dried yeast produced a
substitute for beef extract.

So also they secured ammonium sulphate by a direct combination of
nitrogen and hydrogen in the air. At the same time they utilized other
minerals than those usually available for the manufacture of sulphuric
acid and placed the country on an independent footing.

But Germany was not alone in its advancement. The United States, which
found itself without quantities of dye-stuffs and many other chemically
produced things when the war came on, took the lesson unto itself and is
today nearer self-supporting than it ever was in the history of the
nation. The Department of Agriculture has experimented and produced from
yeast, vegetable boullion cubes, which taste like beef extract and
contain greater nutriment.

DOMESTIC DYE-STUFFS.

America, too, has extracted sulphate of ammonium from the air and the
dye-stuffs which we could not get from abroad are being made at home.
Two of the things which America found lacking when war developed were
potash and acetone, both of which are factors in powder and explosive
making. The former is used in the ordinary black gunpowder, but the
latter is necessary in the making of the smokeless powder. England
wanted Cordite, one form of this powder which the British think is the
best propellant in the world. It is made of guncotton and nitroglycerine
and acetone is one of the chemicals required in its manufacture. England
turned to the United States for quantities of this explosive and also
for the acetone, but America did not produce anywhere near enough, and
England wanted this country to make something like 20,000,000 pounds of
the explosive.

A number of mushroom chemical plants were developed by the powder
company to produce the desired acetone--one very much like a vinegar
plant near Baltimore, and another at San Diego, California, where the
munitions maker's chemists refined acetone and potash extracted from
kelp, or sea weed, and besides supplying the powder and the chemicals
which the English needed America developed a permanent industry.

RELIEVED BY AMERICAN INGENUITY.

Carbolic acid, too, was one of the badly needed chemicals of the war,
not only for medical purposes, but also for explosive making. Again the
ingenuity of America asserted itself and Thomas A. Edison produced the
plans for two benzol-absorbing plants which were erected at great steel
works and within a few months these plants were turning out benzol and