When the history of medicine becomes more widely known, when the principles of prophylactic inoculation are more generally understood, when respect for science is the rule rather than the exception, when great achievements in the saving rather than the destroying of life are objects of national veneration, then we may hope to see the day when it will be unhesitatingly admitted that the discovery by Dr. Edward Jenner, the Englishman, was one of the most momentous in the history of the human race, and that his life was one of the noblest, most unselfish and, in its far-reaching effects, most important that has ever been lived on this planet.
THE VALUE OF INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH
BY W. A. HAMOR
MELLON INSTITUTE OF INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH, UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH
THE aim of all industrial operations is toward perfection, both in process and mechanical equipment, and every development in manufacturing creates new problems. It is only to be expected, therefore, that the industrial researcher is becoming less and less regarded as a burden unwarranted by returns. Industrialists have, in fact, learned to recognize chemistry as the intelligence department of industry, and manufacturing is accordingly becoming more and more a system of scientific processes. The accruement of technical improvements in particularly the great chemical industry is primarily dependent upon systematic industrial research, and this is being increasingly fostered by American manufacturers.
Ten thousand American chemists are at present engaged in pursuits which affect over 1,000,000 wage-earners and produce over $5,000,000,000 worth of manufactured products each year. These trained men have actively and effectively collaborated in bringing about stupendous results in American industry. There are, in fact, at least nineteen American industries in which the chemist has been of great assistance, either in founding the industry, in developing it, or in refining the methods of control or of manufacture, thus ensuring profits, lower costs and uniform outputs.
At the recent symposium on the contributions of the chemist to American industries, at the fiftieth meeting of the American Chemical Society in New Orleans, the industrial achievements of that scientific scout, the chemist, were brought out clearly.[1]
[1] In this connection, see Hesse, J. Ind. Eng. Chem., 7 (1915), 293.
The chemist has made the wine industry reasonably independent of climatic conditions; he has enabled it to produce substantially the same wine, year in and year out, no matter what the weather; he has reduced the spoilage from 25 per cent. to 0.46 per cent. of the total; he has increased the shipping radius of the goods and has made preservatives unnecessary. In the copper industry he has learned and has taught how to make operations so constant and so continuous that in the manufacture of blister copper valuations are less than $1.00 apart on every $10,000 worth of product and in refined copper the valuations of the product do not differ by more than $1.00 in every $50,000 worth of product. The quality of output is maintained constant within microscopic differences. Without the chemist the corn-products industry would never have arisen and in 1914 this industry consumed as much corn as was grown in that year by the nine states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey and Delaware combined; this amount is equal to the entire production of the state of North Carolina and about 80 per cent. of the production of each of the states of Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin; the chemist has produced over 100 useful commercial products from corn, which, without him, would never have been produced. In the asphalt industry the chemist has taught how to lay a road surface that will always be good, and he has learned and taught how to construct a suitable road surface for different conditions of service. In the cottonseed oil industry, the chemist standardized methods of production, reduced losses, increased yields, made new use of wastes and by-products, and has added somewhere between $10 and $12 to the value of each bale of cotton grown. In the cement industry, the chemist has ascertained new ingredients, has utilized theretofore waste products for this purpose, has reduced the waste heaps of many industries and made them his starting material; he has standardized methods of manufacture, introduced methods of chemical control and has insured constancy and permanency of quality and quantity of output. In the sugar industry, the chemist has been active for so long a time that "the memory of man runneth not to the contrary." The sugar industry without the chemist is unthinkable. The Welsbach mantle is distinctly a chemist's invention and its successful and economical manufacture depends largely upon chemical methods. It would be difficult to give a just estimate of the economic effect of this device upon illumination, so great and valuable is it. In the textile industry, he has substituted uniform, rational, well-thought out and simple methods of treatment of all the various textile fabrics and fibers where mystery, empiricism, "rule-of-thumb" and their accompanying uncertainties reigned. In the fertilizer industry, it was the chemist who learned and who taught how to make our immense beds of phosphate rock useful and serviceable to man in the enrichment of the soil; he has taught how to make waste products of other industries useful and available for fertilization and he has shown how to make the gas works contribute to the fertility of the soil. In the soda industry, the chemist can successfully claim that he has founded it, developed it and brought it to its present state of perfection and utility, but not without the help of other technical men; the fundamental ideas were and are chemical. In the leather industry, the chemist has given us all of the modern methods of mineral tanning, and without them the modern leather industry is unthinkable. In the case of vegetable-tanned leather he has also stepped in, standardized the quality of incoming material and of outgoing product. In the flour industry the chemist has learned and taught how to select the proper grain for specific purposes, to standardize the product, and how to make flour available for certain specific culinary and food purposes. In the brewing industry, the chemist has standardized the methods of determining the quality of incoming material and of outgoing products, and has assisted in the development of a product of a quality far beyond that obtaining prior to his entry into that industry. In the preservation of foods, the chemist made the fundamental discoveries; up to twenty years ago, however, he took little or no part in the commercial operations, but now is almost indispensable to commercial success. In the water supply of cities, the chemist has put certainty in the place of uncertainty; he has learned and has shown how, by chemical methods of treatment and control, raw water of varying quality can be made to yield potable water of substantially uniform composition and quality. The celluloid industry and the nitro-cellulose industry owe their very existence and much of their development to the chemist. In the glass industry the chemist has learned and taught how to prepare glasses suitable for the widest ranges of uses and to control the quality and quantity of the output. In the pulp and paper industry, the chemist made the fundamental observations, inventions and operations and to-day he is in control of all the operations of the plant itself; to the chemist also is due the cheap production of many of the materials entering into this industry, as well as the increased and expanding market for the product itself.
Sufficient has been presented to show that certain industries of the United States have been elevated by an infusion of scientific spirit through the medium of the chemist, and that manufacturing, at one time entirely a matter of empirical judgment and individual skill, is more and more becoming a system of scientific processes. The result is that American manufacturers are growing increasingly appreciative of scientific research, and are depending upon industrial researchers—"those who catalyze raw materials by brains"—as their pathfinders. It is now appropriate to consider just how industrialists are taking advantage of the universities and the products of these.