. .., 1. .
2548
,
A N D E N 0 I N EERIN 0 C HEMIS T R Y
The continual growth of thesouthern,plateau, andfarwestern is very apparent, but the southem area still growing more slowly than the others. The middle Atlantic atatea, although long established, have the advantage of locd remuroes of coal and iron, and this, coupled with energetic promotion, still keeps this area in good competitive shape. From the point of view of construction requirements coupled with the enterprise of which the New England and New York area is capable, there is no -on for concern when confronted with the competition of the slowly growing southern a m . All the eastern part of the areas
.
I
D U STRIA L ~.~IN , ’ ,
.
Vol. 44, No. 11
United States should view the growth of the plateau and far western areas with greater concern. Perhaps other factors than construction requirements are of much greater importance.
I
)U
_. LITERATURE CITED (1)
“Boeokh Index of Construction Caste.” E. H.Bwokh Asmiaten,
(2)
Ew. New-Remrd (March 17,
Inc., 1948. R r c m v ~ ofor review Maroh 31, 1952.
1948).
A c c i e ~ ~July o 17, 1852.
Industrial Future and the Chemical Industry BRADLEY DEWEY DKWKY AND llLM QIBMCAL CO., W B R I D G K 40, MASS.
New England has much to ofier to industry and already speoirtlty tankers are openTHEhave recited has a &&le and wowing chemical industr,. as w i t n d ing opportunities which will the statistics and POtentials of New England inby -nt ex pad^^. Today’* chemical industv is justify consideration of New dustriea and the utilities showing an ability to provide suhtitutee for natural England by many fort h a t m e t h e m . Thispaper products as well as to produce mpecialties that give rise Wmd-tMnking tnanUfm turera as they plan for the discugses the featurn that to end products otherwise impossible. These developments are bringing into the h l d manufactumra who are future. affect New England as a chemical proc-~p rather than chemical producers and Another segment of the location, premnt or future, who tab new products and turn them into paints, chemical industry builds the for those various -menta polish-, plastics, f i h , and other i t e m in high c o m m e r heavy chemicals into interof industry which are known mediates or hished chemithe chemical industry. demand. New England h the know-how, the willingness, and the ingenuity to turn to new things and make cals which are used either Do not let the pessimiets sell New England s h o r t i t them profitable. Thb is e resource of mom importance innumerousindustrblprodis here to stay and to grow. than any other. It has been tested and proved many times. ucts or as insecticides, There are thingswrangwith weed killers, etc. Another New England, but many part of the industry refines more things are right. Some industries are declining, but more or work these intermediates into highly fiuished specialties. Where fuel costs are a large item, New England is handicapped, are growing. New England is getting away from one-industry and the mme is generally t N e where power coats are controlling communities. There is nothing wrong with our region that cannot be cured by using Yankee common sense to appraise the situfactors. AE to electric power, however, there is muon for hope ation and then using the 881138 “git-upand-git” which sent the that this differential may be lowered. New England’s u n d c Yankee clippers around the world to sell the products of ita veloped hydroelectric capacity is estimated a t 500,000 kilowatts by one agency and at 3,000,000 by another. About 60% is in industry. We have in New England the know-how, the willingness to Maine, which, as of today, prohibita export of power. Still, for those with the foresight to build factories on some of the exwork, the labor skills, and Yankee ingenuity. These can overcome such obstacles aa transportation and power costs and lack cellent Maine waterfront locations, the power is there. Granting that those process industries which must be new their raw of raw materials. Instead of fretting over curing one or two industries that may or may not be sick unto death, New England materials and thwe which require large amounts of power and is concentrating on diversilicationin both durable and soft goods fuel should think twice before locating in New England, and then manufacture so that she will not be dependent on anyone. In only on the waterfront, there is still the rest of the chemical Hartford, as an example, everything, from brushes to airplanes, industry to consider. To many the picture ia good, although there are 8ome who will is manufactured. What, spe~ilically,does New England offer the chemical intell you it is not. Among the thin@ wrong with New England dustry? today is a group of “gloomy ~ U S S ~ S ”whwe common denominator for the region’s well-being is the textile industry. They think The ohemid industry is made up of many parts. In one group that what has happened to textiles will befall every other inam the heavy basic industrial chemicals. These are bound to gravitate in accordance with economic laws which are only too dustry and that New England is doomed. well understood. Thwe dependent on proximity to raw mateI am not an expert on the textile industry, nor do I know what rials are likely to go near them, and it is almost axiomatic that ia going to happen to it, but, at the risk of being called a soft~ w c e of 8 chlorine and caustic must be close to sources of cheap headed optimist, I should like to state some facts which are often overlooked. power and, if feasible, to Balt depoaite and customers. The 6rat stages of petroleum chemistry will, ae a rule, be found where oil In the past 30 years a large number of mills, mostly cotton, and natural gas are plentiful and make for,cheap fuel “d power. has moved south. This has had a severe impact on New EngHowever, this does not mean that one can write off,New England land, but it haa not wrecked its industry nor its economy. an a manufacturing point for all heavy chemicals. Water trans-. In 1919, 1,500,000 people were employed in New England in portation permits cheap haulage of mlfur. and the amall all industry, and nearly one third of this number in textiles. By
0
=
=
:
November 1952
INDUSTRIAL AND ENGINEERING CHEMISTRY
1939, that figure I d dropped to less than 1,250,000, but in 1949 it had rinen to within 100,000 of the 1919 level, a growth of almost 200,000 in a decade. In the textile industry itself there WBB practically no decline in employment in the decade between 1939 and 1949. Other induatrics have grown by leaps and tiounde, partivularly in durable goods. The labor force in electrical niarhinery haa more than doubled; for all other machinery manufacturing there hra been a 50% inereem, and the two combined outnumber the t a a l employed today in the textile industry. Thua, no mattcr what it haa oast us, we are no longer depeudent on one or two large concentrated industries. Instead, SO% of the working force today is employed in other than the textile industry, even though the latter gives work to more than a 125,000 persona. Mills are still going w t h , or threatening to do so, but not iu the numbers that migrated in the twentiea w d thinies. To determine whether this trend is to invrurse or deer-, we must cousider the South. lnduatrially, it has grown rnpidly in the last 25 years. Expansion is atill large, covering all kinds of industries, but an this expansion continuer, its fine labor pool of largely agricultural people in deerwing. hthermore, like anyone else, Southemem want money; labor dues and w i l l aak for higher wages. Aside from the wage daerential, which is now about IO%, the South does not oRer much more than New England. One New England firm,allied nitb the textile induatry and doing the greater p u t of its business in the k t h , found drer a thorough study that there waa not enwgh diRerencein power, building,transportation,and other iiane towmant moving swth. I t built its large expansion in Maine. It in reasonable then to ask if the southern advantage in textiles may not disappear, especially if some of the Yew England textile managemenu, do morc about their antiquated eaiabliahmenta. Too much of this induary today is housed in multiatoried, 5&yw-old builhga, served by ancient, high main% nanee coat builer plants and power distribution centera. Plumbing ia primeval4eteriaa and rentmoms nonexiatent. In many c88e8 lighting is sonntiqustd that it would shwk a man trained in modern standumb. There is also an X factor involved in the textile industry; one for which cbemittry is responsible. It is the new area being opened up by the man-made fibers, particularly in the field of wool textilea, wherq Orlon, Dacron, dynel, Virum, and Acrilan are now coming into use. These man-made fibers are steadily increasing. l o 1920, they amounted to 0.5% of the total fibers wed; by 1950 they represented 22% of the total. Cotton at one time reprcsented better than 90%; now it is down to 70%. AB we move further into thc chemical age, new dcvelopmenta come faat, and the taxtile scene changes aa quickly. There is need for new machinery, new buildings, new types of operations, and to all of there Yankee ingenuity can and ia adapting itself. Our “gloomy gussa” like to blame union attitudea and deljlanda for driving induatry out of New England. If they were inveatigating the idea of locating a chemical operation here, they would claim the labor picture wm m bad that textiles and other industries were leaving. However, there ia much to be mid on the aide of the New England textile workers. They remembcr the sins of pa& management, and for years many oftbem have lived under the c o n a n t t h t of the unpredictable, sudden, and often long IayoRs that still characterize many segments of the textile induetry. Many manufacturers have found, however, that 88 readjustments take place this labor provea t o he not only mechanically adaptable, but a willing and enthusiastic partner in diversified entorprisea which give it opportunity to learn new skills and to grow and look forward to steadier employment. In new aettings it forgets limitation of output. Fairly paid, textile workers are not antagonistic to three-shift, four-turn, 7day operations aa i8 labor in mme parts of the country. As for
2549
union demands, one must realize that wages are governed by basic economics and that in the main American workmen in wellorganhed manufacturing industries, whether in or out of unions, ae long 88 the unions are not dominated by communiaticorracketeering leaders, are quite prone to give N E value received for dollars paid either in w w or fringe benefits. The chemical industry of today needs water in large quantities. The streama of New England are not polluted with mud; they have clear, fresh water and their temperatures are low enough m that the costs of water used for cooling are a fraction of those encountered in many other parts of the country. It iS far cheaper to pump good clean water out of a pond or clear stream than it is to pump it out of muddy warm streams, filter it, and put it through expensive evaporating cooling towers to get the temperature down to where it can be used in an expensive heat exchanger, whose initial cost goes up faeter than the temperature of its cooling water. The colder, cleaner w a t m of New England do not cauae nearly aa many sliming troubles on heat exchanger aurfaces aa are caused in some other parts of the country where sliming not only makes for higher capital costa, due to the necessity of mpplying more cooling surface, but also makes for high maintenance and desliming costs. As industrial architects learn how to remove the intermediate floors from some of the older textile mills, they find that the wellbuilt mofs and walls can be reconditioned to make splendid housing for many chemical operations. Small and medium-size industries h d it much cheaper to do some reconditioning of collateral services in older buildings than to do expensive ground leveling, fencing, foundation work, etc., and then build and install sidings, power lines, transformers, and other facilities in thk era of high building costs and often times low building labor eJ3icicucy. Combined with these factors are the advantages that come from being able to settle in communities that are never more than 20 and often not more than 5 miles from good machine and eltric shops ata6ed with real machinists and toolmakers. It in a great help to be located in communities served by these and established mill nupply houses. For a chemical industry, it ia a bl&g to be in a community where there are warehouses carrying all kin& of pipes, sheeta, alloys, plastics, beltings, and most other things likely to. be needed in an emergency or constantly being called for by a growing company. Best of all, it ia a bl&g to he within a hundred miles of many of the leading manufacturers of pumps, heat exchangers, valves, instruments, etc. New England haa all these. The chemical industry wants technical men, engineers, and trained chemists. Nowhere is there a more concentrated, steady output to draw fromthat than.found every year in the graduating classes of M.I.T., Harvard, Yale, Tufts, Brown, Boston University, and Worcester Polytech and the host of liberal arts cdleges which turn out well-trained young men anxious to try their hand at production or sales. Once in a while a New England industry will try t o hire a man from another part of the country only to have him say that he does not want to come to New England. He wants to bring up hi8 children free from the snobbery of the older states. This ia a rare occurrence, and is no resson to pick a fight with the fellow: everyone ia entitled to his own opinion. More often, however, those who have grown up in, or been educated in New England are enamored of its hills and blue watera, its varied and reasonably cool climate, its h e winter sports, ita wonderful woods and ntreams, and its proximity to 6ne libraries, concerts, beaches, and a host of other attractions and are unwilling to insulate tbem-
Resources
2550
INDUSTRIAL AND ENGINEERING CHEMISTRY
selves in newer, relatively undeveloped small inland towns which do not appeal to those who know New England. Perhap more important than these considerations are the changes that are taking place in transportation casts. As rail rates go up and specialized water transport spreads to sea trains and small tankers for the transport of petroleum chemicals, many investigations are bound to show that it costs less to transport raw materials with their lower classified freight r a h to New England, lmrk them here, and then deliver them by motor truck than it does to transport finished products at much higher ratea from faraway points. In normal times when buyers have more to eay about where and how they will buy than hes been the case during the last few years, the higher costs of inventories will he reEected in more reluctance on the part of the buyer to pay for material which is destined to sit in a freight car being shuffled around the oeuntry long after he has had to provide the money t o pay for it. The mads of New England are being improved. Its motor transport is growing. Two things uppermad in many manufacturers’minds todsy are taxes and marketa. Taxes are a controvemid subject. With pa& terns as variable as they are, it takes a brave man to generalbe, but it is probably fair to say that taxes in m a y New England aatea are reaeonable and that in three or four the probability of ecnnomy-minded governments is g o d . Even so, the higher standard of living will, for a while at any rate, keep their taxes somewhat above those of rural communities and communitiea b h d with more natural remurces. However, it must he admitted that there are two New England s t a h where the corporate tax picture and the state taxation of individuals are bad and growing worse. In one of tbese, taxation for unemployment bene6ta without merit credits in hurting the more etable industries, which naturally resent paying the mst of “Ey-by-nightem” that shnt down with every softeningof the mark& for their pmducta. In an individual-minded community such as New England, theee aituations naturally 081188much talk. It in hoped that h e fore long the public in the two offending dates will take matters into ita own h d s , and in accordance with the g o d sound principles of democracy, throw the spenders out of the government and return to normal situations. Despite this, it is probably safetosaythatthetaxpiotureinNew Englandisnotadeterrentto husiness locating or operating in moat of the states and that in
Vol. 44, No. 11
some it ie sufficiently OUhtanding to attract wide-awake wmWiea. Many paria of the country regularly advertise tbeir proximity to large marketing areaa We are all familiar with maps showing Cleveland and Chicago as the centera of concentric circles. Well, if w e were to draw a circle with a radius of 333 milea around New England, that circle would include the New England and Middle Atlantic states an well an the northeast parts of Ohio, Weat Virginia, and North Camlina. Within that area, 500 miles from the center of New England, is located about one third of the nation’s population and about half ita manufacturing eetablishnuaota. The Middle Atlantic sector, with ita giant New York and Philadelphiametrupolitans,andNew England receivenearly athird of the nation’s inaome, have stable markets, and money to spend. Further, with water transportation at its door, enabling low ccet delivery to the West C&, New England need not taLe off its hat to anyone when it comes to available markets. New England has mueh to offer and already has a sizable, growing chemical industry, 88 witneesed by Monaanto’s recent expansion of ita plastics facilitka at Springfield, Maw., and Dow‘s new plant at Allyn’s Point near the mouth of the T h e e River in Connecticut. Today’s chemical industry in showing an abiiity to provide substitutes for natural pmduds aa well as to pmduce spe*slties that give rise to end pmducta otherwise impmible. One could talk for hours of the things that cao he made from ailicones, the developmentsin petroleum chemistry, plastioa, new amides end sminea, new esters, and many others. These developmenta are bringing into the field manufacturers who are chemical processors rathex than chemical pmducers and who take new pmducta and turn them into the painta, car polishea, plastic dishes, shoe soles, wrinkleproof fibers, and thousands of other items. Factoriw, medium and small an well an large, are needed, with alert well-educsted, forward-looking management, teams of highly trained technicaland reeearch staffs and engineers, an well an an intelligent, skilled, adaptable labor force willing to do an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay. New England has the know-how, the willingness, and the ingenuity to turn to new things and make them profitable. This is a remuroe of more importance than any other. It coats nothing to dig it out. It has bean tested and proved many times. Rzmvrr, for re?iisnMuch 81. 1852.
ACCEPT^ Saptambar 11, 1952.
Economic and Market Potentials of the Chemical Industry T
HE fabulous industrial power of the United S t a h in common knowledge the world around. The strategic key to that strength is the ability to MOW, to shift productive murcea to m a t changing needs. Unwnnted ‘%uggy-whip“ products must be abandoned and new linen introduced. Changing rwourca pattern may dictate geog~aphicshifts in production. It is not enough that newly tapped reser~oirsof natural monrwa q a w n new cantem of industry. The established centera of industrial concentration must exhibit continuom Eexibility and resourcefulnem an they continue to grow. That is the achievement of New Endand. Industrial activity Eourished in New England early in the nation’s history. A rare combination of CharaeteriStics favored the early growth of manufacturing and trade. Capital accumu-
lated from whaling and clipper ship trade w88 available for invwtment. Materials were available locally or could be imported by water to be worked up by the growing pool of factory trained workers. Water power wan available from the many rivers and streams. Domestic and foreign marketa were readily reached hy water transport. Spurred hy these advantages, industrial production grew rapidly in New England. One hundred years ago the ratio of wage eemers per thousand population in New England was more than two timea the nation’s ratio. Aa the nation developed, some of these advantages remained, but others vanished and still others turned into disadvantages. The availability of capital, trained labor, and ocean transport are production advantsges today. However, the westward move-
