The chemist's pride, in switching world commerce around by his inventions of synthetics for natural products, swelled last week when he read the news bulletin just published by the National Geographic Society. That bulletin was specific. From coal tar,* air-nitrogen, cotton, corn & wood, chemists have been making things from fertilizers to rayon cloth, from paint to pearls.
Their coal tar red wrecked the business of Levant farmers who had been raising madder plants for madder red. A similar misfortune befell the indigo plant cultivators of India. In New Zealand kauri gum diggers are becoming impoverished. Chile, once boastful of its natural...
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