, see the same Journai, Jan., 1919<

806 CREATIVE CHEMISTEY

CHAPTER ZI

President Scherer's "Cotton as a World Power" (Stokefl^
1916) is a fascinating volume that combines the history, sci-
fence and politics of the plant and does not ignore the poetry;
and legend.

In the Yearbook of the Department of Agriculture for 1916
will be found an interesting article by H. S. Bailey on **Some
^American Vegetable Oils" (sold separate for five cents), also
**The Peanut: A Great American Food" by same author in
the Yearbook of 1917. "The Soy Bean Industry" is dis-
cussed in the same volume. See also: Thompson's "Cotton^,
seed Products and Their Competitors in Northern Europe"
[(Part I, Cake and Meal; Part II, Edible Oils. Department
jof Commerce, 10 cents each). "Production and Conservation
of Fats and Oils in the United States" (Bulletin No. 769, 1919,
U. S. Dept. of Agriculture). "Cottonseed Meal for Feeding
Cattle" (U. S. Department of Agriculture, Farmer's Bulletin
655, free). "Cottonseed Industry in Foreign Countries," by
T. H. Norton, 1915 (Department of Commerce, 10 cents).
"* Cottonseed Products" in Journal of the Society of Chemicai
Industry, July 16, 1917, and Baskerville's article in the same
goumal (1915, vol. 7, p. 277). Dunstan's "Oil Seeds and
Feeding Cakes," a volume on British problems since the war.
Ellis's "The Hydrogenation of Oils" (Van Nostrand, 1914).
Copeland's "The Coconut" (Macmillan). Barrett's "Tho
Philippine Coconut Industry" (Bulletin No. 25, Philippine
Bureau of Agriculture). "Coconuts, the Consols of the
East" by Smith and Pope (London): "All About Coco-
nuts" by Belfort and Hoyer (London). Numerous articles
on copra and other oils appear in U. 8. Commerce Reports and
'Philippine Journal of Science. "The "World "Wide Searcb
for Oils" in The Americas (National City Bank, N. Y.)'.
•'Modem Margarine Technology" by W. Clayton in Journal
Society of Chemical Industry, Dec. 5, 1917 ; also see Scientific

BEADING REFERENCES 3071

American Supplement, Sept. 21, 1918. A court decision on
the patent rights of hydrogenation is given in Journal of In-
dustrial and Engineering Chemistry for December, 1917.
The standard work on the whole subject is Lewkowitsch's
** Chemical Technology of Oils, Fats and Waxes" (3 vols.,
Macmillan, 1915).

CHAPTER xn

A full account of the development of the American Warfare
Service has been published in the Journal of Industrial and
Engineering Chemistry in the monthly issues from January
to August, 1919, and an article on the British service in the
issue of April, 1918. See also Crowell's Keport on ** Ameri-
ca's Munitions," published by War Department. Scientifio
American, March 29, 1919, contains several articles. A. Rus*
sell Bond's "Inventions of the Great War" (Century) con-
tains chapters on poison gas and explosives.

Lieutenant Colonel S. J. M. Auld, Chief Gas Officer of Sir
Julian Byng's army and a member of the British Military
Mission to the United States, has published a volume on "Gas
and Flame in Modem Warfare" (George H. Doran Co.).

CHAPTER xni

See chapter in Cressy's "Discoveries and Inventions of
Twentieth Century." ' * Oxy-Acetylene Welders," Bulletin
No. 11, Federal Board of Vocational Education, Washingtcm,
June, 1918, gives practical directions for welding. Beactions,
a quarterly published by Goldschmidt Thermit Company,
N. Y., reports latest achievements of aluminothermies. Pro-
vost Smith's "Chemistry in America" (Appleton) tells of the
experiments of Robert Hare and other pioneers. "Applica-
tions of Electrolysis in Chemical Industry" by A. F. HaH
(Longmans). For recent work on artificial diamonds see
Scientific American Supplement, Dec. 8, 1917, and August 24,
1918. On acetylene see "A Storehouse of Sleeping Energy"
|)y J. M. Morehead in Scientific American, January 27, 1917.

308 CKEATIVE CHEMISTRY

CHAPTER XrV

Spring's "Non-Teclinical Talks on Iron and Steel'*
(Stokes) is a model of popular science writing, clear, com-
prehensive and abundantly illustrated. Tilden's "Chemical
Discovery in the Twentieth Century" must here again be re-
ferred to. The Encyclopedia Britannica is convenient for
reference on the various metals mentioned; see the article on
"Lighting" for the Welsbach burner. The annual "Mineral
Resources of the United States, Part I," contains articles on
the newer metals by Frank W. Hess; see "Tungsten" in the
volume for 1914, also Bulletin No. 652, U. S. Geological Sur-
vey, by same author. Foote-Notes, the house organ of the
Foote Mineral Company, Philadelphia, gives information on
the rare elements. Interesting advertising literature may be
obtained from the Titantium Alloy Manufacturing Company,
Niagara Falls, N. Y. ; Duriron Castings Company, Dayton, 0. ;
Buffalo Foundry and Machine Company, Buffalo, N. Y.,
manufacturers of * * Buflokast ' ' acid-proof apparatus, and simi-
lar concerns. The following additional references may be
useful: Stellite alloys in Jcnir. Ind. & Eng. Chem., v. 9, p.
974; Rossi's work on titantium in same journal, Feb., 1918;
"Welsbach mantles in Journal Franklin Institute, v. 14, p. 401,
585 ; pure alloys in Trans. Amer. Electro-Chemical Society, v.
32, p. 269; molybdenum in Engineering, 1917, or Scientific
American Supplement, Oct. 20, 1917; acid-resisting iron in
Sc. Amer. Sup., May 31, 1919; ferro-alloys in Jour. Ind. &
Eng. Chem., v. 10, p. 831 ; influence of vanadium, etc., on iron,
in Met. Chem. Eng., v. 15, p. 530; tungsten in Engineering^
V. 104, p. 214.

INDEX

Abrasives, 249-251

Acetanilid, 87

Acetone, 125, 154, 243, 245

Acetylene, 30, 154, 240-24«, 257,

307, 308
Acheson, 249
Air, liquefied, 33
Alcohol, ethyl, 101, 102, 127, 174,

190-194, L42-244, 305
methyl, 101, 102, 127, 191
Aluminum, 31, 246-248, 255, 272,

284
Ammonia, 27, 29, 31, 33, 56, 64,

250
American dye industry, 82
Aniline dyes, 60-92
Antiseptics, 86, 87
Argon, 16

Art and nature, 8, 9, 170, 173
Artificial silk, 116, 118, 119
Aspirin, 84

Atomic theory, 293-296, 29ft
Aylesworth, 140

Baekeland, 137

Baeyer, Adolf von, 77;

Bakelite, 138, 303

Balata, 159

Bauxite, 31

Beet sugar, 165, 169, 305

Benzene formula, 67, 301, 101

Berkeley, 61

Berthelot, 7, 94

Birkeland-Eyde process, 2S

Bucher process, 32

Butter, 201, 208

Calcium, 246, 253

Calcium carbide, 30, 339'

Camphor, 100, 131

Cane sugar, 164, 167, 177, 180,

305
Carbolic acid, 18, 64, 84, 101, 102,

137
Carborundum, 249-251
Caro and Franke process, 30

Casein, 142

Castner, 246

Catalyst, 28, 204

Celluloid, 128-135, 302

Cellulose, 110-127, 129, 137, 302

Cellulose acetate, 118, 120, 302

Cerium, 288-290

Chemical warfare, 218-235, 307i

Chlorin, 224, 226, 250

Chlorophyll, 267

Chlorpicrin, 224, 226

Chromicum, 278, 280

Coal, distillation of, 60, 64, 70^

84, 301
Coal tar colors, 60-92
Cochineal, 79

Coconut oil, 203, 211-215, 306
Collodion, 117, 123, 130
Cologne, eau de, 107
Copra, 203, 211-215, 306
Corn oil, 183, 305
Cotton, 112, 120, 129, 197
Cocain, 88
Condensite, 141
Cordite, 18, 19
Corn products, 181-195, »06
Coslett process, 273
Cottonseed oil, 201
Cowles, 248
Creative chemistry, 7
Crookes, Sir William, 292, 2W
Curie, Madame, 292
Cyanamid, 30, 35, 299
C^^anides, 32

Diamond, 259-261, 308
Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan, 221
Drugs, synthetic, 6, 84, 301
Duisberg, 151
Dyestuffs, 60-92

Edison, 84, 141
Ehrlich, 86, 87
Electric furnace, 236-262, 307

m

Fats, 196-217, 306

BIO

INDEX

Fertilizers, 37, 41, 48, 46, 306

Flavors, synthetic, 93-109
Food, synthetic, 94
Formaldehyde, 136, 142
Fruit flavors, synthetic, 99, 101

Galalitli, 142

G«8 masks, 223, 226, 230, 231

Ocrhardt, 6, 7

Glucose, 137, 184-189, 194, 306

Glycerin, 194, 203

Goldschmidt, 266

Goodyear, 161

Graphite, 258

Guayule, 169, 804

Guncotton, 17, 117, 125, 130

Gunpowder, 14, 15, 22, 234

Gutta percha, 159

Haber process, 27, 28
Hall, C. H., 247
Hare, Robert, 237, 245, 30X
Harries, 149
Helium, 236
Hesse, 70, 72, 90
Hofmann, 72, 80
Huxley, 10
Hyatt, 128, 129, 303
Hydrogen, 253-255
H^drogenation of oils, 202-20i,
806

Isdigo, 76, 79

Iron, 236, 253, 262-270, 308

Isoprene, 136, 146, 149, 150, 154

Kelp products, 53, 142
Kekule's dream, 66, 301

Lard substitutes, 209

Lavoisier, 6

Leather substitutes, 124

Leucite, 53

Liebig, 38

Linseed oil, 202, 205, 270

Magnesium, 283

Maize products, 181-196, 305

Manganese, 278

Margarin, 207-212, 307

Mauve, discovery of, 74

|CeDdele«f, 28d, 291

Mercerized eottoli, 119

Moissan, 259

Molybdenum, 283, 308

Munition manufacture im U« flU

33, 224, 299, 307
Mushet, 279

Musk, synthetic, 96, 97, lOa
Mustard gas, 224, 227-229

Naphthalene, 4, 142, 154

Nature and art, 8-13, 118, 12%

133
Nitrates, Chilean, 22, 24, 30, 36
Nitric acid derivatives, 20
Nitrocellulose, 17, 117
Nitrogen, in explosives, 14, 18,

117, 299
fixation, 24, 25, 29, 299
Nitroglycerin, 18, 117, 214
Nobel, 18, 117

Oils, 196-217, 306
Oleomargarin, 207-212, 307
Orange blossoms, 99, 100
Osmium, 28
Ostwald, 29, 55
Oxy-hydrogen blowpipe, 248

Paper, 111, 132

Parker process, 273

Peanut oil, 206, 211, 214, 308

Perfumery, Art of, 103-108

Perfumes, synthetic, 93-109, 309

Perkin, W. H., 148

Perkin, Sir William, 72, 80, 102

Pharmaceutical chemistry, 6, 85-

88
Phenol, 18, 64, 84, 101, 102, 137!
Phonograph records, 84, 141
Phosphates, 56-59
Phosgene, 224, 225
Photographic developers, 88
Picric acid, 18, 84, 85, 226
Platinum, 28, 278, 280, 284, 288
Plastics, synthetic, 128-143
Pneumatic tires, 162
Poisonous gases in warfare, 21|?^

235 307
Potash, '37, 45-56, 300
Priestley, 150, 160
Purple, royal, 76, 79
Fyralin, 132, 133

INDEX

Pyrophoric alloys, 290
^oxylin, 17, 117, 126, 130

IRadium, 291, 295
Hare earths, 286-288, 308
Bedmanol, 140
Remsen, Ira, 178
Refractories, 251-262
Begins, synthetic, 135-143
Rose perfume, 93, 96, 97, 99, 105
Rubber, natural, 155-161, 304
synthetic, 136, 145-163, 304
Rumford, Count, 166
Rust, protection from, 262-275

Saccharin, 178, 179

Salicylic acid, 88, 101

Saltpeter, Chilean, 22, 30, 36, 42

Smith, Provost, 237, 245, 307

Smokeless powder, 16

Sodium, 148, 238, 247

Soil chemistry, 38, 39

Soy bean, 142, 211, 217, 306

Sterch, 137, 184, 189, 190

Stassfort salts, 47, 49, 65

Stellites, 280, 308

Sugar, 164-180, 304.

Sulfuric acid, 67

Tantalum, 282
Terpenes, 100, 154
Textile industry, 6, 112, 121, 300
Thermit, 256

Vhermodynamice, Second law of.
146

Three periods of progr«g^ 3
Tin plating, 271
Tilden, 146, 298
TTitanium, 278, 308
TNT, 19, 21, 84, 299
Trinitrotoluol, 19, 21, 84, 299
Tropics, value of, 96, 156, 165> lOOj*
206, 213, 216

Schoop process, 272

Serpek process, 31

Silicon, 249, 253

Smell, sense of, 97, 98, 103, 109

Tungsten, 267, 277, 281, 808

Uranium, 28

Vanadium, 277, 280, 301
Vanillin, 103
Violet perfume, 100
Viscose, 116
Vitamines, 211
Vulcanization, 161

Welding, 256

Welsbach burner, 287-289, 908
Wheat problem, 43, 299
Wood, distillation of, 126, 121^
Wood pulp, 112, 120, 303

Ypres, Use of gases at, 22£

Zinc platings 2a

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