The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1919-12-31
For the Good of
the Community

A GAIN quoting from the annual address of
IN DR.. Arthur D. Little, president of the Amer
lean Institute of Chemical Engineers, men,
toned in these columns yesterday:
"But chemistry does not stop with the cotton
fiber; it has enriched the south still further in the
values it has put upon the cottonseed which once
clogged southern streams Cottonseed today is
worth $40 ton because chemists have derived
from this nuisance Of pre-bellum days-it is hard
to recall the Civil War, to which | now refer
edible OIL solid substitute for lard, soap stock
concentrated cattle feed and residues of high
fertilizing value
Southern bauxite, without chemistry is
merely stone to throw at dog With chemistry
1t controls the aluminium industry of the world.
Because Braconnot in 1919, converted cellu-
lose to fermentable sugars great plants are now
operating IN Louisiana and South Carolina con-
vertlng the wood wastes from yellow pine lumber
mills into ethyl alcohol. A southern chemist,
Charles H. Herty, held in honor and affection by
chemists everywhere, has revolutionized your
naval-stores industry Moreover, an actual $780,
600 and potential 81 100000 at least has been
added to the annual value of the turpentine crops
by single change in chipping method based on
studies made in France ON the pathology of the
wounded tree.
Statistics often prove without convincing
They may compel the reason to assent without fir
ing the imagination or arousing the will to action.
believe, however, that no one with the capacity
the colossal figures which set forth the natural
resources of the south without first being stunned
and overwhelmed and soon thereafter filled with
the vision OF their stupendous possibilities
"The south contains in superabundant measure
the basic raw materials required for the develop
ment OF great groups OF cO-Ordinated industries (
founded upon chemistry and on a scale incom-
paraby more vast than anything yet known She
has more than half the iron ore in the United
States and Is per cent Of all the coking coal;
great stores of Ignite, natural gas and OIL Here
is the purest salt which occurs in nature thecheap-
est and purest sulphur, clays endless in variety
and extent, bauXite for aluminium and for abra-
sives, limestone adjacent to coal and iron, phos-
phate rock, gypsum, barytes, shale and quartz,
ores of zinc and manganese lead and nickel tita-
mum and tin. There is enough wood waste to sup
ply the cOuntry's need for paper and the world
must soon look to the stumps on millions of acres
and cut-over lands for its rosin and it's trpentne
The cotton fiber is itself the raw material for Y
many chemical industries of magnitude, and the
short hull fiber, to utilize which in smokeess pow
der huge southern plants were built is now avail
able for paper-making and othe- arts of peace.
The products and the potentialties of the cotton
seed now have rival IN the humble peanut and
IN at least one southern locality the peanut crop
exceeds the cotton crop in value. In the south as
whole the value of the corn crop already APP
proximately equals that of cotton and affords
basis for great corn product industries. To such
material resources with many Others to which no
reference can here be made, the south adds the
potentalites of 100000 horsepower in the
available energy of her streams.
''The south is no stranger to chemical develop
ments on the great scale. The largest electrolytic
copper plant in the world refines 72OOOO,OOO
pounds year at Canton, Md; Ducktown, Tenn,
produces 1000 tons of sulphuric acid day. The
war called forth in Sheffield Ala, nitrate plants
designed for carbide production equal to that of
the entire continent and for 100000 tons of am
monium nitrate yearly.
with increasing density of population in the
south and throughout the country more nten-
sive agriculture must everywhere be practiced
great expansion Of the southern fertilizer indus
try, already so important would seem to be as
sured. Improved methods of production will
check the abnormal wastes which now accom-
pany the mining of phosphate rock, raise the in
trinsic value of the product and permit of larger
profits The potash content of the gray iron ores
of Alabama will be rendered available, presunl-
ably by the Cottrel process, and supplies to agri-
culture as a by-product Of the blast furnace. From
the expanding Portland cement industry more by
product potash will be similarly derived. Ammo
MIA from by-product coke ovens will be recovered
in vastly greater quantities. Some extension Of
cyanamid production may be expected, but the
vast stores of cheap nitrates and ammonia which
the new agriculture will demand will come from
the atmosphere by direct nitrogen fixation meth