Chemists & Commerce

The chemist's pride, in switching world commerce around by his inventions of synthetics for natural products, swelled last week when he read the news bulletin just published by the National Geographic Society. That bulletin was specific. From coal tar,* air-nitrogen, cotton, corn & wood, chemists have been making things from fertilizers to rayon cloth, from paint to pearls.

Their coal tar red wrecked the business of Levant farmers who had been raising madder plants for madder red. A similar misfortune befell the indigo plant cultivators of India. In New Zealand kauri gum diggers are becoming impoverished. Chile, once boastful of its natural nitrate monopoly is humble. Synthetic rubber is a fact, although heretofore more expensive than Malaya and Sumatra natural rubber.

Brooklyn, N. Y., makes attar of roses; Bulgaria suffers. Flushing, N.Y., makes citronella; to Java's detriment. Newark, N. J., makes vanillin against vanilla from Seychelle, Mexico and Reunion./- New Jersey ivroid harms African ivory, its bakelite, Central American mahogany. Delaware makes amber (East Prussian commodity) substitute.

Some international good comes from the wide U. S. selling of certain products. The U. S., England, France, Italy and Belgium make rayon. For a while this hurt China's and Japan's silk trade. Japan now makes some rayon herself. But rayon has taught U. S. women and men to desire more real silk. This is also true of pearls. The U. S. and France sell the artificial ones. Thus people learn the beauty of the real ones and buy--from Mexico, Ceylon, Arabia. Into this double pearl demand Japan has insinuated itself. Work people drop a grain of irritant into an oyster's shell. A kind of hard felon develops in the oyster. It is a cultured pearl.

* From coking, a ton of coal gives 12 gals, of gummy coal tar. From coal tar, chemists have fractioned off more than 300 intermediates (esters, ethers, alcohols, etc.), from these intermediates about 200,000 coal tar products (dyes, perfumes, flavors, medicines, resins). William Perkin, London chemist, made the first coal tar dye (Perkin violet) in 1856, by accident.

/- But vanillin lacks vanilla's fine bouquet. The two are sold mixed for bakers and housewives.