\
Feb., 1922
THE JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL A N D ENGINEERING CHEXISTRY
munity lug his load. And the community competes for the job. Psychological analysis of the drafted men showed about 15 per cent in Class D, Inferior Intelligence, and 10 per cent more in Class D--, Very Inferior Intelligence-25 per cent in all. These men and their sort, who were not worth shipping to France, are the people that charity fosters and rears. A statistician has figured that a t the present rate of increase of the subnormal and the declining birthrate of the rest of us we will all be paupers, idiots, or insane in 267 years. It is a vital necessity that the industries that arose from science applied to the mechanic arts by chemists and engineers shall undertake similar research to transform the parasitic 20 per cent into self-supporting people. THE PROFITS OF NINETEENTH-CENTURY INDUSTRY came from exploitation of natural resources and from creation of huge, new industries by applied science-steel, automobiles, moving pictures, talking machines, dyes. All these enterprises were made successful by managers, staff, and ’workmen who had superior versatility and resourcefulness acquired on the farms and in the villages where they were raised. As these reservoirs of material and human resources are becoming exhausted, the profits of twentieth-century industry must come from correct social adjustment; from elimination of social waste, maintenance of cheap, abundant prime necessaries of life-food, clothing, housing-and modernized primary and secondary education.
159
Unless these social factors be brought into and kept in harmony with economic and biological laws, industry and all thrifty people will be crushed by wages inflated by high cost of simple living, and by confiscatory taxation and legislation that is the legal expression of hostile public opinion of the majority, a majority made chiefly by the incompetent and charity classes, D and D-. These jaws of the social industrial vise-high cost of living and confiscatory public opinion-are steadily closing in on the railroads, the telephones and upon all public utilities and industrial enterprises in which the savings and life insurance of thrifty people are invested. Unless these forces be diverted into constructive, economic, biological work we chemists and engineers, and indeed all intellectual people, will be smothered by the suffocating forces of mediocrity. It has already happened in Russia. COMMUNITY CHESTS will be industrial coffins if they be used only to provide money for additional courses on the walls of the already too high reservoir of city poverty and social discontent. But if they supply administrative ability and adequate funds for social scientific research to disclose the causes of poverty and to set the subnormal fifth of our people a t steady, productive work, they will be life-buoys for the thrifty and for industry. They offer an opportunity for chemists and engineers to undertake practical citizenship of the highest order. ~
PERKIN MEDAL AWARD The sivteenth award of the Perkin Medal was made to Dr. William M. Burton, President of the Standard Oil Company of Indiana, a t the meeting of the American Section of the Society of Chemical Industry, held in Rumforrl Hall, Chemists’ Club, iVew Uork City, Friday evening, January 13, 1922 The meeting was unique in that four past presidents of the Society, Drs. Chandler, Remsen, Xichols, and Bogert, were present on the platform. It had been expected that Dr. R. F. Ruttan of Toronto, the present head of the Society, with whom our American chemists became acquainted a t the meeting in New York last September, would also be present a t the meeting, but he was unable to attend. In his introductory remarks, Mr. S. R Church, Chairman of the Section, declared that “seldom if ever has the Perkin Medal Award attracted such widespread interest as has been aroused concerning the present event. In selecting the medalist from a great industry that is outside the narrow classification of chemical industries, the Medal Committee has once more demonstrated a catholic consideration of the problem, ‘What constitutes a signal achievement in applied chemistry?’ ” Dr. Ira Remsen dwelt on Dr. Burton as a student a t Johns Hopkins. He emphasized the essentials of a successful career in chemistry or any other professional activity, as being Eundamental knowledge, imagination, courage, patience, and skill. Dr. Remsen called attention to the point which was also stressed by Dr. Herty and Mr. Wiles, that in the case of Dr. Burton we have a chemist recognized as an executive. Dr. Remsen declared that more and more chemists are coming into executive positions, both in educational institutions and the industries, and urged that it is the duty of the chemist to enter into such activities. Dr. Herty’s sympathetic picture of the personality of Dr. Burton, Mr. Wiles’ discussion of the future of the chemist in industry as seen by a patent attorney, and Dr. Burton’s address of acceptance are printed herewith. The medal was presented by Dr. Chas. F. Chandler, as Senior Past President bf the Society, residing in this country. Dr.
Chandler recounted briefly Dr. Burton’s industrial career. He became chemist with the Standard Oil Company a t Cleveland, Ohio, in 1889, was transferred to the Standard Oil Company of Indiana in 1890, became assistant superintendent of the works in 1892, general superintendent in 1895, director in 1911, vice president in 1915, and president in 1918. Dr. Chandler dwelt particularly on the trip which he and Dr. Burton made to Cermany in 1895, as representatives of the Standard Oil Company, to prevent adverse legislation on the part of the German government against American petroleum. Dr. Burton received the Willard Gibbs Medal in 1918,’ in recognition of his distinguished work in petroleum chemistry.
The Personal Side of Dr. Burton By Chas. H. Herty The charm of biography persists always. The results of a successful man’s work are set forth in the public record, whether it be in the form of scientific publications, of official statuq, of some great engineering feat, of the size of his income tax, or what not. Back of the life accomplishment, however, is the personality of a human being who, following the bent of his own genius, has triumphed over the difficulties which beset us all. What manner of man did it? That iq the question which kindles a different kind of interest from that due to a knowledge of what the accomplishment is. For out of such studies of many types of men we gain here and there suggestions, self-applicable, which help us over our own rough spots and give us hope. In the case of Dr. Burton, or “Billy,” as he was lovingly calletl by us in student days a t Johns Hopkins University, there is added another to the long list of successful men who were born 1
THIS:JOURNAL, 10 (1918), 483.
