The Romance of Modern Chemistry

VALUABLE SUBSTANCES matters has there attained the rank of a distinctively national industry, and the annual value of the dyes exported to other countries is about <£8,000,000. It is a somewhat bitter reflection that the foundation of this huge industry was laid in England, and that it flourished here for about twenty years after its start, only to dwindle subsequently to unworthy proportions. The truth is that the German manufacturers recognised the value of the scientifically trained man, in this industry above all others; they spent large sums on laboratory investigations, in the confidence that these would ulti- mately bear fruit, and their faith has had its reward. Would that our English manufacturers had had a little more of this virtue ! The importance of the coal tar products in the modem world was lately emphasised by the celebration of the Coal Tar Jubilee in 1906. After the lapse of fifty years, chemists, manufacturers, and dyers from all parts of the world met in London to honour Sir William Perkin, the founder of the industry. The chief meeting was held in the Royal Institution, where in 1825 another English chemist, Faraday, discovered benzene, the hydrocarbon which, one might say, has been at the bottom of the whole business. On the table at which distinguished men of science and industry offered their congratulations to Sir William Perkin stood a small bottle of benzene, the iden- tical specimen which Faraday had prepared eighty years before. The whole story of how the aniline and other dyes have been produced from such an uninviting mess as coal tar is really marvellous; it is truly, as some one has said, a “ romance of dirt."” We must remember, too, that coal tai’ has been made to yield many other valuable products 287