spassionate appraisal of my surroundings and to compare what
was actually before and around me with my expectations. I
found that the general laboratory equipment was no better than
what I had been accustomed to; that my colleagues had no better
fundamental training than I had enjoyed nor any better fact--or
manipulative--equipment than I; that those in charge of the
work had no better general intellectual equipment nor any more
native ability than had my instructors; in short, there was
nothing new about it all, nothing that we did not have back
home, nothing--except the specific problems that were engaging
their attention, and the special opportunities of attacking
them. Those problems were of no higher order of complexity than
those I had been accustomed to for years, in fact, most of them
were not very complex from a purely intellectual viewpoint.
There was nothing inherently uncanny, magical or wizardly about
their occupation whatever. It was nothing but plain hard work
and keeping everlastingly at it. Now, what was the actual thing
behind that chemical laboratory that we did not have at home?
It was money, willing to back such activity, convinced that in
the final outcome, a profit would be made; money, willing to
take university graduates expecting from them no special
knowledge other than a good and thorough grounding in
scientific research and provide them with opportunity to become
specialists suited to the factory's needs.

It is evidently not impossible to make the United States self-sufficient
in the matter of coal-tar products. We've got the tar; we've got the
men; we've got the money, too. Whether such a policy would pay us in the
long run or whether it is necessary as a measure of military or
commercial self-defense is another question that cannot here be decided.
But whatever share we may have in it the coal-tar industry has increased
the economy of civilization and added to the wealth of the world by
showing how a waste by-product could be utilized for making new dyes and
valuable medicines, a better use for tar than as fuel for political
bonfires and as clothing for the nakedness of social outcasts.

V

SYNTHETIC PERFUMES AND FLAVORS

The primitive man got his living out of such wild plants and animals as
he could find. Next he, or more likely his wife, began to cultivate the