The Wallace miner. [volume] (Wallace, Idaho) 1907-current, 1915-04-08


on factory basis and that much m
genuity must be exercised in devising
pressure retorts which will work day
In and day out with the regularity de.
manded by a commercial enterprise.
the secretarys announcement must be
considered as reckless There are oil
refiners enough in the United States
of America who would gladly have
conducted experiments on a suttic-
iently large scale to ascertain just
what we may expect of DR. Rittman's
Investigations; but until those expert
ments had been made it was wrong i
mislead the public by rushing into
print.
If the secretary's statement had been
more guarded and accurate, eycn its
premature publication might have been
overlooked AS it stands, it presents
an absurd picture of the Cortro' sup
posedly exercised by the STANDARD oil
petroleum industry on its scientific
side and of the miracles that are To be
achieved in building up a coal tar
chemical industry comparable with
that Of Germany. Let anyone read the
paper by Brooks, Bacon, Padgett and
Humphrey in the March number Of the
Journal of Industrial and Engineering
Chemistry and he will learn what lhc
state of the petroleum refining art
really is and how much has been con-
tributed to our knowledge of crack
ing dstillates by English, French,
German, and Russian chemists. Any
one can take the old Dewar and Red
wood process, upon which even the
Burton is only an Improvement, and
work it with success.
Chemists will be even more amazed
by Secretary Lanes conception of a
coal tar dye industry founded on the
basis of DR.. Rittman's undeveloped
laboratory discoveries. Anyone who
has read DR. Bernhard c. Hesse's an
alysis of the coal tar dye industry Of
Germany, made for the General Chem
zeal company, must be convinced that
even If the Rittman process be carried
to the most brilliant commercial sue
cess, we must have something more
than cheap raw material with which
to make synthetic drugs and dyes.
There must be cooperation between
the dye user and the dye maker The
manufacture of coal tar chemicals is
an economic rather than a technical
problem. Hundreds Of intermediate
products must be handled in a way
that is distinctly forbidden by our
antitrust laws. We have small coal
tar chemical industry now, but it can
never grow to the proportion of the
German trust controlled industry
merely because the Rttman process
may give us cheap benzol. If there is
any doubt about this, consider the fol-
lowing from the Recommendation Of
the New York Section of the American
Chemical Society on the Enlargement
of the Coal Tar Chemical Industry in
the United States:
Benzol, toluol and the like are pro-
duced in sufficient amount in recent
installations of by-product coke-ovens
to provide all of the things that would
be needed for a coal-tar chemical in
dustry of a magnitude sufficient to
supply the United States market; th'
separation of these materials from the
gas that carries them is dependent
upon the market and the demand
therefor There is no inherent defeC'
in our coke industry with regard to
the actual making Of these things; the
only question involved is whether II
be more profitable to burn the ben2ol
toluol and the like contained in the gas
as fuel than to separate them from
the gas and from each other for pur
poses Of sale. Ample supply can be
provided before any plant that could
use benzol and the like for dyestuft
making could be erected in the United
States, and thereafter the supply of
these materials can readily be kept up
to any requirement.
. n