the lady cochineal of her scarlet coat.  Why these peculiar substances were formed only by these particular plants, mussels and insects it is hard to understand.  I don’t know that Mrs. Cacti Coccus derived any benefit from her scarlet uniform when khaki would be safer, and I can’t imagine that to a shellfish it was of advantage to turn red as it rots or to an indigo plant that its leaves in decomposing should turn blue.  But anyhow, it was man that took advantage of them until he learned how to make his own dyestuffs.

Our independent ancestors got along so far as possible with what grew in the neighborhood.  Sweetapple bark gave a fine saffron yellow.  Ribbons were given the hue of the rose by poke berry juice.  The Confederates in their butternut-colored uniform were almost as invisible as if in khaki or feldgrau.  Madder was cultivated in the kitchen garden.  Only logwood from Jamaica and indigo from India had to be imported.  That we are not so independent today is our own fault, for we waste enough coal tar to supply ourselves and other countries with all the new dyes needed.  It is essentially a question of economy and organization.  We have forgotten how to economize, but we have learned how to organize.

The British Government gave the discoverer of mauve a title, but it did not give him any support in his endeavors to develop the industry, although England led the world in textiles and needed more dyes than any other country.  So in 1874 Sir William Perkin relinquished the attempt to manufacture the dyes he had discovered because, as he said, Oxford and Cambridge refused to educate chemists or to carry on research.  Their students, trained in the classics for the profession of being a gentleman, showed a decided repugnance to the laboratory on account of its bad smells.  So when Hofmann went home he virtually took the infant industry along with him to Germany, where Ph.D.’s were cheap and plentiful and not afraid of bad smells.  There the business throve amazingly, and by 1914 the Germans were manufacturing more than three-fourths of all the coal-tar products of the world and supplying material for most of the rest.  The British cursed the universities for thus imperiling the nation through their narrowness and neglect; but this accusation, though natural, was not altogether fair, for at least half the blame should go to the British dyer, who did not care where his colors came from, so long as they were cheap.  When finally the universities did turn over a new leaf and began to educate chemists, the manufacturers would not employ them.  Before the war six English factories producing dyestuffs employed only 35 chemists altogether, while one German color works, the Hoechster Farbwerke, employed 307 expert chemists and 74 technologists.

This firm united with the six other leading dye companies of Germany on January 1, 1916, to form a trust to last for fifty years.  During this time they will maintain uniform prices and uniform wage scales and hours of labor, and exchange patents and secrets.  They will divide the foreign business pro rata and share the profits.  The German chemical works made big profits during the war, mostly from munitions and medicines, and will be, through this new combination, in a stronger position than ever to push the export trade.