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 medicinals and flavors.

The manufacture of dyes is not a big business, but it is a strategic business.  Heligoland is not a big island, but England would have been glad to buy it back during the war at a high price per square yard.  American industries employing over two million men and women and producing over three billion dollars’ worth of products a year are dependent upon dyes.  Chief of these is of course textiles, using more than half the dyes; next come leather, paper, paint and ink.  We have been importing more than $12,000,000 worth of coal-tar products a year, but the cottonseed oil we exported in 1912 would alone suffice to pay that bill twice over.  But although the manufacture of dyes cannot be called a big business, in comparison with some others, it is a paying business when well managed.  The German concerns paid on an average 22 per cent. dividends on their capital and sometimes as high as 50 per cent.  Most of the standard dyes have been so long in use that the patents are off and the processes are well enough known.  We have the coal tar and we have the chemists, so there seems no good reason why we should not make our own dyes, at least enough of them so we will not be caught napping as we were in 1914.  It was decidedly humiliating for our Government to have to beg Germany to sell us enough colors to print our stamps and greenbacks and then have to beg Great Britain for permission to bring them over by Dutch ships.

The raw material for the production of coal-tar products we have in abundance if we will only take the trouble to save it.  In 1914 the crude light oil collected from the coke-ovens would have produced only about 4,500,000 gallons of benzol and 1,500,000 gallons of toluol, but in 1917 this output was raised to 40,200,000 gallons of benzol and 10,200,000 of toluol.  The toluol was used mostly in the manufacture of trinitrotoluol for use in Europe.  When the war broke out in 1914 it shut off our supply of phenol (carbolic acid) for which we were dependent upon foreign sources.  This threatened not only to afflict us with headaches by depriving us of aspirin but also to removed the consolation of music, for phenol is used in making phonographic records.  Mr. Edison with his accustomed energy put up a factory within a few weeks for the manufacture of synthetic phenol.  When we entered the war the need for phenol became yet more imperative, for it was needed to make picric acid for filling bombs.  This demand was met, and in 1917 there were fifteen new plants turning out 64,146,499 pounds of phenol valued at $23,719,805.