I must not forget to mention another lot of coal-tar derivatives in which some of my readers will take a personal interest.  That is the photographic developers.  I am old enough to remember when we used to develop our plates in ferrous sulfate solution and you never saw nicer negatives than we got with it.  But when pyrogallic acid came in we switched over to that even though it did stain our fingers and sometimes our plates.  Later came a swarm of new organic reducing agents under various fancy names, such as metol, hydro (short for hydro-quinone) and eikongen ("the image-maker").  Every fellow fixed up his own formula and called his fellow-members of the camera club fools for not adopting it though he secretly hoped they would not.

Under the double stimulus of patriotism and high prices the American drug and dyestuff industry developed rapidly.  In 1917 about as many pounds of dyes were manufactured in America as were imported in 1913 and our exports of American-made dyes exceeded in value our imports before the war.  In 1914 the output of American dyes was valued at $2,500,000.  In 1917 it amounted to over $57,000,000.  This does not mean that the problem was solved, for the home products were not equal in variety and sometimes not in quality to those made in Germany.  Many valuable dyes were lacking and the cost was of course much higher.  Whether the American industry can compete with the foreign in an open market and on equal terms is impossible to say because such conditions did not prevail before the war and they are not going to prevail in the future.  Formerly the large German cartels through their agents and branches in this country kept the business in their own hands and now the American manufacturers are determined to maintain the independence they have acquired.  They will not depend hereafter upon the tariff to cut off competition but have adopted more effective measures.  The 4500 German chemical patents that had been seized by the Alien Property Custodian were sold by him for $250,000 to the Chemical Foundation, an association of American manufacturers organized “for the Americanization of such institutions as may be affected thereby, for the exclusion or elimination of alien interests hostile or detrimental to said industries and for the advancement of chemical and allied science and industry in the United States.”  The Foundation has a large fighting fund so that it “may be able to commence immediately and prosecute with the utmost vigor infringement proceedings whenever the first German attempt shall hereafter be made to import into this country.”

So much mystery has been made of the achievements of German chemists—­as though the Teutonic brain had a special lobe for that faculty, lacking in other craniums—­that I want to quote what Dr. Hesse says about his first impressions of a German laboratory of industrial research: