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basic ionization constants (K. Ke) becomes smaller than a substance no longer gives a sharp isoelectric point but an increasingly wider isoelectric range. However, the methods used here to determine the isoelectric point may not be the most sensitive methods, and some other method may definitely locate the point at about p H 2.1, which is about the mean of the range where we could detect no differences. The marked insolubility of fibroin is also proof of the fact that it does not have many free acidic or basic groups. The measurements obtained show the isoelectric point or range to be decidedly in the acid region. This observation is in accord with the fact that silk does not form stable combinations with most acid dyes, although it does with basic dyes. Except for the recent work of Nakajima which gave evidence of a low isoelectric point, previous determinations have depended quite largely on surface reactions. It would seem extremely unlikely than an animal product such as fibroin should be entirely homogeneous. It is rather difficult to draw a sharp dividing line between sericin and fibroin, and we do not know that the two do not gradually merge into one another. The amount of material removed from raw silk in the boil-off depends on the method and duration of that process. It is, then, quite possible that the isoelectric points previously given for fibroin, which are almost identical with that of sericin, are influenced by traces of sericin left on the surface of the fibroin. N o very complete amino acid analysis
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of sericin has thus far been reported, but from what is known a t present it does not have a composition a t all similar to that of fibroin. iVole-This research on proteins is one of several investigations plauned for the determination of the true isoelectric point of silk fibroin and also silk sericin; and the program is t o be continued by cooperation of this laboratory with the research staff of the Cheney Silk Mills. The new work will cover a careful study of the properties of colloidal solutions of fibroin prepared under new conditions, and also determinations of the isoelectric constant of this important protein by means of well-known microscopical methods.
Conclusion
It is difficult to explain all the reactions of silk on a strictly chemical basis. The isoelectric point, therefore, in this case is probably not an entirely definite thing, but is in some measure dependent upon the method used to determine it. Literature Cited (1) Abramson, J . A m . Chem. Soc., BO, 390 (1928). (2) Alsberg, IND.ENG.CHEM.,18, 190 (1926). (3) Alsberg and GriBng, Cereal Chem., 2, 325 (1925). (4) Alsberg, GriBng, and Field, J . A m , Chem. Soc.. 48, 1299 (1926). ( 5 ) Clark, “Determination of Hydrogen Ions,” Williams & s’ilkins, 1923. (6) Denham and Brash, J . Textile Insl., 18 (special issue), T520 (1927). (7) Elod, 2. angew. Chem., 40, 262 (1927). (8) Kodama, Biochem. J., 20, 1208 (1926). (9) Landsteiner and Pauli, 25 Kongress fur innere Medizin, 1908. (10) Meunier and Rey, Compl. rend., 184, 285 (1927). (11) Nakajima, Bull. Sci. Fakullafo Terkultura I m p . Univ., 2, 20 (1926).
AMERICAN CONTEMPORARIES Henry Summers Chatfield HE genial president of the National Paint, Oil, and Varnish
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Association, Inc., tioasts of an Irish mother, an English father, and Jewish features. Thus the far-famed melting pot yclept America has, in one of its most ebullient moments, combined in one entity the admirable qualities of three: racesreadiness to fight for the cause of peace a t the drop of a brown derby, combined with a bull-dog persistence and the brand of sportsmanship that accepts with a smile temporary defeat as well as success, and penetrating shrewdness and love of Family. Master Henry Chatfield first opened his eyes-July 28, 1864in the lower east side of S e w York City. Despite the fact that he can trace his genealogy back to 1630, when Henry VI11 awarded a coat of arms to a doughty ancestor, he is just as common as the rest of us. When the boy was eight years old, he decided that the tip of Manhattan was too congested for the full development of his talents so, together with his parents, he moved 1.0 Elizabeth, N. J., where he still resides. After scrambling through the elementary grades he whiled away five years a t the Pingry School, preparatory to Princeton. However, the prospect of association with the scholastic tiger was too tame for one who had been reared within sound of the roar of the Tammany variety. So he teamed up with a horseman who earned oats for his mount by dealing in crude drugs, and thus, a t the age of eighteen, established his first connection with chemistry. Not finding drugs sufficiently profitable, he switched over to shellac in 1886. For over forty years he has been identified with the importation and marketing of that product. I n 1912 there came into existence the Kasebier-Chatfield Shellac Company, united in 1929 with the Mac-Lac Company to form the Mac-Lac-Kasebier-Chatfield Corporation, a merger that added strength to two already strong concerns. The new com-
pany bleaches shellac a t Rahway, N.J., and produces shellac varnish in New York City, with Mr. Chatfield, as vice president, in charge of distribution. I n selling he is an exponent of the direct method. His product and the service provided by his company are the best. If the prospect hasn’t sense enough to see it-so much the worse for the prospect. “Chatty” is not going to waste a lot of time in arguing with a man who is blind to his own interests. The shellac business depends for its principal raw material on imports from far-distant India. Religious unrest among the Hindus, famine, native dissatisfaction with the overlordship of the English, storms a t sea-all tend to interfere with that smooth flow of manufacturing supplies that is the ideal of the production man. So the refining and bleaching of lac have more than the usual quota of ups and downs. However, the outbreak of the World War supplied the climax to this game of now you see i t and now you don’t. It so happened that, a t the critical time, a German freighter cleared from Calcutta with a cargo of lac that belonged to citizens of the United States. While in the Mediterranean she sought safety in an Italian port and later was taken to Naples as a prize of war. There ensued great consternation among the best shellac circles of America. These five thousand bags of lac, badly needed here, were useful to the Italians, who naturally argued that the cargo of an enemy vessel was a legitimate war prize. It was a fine point in international law, with the odds emphatically in favor of the possessor of the goods. While others were appealing to the State Department, Mr. Chatfield adopted the obvious, but not exactly simple, method of direct approach. He went to Italy and argued with the Italian authorities. It took him a whole winter, but he had his way. To
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the amazement of his business associates an American steamer sailed up New York harbor with all the precious lac in her hold. Congratulations-and commissions-were accepted with the usual becoming modesty. Our entry into the great struggle marked for him the opportunity to serve his country. As assistant director of the Bureau of Imports, he was in special charge of foodstuffs; he gave up his business and spent eighteen months in Washington, doing his bit in looking after the nation’s welfare. Citizen Chatfield has always been interested in the good of his community and of his church. For thirty-two years he has been a trustee of the Sacred Heart Church of Elizabeth. He helped found St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in 1907, and has been on the board of governors since that time. He was the first man appointed on the Union County Park Commission (1920), and is still one of the commissioners. His particular care was the development of playgrounds, baseball diamonds, football fields, and golf links. Since he has been on horseback for fifty-five years, there are bridle paths a plenty. Incidentally, along with horses he is partial to dogs and children. He never wants a salaried job from the public, but will work enthusiastically without pay at anything that will serve the needy and the children. In 1920 he accumulated, on his farm near Elizabeth, a herd of sixteen of the best Jersey cows that were ever gathered together. Most of the milk was I sent to the hospital. Henry S. His wife died in 1920, and he married again in 1923. He now shares his spacious home with Nrs. Chatfield and two daughters. His Leitmotif in commercial activity has been cooperation. Shellac is a highly competitive line. Mr. Chatfield was among the first to realize that, no matter how strenuous business rivalry may be, there are always interests that a given trade has in common, that can best be served by group action. Perhaps his greatest service is due to his efforts to smooth the way for orderly business, t o straighten out tortuous courses, to heave to one side the boulders that delay progress. In 1910 he organized the United Shellac Importers Association, and is still its president. Arrangements were made for arbitration, for trustworthy analyses, for the fixing of grades. One of the first members of the National Paint, Oil, and Varnish Association, he has held every office in that aggregation. It was only fitting that this group honored him and itself last year by unanimously electing him their president. It was through the association that he performed perhaps his greatest single service to the chemical industry, a service that will always entitle him to rank as one of the pioneers who made pos-. sible our tremendous development in chemical manufacturing. \\‘e refer to his struggle to induce Congress to authorize tax-free denatured alcohol for the arts and industries. Today one can scarcely realize that extended akgument was needed to put over the common-sense proposition that it was out of the question for industry to pay a t a x of more than two dollars on raw material worth perhaps fifty cents. Other countries had appreciated this absurdity a half-century before the matter was agitated in the United States, and it was largely on account of cheap alcohol that Europe then surpassed us in chemical manufacturing. There was appointed early in the new century a
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committee of manufacturers on industrial alcohol. Large quantities of alcohol were needed for cutting shellac, and the methyl variety was costly. Naturally, Mr. Chatfield was an aggressive member of this committee. The opposition was intense. Pharmaceutical manufacturers had adjusted their prices to the cost of the tax-paid article; the wood distillers feared the loss of a market for methanol; the Anti-Saloon League suspected that alcohol might be diverted into intoxicating beverages. The measure could be passed only by organization, fighting spirit, and conciliation; the chemical industry owes to Mr. Chatfield everlasting gratitude for his tenacity in seeing it through. The bill, once enacted into law, had to be defended against restrictive proposals. T h e National Paint, Oil, and Varnish Association organized a special committee on industrial alcohol, with Chatfield a t its head. (Incidentally, he remained chairman until his election to the presidency.) He was frequently called to appear before c o n g r e s s i o n a l c o m mittees, and it is primarily due to his dialectic skill that the tax-free alcohol law has not been tampered with, that the denaturation system h a s b e e n steadily expanded, and that the legitimate production of industrial alcohol &is grown from almost nothing in 1906 to approximately 100 million gallons during the past year. This struggle has called for versatility as well as persistence, as witness the following. In the beginning the most determined I opposition came from the Anti-Saloon Chatfield League, headed by Wayne B. Wheeler. A few years ago, however, denatured alcohol was s u b j e c t e d to a flank attack by the Association against the Prohibition Amendment. This organization, in a moment of aberration, decided that its cause could be strengthened, and Prohibition correspondingly discredited, by the cry that the Government was deliberately poisoning alcohol. It demanded that the Government discontinue the use as a denaturant, not only of “wood alcohol,” but of any substance that might be injurious to the human system if taken internally. The manufacturing chemist may well imagine what would happen if he were compelled to select his reagents on the basis of palatability and nourishment. The good politician is ever willing to share his couch with anyone who can ease his rest. We now witness the strange phenomenon of Chatfield, in defense of chemical manufacturing, foregathering with Wheeler, coming to the rescue of Prohibition, in order to advance against Stayton, who, in attacking the latter cause, mas threatening harm to the whole denaturing system. The combination was irresistible. The argument culminated in the somewhat famous Chatfield-Stayton correspondence; the final Chatfield letter appeared in the Congressionel Record, issue of December 6, 1928, and was characterized by the Commissioner of Prohibition as “the best presentation of the legal and scientific background of the denatured alcohol act as a t present administered that I have ever seen.” Worker and playboy; active business man and willing servant of his community; scrapper and conciliator; genial soul ever ready with a sharp retort; the president of the National Paint, Oil, and Varnish Association is a happy blend of apparently incongruous qualities. May his tribe increase! i M .H. HAERTEI,
