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and more than flirting with currency inflation is questionable. If confidence in federal credit is allowed to weaken, how can the Government succeed in its necessary borrowing and refinancing? Those who favor inflation speak as if it were a new experiment and disregard history. Surely we need not repeat here any of the well-nigh impossible experiences which certain European nations endured and which we should know enough to avoid. The blow of such conditions fell with greatest weight upon the middle classes. Injustices were done which can never be corrected. Those who practiced thrift all their lives saw their savings vanish, salaried classes and wage earners suffered severely because the& in-
Vol. 25, No. 12
comes did not keep pace with advancing costs of living. Currency inflation with printing presses is not the sort of malady that can be controlled. There is great need for a positive, clear declaration of monetary policy by the President. It can come from no other with suficient authority, but from him would do much to remove the paralysis of business and permit restoration. Given stability, commerce can adjust itself within reasonable time. And yet, with almost cheerful resignation, the average man merely inquires, “Where do we go from here?” He cannot see, nor can we. T o him and to us the Potomac seems very muddy. N a y its colloids soon coalesce.
A QUARTER-CENTURY I N INDUSTRIAL SERVICE
W
I T H this issue INDUSTRIAL AND ENGINEERING The first issue of the journal was that of January, CHEMISTRYcompletes its twenty-6fth year 1909, and Richardson was provided with an imposing of publication. This quarter-century has board of thirty-two associate editors. In accordance covered a period remarkable alike for an extraordinary with the policy of the Council, which was later abanactivity and development in chemistry as a science and doned, all editorials were signed. The Grst to appear for the rapidity with which these developments have was over the signature of T. J. Parker, entitled “The found industrial application on the grand scale. It Industrial Chemist and His Journal.” The concluding is, moreover, a period during which chemical industry sentence of another by F. B. Carpenter on “The Fixain the United States made such phenomenal growth tion of Nitrogen” is especially interesting in retrospect. that it freed the country permanently from its long It reads : “Considering, therefore, this inexhaustible dependence upon Europe, and especially upon Ger- supply, and considering what it means to agriculture and the arts if it can be utilized, the solution of the many, for essential chemical products. The task of securing and presenting an adequate problem of conserving the nitrogen of the air in a record of the constantly changing and expanding commercial way will be recorded as one of the imphases of these developments was one which placed portant inventions of modern times.” In this number a heavy burden of responsibility upon the successive the Emerson bomb calorimeter, which has since come editors of the journal, and the resourcefulness and skill into such general use, is described and illustrated. Especially notable was the appearance, in the March with which that burden has been carried are apparent in the splendid panorama of chemical development issue, of the fundamental paper by L. H. Baekeland, entitled “The Synthesis, Constitution, and Uses of spread out in more than 28,000 pages. In 1907 President Bogert appointed a committee, Bakelite.” The same issue carried an article by E. G. with W. D. Richardson as chairman, to consider the Bailey on “Accuracy in Sampling Coal,” which was feasibility of publishing a journal devoted to the special called “the most important contribution to the quesinterests of industrial chemists. At the meeting of tion that has appeared for years.” In the April issue there appeared an editorial by the Council a t Chicago, January 1, 1908, the report W. R. Whitney, in which that distinguished director of the committee, which had previously received of research said: “A theory is a suit of clothes coverenthusiastic and unanimous endorsement by the It is criminal to appear to be without ing a nakedness. Industrial Section, was considered, and after several it. It is foolish to change it too frequently, and it is hours of discussion it was unanimously voted that the slovenly to neglect it. We have used the atomic SOCIETYundertake the publication of an industrial journal under the title riJouRNALOF INDUSTRIAL AND theory because it covered for a time the nakedness we ENGINEERIKG CHEMISTRY,”the first number to be recognized, but it must apparently be changed.” The July number contained a long and especially issued for January, 1909. The format of the journal was fixed a t this time and, in accordance with the valuable paper on the fixation of atmospheric nitrogen recommendations of the committee, the general char- by A. Bernthsen, director of the Badische company. acter of its contents was determined by provision In view of all that has since happened it is curious to for its appearance under thirteen department head- note that two and a half pages are also given in July ings. Later, as a result of a letter ballot sent to to the judgment of the Board of Food and Drug the Council on June 4, 1908, W. D. Richardson was Inspection in a case concerned with the misbranding of whisky, and to this are referred any readers who elected Editor-in-Chief.
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INDUSTRIAL AND ENGINEERING CHEMISTRY
may have lost in the intervening years the ability to recognize the subtle distinctions between Bourbon and molasses whisky. In August chemical engineering received an important contribution in the form of a paper on “The Theory of Fractional Distillation” by Warren K. Lewis. In the same issue is the highly significant paper by Robert Kennedy Duncan “On Industrial Fellowships,” in which the principles which led to the later establishment of The Mellon Institute are enunciated. During 1910, the year covered by the second volume, there appears to have been much more difficulty experienced in securing suitable papers, as the number of total pages shrank to 564, as contrasted with 819 of the year before. There was a marked predominance of papers dealing with agricultural and food chemistry, and much space was given to abstracts of patents and oficial regulations and rulings. The new journal had, nevertheless, justified its existence and taken on under Richardson’s leadership definite character and form. Having thus successfully launched the journal, Richardson shortly thereafter resigned the editorship and was succeeded by &I. C. Whitaker, under whose direction the issue for March, 1911, appeared. The committee previously appointed by the President of the SOCIETYto consider and report upon the policy of the journal strongly recommended broadening the field of its operations and building up a world-wide staff of correspondents to report upon industrial achievements, processes, and scientific matters-a policy which Whitaker proceeded to make effective. In this March issue there appeared a serious address by Robert Kennedy Duncan on the relation between chemistry and manufacture in America, and this was discussed a t length by Allen Rogers, Whitaker, and Baekeland. Several factors contributed to add greatly to the interest of the third volume, one being the imminence of the Eighth International Congress of Applied Chemistry, which was to meet in September, 1912, and another the opening of the Chemists’ Building a t 50 East Forty-first Street, New York, which not only housed The Chemists’ Club and the library of but provided ofice and laboratory space the SOCIETY, for rental. The volume contains several notable addresses and a number of important papers, as, for example, two by Baskerville and Hamor on “The Chemistry of Anesthetics,” “Heat Transmission” and “Heat Radiation” by H. P. Gurney, the beautifully illustrated paper by James Aston on “The Utility of the Metallographic Microscope,” a “Review of Electrochemical Development” by E. A. Sperry in which the bearing of various stresses was illustrated by reference to the gyroscope, and the significant contribution by F. G. Cottrell which announced and described his process of electrical precipitation. Another new development that was reported upon a t length was the Edison storage battery.
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At the June meeting of the SOCIETY the Council inaugurated the practice, to which it has since adhered, of having some member of the SOCIETYdeliver a t each general meeting a public lecture. The first of these was given by the writer at Indianapolis in 1911, his subject being “The Earning Power of Chemistry.” This was reported in the August number. In Volumes 4 and 5 there was a notable improvement in the general quality and range of papers and in the number and importance of addresses and articles of general character, and there was much good discussion following the Symposium on Mineral Wastes and that on the Patent System. The latter subject was evidently one in which unusual interest was taken at this period. There is Hesse’s report on the Eighth Congress and that of Baekeland on the United States Patent Ofice, and one should not forget Whitaker’s classic editorial on “Fussy Administration.” Of extraordinary importance at the time was the comprehensive and informing address by B. C. Hesse on “The Industry of the Coal-Tar Dyes,” which was delivered before the Board of Directors of the General Chemical Company in New York in October and published in the December number of Volume 6 . In view of the foregoing the following quotation from an editorial in the issue of July, 1915, is pertinent: “No better proof that chemistry and chemists ‘have arrived’ is needed than the fact that a National Exposition of Chemical Industries will be held in New York, September 20 to 25.” Throughout these and the succeeding numbers of the journal the reader is present at the birth of new industries, and their development and maturity are gradually unfolded in successive numbers. The issue of May, 1913, reports the fiftieth meeting of the AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETYand the election of Charles H. Herty as President. At the conclusion of the following year Whitaker resigned from the ofice in which he had served for five years, during which time he had placed the members of the SOCIETYunder a heavy burden of obligation by establishing the journal upon a solid and enduring foundation. He was thereupon succeeded by Herty in the editorial ofice. Under Herty’s able and enthusiastic direction, which covered the period 1917-21, inclusive, the journal continued to gain in its range of topics and in interest and value. As one turns the pages, he encounters a growing succession of new discoveries, new methods, and new equipment-the tungsten lamp, potash from Pacific kelps, surface combustion, a new calorimeter by Parr, the hydrogenation of oils, radium resources, many revolutionary changes in the petroleum industry, and the remarkable Haber process for ammonia. One is vividly reminded in these pages that this period of the war and its immediate aftermath was one of intense and even hectic activity in chemical affairs. There was the insistent demand for dyestuffs and the
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Vol. 25, No. 12
intensive effort which created an American dyestuffs the general direction of Howe. The news of chemical industry. One reads again the sbory of the organiza- discoveries and developments, like scientific news in tion and achievements of the Chemical Warfare general, had long fared badly a t the hands of the Service in spite of official opposition and many difi- average reporter, partly because of his difficulty in culties. One recalls anew the great services to chem- presenting, at their true value and in popular form, istry by Francis P. Garvan, which began with the technical subjects with which he was unfamiliar, and organization of The Chemical Foundation and its partly because of the impression in editorial offices administration of the United States patents issued that the public was only interested in science when to German inventors. During this period the circula- sensationally depicted. tion of the journal increased greatly, rising from The A. C. S. News Service serves press and public 11,160 in 1917 to 14,667 in 1921, and reaching a high alike, to the great benefit of chemistry, by submitting point of 20,200 in 1931. to the editor advance notices of SOCIETYmeetings, The delightful personal quality of Herty, which has together with abstracts carefully prepared in popular endeared him to thousands of friends within and form of important papers to be presented and of permeates his final editorial, items of chemical news of immediate and general without the SOCIETY, “A Fireside Chat,” in the December number of 1921. interest. As a result, the activities of the SOCIETY I n view of the long and notably distinguished service and the achievements of its members are now receiving of Herty’s successor, Harrison E. Howe, one may be wide publicity, and a new appreciation of the essential permitted to express one’s pride in him as a most relation of chemistry to human affairs has been dehappily remembered alumnus of Arthur D. Little, Inc. veloped in the public mind. The phenomenal growth He assumed his editorial duties with the issue of of the service and the appreciation of its value by the January, 1922, and his term of service, therefore, press is shown by the measure of clippings returned. already nearly equals the combined terms of his prede- This was 5000 inches in 1918, 70,000 in 1921, and 205,cessors. During this long period there has been a 000 in 1924, when all but occasional purchase of steady and consistent growth in the quality and in- clippings stopped. To review the three hundred numbers of INDUSTRIAL fluence of the journal until it now ranks as the leading publication on applied chemistry in the world. No- AKD ENGINEERING CHENISTRYis to witness the great where else can members of the SOCIETY find themselves pageant of chemical progress in the field of industry so closely and immediately in touch with the industrial during the past twenty-five years. It is a period developments based on chemistry, and the journal distinguished as no other in the world’s history by has an imposing circulation outside the SOCIETY, both great industrial developments based upon science and in this country and abroad. Its value as an adver- research. To indicate something of the part which tising medium is, moreover, so generally recognized chemistry has played therein, one need only select that it normally carries one hundred or more pages of from the hundreds of available examples such contriadvertisements which reflect the progress in scientific butions as nitrogen fixation, the production of dyes instruments and apparatus, plant equipment, and and potash in America, Bakelite and the many later chemical products generally. synthetic resins which constitute the basis of the As a financial bulwark of the SOCIETY the journal is, expanding plastics industry, cracked gasoline, rayon in effect, the equivalent of a large endowment. Prac- and Cellophane, rubber accelerators which triple the tically all the advertising income of the SOCIETY output of a tire factory, new metals and alloys, the comes from its pages, which in twenty-four years have hydrogenation of coal and oil, the syntheses from water gas, and the impending great development of $1,068,869brought to the treasury of the SOCIETY an average of $46,472 a year-while in single recent aliphatic compounds from natural gas and waste years the income from this source has exceeded $100,000. refinery gases. To an older member, like the writer, a review of the The increasing pressure upon his space led Howe to bring out in 1923 the semi-monthly NEWS EDITIONjournal is not without an element of sadness, as it supplementary to the journal. To it were transferred recalls the progressive passing of many old and valued the more ephemeral items and material, personal notes, friends who were once actively associated with him in SOCIETY notices, and the timely and important foreign the affairs of the SOCIETY,and whose notable contributions to chemistry are outweighed in his mind by letters dealing with developments abroad. Further demands on space and the increasing number their endearing personal qualities. T o those younger chemists fortunate enough to have of papers dealing with methods of analysis led to the AND ENGINEERpublication, in 1929, of the quarterly ANALYTICALaccess to a complete file of INDUSTRIAL ING CHEMISTRY he can recommend no more stimulating EDITION as distinct from the regular monthly issues. Of more far-reaching importance to the recognition and instructive avocation for the coming winter than a of chemistry by the general public was the establish- survey of the development of chemical industry in ment under Herty, in 1917, of the A. C. S. News America as depicted in its pages. ARTHURD. LITTLE Service and its subsequent great developemnt under
