osive.
It is made from carbolic acid and the famous trinitrotoluene is made
from toluene, both of which you will find in the list of the ten
fundamental "crudes."
Both Great Britain and the United States realized the danger of allowing
Germany to recover her former monopoly, and both have shown a readiness
to cast overboard their traditional policies to meet this emergency. The
British Government has discovered that a country without a tariff is a
land without walls. The American Government has discovered that an
industry is not benefited by being cut up into small pieces. Both
governments are now doing all they can to build up big concerns and to
provide them with protection. The British Government assisted in the
formation of a national company for the manufacture of synthetic dyes by
taking one-sixth of the stock and providing $500,000 for a research
laboratory. But this effort is now reported to be "a great failure"
because the Government put it in charge of the politicians instead of
the chemists.
The United States, like England, had become dependent upon Germany for
its dyestuffs. We imported nine-tenths of what we used and most of those
that were produced here were made from imported intermediates. When the
war broke out there were only seven firms and 528 persons employed in
the manufacture of dyes in the United States. One of these, the
Schoelkopf Aniline and Chemical Works, of Buffalo, deserves mention, for
it had stuck it out ever since 1879, and in 1914 was making 106 dyes. In
June, 1917, this firm, with the encouragement of the Government Bureau
of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, joined with some of the other American
producers to form a trade combination, the National Aniline and Chemical
Company. The Du Pont Company also entered the field on an extensive
scale and soon there were 118 concerns engaged in it with great profit.
During the war $200,000,000 was invested in the domestic dyestuff
industry. To protect this industry Congress put on a specific duty of
five cents a pound and an ad valorem duty of 30 per cent. on imported
dyestuffs; but if, after five years, American manufacturers are not
producing 60 per cent. in value of the domestic consumption, the
protection is to be removed. For some reason, not clearly understood and
therefore hotly discussed, Congress at the last moment struck off the
specific duty from two of the most important of the dyestuffs, indigo
and alizarin, as well as from all me
|