demand for war purposes as rubber. The Germans made some rubber from
pitch imported from Sweden. They also found a useful substitute in
aluminum naphthenate made from Baku petroleum, for it is elastic and
plastic and can be vulcanized.

So although rubber can be made in many different ways it is not
profitable to make it in any of them. We have to rely still upon the
natural product, but we can greatly improve upon the way nature produces
it. When the call came for more rubber for the electrical and automobile
industries the first attempt to increase the supply was to put pressure
upon the natives to bring in more of the latex. As a consequence the
trees were bled to death and sometimes also the natives. The Belgian
atrocities in the Congo shocked the civilized world and at Putumayo on
the upper Amazon the same cause produced the same horrible effects. But
no matter what cruelty was practiced the tropical forests could not be
made to yield a sufficient increase, so the cultivation of the rubber
was begun by far-sighted men in Dutch Java, Sumatra and Borneo and in
British Malaya and Ceylon.

Brazil, feeling secure in the possession of a natural monopoly, made no
effort to compete with these parvenus. It cost about as much to gather
rubber from the Amazon forests as it did to raise it on a Malay
plantation, that is, 25 cents a pound. The Brazilian Government clapped
on another 25 cents export duty and spent the money lavishly. In 1911
the treasury of Para took in $2,000,000 from the rubber tax and a good
share of the money was spent on a magnificent new theater at Manaos--not
on setting out rubber trees. The result of this rivalry between the
collector and the cultivator is shown by the fact that in the decade
1907-1917 the world's output of plantation rubber increased from 1000 to
204,000 tons, while the output of wild rubber decreased from 68,000 to
53,000. Besides this the plantation rubber is a cleaner and more even
product, carefully coagulated by acetic acid instead of being smoked
over a forest fire. It comes in pale yellow sheets instead of big black
balls loaded with the dirt or sticks and stones that the honest Indian
sometimes adds to make a bigger lump. What's better, the man who milks
the rubber trees on a plantation may live at home where he can be
decently looked after. The agriculturist and the chemist may do what the
philanthropist and statesman could not accomplish: put an end to the
cruelties involved in the international struggle for "black gold."

The United States uses three-fourths of the world's rubber output and
grows none of it. What is the use of tropical possessions if we do not
make use of them? The Philippines could grow all our rubber and keep a
$300,000,000 business under our flag. Santo Domingo, where rubber was
first discovered, is now under our supervision and could be enriched by
the industry. The Guianas, where the rubber tree was first studied,
might be purchased. It is chiefly for lack of a definite colonial policy
that our rubber industry, by far the largest in the world, has to be
dependent upon foreign sources for all its raw materials. Because the
Philippines are likely to be cast off at any moment, American
manufacturers are placing their plantations in the Dutch or British
possessions. The Goodyear Company has secured a concession of 20,000
acres near Medan in Dutch Sumatra.

While the United States is planning to relinquish its Pacific
possessions the British have more than doubled their holdings in New
Guinea by the acquisition of Kaiser Wilhelm's Land, good rubber
country. The British Malay States in 1917 exported over $118,000,000
worth of plantation-grown rubber and could have sold more if shipping
had not been short and production restricted. Fully 90 per cent. of the
cultivated rubber is now grown in British colonies or on British
plantations in the Dutch East Indies. To protect this monopoly an act
has been passed preventing foreigners from buying more land in the Malay
Peninsula. The Japanese have acquired there 50,000 acres, on which they
are growing more than a million dollars' worth of rubber a year. The
British _Tropical Life_ says of the American invasion: "As America is so
extremely wealthy Uncle Sam can well afford to continue to buy our
rubber as he has been doing instead of coming in to produce rubber to
reduce his competition as a buyer in the world's market." The Malaya
estates calculate to pay a dividend of 20 per cent. on the investment
with rubber selling at 30 cents a pound and every two cents additional
on the price brings a further 3-1/2 per cent. dividend. The output is
restricted by the Rubber Growers' Association so as to keep the price up
to 50-70 cents. When the plantations first came into bearing in 1910
rubber was bringing nearly $3 a pound, and since it can be produced at
less than 30 cents a pound we can imagine the profits of the early
birds.

The fact that the world's rubber trade was in the control of Great
Britain caused America great anxiety and financial loss in the early
part of the war when the British Government, suspecting--not without
reason--that some American rubber goods were getting into Germany
through neutral nations, suddenly shut off our supply. This threatened
to kill the fourth largest of our industries and it was only by the
submission of American rubber dealers to the closest supervision and
restriction by the British authorities that they were allowed to
continue their business. Sir Francis Hopwood, in laying down these
regulations, gave emphatic warning "that in case any manufacturer,
importer or dealer came under suspicion his permits should be
immediately revoked. Reinstatement will be slow and difficult. The
British Government will cancel first and investigate afterward." Of
course the British had a right to say under what conditions they should
sell their rubber and we cannot blame them for taking such precautions
to prevent its getting to their enemies, but it placed the United States
in a humiliating position and if we had not been in sympathy with their
side it would have aroused more resentment than it did. But it made
evident the desirability of having at least part of our supply under our
own control and, if possible, within our own country. Rubber is not rare
in nature, for it is contained in almost every milky juice. Every
country boy knows that he can get a self-feeding mucilage brush by
cutting off a milkweed stalk. The only native source so far utilized is
the guayule, which grows wild on the deserts of the Mexican and the
American border. The plant was discovered in 1852 by Dr. J.M. Bigelow
near Escondido Creek, Texas. Professor Asa Gray described it and named
it Parthenium argentatum, or the silver Pallas. When chopped up and
macerated guayule gives a satisfactory quality of caoutchouc in
profitable amounts. In 1911 seven thousand tons of guayule were
imported from Mexico; in 1917 only seventeen hundred tons. Why this
falling off? Because the eager exploiters had killed the goose that laid
the golden egg, or in plain language, pulled up the plant by the roots.
Now guayule is being cultivated and is reaped instead of being uprooted.
Experiments at the Tucson laboratory have recently removed the
difficulty of getting the seed to germinate under cultivation. This
seems the most promising of the home-grown plants and, until artificial
rubber can be made profitable, gives us the only chance of being in part
independent of oversea supply.

There are various other gums found in nature that can for some purposes
be substituted for caoutchouc. Gutta percha, for instance, is pliable
and tough though not very elastic. It becomes plastic by heat so it can
be molded, but unlike rubber it cannot be hardened by heating with
sulfur. A lump of gutta percha was brought from Java in 1766 and placed
in a British museum, where it lay for nearly a hundred years before it
occurred to anybody to do anything with it except to look at it. But a
German electrician, Siemens, discovered in 1847 that gutta percha was
valuable for insulating telegraph lines and it found extensive
employment in submarine cables as well as for golf balls, and the like.

Balata, which is found in the forests of the Guianas, is between gutta
percha and rubber, not so good for insulation but useful for shoe soles
and machine belts. The bark of the tree is so thick that the latex does
not run off like caoutchouc when the bark is cut. So the bark has to be
cut off and squeezed in hand presses. Formerly this meant cutting down
the tree, but now alternate strips of the bark are cut off and squeezed
so the tree continues to live.

When Columbus discovered Santo Domingo he found the natives playing with
balls made from the gum of the caoutchouc tree. The soldiers of Pizarro,
when they conquered Inca-Land, adopted the Peruvian custom of smearing
caoutchouc over their coats to keep out the rain. A French scientist, M.
de la Condamine, who went to South America to measure the earth, came
back in 1745 with some specimens of caoutchouc from Para as well as
quinine from Peru. The vessel on which he returned, the brig _Minerva_,
had a narrow escape from capture by an English cruiser, for Great
Britain was jealous of any trespassing on her American sphere of
influence. The Old World need not have waited for the discovery of the
New, for the rubber tree grows wild in Annam as well as Brazil, but none
of the Asiatics seems to have discovered any of the many uses of the
juice that exudes from breaks in the bark.

The first practical use that was made of it gave it the name that has
stuck to it in English ever since. Magellan announced in 1772 that it
was good to remove pencil marks. A lump of it was sent over from France
to Priestley, the clergyman chemist who discovered oxygen and was mobbed
out of Manchester for being a republican and took refuge in
Pennsylvania. He cut the lump into little cubes and gave them to his
friends to eradicate their mistakes in writing or figuring. Then they
asked him what the queer things were and he said that they were "India
rubbers."

[Illustration: FOREST RUBBER

Compare this tropical tangle and gnarled trunk with the straight tree
and cleared ground of the plantation. At the foot of the trunk are cups
collecting rubber juice.]

[Illustration: PLANTATION RUBBER

This spiral cut draws off the milk as completely and quickly as possible
without harming the tree. The man is pulling off a strip of coagulated
rubber that clogs it.]

[Illustration: IN MAKING GARDEN HOSE THE RUBBER IS FORMED INTO A TUBE
BY THE MACHINE ON THE RIGHT AND COILED ON THE TABLE TO THE LEFT]

The Peruvian natives had used caoutchouc for water-proof clothing,
shoes, bottles and syringes, but Europe was slow to take it up, for the
stuff was too sticky and smelled too bad in hot weather to become
fashionable in fastidious circles. In 1825 Mackintosh made his name
immortal by putting a layer of rubber between two cloths.

A German chemist, Ludersdorf, discovered in 1832 that the gum could be
hardened by treating it with sulfur dissolved in turpentine. But it was
left to a Yankee inventor, Charles Goodyear, of Connecticut, to work out
a practical solution of the problem. A friend of his, Hayward, told him
that it had been revealed to him in a dream that sulfur would harden
rubber, but unfortunately the angel or defunct chemist who inspired the
vision failed to reveal the details of the process. So Hayward sold out
his dream to Goodyear, who spent all his own money and all he could
borrow from his friends trying to convert it into a reality. He worked
for ten years on the problem before the "lucky accident" came to him.
One day in 1839 he happened to drop on the hot stove of the kitchen that
he used as a laboratory a mixture of caoutchouc and sulfur. To his
surprise he saw the two substances fuse together into something new.
Instead of the soft, tacky gum and the yellow, brittle brimstone he had
the tough, stable, elastic solid that has done so much since to make our
footing and wheeling safe, swift and noiseless. The gumshoes or galoshes
that he was then enabled to make still go by the name of "rubbers" in
this country, although we do not use them for pencil erasers.

Goodyear found that he could vary this "vulcanized rubber" at will. By
adding a little more sulfur he got a hard substance which, however,
could be softened by heat so as to be molded into any form wanted. Out
of this "hard rubber" "vulcanite" or "ebonite" were made combs,
hairpins, penholders and the like, and it has not yet been superseded
for some purposes by any of its recent rivals, the synthetic resins.

The new form of rubber made by the Germans, methyl rubber, is said to be
a superior substitute for the hard variety but not satisfactory for the
soft. The electrical resistance of the synthetic product is 20 per cent,
higher than the natural, so it is excellent for insulation, but it is
inferior in elasticity. In the latter part of the war the methyl rubber
was manufactured at the rate of 165 tons a month.

The first pneumatic tires, known then as "patent aerial wheels," were
invented by Robert William Thomson of London in 1846. On the following
year a carriage equipped with them was seen in the streets of New York
City. But the pneumatic tire did not come into use until after 1888,
when an Irish horse-doctor, John Boyd Dunlop, of Belfast, tied a rubber
tube around the wheels of his little son's velocipede. Within seven
years after that a $25,000,000 corporation was manufacturing Dunlop
tires. Later America took the lead in this business. In 1913 the United
States exported $3,000,000 worth of tires and tubes. In 1917 the
American exports rose to $13,000,000, not counting what went to the
Allies. The number of pneumatic tires sold in 1917 is estimated at
18,000,000, which at an average cost of $25 would amount to
$450,000,000.

No matter how much synthetic rubber may be manufactured or how many
rubber trees are set out there is no danger of glutting the market, for
as the price falls the uses of rubber become more numerous. One can
think of a thousand ways in which rubber could be used if it were only
cheap enough. In the form of pads and springs and tires it would do much
to render traffic noiseless. Even the elevated railroad and the subway
might be opened to conversation, and the city made habitable for mild
voiced and gentle folk. It would make one's step sure, noiseless and
springy, whether it was used individualistically as rubber heels or
collectivistically as carpeting and paving. In roofing and siding and
paint it would make our buildings warmer and more durable. It would
reduce the cost and permit the extension of electrical appliances of
almost all kinds. In short, there is hardly any other material whose
abundance would contribute more to our comfort and convenience. Noise is
an automatic alarm indicating lost motion and wasted energy. Silence is
economy and resiliency is superior to resistance. A gumshoe outlasts a
hobnailed sole and a rubber tube full of air is better than a steel
tire.

IX

THE RIVAL SUGARS

The ancient Greeks, being an inquisitive and acquisitive people, were
fond of collecting tales of strange lands. They did not care much
whether the stories were true or not so long as they were interesting.
Among the marvels that the Greeks heard from the Far East two of the
strangest were that in India there were plants that bore wool without
sheep and reeds that bore honey without bees. These incredible tales
turned out to be true and in the course of time Europe began to get a
little calico from Calicut and a kind of edible gravel that the Arabs
who brought it called "sukkar." But of course only kings and queens
could afford to dress in calico and have sugar prescribed for them when
they were sick.

Fortunately, however, in the course of time the Arabs invaded Spain and
forced upon the unwilling inhabitants of Europe such instrumentalities
of higher civilization as arithmetic and algebra, soap and sugar. Later
the Spaniards by an act of equally unwarranted and beneficent aggression
carried the sugar cane to the Caribbean, where it thrived amazingly. The
West Indies then became a rival of the East Indies as a treasure-house
of tropical wealth and for several centuries the Spanish, Portuguese,
Dutch, English, Danes and French fought like wildcats to gain possession
of this little nest of islands and the routes leading thereunto.

The English finally overcame all these enemies, whether they fought her
singly or combined. Great Britain became mistress of the seas and took
such Caribbean lands as she wanted. But in the end her continental foes
came out ahead, for they rendered her victory valueless. They were
defeated in geography but they won in chemistry. Canning boasted that
"the New World had been called into existence to redress the balance of
the Old." Napoleon might have boasted that he had called in the sugar
beet to balance the sugar cane. France was then, as Germany was a
century later, threatening to dominate the world. England, then as in
the Great War, shut off from the seas the shipping of the aggressive
power. France then, like Germany later, felt most keenly the lack of
tropical products, chief among which, then but not in the recent crisis,
was sugar. The cause of this vital change is that in 1747 Marggraf, a
Berlin chemist, discovered that it was possible to extract sugar from
beets. There was only a little sugar in the beet root then, some six per
cent., and what he got out was dirty and bitter. One of his pupils in
1801 set up a beet sugar factory near Breslau under the patronage of the
King of Prussia, but the industry was not a success until Napoleon took
it up and in 1810 offered a prize of a million francs for a practical
process. How the French did make fun of him for this crazy notion! In a
comic paper of that day you will find a cartoon of Napoleon in the
nursery beside the cradle of his son and heir, the King of Rome--known
to the readers of Rostand as l'Aiglon. The Emperor is squeezing the
juice of a beet into his coffee and the nurse has put a beet into the
mouth of the infant King, saying: "Suck, dear, suck. Your father says
it's sugar."

In like manner did the wits ridicule Franklin for fooling with
electricity, Rumford for trying to improve chimneys, Parmentier for
thinking potatoes were fit to eat, and Jefferson for believing that
something might be made of the country west of the Mississippi. In all
ages ridicule has been the chief weapon of conservatism. If you want to
know what line human progress will take in the future read the funny
papers of today and see what they are fighting. The satire of every
century from Aristophanes to the latest vaudeville has been directed
against those who are trying to make the world wiser or better, against
the teacher and the preacher, the scientist and the reformer.

In spite of the ridicule showered upon it the despised beet year by year
gained in sweetness of heart. The percentage of sugar rose from six to
eighteen and by improved methods of extraction became finally as pure
and palatable as the sugar of the cane. An acre of German beets produces
more sugar than an acre of Louisiana cane. Continental Europe waxed
wealthy while the British West Indies sank into decay. As the beets of
Europe became sweeter the population of the islands became blacker.
Before the war England was paying out $125,000,000 for sugar, and more
than two-thirds of this money was going to Germany and Austria-Hungary.
Fostered by scientific study, protected by tariff duties, and stimulated
by export bounties, the beet sugar industry became one of the financial
forces of the world. The English at home, especially the
marmalade-makers, at first rejoiced at the idea of getting sugar for
less than cost at the expense of her continental rivals. But the
suffering colonies took another view of the situation. In 1888 a
conference of the powers called at London agreed to stop competing by
the pernicious practice of export bounties, but France and the United
States refused to enter, so the agreement fell through. Another
conference ten years later likewise failed, but when the parvenu beet
sugar ventured to invade the historic home of the cane the limit of
toleration had been reached. The Council of India put on countervailing
duties to protect their homegrown cane from the bounty-fed beet. This
forced the calling of a convention at Brussels in 1903 "to equalize the
conditions of competition between beet sugar and cane sugar of the
various countries," at which the powers agreed to a mutual suppression
of bounties. Beet sugar then divided the world's market equally with
cane sugar and the two rivals stayed substantially neck and neck until
the Great War came. This shut out from England the product of Germany,
Austria-Hungary, Belgium, northern France and Russia and took the
farmers from their fields. The battle lines of the Central Powers
enclosed the land which used to grow a third of the world's supply of
sugar. In 1913 the beet and the cane each supplied about nine million
tons of sugar. In 1917 the output of cane sugar was 11,200,000 and of
beet sugar 5,300,000 tons. Consequently the Old World had to draw upon
the New. Cuba, on which the United States used to depend for half its
sugar supply, sent over 700,000 tons of raw sugar to England in 1916.
The United States sent as much more refined sugar. The lack of shipping
interfered with our getting sugar from our tropical dependencies,
Hawaii, Porto Rico and the Philippines. The homegrown beets give us only
a fifth and the cane of Louisiana and Texas only a fifteenth of the
sugar we need. As a result we were obliged to file a claim in advance to
get a pound of sugar from the corner grocery and then we were apt to be
put off with rock candy, muscovado or honey. Lemon drops proved useful
for Russian tea and the "long sweetening" of our forefathers came again
into vogue in the form of various syrups. The United States was
accustomed to consume almost a fifth of all the sugar produced in the
world--and then we could not get it.

[Illustration: MAP SHOWING LOCATION OF EUROPEAN BEET SUGAR
FACTORIES--ALSO BATTLE LINES AT CLOSE OF 1918 ESTIMATED THAT ONE-THIRD
OF WORLDS PRODUCTION BEFORE THE WAR WAS PRODUCED WITHIN BATTLE LINES
Courtesy American Sugar Refining Co.]

The shortage made us realize how dependent we have become upon sugar.
Yet it was, as we have seen, practically unknown to the ancients and
only within the present generation has it become an essential factor in
our diet. As soon as the chemist made it possible to produce sugar at a
reasonable price all nations began to buy it in proportion to their
means. Americans, as the wealthiest people in the world, ate the most,
ninety pounds a year on the average for every man, woman and child. In
other words we ate our weight of sugar every year. The English consumed
nearly as much as the Americans; the French and Germans about half as
much; the Balkan peoples less than ten pounds per annum; and the African
savages none.

[Illustration: How the sugar beet has gained enormously in sugar content
under chemical control]

Pure white sugar is the first and greatest contribution of chemistry to
the world's dietary. It is unique in being a single definite chemical
compound, sucrose, C_{12}H_{22}O_{11}. All natural nutriments are more
or less complex mixtures. Many of them, like wheat or milk or fruit,
contain in various proportions all of the three factors of foods, the
fats, the proteids and the carbohydrates, as well as water and the
minerals and other ingredients necessary to life. But sugar is a simple
substance, like water or salt, and like them is incapable of sustaining
life alone, although unlike them it is nutritious. In fact, except the
fats there is no more nutritious food than sugar, pound for pound, for
it contains no water and no waste. It is therefore the quickest and
usually the cheapest means of supplying bodily energy. But as may be
seen from its formula as given above it contains only three elements,
carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, and omits nitrogen and other elements
necessary to the body. An engine requires not only coal but also
lubricating oil, water and bits of steel and brass to keep it in repair.
But as a source of the energy needed in our strenuous life sugar has no
equal and only one rival, alcohol. Alcohol is the offspring of sugar, a
degenerate descendant that retains but few of the good qualities of its
sire and has acquired some evil traits of its own. Alcohol, like sugar,
may serve to furnish the energy of a steam engine or a human body. Used
as a fuel alcohol has certain advantages, but used as a food it has the
disqualification of deranging the bodily mechanism. Even a little
alcohol will impair the accuracy and speed of thought and action, while
a large quantity, as we all know from observation if not experience,
will produce temporary incapacitation.

When man feeds on sugar he splits it up by the aid of air into water and
carbon dioxide in this fashion:

  C_{12}H_{22}O_{11} +  12O_{2}   -->   11H_{2}O  + 12CO_{2}
        cane sugar     oxygen           water      carbon dioxide

When sugar is burned the reaction is just the same.

But when the yeast plant feeds on sugar it carries the process only part
way and instead of water the product is alcohol, a very different thing,
so they say who have tried both as beverages. The yeast or fermentation
reaction is this:

  C_{12}H_{22}O_{11} +  H_{2}O   -->  4C_{2}H_{6}O   +  4CO_{2}
        cane sugar      water         alcohol       carbon dioxide

Alcohol then is the first product of the decomposition of sugar, a
dangerous half-way house. The twin product, carbon dioxide or carbonic
acid, is a gas of slightly sour taste which gives an attractive tang and
effervescence to the beer, wine, cider or champagne. That is to say, one
of these twins is a pestilential fellow and the other is decidedly
agreeable. Yet for several thousand years mankind took to the first and
let the second for the most part escape into the air. But when the
chemist appeared on the scene he discovered a way of separating the two
and bottling the harmless one for those who prefer it. An increasing
number of people were found to prefer it, so the American soda-water
fountain is gradually driving Demon Rum out of the civilized world. The
brewer nowadays caters to two classes of customers. He bottles up the
beer with the alcohol and a little carbonic acid in it for the saloon
and he catches the rest of the carbonic acid that he used to waste and
sells it to the drug stores for soda-water or uses it to charge some
non-alcoholic beer of his own.

This catering to rival trades is not an uncommon thing with the chemist.
As we have seen, the synthetic perfumes are used to improve the natural
perfumes. Cottonseed is separated into oil and meal; the oil going to
make margarin and the meal going to feed the cows that produce butter.
Some people have been drinking coffee, although they do not like the
taste of it, because they want the stimulating effect of its alkaloid,
caffein. Other people liked the warmth and flavor of coffee but find
that caffein does not agree with them. Formerly one had to take the
coffee whole or let it alone. Now one can have his choice, for the
caffein is extracted for use in certain popular cold drinks and the rest
of the bean sold as caffein-free coffee.

Most of the "soft drinks" that are now gradually displacing the hard
ones consist of sugar, water and carbonic acid, with various flavors,
chiefly the esters of the fatty and aromatic acids, such as I described
in a previous chapter. These are still usually made from fruits and
spices and in some cases the law or public opinion requires this, but
eventually, I presume, the synthetic flavors will displace the natural
and then we shall get rid of such extraneous and indigestible matter as
seeds, skins and bark. Suppose the world had always been used to
synthetic and hence seedless figs, strawberries and blackberries.
Suppose then some manufacturer of fig paste or strawberry jam should put
in ten per cent. of little round hard wooden nodules, just the sort to
get stuck between the teeth or caught in the vermiform appendix. How
long would it be before he was sent to jail for adulterating food? But
neither jail nor boycott has any reformatory effect on Nature.

Nature is quite human in that respect. But you can reform Nature as you
can human beings by looking out for heredity and culture. In this way
Mother Nature has been quite cured of her bad habit of putting seeds in
bananas and oranges. Figs she still persists in adulterating with
particles of cellulose as nutritious as sawdust. But we can circumvent
the old lady at this. I got on Christmas a package of figs from
California without a seed in them. Somebody had taken out all the
seeds--it must have been a big job--and then put the figs together again
as natural looking as life and very much better tasting.

Sugar and alcohol are both found in Nature; sugar in the ripe fruit,
alcohol when it begins to decay. But it was the chemist who discovered
how to extract them. He first worked with alcohol and unfortunately
succeeded.

Previous to the invention of the still by the Arabian chemists man could
not get drunk as quickly as he wanted to because his liquors were
limited to what the yeast plant could stand without intoxication. When
the alcoholic content of wine or beer rose to seventeen per cent. at the
most the process of fermentation stopped because the yeast plants got
drunk and quit "working." That meant that a man confined to ordinary
wine or beer had to drink ten or twenty quarts of water to get one
quart of the stuff he was after, and he had no liking for water.

So the chemist helped him out of this difficulty and got him into worse
trouble by distilling the wine. The more volatile part that came over
first contained the flavor and most of the alcohol. In this way he could
get liquors like brandy and whisky, rum and gin, containing from thirty
to eighty per cent. of alcohol. This was the origin of the modern liquor
problem. The wine of the ancients was strong enough to knock out Noah
and put the companions of Socrates under the table, but it was not until
distilled liquors came in that alcoholism became chronic, epidemic and
ruinous to whole populations.

But the chemist later tried to undo the ruin he had quite inadvertently
wrought by introducing alcohol into the world. One of his most
successful measures was the production of cheap and pure sugar which, as
we have seen, has become a large factor in the dietary of civilized
countries. As a country sobers up it takes to sugar as a "self-starter"
to provide the energy needed for the strenuous life. A five o'clock
candy is a better restorative than a five o'clock highball or even a
five o'clock tea, for it is a true nutrient instead of a mere stimulant.
It is a matter of common observation that those who like sweets usually
do not like alcohol. Women, for instance, are apt to eat candy but do
not commonly take to alcoholic beverages. Look around you at a banquet
table and you will generally find that those who turn down their wine
glasses generally take two lumps in their demi-tasses. We often hear it
said that whenever a candy store opens up a saloon in the same block
closes up. Our grandmothers used to warn their daughters: "Don't marry a
man who does not want sugar in his tea. He is likely to take to drink."
So, young man, when next you give a box of candy to your best girl and
she offers you some, don't decline it. Eat it and pretend to like it, at
least, for it is quite possible that she looked into a physiology and is
trying you out. You never can tell what girls are up to.

In the army and navy ration the same change has taken place as in the
popular dietary. The ration of rum has been mostly replaced by an
equivalent amount of candy or marmalade. Instead of the tippling trooper
of former days we have "the chocolate soldier." No previous war in
history has been fought so largely on sugar and so little on alcohol as
the last one. When the war reduced the supply and increased the demand
we all felt the sugar famine and it became a mark of patriotism to
refuse candy and to drink coffee unsweetened. This, however, is not, as
some think, the mere curtailment of a superfluous or harmful luxury, the
sacrifice of a pleasant sensation. It is a real deprivation and a
serious loss to national nutrition. For there is no reason to think the
constantly rising curve of sugar consumption has yet reached its maximum
or optimum. Individuals overeat, but not the population as a whole.
According to experiments of the Department of Agriculture men doing
heavy labor may add three-quarters of a pound of sugar to their daily
diet without any deleterious effects. This is at the rate of 275 pounds
a year, which is three times the average consumption of England and
America. But the Department does not state how much a girl doing
nothing ought to eat between meals.

Of the 2500 to 3500 calories of energy required to keep a man going for
a day the best source of supply is the carbohydrates, that is, the
sugars and starches. The fats are more concentrated but are more
expensive and less easily assimilable. The proteins are also more
expensive and their decomposition products are more apt to clog up the
system. Common sugar is almost an ideal food. Cheap, clean, white,
portable, imperishable, unadulterated, pleasant-tasting, germ-free,
highly nutritious, completely soluble, altogether digestible, easily
assimilable, requires no cooking and leaves no residue. Its only fault
is its perfection. It is so pure that a man cannot live on it. Four
square lumps give one hundred calories of energy. But twenty-five or
thirty-five times that amount would not constitute a day's ration, in
fact one would ultimately starve on such fare. It would be like
supplying an army with an abundance of powder but neglecting to provide
any bullets, clothing or food. To make sugar the sole food is
impossible. To make it the main food is unwise. It is quite proper for
man to separate out the distinct ingredients of natural products--to
extract the butter from the milk, the casein from the cheese, the sugar
from the cane--but he must not forget to combine them again at each meal
with the other essential foodstuffs in their proper proportion.

[Illustration: THE RIVAL SUGARS The sugar beet of the north has become
a close rival of the sugar cane of the south]

[Illustration: INTERIOR OF A SUGAR MILL SHOWING THE MACHINERY FOR
CRUSHING CANE TO EXTRACT THE JUICE]

[Illustration: Courtesy of American Sugar Refinery Co.

VACUUM PANS OF THE AMERICAN SUGAR REFINERY COMPANY

In these air-tight vats the water is boiled off from the cane juice
under diminished atmospheric pressure until the sugar crystallizes out]

Sugar is not a synthetic product and the business of the chemist has
been merely to extract and purify it. But this is not so simple as it
seems and every sugar factory has had to have its chemist. He has
analyzed every mother beet for a hundred years. He has watched every
step of the process from the cane to the crystal lest the sucrose should
invert to the less sweet and non-crystallizable glucose. He has tested
with polarized light every shipment of sugar that has passed through the
custom house, much to the mystification of congressmen who have often
wondered at the money and argumentation expended in a tariff discussion
over the question of the precise angle of rotation of the plane of
vibration of infinitesimal waves in a hypothetical ether.

The reason for this painstaking is that there are dozens of different
sugars, so much alike that they are difficult to separate. They are all
composed of the same three elements, C, H and O, and often in the same
proportion. Sometimes two sugars differ only in that one has a
right-handed and the other a left-handed twist to its molecule. They
bear the same resemblance to one another as the two gloves of a pair.
Cane sugar and beet sugar are when completely purified the same
substance, that is, sucrose, C_{12}H_{22}O_{11}. The brown and
straw-colored sugars, which our forefathers used and which we took to
using during the war, are essentially the same but have not been so
completely freed from moisture and the coloring and flavoring matter of
the cane juice. Maple sugar is mostly sucrose. So partly is honey.
Candies are made chiefly of sucrose with the addition of glucose, gums
or starch, to give them the necessary consistency and of such colors and
flavors, natural or synthetic, as may be desired. Practically all candy,
even the cheapest, is nowadays free from deleterious ingredients in the
manufacture, though it is liable to become contaminated in the handling.
In fact sugar is about the only food that is never adulterated. It would
be hard to find anything cheaper to add to it that would not be easily
detected. "Sanding the sugar," the crime of which grocers are generally
accused, is the one they are least likely to be guilty of.

Besides the big family of sugars which are all more or less sweet,
similar in structure and about equally nutritious, there are, very
curiously, other chemical compounds of altogether different composition
which taste like sugar but are not nutritious at all. One of these is
a coal-tar derivative, discovered accidentally by an American student
of chemistry, Ira Remsen, afterward president of Johns Hopkins
University, and named by him "saccharin." This has the composition
C_{6}H_{4}COSO_{2}NH, and as you may observe from the symbol it contains
sulfur (S) and nitrogen (N) and the benzene ring (C_{6}H_{4}) that are
not found in any of the sugars. It is several hundred times sweeter than
sugar, though it has also a slightly bitter aftertaste. A minute
quantity of it can therefore take the place of a large amount of sugar
in syrups, candies and preserves, so because it lends itself readily to
deception its use in food has been prohibited in the United States and
other countries. But during the war, on account of the shortage of
sugar, it came again into use. The European governments encouraged what
they formerly tried to prevent, and it became customary in Germany or
Italy to carry about a package of saccharin tablets in the pocket and
drop one or two into the tea or coffee. Such reversals of administrative
attitude are not uncommon. When the use of hops in beer was new it was
prohibited by British law. But hops became customary nevertheless and
now the law requires hops to be used in beer. When workingmen first
wanted to form unions, laws were passed to prevent them. But now, in
Australia for instance, the laws require workingmen to form unions.
Governments naturally tend to a conservative reaction against anything
new.

It is amusing to turn back to the pure food agitation of ten years ago
and read the sensational articles in the newspapers about the poisonous
nature of this dangerous drug, saccharin, in view of the fact that it is
being used by millions of people in Europe in amounts greater than once
seemed to upset the tender stomachs of the Washington "poison squads."
But saccharin does not appear to be responsible for any fatalities yet,
though people are said to be heartily sick of it. And well they may be,
for it is not a substitute for sugar except to the sense of taste.
Glucose may correctly be called a substitute for sucrose as margarin for
butter, since they not only taste much the same but have about the same
food value. But to serve saccharin in the place of sugar is like giving
a rubber bone to a dog. It is reported from Europe that the constant use
of saccharin gives one eventually a distaste for all sweets. This is
quite likely, although it means the reversal within a few years of
prehistoric food habits. Mankind has always associated sweetness with
food value, for there are few sweet things found in nature except the
sugars. We think we eat sugar because it is sweet. But we do not. We eat
it because it is good for us. The reason it tastes sweet to us is
because it is good for us. So man makes a virtue out of necessity, a
pleasure out of duty, which is the essence of ethics.

In the ancient days of Ind the great Raja Trishanku possessed an earthly
paradise that had been constructed for his delectation by a magician.
Therein grew all manner of beautiful flowers, savory herbs and delicious
fruits such as had never been known before outside heaven. Of them all
the Raja and his harems liked none better than the reed from which they
could suck honey. But Indra, being a jealous god, was wroth when he
looked down and beheld mere mortals enjoying such delights. So he willed
the destruction of the enchanted garden. With drought and tempest it was
devastated, with fire and hail, until not a leaf was left of its
luxuriant vegetation and the ground was bare as a threshing floor. But
the roots of the sugar cane are not destroyed though the stalk be cut
down; so when men ventured to enter the desert where once had been this
garden of Eden, they found the cane had grown up again and they carried
away cuttings of it and cultivated it in their gardens. Thus it happened
that the nectar of the gods descended first to monarchs and their
favorites, then was spread among the people and carried abroad to other
lands until now any child with a penny in his hand may buy of the best
of it. So it has been with many things. So may it be with all things.

X

WHAT COMES FROM CORN

The discovery of America dowered mankind with a world of new flora. The
early explorers in their haste to gather up gold paid little attention
to the more valuable products of field and forest, but in the course of
centuries their usefulness has become universally recognized. The potato
and tomato, which Europe at first considered as unfit for food or even
as poisonous, have now become indispensable among all classes. New World
drugs like quinine and cocaine have been adopted into every
pharmacopeia. Cocoa is proving a rival of tea and coffee, and even the
banana has made its appearance in European markets. Tobacco and chicle
occupy the nostrils and jaws of a large part of the human race. Maize
and rubber are become the common property of mankind, but still may be
called American. The United States alone raises four-fifths of the corn
and uses three-fourths of the caoutchouc of the world.

All flesh is grass. This may be taken in a dietary as well as a
metaphorical sense. The graminaceae provide the greater part of the
sustenance of man and beast; hay and cereals, wheat, oats, rye, barley,
rice, sugar cane, sorghum and corn. From an American viewpoint the
greatest of these, physically and financially, is corn. The corn crop of
the United States for 1917, amounting to 3,159,000,000 bushels, brought
in more money than the wheat, cotton, potato and rye crops all
together.

When Columbus reached the West Indies he found the savages playing with
rubber balls, smoking incense sticks of tobacco and eating cakes made of
a new grain that they called _mahiz_. When Pizarro invaded Peru he found
this same cereal used by the natives not only for food but also for
making alcoholic liquor, in spite of the efforts of the Incas to enforce
prohibition. When the Pilgrim Fathers penetrated into the woods back of
Plymouth Harbor they discovered a cache of Indian corn. So throughout
the three Americas, from Canada to Peru, corn was king and it has proved
worthy to rank with the rival cereals of other continents, the wheat of
Europe and the rice of Asia. But food habits are hard to change and for
the most part the people of the Old World are still ignorant of the
delights of hasty pudding and Indian pudding, of hoe-cake and hominy, of
sweet corn and popcorn. I remember thirty years ago seeing on a London
stand a heap of dejected popcorn balls labeled "Novel American
Confection. Please Try One." But nobody complied with this pitiful
appeal but me and I was sorry that I did. Americans used to respond with
a shipload of corn whenever an appeal came from famine sufferers in
Armenia, Russia, Ireland, India or Austria, but their generosity was
chilled when they found that their gift was resented as an insult or as
an attempt to poison the impoverished population, who declared that they
would rather die than eat it--and some of them did. Our Department of
Agriculture sent maize missionaries to Europe with farmers and millers
as educators and expert cooks to serve free flapjacks and pones, but the
propaganda made little impression and today Americans are urged to eat
more of their own corn because the famished families of the war-stricken
region will not touch it. Just so the beggars of Munich revolted at
potato soup when the pioneer of American food chemists, Bumford,
attempted to introduce this transatlantic dish.

But here we are not so much concerned with corn foods as we are with its
manufactured products. If you split a kernel in two you will find that
it consists of three parts: a hard and horny hull on the outside, a
small oily and nitrogenous germ at the point, and a white body
consisting mostly of starch. Each of these is worked up into various
products, as may be seen from the accompanying table. The hull forms
bran and may be mixed with the gluten as a cattle food. The corn steeped
for several days with sulfurous acid is disintegrated and on being
ground the germs are floated off, the gluten or nitrogenous portion
washed out, the starch grains settled down and the residue pressed
together as oil cake fodder. The refined oil from the germ is marketed
as a table or cooking oil under the name of "Mazola" and comes into
competition with olive, peanut and cottonseed oil in the making of
vegetable substitutes for lard and butter. Inferior grades may be used
for soaps or for glycerin and perhaps nitroglycerin. A bushel of corn
yields a pound or more of oil. From the corn germ also is extracted a
gum called "paragol" that forms an acceptable substitute for rubber in
certain uses. The "red rubber" sponges and the eraser tips to pencils
may be made of it and it can contribute some twenty per cent. to the
synthetic soles of shoes.

[Illustration: CORN PRODUCTS]

Starch, which constitutes fifty-five per cent. of the corn kernel, can
be converted into a variety of products for dietary and industrial uses.
As found in corn, potatoes or any other vegetables starch consists of
small, round, white, hard grains, tasteless, and insoluble in cold
water. But hot water converts it into a soluble, sticky form which may
serve for starching clothes or making cornstarch pudding. Carrying the
process further with the aid of a little acid or other catalyst it takes
up water and goes over into a sugar, dextrose, commonly called
"glucose." Expressed in chemical shorthand this reaction is

  C_{6}H_{10}O_{5} + H_{2}O   -->  C_{6}H_{12}O_{6}
         starch      water          dextrose

This reaction is carried out on forty million bushels of corn a year in
the United States. The "starch milk," that is, the starch grains washed
out from the disintegrated corn kernel by water, is digested in large
pressure tanks under fifty pounds of steam with a few tenths of one per
cent. of hydrochloric acid until the required degree of conversion is
reached. Then the remaining acid is neutralized by caustic soda, and
thereby converted into common salt, which in this small amount does not
interfere but rather enhances the taste. The product is the commercial
glucose or corn syrup, which may if desired be evaporated to a white
powder. It is a mixture of three derivatives of starch in about this
proportion:

  Maltose          45 per cent.
  Dextrose         20 per cent.
  Dextrin          35 per cent.

There are also present three- or four-tenths of one per cent. salt and
as much of the corn protein and a variable amount of water. It will be
noticed that the glucose (dextrose), which gives name to the whole, is
the least of the three ingredients.

Maltose, or malt sugar, has the same composition as cane sugar
(C_{12}H_{22}O_{11}), but is not nearly so sweet. Dextrin, or starch
paste, is not sweet at all. Dextrose or glucose is otherwise known; as
grape sugar, for it is commonly found in grapes and other ripe fruits.
It forms half of honey and it is one of the two products into which
cane sugar splits up when we take it into the mouth. It is not so sweet
as cane sugar and cannot be so readily crystallized, which, however, is
not altogether a disadvantage.

The process of changing starch into dextrose that takes place in the
great steam kettles of the glucose factory is essentially the same as
that which takes place in the ripening of fruit and in the digestion of
starch. A large part of our nutriment, therefore, consists of glucose
either eaten as such in ripe fruits or produced in the mouth or stomach
by the decomposition of the starch of unripe fruit, vegetables and
cereals. Glucose may be regarded as a predigested food. In spite of this
well-known fact we still sometimes read "poor food" articles in which
glucose is denounced as a dangerous adulterant and even classed as a
poison.

The other ingredients of commercial glucose, the maltose and dextrin,
have of course the same food value as the dextrose, since they are made
over into dextrose in the process of digestion. Whether the glucose
syrup is fit to eat depends, like anything else, on how it is made. If,
as was formerly sometimes the case, sulfuric acid was used to effect the
conversion of the starch or sulfurous acid to bleach the glucose and
these acids were not altogether eliminated, the product might be
unwholesome or worse. Some years ago in England there was a mysterious
epidemic of arsenical poisoning among beer drinkers. On tracing it back
it was found that the beer had been made from glucose which had been
made from sulfuric acid which had been made from sulfur which had been
made from a batch of iron pyrites which contained a little arsenic. The
replacement of sulfuric acid by hydrochloric has done away with that
danger and the glucose now produced is pure.

The old recipe for home-made candy called for the addition of a little
vinegar to the sugar syrup to prevent "graining." The purpose of the
acid was of course to invert part of the cane sugar to glucose so as to
keep it from crystallizing out again. The professional candy-maker now
uses the corn glucose for that purpose, so if we accuse him of
"adulteration" on that ground we must levy the same accusation against
our grandmothers. The introduction of glucose into candy manufacture has
not injured but greatly increased the sale of sugar for the same
purpose. This is not an uncommon effect of scientific progress, for as
we have observed, the introduction of synthetic perfumes has stimulated
the production of odoriferous flowers and the price of butter has gone
up with the introduction of margarin. So, too, there are more weavers
employed and they get higher wages than in the days when they smashed up
the first weaving machines, and the same is true of printers and
typesetting machines. The popular animosity displayed toward any new
achievement of applied science is never justified, for it benefits not
only the world as a whole but usually even those interests with which it
seems at first to conflict.

The chemist is an economizer. It is his special business to hunt up
waste products and make them useful. He was, for instance, worried over
the waste of the cores and skins and scraps that were being thrown away
when apples were put up. Apple pulp contains pectin, which is what makes
jelly jell, and berries and fruits that are short of it will refuse to
"jell." But using these for their flavor he adds apple pulp for pectin
and glucose for smoothness and sugar for sweetness and, if necessary,
synthetic dyes for color, he is able to put on the market a variety of
jellies, jams and marmalades at very low price. The same principle
applies here as in the case of all compounded food products. If they are
made in cleanly fashion, contain no harmful ingredients and are
truthfully labeled there is no reason for objecting to them. But if the
manufacturer goes so far as to put strawberry seeds--or hayseed--into
his artificial "strawberry jam" I think that might properly be called
adulteration, for it is imitating the imperfections of nature, and man
ought to be too proud to do that.

The old-fashioned open kettle molasses consisted mostly of glucose and
other invert sugars together with such cane sugar as could not be
crystallized out. But when the vacuum pan was introduced the molasses
was impoverished of its sweetness and beet sugar does not yield any
molasses. So we now have in its place the corn syrups consisting of
about 85 per cent. of glucose and 15 per cent. of sugar flavored with
maple or vanillin or whatever we like. It is encouraging to see the bill
boards proclaiming the virtues of "Karo" syrup and "Mazola" oil when
only a few years ago the products of our national cereal were without
honor in their own country.

Many other products besides foods are made from corn starch. Dextrin
serves in place of the old "gum arabic" for the mucilage of our
envelopes and stamps. Another form of dextrin sold as "Kordex" is used
to hold together the sand of the cores of castings. After the casting
has been made the scorched core can be shaken out. Glucose is used in
place of sugar as a filler for cheap soaps and for leather.

Altogether more than a hundred different commercial products are now
made from corn, not counting cob pipes. Every year the factories of the
United States work up over 50,000,000 bushels of corn into 800,000,000
pounds of corn syrup, 600,000,000 pounds of starch, 230,000,000 pounds
of corn sugar, 625,000,000 pounds of gluten feed, 90,000,000 pounds of
oil and 90,000,000 pounds of oil cake.

Two million bushels of cobs are wasted every year in the United States.
Can't something be made out of them? This is the question that is
agitating the chemists of the Carbohydrate Laboratory of the Department
of Agriculture at Washington. They have found it possible to work up the
corn cobs into glucose and xylose by heating with acid. But glucose can
be more cheaply obtained from other starchy or woody materials and they
cannot find a market for the xylose. This is a sort of a sugar but only
about half as sweet as that from cane. Who can invent a use for it! More
promising is the discovery by this laboratory that by digesting the cobs
with hot water there can be extracted about 30 per cent. of a gum
suitable for bill posting and labeling.

Since the starches and sugars belong to the same class of compounds as
the celluloses they also can be acted upon by nitric acid with the
production of explosives like guncotton. Nitro-sugar has not come into
common use, but nitro-starch is found to be one of safest of the high
explosives. On account of the danger of decomposition and spontaneous
explosion from the presence of foreign substances the materials in
explosives must be of the purest possible. It was formerly thought that
tapioca must be imported from Java for making nitro-starch. But during
the war when shipping was short, the War Department found that it could
be made better and cheaper from our home-grown corn starch. When the war
closed the United States was making 1,720,000 pounds of nitro-starch a
month for loading hand grenades. So, too, the Post Office Department
discovered that it could use mucilage made of corn dextrin as well as
that which used to be made from tapioca. This is progress in the right
direction. It would be well to divert some of the energetic efforts now
devoted to the increase of commerce to the discovery of ways of reducing
the need for commerce by the development of home products. There is no
merit in simply hauling things around the world.

In the last chapter we saw how dextrose or glucose could be converted by
fermentation into alcohol. Since corn starch, as we have seen, can be
converted into dextrose, it can serve as a source of alcohol. This was,
in fact, one of the earliest misuses to which corn was put, and before
the war put a stop to it 34,000,000 bushels went into the making of
whiskey in the United States every year, not counting the moonshiners'
output. But even though we left off drinking whiskey the distillers
could still thrive. Mars is more thirsty than Bacchus. The output of
whiskey, denatured for industrial purposes, is more than three times
what is was before the war, and the price has risen from 30 cents a
gallon to 67 cents. This may make it profitable to utilize sugars,
starches and cellulose that formerly were out of the question. According
to the calculations of the Forest Products Laboratory of Madison it
costs from 37 to 44 cents a gallon to make alcohol from corn, but it may
be made from sawdust at a cost of from 14 to 20 cents. This is not "wood
alcohol" (that is, methyl alcohol, CH_{4}O) such as is made by the
destructive distillation of wood, but genuine "grain alcohol" (ethyl
alcohol, C_{2}H_{6}O), such as is made by the fermentation of glucose or
other sugar. The first step in the process is to digest the sawdust or
chips with dilute sulfuric acid under heat and pressure. This converts
the cellulose (wood fiber) in large part into glucose ("corn sugar")
which may be extracted by hot water in a diffusion battery as in
extracting the sugar from beet chips. This glucose solution may then be
fermented by yeast and the resulting alcohol distilled off. The process
is perfectly practicable but has yet to be proved profitable. But the
sulfite liquors of the paper mills are being worked up successfully into
industrial alcohol.

The rapidly approaching exhaustion of our oil fields which the war has
accelerated leads us to look around to see what we can get to take the
place of gasoline. One of the most promising of the suggested
substitutes is alcohol. The United States is exceptionally rich in
mineral oil, but some countries, for instance England, Germany, France
and Australia, have little or none. The Australian Advisory Council of
Science, called to consider the problem, recommends alcohol for
stationary engines and motor cars. Alcohol has the disadvantage of
being less volatile than gasoline so it is hard to start up the engine
from the cold. But the lower volatility and ignition point of alcohol
are an advantage in that it can be put under a pressure of 150 pounds to
the square inch. A pound of gasoline contains fifty per cent. more
potential energy than a pound of alcohol, but since the alcohol vapor
can be put under twice the compression of the gasoline and requires only
one-third the amount of air, the thermal efficiency of an alcohol engine
may be fifty per cent. higher than that of a gasoline engine. Alcohol
also has several other conveniences that can count in its favor. In the
case of incomplete combustion the cylinders are less likely to be
clogged with carbon and the escaping gases do not have the offensive
odor of the gasoline smoke. Alcohol does not ignite so easily as
gasoline and the fire is more readily put out, for water thrown upon
blazing alcohol dilutes it and puts out the flame while gasoline floats
on water and the fire is spread by it. It is possible to increase the
inflammability of alcohol by mixing with it some hydrocarbon such as
gasoline, benzene or acetylene. In the Taylor-White process the vapor
from low-grade alcohol containing 17 per cent. water is passed over
calcium carbide. This takes out the water and adds acetylene gas, making
a suitable mixture for an internal combustion engine.

Alcohol can be made from anything of a starchy, sugary or woody nature,
that is, from the main substance of all vegetation. If we start with
wood (cellulose) we convert it first into sugar (glucose) and, of
course, we could stop here and use it for food instead of carrying it
on into alcohol. This provides one factor of our food, the carbohydrate,
but by growing the yeast plants on glucose and feeding them with
nitrates made from the air we can get the protein and fat. So it is
quite possible to live on sawdust, although it would be too expensive a
diet for anybody but a millionaire, and he would not enjoy it. Glucose
has been made from formaldehyde and this in turn made from carbon,
hydrogen and oxygen, so the synthetic production of food from the
elements is not such an absurdity as it was thought when Berthelot
suggested it half a century ago.

The first step in the making of alcohol is to change the starch over
into sugar. This transformation is effected in the natural course of
sprouting by which the insoluble starch stored up in the seed is
converted into the soluble glucose for the sap of the growing plant.
This malting process is that mainly made use of in the production of
alcohol from grain. But there are other ways of effecting the change. It
may be done by heating with acid as we have seen, or according to a
method now being developed the final conversion may be accomplished by
mold instead of malt. In applying this method, known as the amylo
process, to corn, the meal is mixed with twice its weight of water,
acidified with hydrochloric acid and steamed. The mash is then cooled
down somewhat, diluted with sterilized water and innoculated with the
mucor filaments. As the mash molds the starch is gradually changed over
to glucose and if this is the product desired the process may be stopped
at this point. But if alcohol is wanted yeast is added to ferment the
sugar. By keeping it alkaline and treating with the proper bacteria a
high yield of glycerin can be obtained.

In the fermentation process for making alcoholic liquors a little
glycerin is produced as a by-product. Glycerin, otherwise called
glycerol, is intermediate between sugar and alcohol. Its molecule
contains three carbon atoms, while glucose has six and alcohol two. It
is possible to increase the yield of glycerin if desired by varying the
form of fermentation. This was desired most earnestly in Germany during
the war, for the British blockade shut off the importation of the fats
and oils from which the Germans extracted the glycerin for their
nitroglycerin. Under pressure of this necessity they worked out a
process of getting glycerin in quantity from sugar and, news of this
being brought to this country by Dr. Alonzo Taylor, the United States
Treasury Department set up a special laboratory to work out this
problem. John R. Eoff and other chemists working in this laboratory
succeeded in getting a yield of twenty per cent. of glycerin by
fermenting black strap molasses or other syrup with California wine
yeast. During the fermentation it is necessary to neutralize the acetic
acid formed with sodium or calcium carbonate. It was estimated that
glycerin could be made from waste sugars at about a quarter of its
war-time cost, but it is doubtful whether the process would be
profitable at normal prices.

We can, if we like, dispense with either yeast or bacteria in the
production of glycerin. Glucose syrup suspended in oil under steam
pressure with finely divided nickel as a catalyst and treated with
nascent hydrogen will take up the hydrogen and be converted into
glycerin. But the yield is poor and the process expensive.

Food serves substantially the same purpose in the body as fuel in the
engine. It provides the energy for work. The carbohydrates, that is the
sugars, starches and celluloses, can all be used as fuels and can
all--even, as we have seen, the cellulose--be used as foods. The final
products, water and carbon dioxide, are in both cases the same and
necessarily therefore the amount of energy produced is the same in the
body as in the engine. Corn is a good example of the equivalence of the
two sources of energy. There are few better foods and no better fuels. I
can remember the good old days in Kansas when we had corn to burn. It
was both an economy and a luxury, for--at ten cents a bushel--it was
cheaper than coal or wood and preferable to either at any price. The
long yellow ears, each wrapped in its own kindling, could be handled
without crocking the fingers. Each kernel as it crackled sent out a
blazing jet of oil and the cobs left a fine bed of coals for the corn
popper to be shaken over. Driftwood and the pyrotechnic fuel they make
now by soaking sticks in strontium and copper salts cannot compare with
the old-fashioned corn-fed fire in beauty and the power of evoking
visions. Doubtless such luxury would be condemned as wicked nowadays,
but those who have known the calorific value of corn would find it hard
to abandon it altogether, and I fancy that the Western farmer's wife,
when she has an extra batch of baking to do, will still steal a few ears
from the crib.

XI

SOLIDIFIED SUNSHINE

All life and all that life accomplishes depend upon the supply of solar
energy stored in the form of food. The chief sources of this vital
energy are the fats and the sugars. The former contain two and a quarter
times the potential energy of the latter. Both, when completely
purified, consist of nothing but carbon, hydrogen and oxygen; elements
that are to be found freely everywhere in air and water. So when the
sunny southland exports fats and oils, starches and sugar, it is then
sending away nothing material but what comes back to it in the next
wind. What it is sending to the regions of more slanting sunshine is
merely some of the surplus of the radiant energy it has received so
abundantly, compacted for convenience into a portable and edible form.

In previous chapters I have dealt with some of the uses of cotton, its
employment for cloth, for paper, for artificial fibers, for explosives,
and for plastics. But I have ignored the thing that cotton is attached
to and for which, in the economy of nature, the fibers are formed; that
is, the seed. It is as though I had described the aeroplane and ignored
the aviator whom it was designed to carry. But in this neglect I am but
following the example of the human race, which for three thousand years
used the fiber but made no use of the seed except to plant the next
crop.

Just as mankind is now divided into the two great classes, the
wheat-eaters and the rice-eaters, so the ancient world was divided into
the wool-wearers and the cotton-wearers. The people of India wore
cotton; the Europeans wore wool. When the Greeks under Alexander fought
their way to the Far East they were surprised to find wool growing on
trees. Later travelers returning from Cathay told of the same marvel and
travelers who stayed at home and wrote about what they had not seen,
like Sir John Maundeville, misunderstood these reports and elaborated a
legend of a tree that bore live lambs as fruit. Here, for instance, is
how a French poetical botanist, Delacroix, described it in 1791, as
translated from his Latin verse:

  Upon a stalk is fixed a living brute,
  A rooted plant bears quadruped for fruit;
  It has a fleece, nor does it want for eyes,
  And from its brows two wooly horns arise.
  The rude and simple country people say
  It is an animal that sleeps by day
  And wakes at night, though rooted to the ground,
  To feed on grass within its reach around.

But modern commerce broke down the barrier between East and West. A new
cotton country, the best in the world, was discovered in America. Cotton
invaded England and after a hard fight, with fists as well as finance,
wool was beaten in its chief stronghold. Cotton became King and the
wool-sack in the House of Lords lost its symbolic significance.

Still two-thirds of the cotton crop, the seed, was wasted and it is only
within the last fifty years that methods of using it have been
developed to any extent.

The cotton crop of the United States for 1917 amounted to about
11,000,000 bales of 500 pounds each. When the Great War broke out and no
cotton could be exported to Germany and little to England the South was
in despair, for cotton went down to five or six cents a pound. The
national Government, regardless of states' rights, was called upon for
aid and everybody was besought to "buy a bale." Those who responded to
this patriotic appeal were well rewarded, for cotton rose as the war
went on and sold at twenty-nine cents a pound.

[ILLUSTRATION: PRODUCTS AND USES OF COTTONSEED]

But the chemist has added some $150,000,000 a year to the value of the
crop by discovering ways of utilizing the cottonseed that used to be
thrown away or burned as fuel. The genealogical table of the progeny of
the cottonseed herewith printed will give some idea of their variety. If
you will examine a cottonseed you will see first that there is a fine
fuzz of cotton fiber sticking to it. These linters can be removed by
machinery and used for any purpose where length of fiber is not
essential. For instance, they may be nitrated as described in previous
articles and used for making smokeless powder or celluloid.

On cutting open the seed you will observe that it consists of an oily,
mealy kernel encased in a thin brown hull. The hulls, amounting to 700
or 900 pounds in a ton of seed, were formerly burned. Now, however, they
bring from $4 to $10 a ton because they can be ground up into
cattle-feed or paper stock or used as fertilizer.

The kernel of the cottonseed on being pressed yields a yellow oil and
leaves a mealy cake. This last, mixed with the hulls, makes a good
fodder for fattening cattle. Also, adding twenty-five per cent. of the
refined cottonseed meal to our war bread made it more nutritious and no
less palatable. Cottonseed meal contains about forty per cent. of
protein and is therefore a highly concentrated and very valuable feeding
stuff. Before the war we were exporting nearly half a million tons of
cottonseed meal to Europe, chiefly to Germany and Denmark, where it is
used for dairy cows. The British yeoman, his country's pride, has not
yet been won over to the use of any such newfangled fodder and
consequently the British manufacturer could not compete with his
continental rivals in the seed-crushing business, for he could not
dispose of his meal-cake by-product as did they.

[Illustration: Photo by Press Illustrating Service

Cottonseed Oil As It Is Squeezed From The Seed By The Presses]

[Illustration: Photo by Press Illustrating Service

Cottonseed Oil As It Comes From The Compressors Flowing Out Of The
Faucets

When cold it is firm and white like lard]

Let us now turn to the most valuable of the cottonseed products, the
oil. The seed contains about twenty per cent. of oil, most of which can
be squeezed out of the hot seeds by hydraulic pressure. It comes out as
a red liquid of a disagreeable odor. This is decolorized, deodorized and
otherwise purified in various ways: by treatment with alkalies or acids,
by blowing air and steam through it, by shaking up with fuller's earth,
by settling and filtering. The refined product is a yellow oil, suitable
for table use. Formerly, on account of the popular prejudice against any
novel food products, it used to masquerade as olive oil. Now, however,
it boldly competes with its ancient rival in the lands of the olive tree
and America ships some 700,000 barrels of cottonseed oil a year to the
Mediterranean. The Turkish Government tried to check the spread of
cottonseed oil by calling it an adulterant and prohibiting its mixture
with olive oil. The result was that the sale of Turkish olive oil fell
off because people found its flavor too strong when undiluted. Italy
imports cottonseed oil and exports her olive oil. Denmark imports
cottonseed meal and margarine and exports her butter.

Northern nations are accustomed to hard fats and do not take to oils for
cooking or table use as do the southerners. Butter and lard are
preferred to olive oil and ghee. But this does not rule out cottonseed.
It can be combined with the hard fats of animal or vegetable origin in
margarine or it may itself be hardened by hydrogen.

To understand this interesting reaction which is profoundly affecting
international relations it will be necessary to dip into the chemistry
of the subject. Here are the symbols of the chief ingredients of the
fats and oils. Please look at them.

  Linoleic acid       C_{18}H_{32}O_{2}
  Oleic acid          C_{18}H_{34}O_{2}
  Stearic acid        C_{18}H_{36}O_{2}

Don't skip these because you have not studied chemistry. That's why I am
giving them to you. If you had studied chemistry you would know them
without my telling. Just examine them and you will discover the secret.
You will see that all three are composed of the same elements, carbon,
hydrogen, and oxygen. Notice next the number of atoms in each element as
indicated by the little low figures on the right of each letter. You
observe that all three contain the same number of atoms of carbon and
oxygen but differ in the amount of hydrogen. This trifling difference in
composition makes a great difference in behavior. The less the hydrogen
the lower the melting point. Or to say the same thing in other words,
fatty substances low in hydrogen are apt to be liquids and those with a
full complement of hydrogen atoms are apt to be solids at the ordinary
temperature of the air. It is common to call the former "oils" and the
latter "fats," but that implies too great a dissimilarity, for the
distinction depends on whether we are living in the tropics or the
arctic. It is better, therefore, to lump them all together and call
them "soft fats" and "hard fats," respectively.

Fats of the third order, the stearic group, are called "saturated"
because they have taken up all the hydrogen they can hold. Fats of the
other two groups are called "unsaturated." The first, which have the
least hydrogen, are the most eager for more. If hydrogen is not handy
they will take up other things, for instance oxygen. Linseed oil, which
consists largely, as the name implies, of linoleic acid, will absorb
oxygen on exposure to the air and become hard. That is why it is used in
painting. Such oils are called "drying" oils, although the hardening
process is not really drying, since they contain no water, but is
oxidation. The "semi-drying oils," those that will harden somewhat on
exposure to the air, include the oils of cottonseed, corn, sesame, soy
bean and castor bean. Olive oil and peanut oil are "non-drying" and
contain oleic compounds (olein). The hard fats, such as stearin,
palmitin and margarin, are mostly of animal origin, tallow and lard,
though coconut and palm oil contain a large proportion of such saturated
compounds.

Though the chemist talks of the fatty "acids," nobody else would call
them so because they are not sour. But they do behave like the acids in
forming salts with bases. The alkali salts of the fatty acids are known
to us as soaps. In the natural fats they exist not as free acids but as
salts of an organic base, glycerin, as I explained in a previous
chapter. The natural fats and oils consist of complex mixtures of the
glycerin compounds of these acids (known as olein, stearin, etc.), as
well as various others of a similar sort. If you will set a bottle of
salad oil in the ice-box you will see it separate into two parts. The
white, crystalline solid that separates out is largely stearin. The part
that remains liquid is largely olein. You might separate them by
filtering it cold and if then you tried to sell the two products you
would find that the hard fat would bring a higher price than the oil,
either for food or soap. If you tried to keep them you would find that
the hard fat kept neutral and "sweet" longer than the other. You may
remember that the perfumes (as well as their odorous opposites) were
mostly unsaturated compounds. So we find that it is the free and
unsaturated fatty acids that cause butter and oil to become rank and
rancid.

Obviously, then, we could make money if we could turn soft, unsaturated
fats like olein into hard, saturated fats like stearin. Referring to the
symbols we see that all that is needed to effect the change is to get
the former to unite with hydrogen. This requires a little coaxing. The
coaxer is called a catalyst. A catalyst, as I have previously explained,
is a substance that by its mere presence causes the union of two other
substances that might otherwise remain separate. For that reason the
catalyst is referred to as "a chemical parson." Finely divided metals
have a strong catalytic action. Platinum sponge is excellent but too
expensive. So in this case nickel is used. A nickel salt mixed with
charcoal or pumice is reduced to the metallic state by heating in a
current of hydrogen. Then it is dropped into the tank of oil and
hydrogen gas is blown through. The hydrogen may be obtained by splitting
water into its two components, hydrogen and oxygen, by means of the
electrical current, or by passing steam over spongy iron which takes out
the oxygen. The stream of hydrogen blown through the hot oil converts
the linoleic acid to oleic and then the oleic into stearic. If you
figured up the weights from the symbols given above you would find that
it takes about one pound of hydrogen to convert a hundred pounds of
olein to stearin and the cost is only about one cent a pound. The nickel
is unchanged and is easily separated. A trace of nickel may remain in
the product, but as it is very much less than the amount dissolved when
food is cooked in nickel-plated vessels it cannot be regarded as
harmful.

Even more unsaturated fats may be hydrogenated. Fish oil has hitherto
been almost unusable because of its powerful and persistent odor. This
is chiefly due to a fatty acid which properly bears the uneuphonious
name of clupanodonic acid and has the composition of C_{18}H_{28}O_{2}.
By comparing this with the symbol of the odorless stearic acid,
C_{18}H_{36}O_{2}, you will see that all the rank fish oil lacks to make
it respectable is eight hydrogen atoms. A Japanese chemist, Tsujimoto,
has discovered how to add them and now the reformed fish oil under the
names of "talgol" and "candelite" serves for lubricant and even enters
higher circles as a soap or food.

This process of hardening fats by hydrogenation resulted from the
experiments of a French chemist, Professor Sabatier of Toulouse, in the
last years of the last century, but, as in many other cases, the Germans
were the first to take it up and profit by it. Before the war the copra
or coconut oil from the British Asiatic colonies of India, Ceylon and
Malaya went to Germany at the rate of $15,000,000 a year. The palm
kernels grown in British West Africa were shipped, not to Liverpool, but
to Hamburg, $19,000,000 worth annually. Here the oil was pressed out and
used for margarin and the residual cake used for feeding cows produced
butter or for feeding hogs produced lard. Half of the copra raised in
the British possessions was sent to Germany and half of the oil from it
was resold to the British margarin candle and soap makers at a handsome
profit. The British chemists were not blind to this, but they could do
nothing, first because the English politician was wedded to free trade,
second, because the English farmer would not use oil cake for his stock.
France was in a similar situation. Marseilles produced 15,500,000
gallons of oil from peanuts grown largely in the French African
colonies--but shipped the oil-cake on to Hamburg. Meanwhile the Germans,
in pursuit of their policy of attaining economic independence, were
striving to develop their own tropical territory. The subjects of King
George who because they had the misfortune to live in India were
excluded from the British South African dominions or mistreated when
they did come, were invited to come to German East Africa and set to
raising peanuts in rivalry to French Senegal and British Coromandel.
Before the war Germany got half of the Egyptian cottonseed and half of
the Philippine copra. That is one of the reasons why German warships
tried to check Dewey at Manila in 1898 and German troops tried to
conquer Egypt in 1915.

But the tide of war set the other way and the German plantations of
palmnuts and peanuts in Africa have come into British possession and
now the British Government is starting an educational campaign to teach
their farmers to feed oil cake like the Germans and their people to eat
peanuts like the Americans.

The Germans shut off from the tropical fats supply were hard up for food
and for soap, for lubricants and for munitions. Every person was given a
fat card that reduced his weekly allowance to the minimum. Millers were
required to remove the germs from their cereals and deliver them to the
war department. Children were set to gathering horse-chestnuts,
elderberries, linden-balls, grape seeds, cherry stones and sunflower
heads, for these contain from six to twenty per cent. of oil. Even the
blue-bottle fly--hitherto an idle creature for whom Beelzebub found
mischief--was conscripted into the national service and set to laying
eggs by the billion on fish refuse. Within a few days there is a crop of
larvae which, to quote the "Chemische Zentralblatt," yields forty-five
grams per kilogram of a yellow oil. This product, we should hope, is
used for axle-grease and nitroglycerin, although properly purified it
would be as nutritious as any other--to one who has no imagination.
Driven to such straits Germany would have given a good deal for one of
those tropical islands that we are so careless about.

It might have been supposed that since the United States possessed the
best land in the world for the production of cottonseed, coconuts,
peanuts, and corn that it would have led all other countries in the
utilization of vegetable oils for food. That this country has not so
used its advantage is due to the fact that the new products have not
merely had to overcome popular conservatism, ignorance and
prejudice--hard things to fight in any case--but have been deliberately
checked and hampered by the state and national governments in defense of
vested interests. The farmer vote is a power that no politician likes to
defy and the dairy business in every state was thoroughly organized. In
New York the oleomargarin industry that in 1879 was turning out products
valued at more than $5,000,000 a year was completely crushed out by
state legislation.[2] The output of the United States, which in 1902 had
risen to 126,000,000 pounds, was cut down to 43,000,000 pounds in 1909
by federal legislation. According to the disingenuous custom of American
lawmakers the Act of 1902 was passed through Congress as a "revenue
measure," although it meant a loss to the Government of more than three
million dollars a year over what might be produced by a straight two
cents a pound tax. A wholesale dealer in oleomargarin was made to pay a
higher license than a wholesale liquor dealer. The federal law put a tax
of ten cents a pound on yellow oleomargarin and a quarter of a cent a
pound on the uncolored. But people--doubtless from pure
prejudice--prefer a yellow spread for their bread, so the economical
housewife has to work over her oleomargarin with the annatto which is
given to her when she buys a package or, if the law prohibits this,
which she is permitted to steal from an open box on the grocer's
counter. A plausible pretext for such legislation is afforded by the
fact that the butter substitutes are so much like butter that they
cannot be easily distinguished from it unless the use of annatto is
permitted to butter and prohibited to its competitors. Fradulent sales
of substitutes of any kind ought to be prevented, but the recent pure
food legislation in America has shown that it is possible to secure
truthful labeling without resorting to such drastic measures. In Europe
the laws against substitution were very strict, but not devised to
restrict the industry. Consequently the margarin output of Germany
doubled in the five years preceding the war and the output of England
tripled. In Denmark the consumption of margarin rose from 8.8 pounds per
capita in 1890 to 32.6 pounds in 1912. Yet the butter business,
Denmark's pride, was not injured, and Germany and England imported more
butter than ever before. Now that the price of butter in America has
gone over the seventy-five cent mark Congress may conclude that it no
longer needs to be protected against competition.

The "compound lards" or "lard compounds," consisting usually of
cottonseed oil and oleo-stearin, although the latter may now be replaced
by hardened oil, met with the same popular prejudice and attempted
legislative interference, but succeeded more easily in coming into
common use under such names as "Cottosuet," "Kream Krisp," "Kuxit,"
"Korno," "Cottolene" and "Crisco."

Oleomargarin, now generally abbreviated to margarin, originated, like
many other inventions, in military necessity. The French Government in
1869 offered a prize for a butter substitute for the army that should be
cheaper and better than butter in that it did not spoil so easily. The
prize was won by a French chemist, Mége-Mouries, who found that by
chilling beef fat the solid stearin could be separated from an oil
(oleo) which was the substantially same as that in milk and hence in
butter. Neutral lard acts the same.

This discovery of how to separate the hard and soft fats was followed by
improved methods for purifying them and later by the process for
converting the soft into the hard fats by hydrogenation. The net result
was to put into the hands of the chemist the ability to draw his
materials at will from any land and from the vegetable and animal
kingdoms and to combine them as he will to make new fat foods for every
use; hard for summer, soft for winter; solid for the northerners and
liquid for the southerners; white, yellow or any other color, and
flavored to suit the taste. The Hindu can eat no fat from the sacred
cow; the Mohammedan and the Jew can eat no fat from the abhorred pig;
the vegetarian will touch neither; other people will take both. No
matter, all can be accommodated.

All the fats and oils, though they consist of scores of different
compounds, have practically the same food value when freed from the
extraneous matter that gives them their characteristic flavors. They are
all practically tasteless and colorless. The various vegetable and
animal oils and fats have about the same digestibility, 98 per cent.,[3]
and are all ordinarily completely utilized in the body, supplying it
with two and a quarter times as much energy as any other food.

It does not follow, however, that there is no difference in the
products. The margarin men accuse butter of harboring tuberculosis germs
from which their product, because it has been heated or is made from
vegetable fats, is free. The butter men retort that margarin is lacking
in vitamines, those mysterious substances which in minute amounts are
necessary for life and especially for growth. Both the claim and the
objection lose a large part of their force where the margarin, as is
customarily the case, is mixed with butter or churned up with milk to
give it the familiar flavor. But the difficulty can be easily overcome.
The milk used for either butter or margarin should be free or freed from
disease germs. If margarin is altogether substituted for butter, the
necessary vitamines may be sufficiently provided by milk, eggs and
greens.

Owing to these new processes all the fatty substances of all lands have
been brought into competition with each other. In such a contest the
vegetable is likely to beat the animal and the southern to win over the
northern zones. In Europe before the war the proportion of the various
ingredients used to make butter substitutes was as follows:

  AVERAGE COMPOSITION OF EUROPEAN MARGARIN

                            Per Cent.
  Animal hard fats              25
  Vegetable hard fats           35
    Copra                       29
    Palm-kernel                  6
  Vegetable soft fats           26
    Cottonseed                  13
    Peanut                       6
    Sesame                       6
    Soya-bean                    1
  Water, milk, salt             14
                               ___
                               100

This is not the composition of any particular brand but the average of
them all. The use of a certain amount of the oil of the sesame seed is
required by the laws of Germany and Denmark because it can be easily
detected by a chemical color test and so serves to prevent the margarin
containing it from being sold as butter. "Open sesame!" is the password
to these markets. Remembering that margarin originally was made up
entirely of animal fats, soft and hard, we can see from the above
figures how rapidly they are being displaced by the vegetable fats. The
cottonseed and peanut oils have replaced the original oleo oil and the
tropical oils from the coconut (copra) and African palm are crowding out
the animal hard fats. Since now we can harden at will any of the
vegetable oils it is possible to get along altogether without animal
fats. Such vegetable margarins were originally prepared for sale in
India, but proved unexpectedly popular in Europe, and are now being
introduced into America. They are sold under various trade names
suggesting their origin, such as "palmira," "palmona," "milkonut,"
"cocose," "coconut oleomargarin" and "nucoa nut margarin." The last
named is stated to be made of coconut oil (for the hard fat) and peanut
oil (for the soft fat), churned up with a culture of pasteurized milk
(to impart the butter flavor). The law requires such a product to be
branded "oleomargarine" although it is not. Such cases of compulsory
mislabeling are not rare. You remember the "Pigs is Pigs" story.

Peanut butter has won its way into the American menu without any
camouflage whatever, and as a salad oil it is almost equally frank about
its lowly origin. This nut, which grows on a vine instead of a tree,
and is dug from the ground like potatoes instead of being picked with a
pole, goes by various names according to locality, peanuts, ground-nuts,
monkey-nuts, arachides and goobers. As it takes the place of cotton oil
in some of its products so it takes its place in the fields and oilmills
of Texas left vacant by the bollweevil. The once despised peanut added
some $56,000,000 to the wealth of the South in 1916. The peanut is rich
in the richest of foods, some 50 per cent. of oil and 30 per cent. of
protein. The latter can be worked up into meat substitutes that will
make the vegetarian cease to envy his omnivorous neighbor. Thanks
largely to the chemist who has opened these new fields of usefulness,
the peanut-raiser got $1.25 a bushel in 1917 instead of the 30 cents
that he got four years before.

It would be impossible to enumerate all the available sources of
vegetable oils, for all seeds and nuts contain more or less fatty matter
and as we become more economical we shall utilize of what we now throw
away. The germ of the corn kernel, once discarded in the manufacture of
starch, now yields a popular table oil. From tomato seeds, one of the
waste products of the canning factory, can be extracted 22 per cent. of
an edible oil. Oats contain 7 per cent. of oil. From rape seed the
Japanese get 20,000 tons of oil a year. To the sources previously
mentioned may be added pumpkin seeds, poppy seeds, raspberry seeds,
tobacco seeds, cockleburs, hazelnuts, walnuts, beechnuts and acorns.

The oil-bearing seeds of the tropics are innumerable and will become
increasingly essential to the inhabitants of northern lands. It was the
realization of this that brought on the struggle of the great powers
for the possession of tropical territory which, for years before, they
did not think worth while raising a flag over. No country in the future
can consider itself safe unless it has secure access to such sources. We
had a sharp lesson in this during the war. Palm oil, it seems, is
necessary for the manufacture of tinplate, an industry that was built up
in the United States by the McKinley tariff. The British possessions in
West Africa were the chief source of palm oil and the Germans had the
handling of it. During the war the British Government assumed control of
the palm oil products of the British and German colonies and prohibited
their export to other countries than England. Americans protested and
beseeched, but in vain. The British held, quite correctly, that they
needed all the oil they could get for food and lubrication and
nitroglycerin. But the British also needed canned meat from America for
their soldiers and when it was at length brought to their attention that
the packers could not ship meat unless they had cans and that cans could
not be made without tin and that tin could not be made without palm oil
the British Government consented to let us buy a little of their palm
oil. The lesson is that of Voltaire's story, "Candide," "Let us
cultivate our own garden"--and plant a few palm trees in it--also rubber
trees, but that is another story.

The international struggle for oil led to the partition of the Pacific
as the struggle for rubber led to the partition of Africa. Theodor
Weber, as Stevenson says, "harried the Samoans" to get copra much as
King Leopold of Belgium harried the Congoese to get caoutchouc. It was
Weber who first fully realized that the South Sea islands, formerly
given over to cannibals, pirates and missionaries, might be made
immensely valuable through the cultivation of the coconut palms. When
the ripe coconut is split open and exposed to the sun the meat dries up
and shrivels and in this form, called "copra," it can be cut out and
shipped to the factory where the oil is extracted and refined. Weber
while German Consul in Samoa was also manager of what was locally known
as "the long-handled concern" (_Deutsche Handels und Plantagen
Gesellschaft der Südsee Inseln zu Hamburg_), a pioneer commercial and
semi-official corporation that played a part in the Pacific somewhat
like the British Hudson Bay Company in Canada or East India Company in
Hindustan. Through the agency of this corporation on the start Germany
acquired a virtual monopoly of the transportation and refining of
coconut oil and would have become the dominant power in the Pacific if
she had not been checked by force of arms. In Apia Bay in 1889 and again
in Manila Bay in 1898 an American fleet faced a German fleet ready for
action while a British warship lay between. So we rescued the
Philippines and Samoa from German rule and in 1914 German power was
eliminated from the Pacific. During the ten years before the war, the
production of copra in the German islands more than doubled and this was
only the beginning of the business. Now these islands have been divided
up among Australia, New Zealand and Japan, and these countries are
planning to take care of the copra.

But although we get no extension of territory from the war we still
have the Philippines and some of the Samoan Islands, and these are
capable of great development. From her share of the Samoan Islands
Germany got a million dollars' worth of copra and we might get more from
ours. The Philippines now lead the world in the production of copra, but
Java is a close second and Ceylon not far behind. If we do not look out
we will be beaten both by the Dutch and the British, for they are
undertaking the cultivation of the coconut on a larger scale and in a
more systematic way. According to an official bulletin of the Philippine
Government a coconut plantation should bring in "dividends ranging from
10 to 75 per cent. from the tenth to the hundredth year." And this being
printed in 1913 figured the price of copra at 3-1/2 cents, whereas it
brought 4-1/2 cents in 1918, so the prospect is still more encouraging.
The copra is half fat and can be cheaply shipped to America, where it
can be crushed in the southern oilmills when they are not busy on
cottonseed or peanuts. But even this cost of transportation can be
reduced by extracting the oil in the islands and shipping it in bulk
like petroleum in tank steamers.

In the year ending June, 1918, the United States imported from the
Philippines 155,000,000 pounds of coconut oil worth $18,000,000 and
220,000,000 pounds of copra worth $10,000,000. But this was about half
our total importations; the rest of it we had to get from foreign
countries. Panama palms may give us a little relief from this dependence
on foreign sources. In 1917 we imported 19,000,000 whole coconuts from
Panama valued at $700,000.

[Illustration: SPLITTING COCONUTS ON THE ISLAND OF TAHITI

After drying in the sun the meat is picked and the oil extracted for
making coconut butter]

[Illustration: From "America's Munitions"

THE ELECTRIC CURRENT PASSING THROUGH SALT WATER IN THESE CELLS
DECOMPOSES THE SALT INTO CAUSTIC SODA AND CHLORINE GAS

There were eight rooms like this in the Edgewood plant, capable of
producing 200,000 pounds of chlorine a day]

A new form of fat that has rapidly come into our market is the oil of
the soya or soy bean. In 1918 we imported over 300,000,000 pounds of
soy-bean oil, mostly from Manchuria. The oil is used in manufacture of
substitutes for butter, lard, cheese, milk and cream, as well as for
soap and paint. The soy-bean can be raised in the United States wherever
corn can be grown and provides provender for man and beast. The soy meal
left after the extraction of the oil makes a good cattle food and the
fermented juice affords the shoya sauce made familiar to us through the
popularity of the chop-suey restaurants.

As meat and dairy products become scarcer and dearer we shall become
increasingly dependent upon the vegetable fats. We should therefore
devise means of saving what we now throw away, raise as much as we can
under our own flag, keep open avenues for our foreign supply and
encourage our cooks to make use of the new products invented by our
chemists.

CHAPTER XII

FIGHTING WITH FUMES

The Germans opened the war using projectiles seventeen inches in
diameter. They closed it using projectiles one one-hundred millionth of
an inch in diameter. And the latter were more effective than the former.
As the dimensions were reduced from molar to molecular the battle became
more intense. For when the Big Bertha had shot its bolt, that was the
end of it. Whomever it hit was hurt, but after that the steel fragments
of the shell lay on the ground harmless and inert. The men in the
dugouts could hear the shells whistle overhead without alarm. But the
poison gas could penetrate where the rifle ball could not. The malignant
molecules seemed to search out their victims. They crept through the
crevices of the subterranean shelters. They hunted for the pinholes in
the face masks. They lay in wait for days in the trenches for the
soldiers' return as a cat watches at the hole of a mouse. The cannon
ball could be seen and heard. The poison gas was invisible and
inaudible, and sometimes even the chemical sense which nature has given
man for his protection, the sense of smell, failed to give warning of
the approach of the foe.

The smaller the matter that man can deal with the more he can get out of
it. So long as man was dependent for power upon wind and water his
working capacity was very limited. But as soon as he passed over the
border line from physics into chemistry and learned how to use the
molecule, his efficiency in work and warfare was multiplied manifold.
The molecular bombardment of the piston by steam or the gases of
combustion runs his engines and propels his cars. The first man who
wanted to kill another from a safe distance threw the stone by his arm's
strength. David added to his arm the centrifugal force of a sling when
he slew Goliath. The Romans improved on this by concentrating in a
catapult the strength of a score of slaves and casting stone cannon
balls to the top of the city wall. But finally man got closer to
nature's secret and discovered that by loosing a swarm of gaseous
molecules he could throw his projectile seventy-five miles and then by
the same force burst it into flying fragments. There is no smaller
projectile than the atom unless our belligerent chemists can find a way
of using the electron stream of the cathode ray. But this so far has
figured only in the pages of our scientific romancers and has not yet
appeared on the battlefield. If, however, man could tap the reservoir of
sub-atomic energy he need do no more work and would make no more war,
for unlimited powers of construction and destruction would be at his
command. The forces of the infinitesimal are infinite.

The reason why a gas is so active is because it is so egoistic.
Psychologically interpreted, a gas consists of particles having the
utmost aversion to one another. Each tries to get as far away from every
other as it can. There is no cohesive force; no attractive impulse;
nothing to draw them together except the all too feeble power of
gravitation. The hotter they get the more they try to disperse and so
the gas expands. The gas represents the extreme of individualism as
steel represents the extreme of collectivism. The combination of the two
works wonders. A hot gas in a steel cylinder is the most powerful agency
known to man, and by means of it he accomplishes his greatest
achievements in peace or war time.

The projectile is thrown from the gun by the expansive force of the
gases released from the powder and when it reaches its destination it is
blown to pieces by the same force. This is the end of it if it is a
shell of the old-fashioned sort, for the gases of combustion mingle
harmlessly with the air of which they are normal constituents. But if it
is a poison gas shell each molecule as it is released goes off straight
into the air with a speed twice that of the cannon ball and carries
death with it. A man may be hit by a heavy piece of lead or iron and
still survive, but an unweighable amount of lethal gas may be fatal to
him.

Most of the novelties of the war were merely extensions of what was
already known. To increase the caliber of a cannon from 38 to 42
centimeters or its range from 30 to 75 miles does indeed make necessary
a decided change in tactics, but it is not comparable to the revolution
effected by the introduction of new weapons of unprecedented power such
as airplanes, submarines, tanks, high explosives or poison gas. If any
army had been as well equipped with these in the beginning as all armies
were at the end it might easily have won the war. That is to say, if the
general staff of any of the powers had had the foresight and confidence
to develop and practise these modes of warfare on a large scale in
advance it would have been irresistible against an enemy unprepared to
meet them. But no military genius appeared on either side with
sufficient courage and imagination to work out such schemes in secret
before trying them out on a small scale in the open. Consequently the
enemy had fair warning and ample time to learn how to meet them and
methods of defense developed concurrently with methods of attack. For
instance, consider the motor fortresses to which Ludendorff ascribes his
defeat. The British first sent out a few clumsy tanks against the German
lines. Then they set about making a lot of stronger and livelier ones,
but by the time these were ready the Germans had field guns to smash
them and chain fences with concrete posts to stop them. On the other
hand, if the Germans had followed up their advantage when they first set
the cloud of chlorine floating over the battlefield of Ypres they might
have won the war in the spring of 1915 instead of losing it in the fall
of 1918. For the British were unprepared and unprotected against the
silent death that swept down upon them on the 22nd of April, 1915. What
happened then is best told by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in his "History of
the Great War."

     From the base of the German trenches over a considerable length
     there appeared jets of whitish vapor, which gathered and
     swirled until they settled into a definite low cloud-bank,
     greenish-brown below and yellow above, where it reflected the
     rays of the sinking sun. This ominous bank of vapor, impelled
     by a northern breeze, drifted swiftly across the space which
     separated the two lines. The French troops, staring over the
     top of their parapet at this curious screen which ensured them
     a temporary relief from fire, were observed suddenly to throw
     up their hands, to clutch at their throats, and to fall to the
     ground in the agonies of asphyxiation. Many lay where they had
     fallen, while their comrades, absolutely helpless against this
     diabolical agency, rushed madly out of the mephitic mist and
     made for the rear, over-running the lines of trenches behind
     them. Many of them never halted until they had reached Ypres,
     while others rushed westwards and put the canal between
     themselves and the enemy. The Germans, meanwhile, advanced, and
     took possession of the successive lines of trenches, tenanted
     only by the dead garrisons, whose blackened faces, contorted
     figures, and lips fringed with the blood and foam from their
     bursting lungs, showed the agonies in which they had died. Some
     thousands of stupefied prisoners, eight batteries of French
     field-guns, and four British 4.7's, which had been placed in a
     wood behind the French position, were the trophies won by this
     disgraceful victory.

     Under the shattering blow which they had received, a blow
     particularly demoralizing to African troops, with their fears
     of magic and the unknown, it was impossible to rally them
     effectually until the next day. It is to be remembered in
     explanation of this disorganization that it was the first
     experience of these poison tactics, and that the troops engaged
     received the gas in a very much more severe form than our own
     men on the right of Langemarck. For a time there was a gap five
     miles broad in the front of the position of the Allies, and
     there were many hours during which there was no substantial
     force between the Germans and Ypres. They wasted their time,
     however, in consolidating their ground, and the chance of a
     great coup passed forever. They had sold their souls as
     soldiers, but the Devil's price was a poor one. Had they had a
     corps of cavalry ready, and pushed them through the gap, it
     would have been the most dangerous moment of the war.

A deserter had come over from the German side a week before and told
them that cylinders of poison gas had been laid in the front trenches,
but no one believed him or paid any attention to his tale. War was then,
in the Englishman's opinion, a gentleman's game, the royal sport, and
poison was prohibited by the Hague rules. But the Germans were not
playing the game according to the rules, so the British soldiers were
strangled in their own trenches and fell easy victims to the advancing
foe. Within half an hour after the gas was turned on 80 per cent. of the
opposing troops were knocked out. The Canadians, with wet handkerchiefs
over their faces, closed in to stop the gap, but if the Germans had been
prepared for such success they could have cleared the way to the coast.
But after such trials the Germans stopped the use of free chlorine and
began the preparation of more poisonous gases. In some way that may not
be revealed till the secret history of the war is published, the British
Intelligence Department obtained a copy of the lecture notes of the
instructions to the German staff giving details of the new system of gas
warfare to be started in December. Among the compounds named was
phosgene, a gas so lethal that one part in ten thousand of air may be
fatal. The antidote for it is hexamethylene tetramine. This is not
something the soldier--or anybody else--is accustomed to carry around
with him, but the British having had a chance to cram up in advance on
the stolen lecture notes were ready with gas helmets soaked in the
reagent with the long name.

The Germans rejoiced when gas bombs took the place of bayonets because
this was a field in which intelligence counted for more than brute
force and in which therefore they expected to be supreme. As usual they
were right in their major premise but wrong in their conclusion, owing
to the egoism of their implicit minor premise. It does indeed give the
advantage to skill and science, but the Germans were beaten at their own
game, for by the end of the war the United States was able to turn out
toxic gases at a rate of 200 tons a day, while the output of Germany or
England was only about 30 tons. A gas plant was started at Edgewood,
Maryland, in November, 1917. By March it was filling shell and before
the war put a stop to its activities in the fall it was producing
1,300,000 pounds of chlorine, 1,000,000 pounds of chlorpicrin, 1,300,000
pounds of phosgene and 700,000 pounds of mustard gas a month.

Chlorine, the first gas used, is unpleasantly familiar to every one who
has entered a chemical laboratory or who has smelled the breath of
bleaching powder. It is a greenish-yellow gas made from common salt. The
Germans employed it at Ypres by laying cylinders of the liquefied gas in
the trenches, about a yard apart, and running a lead discharge pipe over
the parapet. When the stop cocks are turned the gas streams out and
since it is two and a half times as heavy as air it rolls over the
ground like a noisome mist. It works best when the ground slopes gently
down toward the enemy and when the wind blows in that direction at a
rate between four and twelve miles an hour. But the wind, being strictly
neutral, may change its direction without warning and then the gases
turn back in their flight and attack their own side, something that
rifle bullets have never been known to do.

[Illustration: © International Film Service

GERMANS STARTING A GAS ATTACK ON THE RUSSIAN LINES

Behind the cylinders from which the gas streams are seen three lines of
German troops waiting to attack. The photograph was taken from above by
a Russian airman]

[Illustration: © Press Illustrating Service

FILLING THE CANNISTERS OF GAS MASKS WITH CHARCOAL MADE FROM FRUIT PITS
IN LONG ISLAND CITY]

Because free chlorine would not stay put and was dependent on the favor
of the wind for its effect, it was later employed, not as an elemental
gas, but in some volatile liquid that could be fired in a shell and so
released at any particular point far back of the front trenches.

The most commonly used of these compounds was phosgene, which, as the
reader can see by inspection of its formula, COCl_{2}, consists of
chlorine (Cl) combined with carbon monoxide (CO), the cause of deaths
from illuminating gas. These two poisonous gases, chlorine and carbon
monoxide, when mixed together, will not readily unite, but if a ray of
sunlight falls upon the mixture they combine at once. For this reason
John Davy, who discovered the compound over a hundred years ago, named
it phosgene, that is, "produced by light." The same roots recur in
hydrogen, so named because it is "produced from water," and phosphorus,
because it is a "light-bearer."

In its modern manufacture the catalyzer or instigator of the combination
is not sunlight but porous carbon. This is packed in iron boxes eight
feet long, through which the mixture of the two gases was forced. Carbon
monoxide may be made by burning coke with a supply of air insufficient
for complete combustion, but in order to get the pure gas necessary for
the phosgene common air was not used, but instead pure oxygen extracted
from it by a liquid air plant.

Phosgene is a gas that may be condensed easily to a liquid by cooling it
down to 46 degrees Fahrenheit. A mixture of three-quarters chlorine with
one-quarter phosgene has been found most effective. By itself phosgene
has an inoffensive odor somewhat like green corn and so may fail to
arouse apprehension until a toxic concentration is reached. But even
small doses have such an effect upon the heart action for days afterward
that a slight exertion may prove fatal.

The compound manufactured in largest amount in America was chlorpicrin.
This, like the others, is not so unfamiliar as it seems. As may be seen
from its formula, CCl_{3}NO_{2}, it is formed by joining the nitric acid
radical (NO_{2}), found in all explosives, with the main part of
chloroform (HCCl_{3}). This is not quite so poisonous as phosgene, but
it has the advantage that it causes nausea and vomiting. The soldier so
affected is forced to take off his gas mask and then may fall victim to
more toxic gases sent over simultaneously.

Chlorpicrin is a liquid and is commonly loaded in a shell or bomb with
20 per cent. of tin chloride, which produces dense white fumes that go
through gas masks. It is made from picric acid (trinitrophenol), one of
the best known of the high explosives, by treatment with chlorine. The
chlorine is obtained, as it is in the household, from common bleaching
powder, or "chloride of lime." This is mixed with water to form a cream
in a steel still 18 feet high and 8 feet in diameter. A solution of
calcium picrate, that is, the lime salt of picric acid, is pumped in and
as the reaction begins the mixture heats up and the chlorpicrin distils
over with the steam. When the distillate is condensed the chlorpicrin,
being the heavier liquid, settles out under the layer of water and may
be drawn off to fill the shell.

Much of what a student learns in the chemical laboratory he is apt to
forget in later life if he does not follow it up. But there are two
gases that he always remembers, chlorine and hydrogen sulfide. He is
lucky if he has escaped being choked by the former or sickened by the
latter. He can imagine what the effect would be if two offensive fumes
could be combined without losing their offensive features. Now a
combination something like this is the so-called mustard gas, which is
not a gas and is not made from mustard. But it is easily gasified, and
oil of mustard is about as near as Nature dare come to making such
sinful stuff. It was first made by Guthrie, an Englishman, in 1860, and
rediscovered by a German chemist, Victor Meyer, in 1886, but he found it
so dangerous to work with that he abandoned the investigation. Nobody
else cared to take it up, for nobody could see any use for it. So it
remained in innocuous desuetude, a mere name in "Beilstein's
Dictionary," together with the thousands of other organic compounds that
have been invented and never utilized. But on July 12, 1917, the British
holding the line at Ypres were besprinkled with this villainous
substance. Its success was so great that the Germans henceforth made it
their main reliance and soon the Allies followed suit. In one offensive
of ten days the Germans are said to have used a million shells
containing 2500 tons of mustard gas.

The making of so dangerous a compound on a large scale was one of the
most difficult tasks set before the chemists of this and other
countries, yet it was successfully solved. The raw materials are
chlorine, alcohol and sulfur. The alcohol is passed with steam through
a vertical iron tube filled with kaolin and heated. This converts the
alcohol into a gas known as ethylene (C_{2}H_{4}). Passing a stream of
chlorine gas into a tank of melted sulfur produces sulfur monochloride
and this treated with the ethylene makes the "mustard." The final
reaction was carried on at the Edgewood Arsenal in seven airtight tanks
or "reactors," each having a capacity of 30,000 pounds. The ethylene gas
being led into the tank and distributed through the liquid sulfur
chloride by porous blocks or fine nozzles, the two chemicals combined to
form what is officially named "di-chlor-di-ethyl-sulfide"
(ClC_{2}H_{4}SC_{2}H_{4}Cl). This, however, is too big a mouthful, so
even the chemists were glad to fall in with the commonalty and call it
"mustard gas."

The effectiveness of "mustard" depends upon its persistence. It is a
stable liquid, evaporating slowly and not easily decomposed. It lingers
about trenches and dugouts and impregnates soil and cloth for days. Gas
masks do not afford complete protection, for even if they are
impenetrable they must be taken off some time and the gas lies in wait
for that time. In some cases the masks were worn continuously for twelve
hours after the attack, but when they were removed the soldiers were
overpowered by the poison. A place may seem to be free from it but when
the sun heats up the ground the liquid volatilizes and the vapor soaks
through the clothing. As the men become warmed up by work their skin is
blistered, especially under the armpits. The mustard acts like steam,
producing burns that range from a mere reddening to serious
ulcerations, always painful and incapacitating, but if treated promptly
in the hospital rarely causing death or permanent scars. The gas attacks
the eyes, throat, nose and lungs and may lead to bronchitis or
pneumonia. It was found necessary at the front to put all the clothing
of the soldiers into the sterilizing ovens every night to remove all
traces of mustard. General Johnson and his staff in the 77th Division
were poisoned in their dugouts because they tried to alleviate the
discomfort of their camp cots by bedding taken from a neighboring
village that had been shelled the day before.

Of the 925 cases requiring medical attention at the Edgewood Arsenal 674
were due to mustard. During the month of August 3-1/2 per cent. of the
mustard plant force were sent to the hospital each day on the average.
But the record of the Edgewood Arsenal is a striking demonstration of
what can be done in the prevention of industrial accidents by the
exercise of scientific prudence. In spite of the fact that from three to
eleven thousand men were employed at the plant for the year 1918 and
turned out some twenty thousand tons of the most poisonous gases known
to man, there were only three fatalities and not a single case of
blindness.

Besides the four toxic gases previously described, chlorine, phosgene,
chlorpicrin and mustard, various other compounds have been and many
others might be made. A list of those employed in the present war
enumerates thirty, among them compounds of bromine, arsenic and cyanogen
that may prove more formidable than any so far used. American chemists
kept very mum during the war but occasionally one could not refrain
from saying: "If the Kaiser knew what I know he would surrender
unconditionally by telegraph." No doubt the science of chemical warfare
is in its infancy and every foresighted power has concealed weapons of
its own in reserve. One deadly compound, whose identity has not yet been
disclosed, is known as "Lewisite," from Professor Lewis of Northwestern,
who was manufacturing it at the rate of ten tons a day in the "Mouse
Trap" stockade near Cleveland.

Throughout the history of warfare the art of defense has kept pace with
the art of offense and the courage of man has never failed, no matter to
what new danger he was exposed. As each new gas employed by the enemy
was detected it became the business of our chemists to discover some
method of absorbing or neutralizing it. Porous charcoal, best made from
such dense wood as coconut shells, was packed in the respirator box
together with layers of such chemicals as will catch the gases to be
expected. Charcoal absorbs large quantities of any gas. Soda lime and
potassium permanganate and nickel salts were among the neutralizers
used.

The mask is fitted tightly about the face or over the head with rubber.
The nostrils are kept closed with a clip so breathing must be done
through the mouth and no air can be inhaled except that passing through
the absorbent cylinder. Men within five miles of the front were required
to wear the masks slung on their chests so they could be put on within
six seconds. A well-made mask with a fresh box afforded almost complete
immunity for a time and the soldiers learned within a few days to
handle their masks adroitly. So the problem of defense against this new
offensive was solved satisfactorily, while no such adequate protection
against the older weapons of bayonet and shrapnel has yet been devised.

Then the problem of the offense was to catch the opponent with his
mask off or to make him take it off. Here the lachrymators and
the sternutators, the tear gases and the sneeze gases, came into
play. Phenylcarbylamine chloride would make the bravest soldier
weep on the battlefield with the abandonment of a Greek hero.
Di-phenyl-chloro-arsine would set him sneezing. The Germans alternated
these with diabolical ingenuity so as to catch us unawares. Some shells
gave off voluminous smoke or a vile stench without doing much harm, but
by the time our men got used to these and grew careless about their
masks a few shells of some extremely poisonous gas were mixed with them.

The ideal gas for belligerent purposes would be odorless, colorless and
invisible, toxic even when diluted by a million parts of air, not set on
fire or exploded by the detonator of the shell, not decomposed by water,
not readily absorbed, stable enough to stand storage for six months and
capable of being manufactured by the thousands of tons. No one gas will
serve all aims. For instance, phosgene being very volatile and quickly
dissipated is thrown into trenches that are soon to be taken while
mustard gas being very tenacious could not be employed in such a case
for the trenches could not be occupied if they were captured.

The extensive use of poison gas in warfare by all the belligerents is a
vindication of the American protest at the Hague Conference against its
prohibition. At the First Conference of 1899 Captain Mahan argued very
sensibly that gas shells were no worse than other projectiles and might
indeed prove more merciful and that it was illogical to prohibit a
weapon merely because of its novelty. The British delegates voted with
the Americans in opposition to the clause "the contracting parties agree
to abstain from the use of projectiles the sole object of which is the
diffusion of asphyxiating or deleterious gases." But both Great Britain
and Germany later agreed to the provision. The use of poison gas by
Germany without warning was therefore an act of treachery and a
violation of her pledge, but the United States has consistently refused
to bind herself to any such restriction. The facts reported by General
Amos A. Fries, in command of the overseas branch of the American
Chemical Warfare Service, give ample support to the American contention
at The Hague:

     Out of 1000 gas casualties there are from 30 to 40 fatalities,
     while out of 1000 high explosive casualties the number of
     fatalities run from 200 to 250. While exact figures are as yet
     not available concerning the men permanently crippled or
     blinded by high explosives one has only to witness the
     debarkation of a shipload of troops to be convinced that the
     number is very large. On the other hand there is, so far as
     known at present, not a single case of permanent disability or
     blindness among our troops due to gas and this in face of the
     fact that the Germans used relatively large quantities of this
     material.

     In the light of these facts the prejudice against the use of
     gas must gradually give way; for the statement made to the
     effect that its use is contrary to the principles of humanity
     will apply with far greater force to the use of high
     explosives. As a matter of fact, for certain purposes toxic gas
     is an ideal agent. For example, it is difficult to imagine any
     agent more effective or more humane that may be used to render
     an opposing battery ineffective or to protect retreating
     troops.

Captain Mahan's argument at The Hague against the proposed prohibition
of poison gas is so cogent and well expressed that it has been quoted in
treatises on international law ever since. These reasons were, briefly:

     1. That no shell emitting such gases is as yet in practical use
     or has undergone adequate experiment; consequently, a vote
     taken now would be taken in ignorance of the facts as to
     whether the results would be of a decisive character or whether
     injury in excess of that necessary to attain the end of
     warfare--the immediate disabling of the enemy--would be
     inflicted.

     2. That the reproach of cruelty and perfidy, addressed against
     these supposed shells, was equally uttered formerly against
     firearms and torpedoes, both of which are now employed without
     scruple. Until we know the effects of such asphyxiating shells,
     there was no saying whether they would be more or less merciful
     than missiles now permitted. That it was illogical, and not
     demonstrably humane, to be tender about asphyxiating men with
     gas, when all are prepared to admit that it was allowable to
     blow the bottom out of an ironclad at midnight, throwing four
     or five hundred into the sea, to be choked by water, with
     scarcely the remotest chance of escape.

As Captain Mahan says, the same objection has been raised at the
introduction of each new weapon of war, even though it proved to be no
more cruel than the old. The modern rifle ball, swift and small and
sterilized by heat, does not make so bad a wound as the ancient sword
and spear, but we all remember how gunpowder was regarded by the dandies
of Hotspur's time:

  And it was great pity, so it was,
  This villainous saltpeter should be digg'd
  Out of the bowels of the harmless earth
  Which many a good tall fellow had destroy'd
  So cowardly; and but for these vile guns
  He would himself have been a soldier.

The real reason for the instinctive aversion manifested against any new
arm or mode of attack is that it reveals to us the intrinsic horror of
war. We naturally revolt against premeditated homicide, but we have
become so accustomed to the sword and latterly to the rifle that they do
not shock us as they ought when we think of what they are made for. The
Constitution of the United States prohibits the infliction of "cruel and
unusual punishments." The two adjectives were apparently used almost
synonymously, as though any "unusual" punishment were necessarily
"cruel," and so indeed it strikes us. But our ingenious lawyers were
able to persuade the courts that electrocution, though unknown to the
Fathers and undeniably "unusual," was not unconstitutional. Dumdum
bullets are rightfully ruled out because they inflict frightful and
often incurable wounds, and the aim of humane warfare is to disable the
enemy, not permanently to injure him.

[Illustration: From "America's Munitions" THE CHLORPICRIN PLANT AT THE
EDGEWOOD ARSENAL

From these stills, filled with a mixture of bleaching powder, lime, and
picric acid, the poisonous gas, chlorpicrin, distills off. This plant
produced 31 tons in one day]

[Illustration: Courtesy of the Metal and Thermit Corporation, N.Y.

REPAIRING THE BROKEN STERN POST OF THE U.S.S. NORTHERN PACIFIC, THE
BIGGEST MARINE WELD IN THE WORLD

On the right the fractured stern post is shown. On the left it is being
mended by means of thermit. Two crucibles each containing 700 pounds of
the thermit mixture are seen on the sides of the vessel. From the bottom
of these the melted steel flowed down to fill the fracture]

In spite of the opposition of the American and British delegates the
First Hague Conference adopted the clause, "The contracting powers agree
to abstain from the use of projectiles the [sole] object of which is the
diffusion of asphyxiating or deleterious gases." The word "sole"