Evening star., 1933-12-17

~ URIED far inside the newspapers
- at this time of year there VIII
occur brief items announcing
IL that the chief of this or that
bureau Of the Federal Govern
nent has made public in his annual
report. As rule there are few, If any,
reverberations. And this year, I sup
pose. the conventional annual report OF
Government bureau will produce even
less stir than usual, what with the
emergency activities so much in the
iimelight.
This is inevitable, suppose. and it
Is not helped any by the style in which
most of these annual reports are writ
ten. They are solid and factual. There
is no gossip in them and no hint of
personal controversy. If it happens to
be the report Of scientific bureau, the
controversy is there, but it is with ma
ture more than with man. A scientist
may be doing research, the conse-
quences of which will be sensational,
which may alter the lives of every in
dividual, but the scientists stock in
trade is facts and theories, not conse-
quences and implications, and he writes
his reports accordingly.
During the depression, however, SCI
entists have had to abandon some of
their detachment. The Philistines have
been after them, and there has been
a good deal of slaughter. Scientists in
Government, of course, have suffered
most. In self-defense scientists have
had to examine the alleged conse-
quences of their research, and they
have had to take time off TO explain
what they were doing, why they were
doing it, and what the consequences
had been. For a productive scientist to
f2kH time off for of
tense ought not, of course, to be neces-
sary in civilized age; but the result
ing revelations of what scientific re-
search contributes are all to the good.
Garry On Despite Cuts.
have been looking through the an
nual reports of the bureaus in the De-
partment of Agriculture. This depart
ment is more than all others dependent
upon scientific research Its regulatory
work, its extension teaching, and even
its emergency activities of today would
be paralyZed without background of
scientific fact and inquiry. Despite
drastic reductions in appropriations for
research, the scientists are carrying on
as best they can. and they are continu-
ing to discover facts of consequence in
the creation of new wealth.
The report of the Bureau of Chemistry
and Soils happens to be before me as l
write. From one scientific project, here
reported, the Nation has gained in a
<ew years several times as much as it
has ever paid in any one year for all
the scientific work of the department.
Largely because of this bureaus re-
search in nitrogen -fixation, for example,
Shere is now established in the United
States an industry which uses the direct
synthetic ammonia process Of producing
nitrogenouS fertilizers. with eight plants
having an annual capacity of some 275,-
600 tons. This capacity, added to that
of the by-product coke ovens, is sufh-
cient to meet the requirements of the
country. We are, therefore, independent
as we were not before the World
war-of foreign monopoly. AS result,
prices Of nitrogenous fertilizers have
dropped consistently since 1925. The
average price of sulphate of ammonia
from 1907 to 1914 was $50 ton. 1t
has since dropped to as low as SIT a
ton. The saving in cost to farmers
during the period l924-32 is estimated
at Sl25, 100000.
Over in the section of this report
devoted to the food utilization studies
Of the bureau there is a paragraph on
the effect Of light on foods. This parti-
cular item of research cost, suppose,
q Few hundred dollars Its consequences
are of value to every consumer of food,
to every professor and distributor, and
20 every producer The point was this:
Many oil-bearing food products, care
fully put up in glass containers. after
a time become rancid and unfit for use.
The loss may be the consumers, the
distributors. or the producers-or more
realistically, everybody's loss. A young
scientist got to specializing upon the ef-
feet of light waves upon such foods.
After months of testing. he demon
strated that the rapid spoilation of OIL
bearing foods could be checked by the
simple procedure of keeping out certain
light waves. Black or green wrappers,
ne found, effectively retarded rancidity.
Since other factors may be involved,
the research is continuing, but already
the food distributing trade has taken
note of the discovery, and a number OF
oil-bearing foods are now appearing in
green containers or green wrappers
Green bottles for beer incidentally, is
one Of the new dispenSationS.
Now these are. I suppose. humdrum