Economic Foundations
of American Chemical Industry WILLIAMS HAYNES 25 Spruce Street, New York, N. Y.
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Leather was home-tanned. Soap, candles, arid most of the simple utensils were homemade. Except for salt, gunpowder, pottery, metals, tools, and such elaborate wares as firearms and clocks, the household was generally sufficient unto itself. Luxuries, even conveniences, were imported. For the cash to purchase them, Sew England relied upon fish sold t o the Catholic countries and to a less extent upon lumber; the Middle Colonies upon the fur trade which early centered a t Kew York; and the South upon tobacco and naval stores, supplemented after the rapid growth of British textile manufacture by cotton and indigo. The dominant economic stage of the entire country was that of agricii!ture practiced, except on the great southern plantations, under conditions but a step from the dangerous uncertainties of the frontier. $1though two-thirds of the population lived within fifty miles of the seacoast, there were but few large trading centers.
P O S the three-hundredth anniversary of
the establishment of chemical industry iu the TJnited States and a t a time when contemporary events put such heavy emphasis upon the economic problems of chemical production, it is a t least opportune to consider why and how chemical manufacturing came first t o be undertaken in this country. Historical perspective, always valuable, has special significance today. To trace the development of our American chemical industry and indicate clearly the broad economic service it has performed is not only appropriate, but it may also be of practical value. A significant economic characteristic of chemicals is that (excepting medicinals, cosmetics, and household specialties) they are manufactured industrial raw materials. They are bought by industrial consumers and used to produce chemical effects. In the sense that a pair of pliers is made of steel or a suit of clothes of wool, consumer goods are not, generally speaking, made of chemicals. Accordingly, chemical production initially must await the establishment of other manufactories; and chemical industry, once established, develops conditioned by the growth of its own customers. The birth and growth of the American chemical industry is, therefore, an interesting, accurate footnote upon the industrial phsses of our history. American economic development has been described as a succession of modes of living-the savage, the hunter, the trader, the rancher, the farmer, and finally the manufacturer, each following the other in waves, moving westward and always pushing the frontier across the continent. On that frontier social development was always beginning over and over again. Behind that frontier, economic development was continually consolidating the advances of the pioneers who blazed the western trails. This social and economic evolution has been progressing so rapidly that within two generations great numbers of our people have time and again advanced literally from the simple conditions of frontier life to those of highly specialized, modern industrialism.
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NDER such circumstances the establishment of industry was difficult. The market was limited. Transportation was slow and costly. There was little rash available for investment. Labor was scattered and vast domains of free land, open for occupation to any courageous, energetic man, naturally kept wages high. Gradually, however, the blacksmith, the wheelwright, the gunsmith, and the clockmaker took their places in the colonies beside the trader, to be followed by manufacturers either of necessities or of goods made from the natural raw materials of the region. And as the frontier moved westward, these conditions were again and again repeated. This gradual unfolding of industry in America, a repeated recapitulation, as it were, of the economic development of the human race, has given our industry a unique background. Machinery, thrust suddenly into the fixed and ordered life of Europe, forced readjustments upon work people that caused miserable hardships; it changed sharply the use of capital; it demanded drastic revision of the law; it created new political issues. In America, on the other hand, machinery fitted itself quite easily into the natural economic development. The pioneering spirit is woven into American character. Democratic social life, cooperation in public works, equal economic opportunity are no finespun philosophies upon the frontier where every man stands-or falls-upon his own character and native capabilities. In this light it is easy to trace out the roots of our disrespect for tradition, our mistrust of powerful combinations, our careless wastefulness of materials, our careful concern for any ways and means of saving either time or labor. The Yankee habit of “tinkering” was
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H E Industrial Revolution, contemporaneous with our Revolutionary War, found Europe with an established economic system, powerful well-organized political institutions, and a social life molded into orders that were virtual castes. American conditions were quite different. We were a handful of people scattered along the eastern fringe of a vast unexplored territory. Almost every household was selfsupporting. Food was home-grown. Buildings and furniture were home-built. Clothes were chiefly homespun. 355
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a valuable asset under frontier conditions where of necessity a man was a carpenter today and a veterinarian tomorrow, a farmer in summer and in winter a trapper. Our inventive genius is the rich legacy of enforced habits of using head and hand together. With such talents and temperament we have reared a distinctive industrial organization designed primarily to exploit our rich natural resources. The familiar, salient characteristics of American industry-large-scale straight-line production which freely employs machinery to save time and to
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when John Rolfe began to cultivate tobacco, this highly profitable crop quickly became the principal export and the main source of cash income. Accordingly, these seeds of chemical industry did not flourish on Virginian soil. The naval stores and potash (soap ash) industries, transplanted t o locations where they did not have to compete with tobacco, soon became important factors in American export trade. Indeed, since earliest colonial times, American rosin and turpentine have continued to dominate the world’s naval stores markets; and American potashes were driven from a
FIRST TANNERY IN
NEW ENGLAND 1632
Sketch of the first tannery in New England, beside Humphrey’s brook, i n Swampscott, Mass., started b y Francis Ingalls in 1632, and his log cabin, in the rear, which he built in 1629. (From “Historical Sketchee of SwampScott” courteously loaned b y the Lynn Public Library.)
Courtesy, Professor Moody
lower labor costs and which is marked by exceptional delegation of authority and division of profits-are the inevitable result of the conditions under which manufacturing enterprises have grown up in the United States.
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HEMICALS fitted themselves naturally into the larger picture of our national economics. It is commonly believed that American chemicals are an “infant industry,” a lusty child of the World War, an opportune and profitable business which we stole from Germany under the protecting guns of the British Navy. As a matter of fact, the value of our chemical products, just prior to the war, was something in excess of two billion dollars, or a twelfth of all our manufactured goods, a total exceeded only by the foodstuffs, the textile, and the iron and steel industries. I n 1910 we produced three times as much sulfuric acid as Germany and twice the tonnage of alkalies made in England. Furthermore, the chemical industry was the first industry established in the American colonies. I n 1608 the London Company, which financed the settlement a t Jamestown, disappointed in their hope of finding gold, sent out skilled workmen to manufacture glass, pitch, and tar. The first cargo of exports from Virginia listed in the ship’s manifest “trials of pitch, tar, glass, frankincense, and soap-ashes.” A bitter struggle against starvation left little time for the pursuit of these industries, and after 1612,
similar commanding position only after 1860, when the Prussian Government began t o exploit the famous Stassfurt deposits of mineral potash. Thus two chemical raw materials industries, established in the second year of the first American colony, became the real beginnings of our manufacturing activities and were so preeminently successful that they won and held an important place in world commerce. In 1635, just fifteen years after the Mayflower Pilgrims landed a t Plymouth, John Winthrop, Jr., returned from a visit to England, bringing with him a collection of “philosophical instruments” consisting chiefly of chemical apparatus. He set up the first chemical laboratory in America and began the first manufacture of chemicals. This astute and scientifically minded scion of the Puritans, who had been educated a t Trinity College, Dublin, was thus a t once our first chemist and our first chemical industrialist. For years he worked incessantly to exploit the chemical and mineral resources of New England. His greatest efforts were t o supply those prime essentials, lead, gunpowder, and salt. To this latter end he received a special commission and grant from the Massachusetts Colony, and in 1649 the first monopoly sanctioned by Connecticut was awarded him for the working of lead, copper, tin, alum, and vitriol. In 1650, he organized the first American chemical stock company to manufacture saltpeter. Since he was financially backed by his father and since his chemical enterprises were carried
forward hy his own son, Wait, and his grandson, didin, the good name of Winthrop has a proper place beside du l’ont, Lennig, Innis, Grasselli, Mapes, Kalbfleisch, Wilder, Uowker, and other distinguished fairdies long and closely associated with the American chemical industry. The tannery established in 1634 at Ipswich, tlie fullirig mill at Rowley (16d9), the glass works a t Sanduich (1640) were but pioneers of a long series of local chemical process industries established in Keiv E ~ g l a n d . At Boston aiid Philadelphia, then tlie most important cominercial cities, various efforts were made to supply the growing demands for bleach, alum, and acid; and the preparation of dyestuffs and tanning extracts assumed quite sizahlc proportions. Although nia.nufact~iiringactivities mere extremely limited, nevertheless there was considerable exploitation of the uatural raw materials of the seaboard area. Several of these mere chemical in character.
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HE early exjmtation of rosin arid tiirgeiitine from the pine forests was encouraged by a bounty to producers authorized in 1704 by the British Parlinment. The burning of wood in iron pots served the double purpose of helping to clear land and furnishing occupation during spare times, while the finished product, potash, was valuable for soapmaking, was easily transported, and carried a high price. Soap, glass, bricks, and pottery developed as local industries, and paper-making wns begun in Pennsylvania by Rittenhouse in 1690. Gunpovder was manufactured early in bot,h iMassaclirisetts arid Virginia, and niost of the colonies made special efrorts t o soyply their need for salt. Animal Cats and fish oils were mainifact.ured into candles and exported to the West Indies. Aniongtlieforest products n w e tanning extracts, used in preparing fur skim for export and in tanning Iuttlier for donientic use. Native nat,ural dyes were used in the homespun textiles (a tax on imported dyeiwods being a favorite revenue measure of several of the colonies) and in 1741 Eliza Lucas introduced the cultivation and extraction of indigo into Xorth Carolina. This industry grew for a century and prospered until killed off by quicker, cheaper communicatiori w-ith I n d i a during the clipper shipera.
tlie same time English merchants dumped all sorts of goods into our markets, determinod to regain the profitable trade lost duririg the war. The logical result was to impress upon Americm leaders n,n early conviction that, if induskid enterprises uwe to succeed, some system of protection and encouragement would be necessary. Accordingly, in 1790, the year after the adoption of the Constitution, the first tariff law was passed sild the Patent Office established. Some ten years earlier Calcb and Joseph Vilder niade distinct progress in tlie process of leaching potash out of hardnood ashes. Tliis advance in v h a t was then our most important chemical industry has two interesting historical sequences. Patent S o . 1, issued by the United States Governmerit several years after tile Wilder invention, coxws this identical cliernical process; and Salmon W. Wilder, great grandson, was for niaiiy years at the helm of the Merrimac Cliemical Company, the largest chemical manufacturing husiness in New England. At this time the British consul a t Philadelphia, then the nioxt important city, reported to his government that the country was so large and thinly settled that manufactories would not thrive “for a series of centuries.” He expected only a few bulky or difficult goods upon which transportation costs would be exorbitantly high. Sulfuric acid, shipped in glass carboys, falls plainly within the last class, and in 1792, in the very city from which Consul Phineas Bond made his report, John Harrisou built a tiny sulfuric acid plant, with a yearly output of three-hundred carboys. He laid the first stone in the pennanent foiindations of the American chemical industry.
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Y 1806 Hnrrisoii bad expanded to an airriual capacity of half a million pounds of acid, which is just about t.lie daily output. of a niodern unit. This output he sold at an average price o€ 15 cents a pound; today the price is 5 cents. Tliat our first chernieal nianufacture should be this widely used acid was quite natural. A considerable market existed ready-made, arid high freight rates to compensate ship owners for the extraordinary risks of transporting this dangerous mat.erial Dacked in elass created an attractive differential between production cost LI, these b r a v e l i t t l e and selling price. Therefore, cheniical attempts, init was not long before the spired by bitter need, won pioneer plant of John Ilarrionly sporadic success. Exson had competition. cept for the exploitation of I n 1823 t h e New York our natural r a v materials-C h eniical Manufacturing fish oils, potash, tannins, and Company was chartered to naval stores-.-they remained make “blue vit.rio1, alum, oil local and vanished u+th the of vitriol, aquafortis, nitric passing of tlie enterprisiiig acid, muriatic acid, alcohol, individual who u rider t o o k tartar emetic, refined camthem. Lack of experience phor, saltpeter, borax, c o p and of chemical knowledge, peras, c o r r o s i v e sublimate, restricted markets, and calomel, and o t h e r drugg, limited capital, p r e v e n t e d medicines, paints, and dyers’ any permanent progress. colours.” Their factory ~ & Not until after the Revoluin Greenwich Village, on the Comtcay, P~oJeraorMood!, t i o n d o we f i n d t h e perwest side of Hudson Street TIIEFIRST-IRON POT CAST IN AHER~CA manent b e g i n n i n g s of our a n d t h e s o u t h side of the (From B plmtogranh furnished by the Lynn Public Library.) -. .chemical industry. Great Kill Road. now GameAfter the Ifevolutionary ’ voort Street, and cost $37,210. John G. Morrison, a leadingdruggist, with James Jenkins, War the English attitude toward the newborn states iiaturally undement radical revisions, and the young nation learned Geradus Post, and Charles G. Haynes were the organizers. promptly that political and economic freedom are quite differThey soon moved far out into the country (on the lfudson River betneen Thirt,y-secondand Thirty-fourth Streets). ent things. British cuinmercial policy was IIOW bent upon Cornpetition for Harrison sprang up closer to home. In preiventing the exportation of machinery and skilled workmen 1818, at Arch and Tndftli Streets, Philadelphia, Farr and to assist in establishing the factory system in America. 4 t
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Kunzi began the manufacture of various acids. They were joined in 1829 by a young Englishman, William Weightman, the firm eventually becoming Powers and Weightman. A few years before, in 1822, Rosengarten and Sons entered the Philadelphia chemical field, although from the first their efforts were directed more toward medicinal than industrial products. On the death of William Weightman, a t the ripe age of ninety-one, these two firms consolidated in 1905 and became Powers-Weightman-Rosengarten Company, which combined in 1927 with Merck and Company, a younger American transplantation of the old drug house of Merck of Darmstadt. Of the early competitors of Harrison, however, the most potent was Charles Lennig, who in 1829 erected a t Bridesburg, near Philadelphia, the largest sulfuric acid chambers yet attempted. A preeminently successful manufacturer and an aggressive salesman, the first Lennig soon set a competitive pace that, combined with the efforts of Maryland Chemical Works and the Baltimore Chemical Works, which entered the market in 1829, precipitated the earliest chemical price war,
THESE
unsettled conditions in the chemical market led the directors of the New York Chemical Manufacturing Company to abandon the chemical enterprise and establish the Chemical National Bank, However, their plant manager, Martin Kalbfleisch, a young Hollander educated in France, continued in the business. In the burst of patriotic enthusiasm that fired the founders of the Republic to win commercial selfsufficiency, every incentive was held out to manufacturers. In 1801 Thomas Jefferson, who agreed with Alexander Hamilton, in his keen interest in industrial development, inspired E. I. du Pont de Nemours to embark in the manufacture of explosives a t Wilmington, Del. New demands now arose for all sorts of chemicals, and J. L. Bishop has estimated that by 1830 a t least thirty different chemical manufacturing firms existed in the United States, with a total capitalization of $1,158,000and an aggregate output in excess of a million dollars a year. By 1839 the industrial frontier Grossed the Alleghenies, and a demand for chemicals had been created which led to the establishment of a chemical plant a t Cincinnati by Eugene Grasselli. This bold venture west of the seaboard fringe furnishes another example both of the importance of chemicals in industry and of the dependence of chemical manufacturing upon industrial consumption, for the subsequent development of the Grasselli Chemical Company is interwoven with the growth of the vast petroleum and steel industries of westtern Pennsylvania and Ohio. The purchase of the John Harrison & Sons Company by the du Pont Company in 1920, and consolidation with Grasselli interests in 1928 binds together three of the most historically significant companies in our chemical industry. By 1890 the frontier had vanished and with it the hunter and trader. By 1900 the rancher had practically disappeared, and the manufacturer began to indicate plainly his eventual triumph over agricultural, mining, lumbering, and fishing activities. These continued, however, to be our principal economic activities until the World War.
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I G the closing years of the last century two new factors entered the sulfuric acid industry, which show the far-reaching effects of a new process. The recovery of sulfur from smelter fumes and its conversion into acid had long been preached by chemists It was not practiced by our metal refineries until other industries in the western states (especially the petroleum industry) created a near-by market for the acid. In 1882 Matthiesson & Hegeler Zinc Company first made by-product sulfuric acid from zinc ores a t La Salle, Ill. The threat to established acid makers of this by-product
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acid seemed mild compared with the promise, confidently made by technologists, that the recently discovered contact process would shortly make every lead chamber plant obsolete. The new process dispensed with the use of nitric acid. The product it turned out was stronger and purer than could be produced by concentration of the chamber acid. In perfecting this new contact process, the Badische Aniline Company (which required pure, concentrated acid in their dye-making operations) had invested ten years of costly research. They demanded such exorbitant royalties for their patents that, although thoroughly frightened, the American chamber acid manufacturers did not feel they could afford to meet the German terms. August Heckscher, of the New Jersey Zinc Company, learned of another contact process, invented by Grillo and Schroeder, which did not interfere with the Badische rights, and he was quick to seize this opportunity. Accordingly, the first contact acid plant in America was erected in 1901 by a subsidiary of the zinc company a t Mineral Point, Wis. In the meantime the foreign threat was very helpful in effecting the organization of the General Chemical Company (1899), into which William H. Nichols banded twelve smaller chemical companies, operating fifteen acid plants. Individually, several of these had been approached by Badische to lease their patents; as a group, their first effort was to develop a competitive process. I n this project they were signally successful, owing to the work of J. B. F. Herreshoff, chief chemist of the Nichols Company. With the Herreshoff process as a trump card in their negotiations, the General Chemical Company acquired American rights to the Badische patents upon favorable terms. It is significant that the first chemical consolidation (organization of the General Chemical Company) was initiated by the commercial effects of a foreign technical advance.
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ECOXD in industrial importance t o sulfuric acid are the alkalies, soda ash and caustic soda. Because ocean transport involves neither the risk nor expense of the importation of acids, domestic manufacture of soda products was delayed; and until about 1885 our supplies were drawn wholly from the efficient and well-organized alkali industry of Great Britain. The development of the British alkali industry had been closely associated with the Industrial Revolution in the textile industry. Its introduction into this country had a similar connection. The Solvay process, discovered in 1863, had been successfully introduced into England by the Monds. Its valuable by-products, the growth of our textile, paper, and glass industries, and the availability of domestic supplies of ammonia, combined to make the transplantation of the process an economic feasibility. Rowland Hazard, member of a family long prominently identified with textile interests in Rhode Island, became interested in the project; an agreement was entered into with the Belgian house of Solvay; and a plant was erected a t Syracuse, N. Y . , close to an abundant supply of natural brine. On January 10, 1884, operations began. The initial unit, designed to produce 50 tons a day, fell far short of projected capacity; but improvements and labor-saving devices, perfected by the American staff, increased the output to 150 tons daily. This success prompted the organization of two other American alkali companies, the Michigan Alkali Works (1892) and the Mathieson Alkali Works (1893). Both brought over English technical men for the construction and initial operation of their plants, and both settled, the former at Wyandotte, Mich., and the latter a t Saltville, Va., adjacent to liberal salt supplies. At this time (1893) our imports of soda ash totaled 388,910,183 pounds, valued a t $4,855,098. Ten years later they had dropped t o 24,688,625 pounds, worth $232,201. During the
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INDUSTRIAL AND ENGINEERING CHEMISTRY
same period the importation of caustic soda fell from 57,485,106 to 2,657,751 pounds, valued, respectively, a t $1,344,525 and $66,176. Following the example of the Ford family, who prior to their organization of the Michigan Alkali Works had been engaged in the glass business, two other groups among the big consumers of soda ash subsequently embarked upon alkali manufacture in order to supply their own requirements. In 1899 the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company organized the Columbia Chemical Company; and in 1910 the Macbeth-Evans-Flackus Glass Companies joined with the Hazel-Atlas Glass Works to establish the Diamond Alkali Company. These new producers not only removed the very considerable alkali requirements of their backers, but both companies also produced a surplus which they naturally sought to market to other consumers. Consequently, our alkali output was for several years uncomfortably in excess of demand. A bitter price war ensued. Since the manufacture of alkalies is predicated upon the sale of large tonnages of low-priced materials at a close margin of profit, it is obviously a type of industry which, with its heavy plant investments, is notably vulnerable to price cutting. This highly unsatisfactory market condition seriously jeopardized the stability of one of the most important sections of the chemical industry. Had these conditions lasted long, serious casualties-either outright failures or consolidations-would have resulted, but the entiremarket situationwas abruptly changed in 1914 by the enormous demand for alkalies created by the World War.
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HROUGHOUT the history of the American chemical industry, chemicals have been obliged to wait upon an effective demand from other manufacturing processes. Moreover, the establishment of chemical industry in this country was attended not only by the usual difficulties of limited technical experience and small consuming demand, but also by determined competition from the more experienced and better established chemical producers abroad. The story of the unscrupulous methods by which the German dye manufacturers successfully discouraged the establishment of an American dye industry has been often told; but this was by no means an isolated case. The manufacture of phosphorus-then an important raw material of the match industry-was undertaken a t hft. Holly, N. J., in 1870 by Rose & Lowell. When they opened their plant, the selling price was $1.25 B pound. The next year it dropped to 70 cents. The little plant a t l i t . Holly closed. The next year the price went back t o $1.20, and the plucky partnersre-
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opened. They gave up the fight four years later after the price had been carried down to 50 cents a pound. The match business had passed under the control of a single company, and a t the time it was testified before a Congressional Committee that this large buyer had “contracted with an English company for their phosphorus supplies a t a price considerably below that quoted in England and below the cost of production here.” The English price was about 70 cents a pound, but this contract called for delivery of the material in New York, with a 20 per cent ad valorem duty paid, for 60 cents.
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HE bromine industry went through a paraIlel experience,
but to a happier conclusion. Production was begun a t Freeport, Pa., in 1845 by David Alter to supply the use in daguerreotype plates at the profitable price of about $8 a pound. When this photographic process was superseded, he closed his plant; but in 1866 when bromides as nerve sedatives became popular with the physicians, the Rosengartens built a plant a t Tarentum, Pa., but soon moved to Pomeroy, Ohio. Theirs was the first of several works for extracting bromine from the natural salt brine of that section. Meanwhile, the Germans had entered the market with bromine recovered as a by-product from the Stassfurt salts. The price dropped from $6 in 1866 to 28 cents in 1880. After choking off all effective American competition, the Germans met ultimate defeat a t the hands of the Dow Chemical Company, working the brine deposits of northern Michigan. Despite these bitter trade wars the American chemical industry continued to expand. From Appomattox to the Marne, an era of great American industrial growth, the value of our chemical products rose from 60 million to 2 billion dollars. Not only was there this enormous increase in output, but during this time a definite trend was also established toward the consolidation of this output into plants of constantly increasing size. In the midst of this period, in the first special census report on the chemical industry issued in 1884, TI7. L. Rowland epitomized the chemical activity of that time; “Industrial progress appears in an extraordinary degree in the advances made by applied chemistry during the present century. Scientific research has opened up a vast field for the application of many new and valuable compounds, and has also reduced the cost of many chemical products, rendering some hitherto unimportant chemicals convenient and economically available and enlarging the applications of others already in use.” RECEXWD February 7, 1935.
The illustrations of this article are reproduced through the oourtesy of the Journal of Chemical Education.
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