Atlanta semi-weekly journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, 1917-01-30
4 Big Problem Solved.

Two years ago America faced dye shortage
that compelled many mills to shut down and
threatened divers fields of industry with mis-
fortune. Conditions peculiarly critical for
manufacturers of wooden, silk and cotton goods,
but not for them ahone The trouble extended to
paints paper ink, soap certain medicinal products,
Photographic supplies, upholstery, automobiles and
hundreds of other lines of production and trade 1t
was conservatively reckoned at the time that at
least two million people we're directly affected by
the dearth of dyestuffs, and ten times that num-
Der indirectly. Having depended Germany for
more than eighty per cent of their supply of such
commodities, Americans were sorely perplexed and
discounted when the shut off their German
imports. Dyes constituted only item in long
list of chemical products including drugs, of which
there embarrassing and sometimes distress
ing shortage.
With that state of affairs fresh in the public
memory it seems marvellous that today the United
States is producing abundanty and efficiently most
of the varieties of dyes and of the chemicals
it needs. In a little more than two years, native
enterprise has developed to important proportions
a field of industries which before almost neg
ligble, compared with those abroad. The New
York Commercial truly observes that the best
chemists and chemical engineers in the world are
Americans, and it adds:
eff we produce potash cheaply enough
ent of foreign made chemicals after peace is
restored. Soda products and sulphuric acid we
are now making a scale that assures indus
trial independence far these important in
dustral chemicals concerned. A gas compa-
ny in Greater New York has erected the most
efficient plant in existence for the recovery of
ammonia by-product of gas making. The
principal dyestuffs derived from coal tar are
now made here equal in quality to the German
f;Y,,Ose Nhovo
fast, but that difficulty has been overcome and
our manufacturers are putting on the
market all the dyes and colors need with
the exception of few special tints that never
were largely used, such for instance the
peculiar blue used by the Government Printing
Bureau in printing bank notes."
The United States always had the raw materials
and it always had the scientific talent and skill
needfu for making dyestufs and developing chem
ical industries. But not until the European war
threw us upon resources and initiative we're
our chemists given fair chance to show what they
could do not until then, indeed they given
fair hearing by industry and capital. The results
that have been accomplished in so brief time are
therefore, not astonishing after ALL for they al
ways lay within the chemists reach; it required
only the confidence and aid of capital to put them
squarely within his grasp.
What chemical science has done for dyestufs
and other industries thus far is merely prologue
to what it do and will do in developing the
country's latent resources and opening new paths
of opportunity. No region of the United States has
to expect in this connection than the South.
It's agricultural resources, its mineral resources it's
forests aRd streams and all the wide range of in
dustries based these offer unlimited realms for
the chemist and chemical engineer.
Charles M. Schwab has written book how
to succeed. Two methods occur to One is to
open munitions plant and the other to start a
corner in eggs