P L I X T OF SOUTHEKS ;\LE( I L I C O R P O R a T I O ? i , C O R P U S CHRISTI,
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1934 in Chemical Review labor under the various codes. The first have been the natural accompaniment of the framing of business laws under the codes and of the necessity of preserving the fundamental points of the antitrust laws which initially the codes were designed to offset. At the same time the haste shown in developing the code idea necessarily resulted in numerous errors which later had to be corrected. The effect of this has been to befog the business outlook and prevent conservative planning for the future so necessary to business progress. LABOR.The labor situation created by the application of Section 7A of the National Industrial Recovery Act has frequently been grave, This article provides that labor may organize and that employers must deal with the representatives of their employees. It has been interpreted in such a may as to encourage unionization of workers generally by paid organizers from outside and to place in the hands of any organized group an extraordinary amount of power with the backing of federal authority to enforce their will. The result has been a great number of strikes throughout industry, some of which have been both unnecessary and undesired by the majority of the employees affected. A case in point is that of a prominent rayon manufacturer who signed the code of the industry and whose plant was immediately the target of labor organizers. In view of conditions in this particular plant a mere handful of its some two thousand workers joined the union, but these were the “key” men. Later it became necessary to release s3me employees; included in the number were, among others, members of the union. Immediately discrimination was charged and the union laid the case before the h-ational Labor Board, whose ruling insisted that the union members be immediately reemployed. Upon the refusal of the company to do this, the union called a strike of its three hundred members without warning. The result was that pipe lines were hopelessly clogged with cellulose solutions and the entire plant was rendered completely inoperable within a matter of hours. So serious was the damage to plant equipment that the company was forced to liquidate rather than attempt to raise funds to rehabilitate its property. In this case as in several others less unfortunate in their outcome the net result has been a loss rather than a gain for the workers. Not only was work taken from the many in this instance on account of the activities of the few, but in numerous other cases manufacturers have moved their plants and opera-
‘HENthe Great Depression has finally become history and can be viewed dispassionately from the vantage point of years, two things will stand out as important exceptions to the general discouragement of the times: the sound condition of chemical industry despite economic reverses and the quickened pulse of research because of them. Although twelve months ago 1933 was considered definitely to be the last of the depression years (so great had been the progress toward economic stability already accomplished), business has since been seriously handicapped by what some choose to call the “Roosevelt, Depression.” This economic relapse apparently began in the late fall of 1933, and by the summer of 1934 the accepted indices of business showed that the reduction in activity from the highest point reached the previous year had been as great or greater than that felt during the earlier post-war depression of 1921! Whether it has yet run its course is still a question, but the upward trend of the business curves during the late months of 1934 seems to indicate that it has.
GOVERNMENT IN BUSINESS In the meantime, efforts to control and direct economic forces have been continued by governmental agencies. Huge sums of public money have been poured into various public enterprises in an effort to initiate a return to normal business activity. The National Recovery Administration has continued its fostering of codes of fair competition for the presumed purpose of aiding industry to regain its feet and to ret,urn to more nearly normal employment and production, in the rewards of which both capital and labor would share. The huge public project being carried out by the Tennessee Valley Authority, one of the numerous organizations created to aid in the program of recovery, has had for its objective the control of floods, the production of power, and the fostering of power-using activities in the territory of the Tennessee Valley, as well as the rehabilitation of farms in the region. All of these have had more or less important effects on chemical industry and activity. CODES.Codes of fair competition have had the effect in chemical industry, as elsewhere, of spreading employment and to some extent of correcting trade abuses. More important have been the elements of uncertainty introduced into the business outlook by the various changes effected and threatened in the attitude of the National Recovery Administration from time to time and the concessions given organized 5
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tions to remote points to escape the dominance of union labor in centers of concentration of particular industries. DANQERPOINTS.As we enter the New Year, we hear more often and much more distinctly the opinion that the National Industrial Recovery Administration has proved a failure and should be scrapped before its expiration by law in June, 1935. Only those provisions which set up minimum rates of pay and abolish child labor should be retained. Business, big and little, feels that it can progress if three principal things are done, and that it cannot move forward otherwise : First, the Administration should announce, and mean it, that a definite end has been reached in tinkering with the currency. Second, the famous section ?A should be declared not to mean the establishment of a labor monopoly under the American Federation of Labor. Third, with minimum wages established, the adjustment of hours should be left to individual industries or even to individual plants, employers dealing directly with representatives of their own labor groups and perfecting arran ements made in accordance with circumstances. The agitation for a 30-hour week should be dropped forthwith.
Vol. 27, No. 1
process of recovery and put into effect the Administration’s economic ideas have multiplied during the year t o the point where one of our leading humorists has suggested that the alphabet requires enlargement to provide initials for them all. Among the latest suggestions has been a bureau to control the export of munitions whose duty it would be to certify to the propriety and the necessity for the export of any material that might be used in war. This suggestion is the outgrowth of a previous one made by the Nye committee investigating the export of munitions that all exports of material usable in war be completely prohibited. This apparently simple method of reducing the probability of wars overlooked the fact that modern warfare requires innumerable materials which form essential parts of our peacetime exports. Obviously smokeless powder could be considered prohibited export under such a provision, but to be effective all nitrated cotton in lacquers or otherwise, cellulose, nitric acid, and even anhydrous ammonia would have to be included under the same ban for there would be no way of knowing in advance whether cotton was to be used in the manufacture of baby clothes or smokeless powder, or whether ammonia when once exported would become fertilizer for roses or nitric acid to participate in the synthesis of picric acid or trinitrotoluene. The insurmountable difficulties in the way of administering such a law, while plainly evident to chemical manufacturers and others, escape the eyes of legislators who would create such a law.
A factor deeply disturbing in its possibilities is tariff bargaining. Such bargains as have been completed have been confined largely to the comparatively nonindustrial nations; however, as the program goes forward it must be followed with the greatest care by all those appreciative of American chemical industry and with determination to prevent any disaster from overtaking it as a result of this new OUTSTANDING INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENTS method of promoting international exchange of products. An important industrial event of the year was the comOne of the most encoura-hg factors is the apparent decision that the Administration and business leaders are to work in pletion of the great new plant of the Southern Alkali Corcloser cooperation than they have been able to do for some poration a t Corpus Christi, Texas. Following tests begun in September, the plant swung into full production the first time past. T E N ~ S BVALLEY EE AUTHORITY.One of the problems of November with a capacity of 500 tons a day. The probefore the Tennessee Valley Authority is to find uses for large duction will be made up of soda ash, caustic soda (both solid blocks of hydroelectric power in enterprises beneficial to the and liquid), modified sodas, and caustic ash; later a line of territory and a t the same time capable of yielding products alkali chemicals derived from these compounds may be of value to the farmers. Wisely deciding that it would be un- marketed. This enterprise, representing a 7 million dollar profitable to utilize wartime developments a t Muscle investment, is the first alkali plant in the Far South and has Shoals for the fixation of atmospheric nitrogen, the Authority available adequate supplies of raw materials, a good supply has directed a large part of its initial efforts toward the de- of labor, unusual advantages for transportation of both raw velopment and testing of processes for the manufacture of and finished products, and a favorable location for the disphosphoric acid. During the closing months of 1934 two tribution of alkali to the important consuming industries furnaces designed to produce phosphoric acid, each by a dif- of the middlewestern and southwestern portions of the United ferent process, were put into operation. Results have not States. Among the products of chemical industry which have yet been published, and it may be some weeks or months before those in charge are prepared to make definite announce- stepped from the rarity class of a few pounds to the comments. The basis for this development is to be found in the mercial category of carloads during the year has been acetexistence of extensive resources of phosphate rock near by amide. This material has been shown to have valuable and a need for phosphates on the farms and hiIIsides of the solvent properties under proper conditions, and its increased use has been followed by a sharp increase in output and an Tennessee Valley. Work on new dams for flood control and on increasing the equivalent reduction in price to a point where it is industrially amount of primary power available for power production a t available. Diphenyl oxide has gone through a similar cycle recently these new sites has progressed rapidly, but it will be some time before power can be made available from these new sources. and has been satisfactorily used as the high-temperature heat Even after the engineering work has been completed, it will transfer agent in a bifluid boiler during the past year. Berequire many months for the reservoirs to fill sufficiently to cause of its high boiling point and its extreme chemical produce any considerable head. A recent decision of Federal stability in use, this organic compound serves to absorb and Judge Grubb in Birmingham, in an action brought by the transfer to high-pressure steam the heat available in boiler Alabama Power Company against the TVA, enjoins the furnaces a t high temperature. This transfer is brought about latter from selling power in competition with privately in a way which allows the construction of the boiler itself a t owned power companies. Just what effect this decision will a much lower cost than would be required if the entire unit have on the future of this gigantic project it is impossible were under the high pressure of the steam motive fluid. Boron carbide, with a hardness closely approaching that to say. Obviously there are several important decisions to be made regarding competition between this federally created of the diamond, has been made on a commercial scale and agency and the power companies on the one hand and the offered as an industrial abrasive during the year. It is an fertilizer manufacturers on the other before the future can electric furnace product of the reaction between coke and boric acid. be entirely clear. Sodium oxide has been marketed during the year as an MUNITIONS. Governmental agencies created to assist the
January, 1935
INDUSTRIAL AND ENGINEERING CHEMISTRY
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active alkali of high concentration. In addition to its atoms still remains essentially as he set it forth. Pasteur, extreme causticity, this compound weighs 22.5 per cent less whose portrait has appeared on a number of French stamps, is the only other chemist similarly honored by his native than its equivalent of caustic soda. One of the interesting new items of commerce is a trans- country. parent wrapping material prepared from rubber. It is Several discoveries in radioactivity, particularly the naturally moisture-proof, is easily sealed by slight heat and artificial production of radioactivity in elements otherwise pressure, and has sufficient elasticity to permit its being inactive, claim attention. At the Curie Institute of Radium stretched to a reasonable degree over sharp corners and in Paris, Mme. F. Joliot (nee I r h e Curie) and her husband edges without puncturing. One popular sheet runs 25,000 have succeeded in inducing radioactive characteristics in aluminum, boron, and magnesium atoms by bombarding square inches to the pound. Advances in petroleum chemistry include further develop- them with alpha particles. Although the life of the radiaments in extraction processes for the manufacture of superior tion is short (a matter of minutes after the bombardment has lubricants, propane being one of the favorite reagents for ceased), it is definite and detectable. In the process of this purpose. One of the great oil companies has developed bombardment it appears that boron atoms are converted a material of very high molecular weight by polymerizing into unstable, radioactive nitrogen, magnesium into radiolight ends of refinery gasoline. When added to lubricating active silicon, and aluminum into radioactive phosphorus. oil, these large molecules possess the property of increasing In this way it is apparently possible to accomplish the transthe viscosity indices to a marked extent. mutation of elements but the tiny scale on which it has been Attempts to disperse fog, the archenemy of air transport, done in experiments so far reported leaves room for further by spraying strong calcium chloride solutions into the air confirmation. have been successful. A series of jets is arranged to spray Following the same line of reasoning, Lawrence of the the water-absorbing solution into the air on the windward University of California has succeeded in producing a radioside of the landing field. The spray heads are arranged on a active form of sodium having remarkable properties. The horizontal, elevated pipe and are so placed that a section of fact that sodium compounds can be safely introduced into the landing field large enough to permit the landing of a plane the animal system makes this accomplishment especially is cleared of fog. The arrangement is successful for low- interesting from a medical point of view. The radioactive lying fogs and is expected to increase greatly the safety of sodium has a half-life of about 15 hours and yields gamma rays air transport, particularly near the seacoast where fogs are under a potential of some 5.5 million electron volts. The frequent. transformation from sodium to radioactive sodium is acIn the field of air-conditioning, to which chemistry makes complished by bombarding it with deutons, the charged a number of contributions, an unusual contract was under- neuclei of atoms of deuterium (heavy hydrogen). The taken in the project to air-condition the Robinson deep mine gamma rays as produced by the bombarded sodium are monoin South Africa. Besides being of interest to chemists and chromatic, and, since they are produced a t a high energy engineers, this project may have a considerable economic level and a high intensity, this development provides a new importance because of its relation to the further supply of tool for physicists to attack other problems of atomic strucincreasing quantities of gold. ture. A number of interesting pieces of equipment were developed Protoactinium, element number 91, has been isolated in during 1934. Many of these will be found described and elemental form by von Grosse, working in the laboratory of illustrated in the section on Progress Pictorial in INDUSTRIAL the University of Chicago. The element, isolated from the AND ENQINEERINQ CHEMISTRY for December, 1934. residues from radium extraction, is itself radioactive and, it is hoped, may have valuable therapeutic properties. PHY~ICAL CEEMISTRY At Columbia University physicists undertook to measure From the Cavendish Laboratory of Cambridge Univer- the size of the neutron and have fixed this at 0.0000000000001 sity comes word that evidence has been adduced of the inch. existence of both hydrogen and helium isotopes with atomic A new x-ray tube in which the x-radiation is produced by weights of 3. Although the chain of evidence is not yet the impact of heavy mercury atoms on the target, instead entirely complete, these two new atoms offer conlirmation of light hydrogen or helium atoms or electrons now used, has of views reached previously on purely speculative grounds. been developed a t the University of California by Coates The methods used a t Cambridge involve collisions of atoms and Sloan. It is expected that the new tube will open an of deuterium. At Princeton University a similar technic entirely new field to x-ray research because of the differences has yielded approximately 0.1 cu. mm. of “tritium” after in the radiation it produces from the customary types. its presence had been shown in heavy hydrogen by the use of A new allotropic modification of phosphorus, black and the mass spectrograph. practically noninflammable, has been made by Bridgman a t Element number 93 was announced during the year by Harvard University by the mere application of extraordinarily Enrico Fermi of Italy who prepared it by bombarding uranium high pressures. atoms with neutrons. This discovery of an element heavier than any known has not yet been conclusively confirmed; yet it suggests the possibility that further research will reveal other heavier elements beyond the present limits of our periodic system. In connection with the periodic system, it is of interest to note that the U. S. S. R. issued a series of four postage stamps to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Mendelyeev. His original thought of the periodicity of the properties of the elements has been strikingly confirmed during the period since his original announcements, and, although new discoveries have from time to time forced modification of the original statements,.the fundamental idea on which it was possible to foretell the properties of unknown
OUTSTANDINQ DEVELOPMENTS IN THE GLASSINDUSTRY An achievement of the f i s t magnitude in the glass industry marked the past year when the Corning Glass Works poured a 200-inch blank for a high-power telescope mirror and, uncertain as the quality of this disk, cast a second one December 2. The first blank was poured with proper ceremony in March and was by far the largest and most carefully made piece of glass ever produced. Some difficulties with the mold caused uncertainty as to the final result; even after annealing to the point where examination could be made, the company thought best to repeat what had been done, considering the fist blank as a spare should later examination
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INDUSTRIAL AND ENGINEERING CHEMISTRY
prove it to be satisfactory for its exacting task. Now that the second disk has been poured, it is announced that the first is satisfactory for use, so that within a single year this company has provided us with a repetition of one of the greatest triumphs of modern science. The second casting, completed in the record time of 6 hours and 57 minutes, appears to be entirely successfuI, but it will be another 10 months, before it is completely annealed and ready for the next operation in preparing it for the use of astronomers. The first disk is a deep turquoise blue; the second is a pure, transparent, crystal-clear glass. The provision of large mirrors for astronomical purposes has aroused renewed interest in various methods of coating these first surface reflectors. At Cornel1 University a new improvement has been developed, using aluminum which gives a hard, tenacious, nontarnishing, and highly reflecting surface. The mirror is first coated with chromium by evaporating the metal on the glass surface. Onto this thin layer a film of aluminum is evaporated in a thickness sufficient to produce an opaque layer. A mirror 36 inches in diameter has been coated in this fashion. More recently experiments with platinum indicate that this element can also be made t o form a coating on glass by the evaporation process. Platinum is p@icularly efficient in reflecting the invisible light of 500 A. wave length, an apparently unique property of this metal.
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less interesting as a realization of what has long been a dream of inventors. Perhaps sunshine will now be gotten from cucumbers to put in the museum along with the silk purse from the sows’ ears and the gold from sea water. On the subject of sea water, it is only proper to mention the latest effort to recover power from the temperature differential between the depths and the surface of the tropical oceans. The plan of Georges Claude for using sea water i n this way was tried in Cuba a few years ago without success, Now a similar apparatus has been built on a ship and sent to the South Atlantic. It is planned to use the power produced for the manufacture of ice for use in tropical countries. No word has yet been received of a glut of ice on the South American market from this source. MEDALAWARDS
Again the chemists of the United States have been honored by having awarded to one of their colleagues the much coveted Nobel Prize, this time to Harold C. Urey of Columbia University for his work on the isotopes of hydrogen and their compounds. This work and its implications are regarded by many as the equivalent of the discovery of a new element, and certainly they have had an immediate and far-reaching effect upon the trend of research not only in chemistry but in related fields of science. Indeed, the wide interest in the subject a t the present date is one of the most striking facts in research today. Every resource is being taxed to supply MIsCELL-~NEOUS DEVELOPMENTS heavy water to research workers for experimentation and not The Food Investigation Board, Department of Scientific only university laboratories but commercial firms, one in and Industrial Research of Great Britain, has reported some this country and one in Great Britain, have undertaken its success in its investigation of the influence of carbon dioxide manufacture for investigational purposes. The idea of heavy on the transport and storage of fish, meats, and fruits. It water, particularly its high cost and assumed toxicity, has has been demonstrated on a semi-commercial scale that so seized the public imagination that it has been made a chilled beef can be held in perfect condition from 60 to 70 factor in a recent important detective novel. days in an atmosphere containing from 10 to 20 per cent of Previous Nobel laureates in chemistry in America have carbon dioxide. This work, which is continuing, has an been the late Theodore William Richards for his work on important bearing upon the long-distance transportation atomic weights, particularly that of lead, and Irving Langand the storage of this class of perishable foodstuffs. muir for his work on high vacua and on surface chemistry. With the introduction into this country of methods of The AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY Award in Pure Chemsterilization depending upon the effect of infinitesimal istry (initiated by A. C. Langmuir) went to C. Frederick quantities of dissolved ionic silver (Katadyn process), special Koelsch of the University of Minnesota. interest attaches to a report from the New York State ColThe Willard Gibbs Medal, awarded by the Chicago Section lege of Agriculture to the effect that cut flowers of many of the AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY,was won by Harold varieties have been shown to keep much better in jars plated C. Urey in recognition of the same work which brought him on the inside with copper. Apparently the infinitesimal the Nobel Prize of 1934. solution pressure of copper, like that of silver, is sufficient to The Perkin Medal Award by the American Section of the produce a somewhat effective bactericidal concentration of Society of Chemical Industry in n’ew York was bestowed the metal. Carotin, formed in the leaves and other parts of plants, is upon Colin G. Fink. The Theodore William Richards Medal bestowed by the the parent substance of vitamin A and is converted into this Northeastern Section of the AMERICAN CEEMICALSOCIETY dietary essential in the liver of the animal eating it. This discovery was announced as the result of the researches of was awarded to G. P. Baxter. The Pittsburgh Award of the Pittsburgh Section, AMERICAN Goode of the Basic Science Laboratory of the University of SOCIETY,for the year 1933 was conferred on Ralph Cincinnati, who succeeded in showing that light is necessary CHEMICAL E. Hall in February, 1934. to the formation of this vitamin. The light needed is in the The Hillebrand Prize of the Chemical Society of Washington visible part of the spectrum and not in the ultraviolet, re(AMERICANCHEMICALSocmm) for 1933 was awarded quired in forming vitamin D. An antirachitic substance can be formed from cholesterol posthumously to Edward W. Washburn and received by his by activating it with fuller’s earth. This substance, es- son in April. The Schoellkopf Medal of the Western New York Section, sentially different from vitamin D formed by the action of CHEMICALSOCIETY,was awarded to James C . ultraviolet light on ergosterol, has been produced by Yoder AMERICAN Downs. of Iowa State College. The William H. Nichols Medal bestowed annually by the Commercial-scale recovery of bromine from sea water has CHEMICAL SOCIETY was been carried on for over a year now, and the plant is producing New York Section of the AMERICAN a substantial quantity over its rated capacity. In this con- awarded to H. C. Sherman. The Chemical Industry Medal of the Society of Chemical nection it has been found possible actually to recover gold from the same raw material. This is distinctly an un- Industry was awarded to Floyd J. Metzger. TheYlChandler Medal, awarded by the Charles Frederick profitable process and the cost of its recovery is far greater than the value of the gold obtained, yet the fact is none the Chandler Foundation, was bestowed upon Jacob G. Lipman.
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The llorty Medal, an auiiual award Iiy tlic Cheniistry Cluh id the Georgia Statc College Sor Women, went to Charles 1%. Herty. The Phillips llcdal, snnrdcd annually hy the lrnivcrsity oi Pittsburgh, went to 'Theodore W. Meckicwicz. The Franklin Medal r,S t l i e Franklin Institute was amtrded ti, Irving Laugmuir. The Proctor Ilit~Tll:iti
