Dyes and dyeing

by Charles Ernest Pellew

They went over all the details of the business with the greatest care, and soon found what seemed to them a willful piece of extravagance. Perkin himself, and three or four other chemists, were drawing salaries, not for the actual making of the dyestuffs but forexperimental purposes, and they had quite an expensive laboratory used for that purpose alone!

Of course this was at once eliminated—and great was their satisfaction when they found that they had thereby cut down the price of making their dyes two or three cents a pound.

Then it came to the “selling dear” part of it. Perkin told me that the last few years that he ran his factory, he kept the price of his dyestuffs at a reasonable figure, so that, indeed, he would get a good profit from them, but that, on the other hand, it would be no easy matter for competitors to break into his field with success. His alizarine, in particular, he had kept at a price just below what it would pay to grow madder in opposition to it, and he had not raised the price to any great extent since the war had given him a monopoly. These Manchester people, however, fully recognized that they were the only manufacturers of alizarine, anywhere, and were over-flooded with orders—so they instantly jumped up the price of their alizarine to four or five times its former figures.

Barely had they completed their “business” reorganization of the plant when the war came to an end, and the Germans marched back to their own country, with “five milliards” of French money, full of self-confidence (to use a very mild term) and looking around for new fields to conquer in peace, now that they had won all that they could at that time by war. Instantly every German with any knowledge of the textile or dyestuff industries turned his eyes at once in that direction. “What! Alizarine at five dollars a pound instead of a dollar; why, any fool can make a profit on colors at that price!” And immediately, in different parts of the country, factory after factory was started, each one centered around some first-class chemist, of national if not international reputation, with instructions to gather around himself a staff of the most brilliant and best trained organic chemists he could find, to be used first of all in experimental and investigating work as well as for the mere preparation of dyestuffs.

As a result, in a very short time, these new German firms were supplying alizarine and other dyestuffs to the Manchester Turkey red manufacturers at lower prices than they could be made for in Perkin’s old factory in the immediate neighborhood; and, before the end of the year, those clever business men were complaining bitterly to Perkin that he had cheated them in the sale of his works, and were wanting him to give them their money back, which, as the old gentleman told me with a chuckle, he very positively and decidedly refused to do.

From that time until the beginning of the Great War the great English textile industry, with its enormous trade all over the world, was obliged to buy practically all its dyestuffs from Germany.

Dyestuff Industry in the United States.—The manufacture of dyestuffs in this country was a little better than in England, because of the tariff protection granted it by the Government for many years. Four or five factories of very moderate size kept up a rather precarious existence, because their chief raw materials, the so-called “intermediates,” organic chemicals made from coal tar and from which the principal products, dyes, drugs, perfumes and the like are made in turn, all had to be imported from Europe, and, in most cases, from their German rivals who naturally kept a tight rein upon the quantity and quality of their output.

In 1913 even this industry was destroyed by the abolition of the duties on dyestuffs in the new tariff, thanks to the pressure for free raw materials brought by the great textile industries, probably at the instigation of the foreign color houses.

Changed Conditions Due to the War.—Since 1914 this whole situation has been radically and completely changed all over the world. Appreciating the great danger to their textile trades from the lack of dyestuffs, and also the vast military importance of a large and highly developed coal tar products industry, for the manufacture of high explosives, smokeless powder and the like, nation after nation has given government assistance not only in the line of money, but also with patent legislation and new tariff. England with its British Dye Works, Ltd., France with the St. Denis Works, now greatly enlarged and strengthened, Italy, Japan, all have made arrangements for supplying their trade with home-made dyestuffs, of excellent quality, not only during but after the temporary disturbance due to the actual fighting.

In the United States there soon were made many more or less independent and spasmodic efforts to supply at least the principal and most generally used colors, notably the Basic dyes, Methylene Blue, Methyl Violet and the like, so much used in calico printing, silk and wool dyeing, leather and other lines, and the simpler Sulphur colors, like Sulphur Black, Blues, and Browns. These were selling, before the end of 1914, at comparatively huge prices, and until the peace will probably still command from five to ten times their usual values.