laborer; the while a course in physics which would have opened their minds to what they needed most was being neglected.

There is every reason why we should avoid class distinction in chemistry. We hope the Princeton and Rutgers faculties and the high school teachers generally will join the New Jersey Society. It will be an excellent thing for the teachers to see the many applications of their subject in everyday doings and things. It will enable them to blow the breath of life into their work and to explain the reason why abstractions that seem to be only "mind-improving" school book agonies are in constant use in daily life. For the chemist in the works whose operations are likely to be circumscribed by the limitations of routine practice, it will be an inspiration to foregather with men who select their own problems and dig into the unknown.

Recognizing the Importance

Of Non-Metallic Minerals

FAVORITE expression of a friend of ours is that

Likewise we ought periodically to extend our vision, revise our classification of essentials and non-essentials, and readjust our concept of the relative importance of things. If prejudices are susceptible of revision, and we may pause to remark that they are, then certainly it is possible occasionally to take stock of our industries and their needs and revise our estimate of the relative importance of, let us say, minerals.

We venture the assertion that there is a wider familiarity with the production, treatment and uses of metallic minerals, such as galena, blende, hematite, chalcopyrite and pyrite, than with such non-metallic minerals as dolomite, talc, feldspar, fuller's earth and gypsum. The reasons are obvious. Minerals of the first class produce the common metals, and have the metallic luster and other physical properties that distinguish them, even for the layman, as something of importance in the earth's crust. The non-metallics, on the other hand, are apt to lack even distinguished appearance, being earthy and unattractive. Furthermore their uses are likely to be less apparent, and consequently they are not regarded as economically important. Not the least factor in drawing attention to the metallics is the amount of research that has been devoted to them by both Government and private agencies. In fact the pendulum of mineral research has been swinging so strongly in the direction of the metallics that we have been in danger of forgetting the importance of the non-metallics.

If the reader is interested in gaining an insight into the importance of the non-metallics in our industrial life, he will read the contribution of Mr. LADOO, published elsewhere in this issue. The non-metallics are the basis of many of our chemical industries; they form the raw materials out of which the finished product is fashioned, or, quite as often, they are used in the form in which they are taken from the earth, requiring no beneficiation or treatment whatsoever. Oftentimes their properties are obscure and the reason for their action poorly understood. This leads to rule-ofthumb application, to empirical use, and often acts as a bar to progress.

The great need of the non-metallic mineral industry in the United States today is systematic research prosecuted with as much intelligence and vigor as has been expended on metallic minerals for the past decade or

more. The Bureau of Mines is an excellent agency to undertake this work as far as its national aspect is concerned. State institutions of learning can supplement the work either in co-operation with Federal authorities or by independent investigations on minerals of importance within their own borders. We believe it is not too optimistic to predict that ten years of research of the kind indicated will place our chemical industry and allied industries on such a footing as will establish them permanently in competition with similar industries in other countries, provided always that we have raw materials of equal quality and quantity.

but no considerable segregation in sizes or in materials is allowable either vertically or longitudinally, else overfire and serious losses in recovery will ensue. Not that a uniform charge is not extremely desirable on any furnace, for it unquestionably is, but metallurgists believe that a lead furnace will stand less abuse than any other common smelter.

Twenty-five years ago hand-charging was universal practice; ores were bedded by hand, carted and dumped on the furnace floor, there to be shoveled into the furnace top at a total expenditure of perhaps one hour's labor per ton of charge. In its entirety this laborwasting system is now seldom encountered, although mechanical devices for bedding are even yet rare. The first long step in advance instituted a charge car to be filled with several tons of miscellaneous materials by barrows, then to be hauled to the furnace and dumped into the shaft. In this manner about three tons of charge can be put into a furnace per man-hour. Labor efficiency is again tripled by most modern systems of mechanical assembly and charging.

Arguments against an exclusively mechanical system on the ground that it causes segregation lose weight when coming from men who are using a charge car not only narrower but actually much shorter than the furnace top. This is said with all due regard to the ideas of those who wish the charge car distinctly smaller than the furnace cross-section, so that it can be placed as desired, into this or that corner, side, or end of the furnace, to humor the peculiarities of accretion and charge descent. But are not these abnormalities mostly due to inferior charging? Then why spend, good money in getting a correct mixture to the charging floor, and waste it in one fell drop?

Various causes other than inertia have prevented ready adoption of labor-saving devices at lead plants. Differences in general plant arrangements make it impossible to copy widely a successful layout, while variation in furnace top construction requires special design of charge car itself, so that a car very successful on a hooded furnace would be useless on another whose gases were drawn off below the floor or through a thimble. Mechanical handling in general is accompanied by rough handling, which is disastrous to the friable sinter forming such a large proportion of the present

burden. Again, since no device will be perfect, irregular furnace operation will require at times uneven corrective charges; in other words, the system to give uniform charges should be flexible enough to give nonuniform charges when desired to control the furnace action.

Combine all these requisites in a layout which will minimize the cost of plant, operating charges and the handling of materials, and the problem is by no means an easy one. The Dwight-Messiter system so successfully operating in copper smelters has not found much favor in lead plants, principally because the extensive conveyor system involves much handling-that is, many drops and because certain portions of the charge, such as sinter, flux and coke, do not require bedding, in fact are preferably placed in the furnace in layers. Therefore it seems probable that, for economical construction, sinter can be passed through bins of fair reserve capacity, while limerock, slag, coke, or other materials of uniform analysis can be merely dumped from a trestle, and drawn off into a tunnel below, the toes and ends of the piles remaining as surplus emergency stock.

A series of individual bins have in certain instances been successfully substituted for the time-honored orebeds. They are much more expensive to install, especially if each has a weighing mechanism attached, and they by the charge

ducing the impact but correcting the segregation inevitable from center charging.

A charge properly assembled should not need distributors or deflectors to get it into a lead blast-furnace correctly. A car with a real quick-opening flat drop-bottom, of the same cross-section as the furnace mouth, should be able to place the charge into the furnace in the same condition as it arrives. The impact of the falling mass would then be a factor of importance and could most readily be reduced by a low-hung car entering a hooded top, with the burden kept as close to the rail as metallurgical circumstances will permit.

Thus would the maximum value of mechanical charging be attained. It is evidently independent of the method of storing the components, of gathering them or getting them into the charge car. The main thing is to get the materials into the furnace in a pre-determined and controlled manner. At present the deflector controls the situation, but the question is raised, Could not the distribution be more properly done under closer control and at more leisure in a charge car so designed as to dump quickly and without further segregation? Co-operative Industrial

Research Laboratories

car.

If but a hundred pounds are drawn off for each charge, a small shipment is quickly exhausted. Orebeds containing a thousand tons of material or more have many points of metallurgical advantage, if only in making for uniformity in furnace operation. Excessive labor is not essential for their assembly; a rectangular tank-l'ke bin covered by a tripper on a low traveling bridge will build as good a bed as can be done by the most skilful laborers.

So much for the storage end. The engineer will next concern himself with getting the material into a charge car in uniform layers. Mechanically this may be done by bringing the charge car to the stock, or vice versa, either by rail or conveyor. As before noted, the first mentioned scheme has been installed successfully, but requires much switching and expensive maintenance of a scale car, or if a rugged hopper car is used, will involve many costly weighing devices. By the second plan, if a series of smaller receiving bins are assembled over a single loading track, a minimum of charge-car movement and a very few "weighing-off" conveyorfeeders would do the work. Either arrangement can closely simulate successful hand-filling practice and by regulation of speed of car or ore-stream, "humps" of material can be built up as required by the furnace man for corrective purposes.

To take the best advantage of the close control thus available in the condition of the charge as it arrives at the furnace mouth, it is essential that the burden be placed into the furnace in practically the same condition as it is delivered. That this is only approximated is easily seen from present arrangements. The wheels of the charge car itself may be about two feet above the floor, carried on a transfer, while the shaft may be open eight to ten feet to the bottom of the smoke flue. A six-ton charge dropping sheer ten feet would appear to be disastrous to the stoutest furnace construction-as a matter of fact, the charge runs slowly out of slots in the car, and strikes a deflector on its way down, not only re

search laboratory of the Eastman Kodak Co., delivered an address in New York on Research Laboratories in Industrial Establishments. He spoke from the vantage of ripe and successful experience. He gave many valuable hints, and pointed out not a few hazards in well-meant laboratory practice. It was an excellent address. Later Mr. P. G. NUTTING, head of the Westinghouse research laboratory at Pittsburgh, presented a paper on Institutes of Applied Science, in which he outlined in considerable detail the qualifications which a research institution should possess to be efficient in "turning out experts and in establishing vital and fundamental principles." He outlined seven principal types of research institutions that are already in existence in this country, and concluded his paper with enumerating the benefits to be gained by a great series of such organizations which should cover over thirty fields of applied science. His sketch of plans for the conduct of such co-operative institutes was illuminating, and in many respects admirable.

Just now, however, we want to emphasize the immediate need of research in industries, the need of it today; in our native clays, for instance; in the cement industry: in pulp and paper; in refractories, despite the work already done, for the prosecution of what VICTOR MEYER called pyrochemistry; and in many other directions. When captains of industry are so minded they can get a first line on what they need in many different ways. The main thing required is intelligence at the source. Industrial establishments must retain a reasonable measure of individuality, and if this is not to be found in standard products it may be looked for in methods. Natural raw materials cannot be economically standardized; we have to take them as they come with varying geologic histories and of diverse chemical composition.

And while our interest is in industries as made up collectively of many plants, we cannot ask the individual manufacturer to consider his own responsibilities lightly, or as merely incidental to the whole. He must

bear his own establishment constantly in mind, if he is of the right sort and wants to keep ahead of the game. The way to do this is by progress rather than by secrecy. Given two plants, one modern and well administered, the other antiquated and operated by rule-of-thumb methods, it takes no gift of prophecy to furetell which will succeed and which fail. It is not secrecy that counts; it is capacity. The great purpose of co-operative research is to keep up the tone of the whole of an industry. This is essential for national reasons, in order to prevent failures and the consequent miseries of unemployment no less than to avoid that general ill-repute into which the incompetent few can bring all engaged in any single line of manufacture. The really able manufacturers are those who see to it that they keep ahead. They acquaint themselves with principles rather than with details of which their competitors are ignorant. They ascertain if any one else is working along their particular lines, whether in universities, private laboratories or endowed institutions. This is not accomplished by spying or underground methods; it is the result of being informed, of speaking the language, of familiarity with the literature—and in large part it is the reward of intelligent curiosity.

In short, the really able manufacturers are men of science, or they are closely associated with such persons of standing. In this wise they become familiar with the philosophy of their various processes. Also they attend meetings which would provide no enlightenment to their unreceptive competitors because the latter class do not grasp the vast complex of relevancies in applied science. The competent always have something on the stocks, in one laboratory or another, if not in their own, and they reap rich harvests accordingly. O'd Uncle DANIEL DOLLARDOODLE never could make out how they turn the trick.

The White House

Conference on Labor

ARLY next month twoscore or more carefully se

Elected men will gather in Washington at the in

vitation of the President to seek a solution of the labor problem. Precedent does not encourage one to be hopeful that such a gathering, or any other, can solve the problem. Great questions like this do not usually have an "answer" that is adequate, requiring only search that it may be found. Ten years ago there was the White House conference of Governors, to consider the subject of conservation. The interchange of views undoubted'y did good, but no comprehensive program resulted, because such a program, to be effective, required the active co-operation of a very large number of men, with very divergent interests.

It is quite true that the coming conference could recommend legislation by Congress, but it is extremely doubtful whether any vital legislation that would be recommended would be enacted. Even were Congress disposed to legislate, it would be very difficult to draw up desirable legislation. Suppose, for instance, it should be desired to legislate against strikes, as it is desired to do in the case of the railroads. How could a line be drawn, defining in what industries or at what plants strikes must not occur?

An awkward feature of such a conference is the matter of representation. It is very difficult to find real representatives of unorganized labor, while representatives of organized labor are exponents of a system that

strikes at the very roots of industrial peace. There can be no true co-operation between employers and organized labor, because organized labor refuses to recognize quality.

An illustration will serve to emphasize the vital importance of this fact. There was a time, say 15 or 20 years ago, when the average steel mill produced little steel except ordinary "mild steel," which covered a multitude of characteristics little known and still less regarded, while some of them produced what was broadly known as "rail steel." The buyer had to take what he got. Gradually it developed that there was money in suiting the steel to the special requirements of the consumer. At first the steel mills yielded rather grudgingly to the demands of customers that they be furnished steel a little different, but soon this feeling was supplanted by an active desire to meet the precise requirements of the user. Instead of being content with filling, or attempting to fi'l, the expressed desires of the buyer, many mills established research departments, resulting in the mill being able voluntarily to offer the customer or prospective customer a steel better adapted to his requirements than the buyer had been able to conceive.

Thus there has been established co-operation between the seller of steel and the buyer of steel, and this cooperation has proved mutual'y advantageous. More steel is being made and consumed to-day than if this co-operation had not been developed.

The system of organized labor presents no such cooperation. It strives to prevent co-operation. The pay per day is to be so much, no matter what the day's service amounts to. No day's work is worth more than another day's work. It is as if the seller of steel should say: "Here is our steel. If your axle is not strong enough, buy more steel and make your axles larger. If 25 per cent of the sheets break in forming, buy one-third more sheets. That will give the steel mills more work."

What is desirable is the replacement of the system of organized labor by a better system, but in all probability organized labor will contribute the chief spokesmen for labor.

For some time there was a strong outcry against "paternalism" on the part of the United States Government. OTTO H. KAHN delivered a very forceful address on "The Menace of Paternalism" before the convention, at Chicago, of the American Bankers Association, September 27, 1918. The address was reprinted in pamphlet form and was read with interest and approval by a great many thinking men. The "menace" has now almost died out, not chiefly because MR. KAHN spoke against it, but chiefly because practical experience has shown that it won't work.

Paternalism, however, is paternalism, whether it be government paternalism or not, and the fundamentals are such that it is as insufficient if it is the one kind or the other. Now, unfortunately, a large part of the defense of "open shop" employers against unionization is the paternalism these employers practice. What is done may be, and probably is, in itself altogether unobjectionable. It is "good work," so to speak, but it is not co-operation, and it is co-operation that is requisite. Can the coming conference at Washington devise a method whereby there will be co-operation between the employer as an individual and the employee as an individual?

War Department Deserts Chemical
Warfare Service

To the Editor of Chemical & Metallurgical Engineering SIR: The editorial in your issue of Aug. 15, entitled "War Department Deserts Chemical Warfare Service," prompts this letter. As a chemist, I sympathize with your attitude. I believe that such of the recent developments in methods of warfare that are usually described as "chemical warfare" should be the subject of continued study and research. And much of this should be done by chemists and physicists of the best training and widest experience. On the other hand, I do not believe it necessarily need be done by a distinct branch of the Army organization. My experience as a Captain in the Chemical Warfare Service, A. E. F., leads me to believe that the various activities of the Chemical Warfare Service, with perhaps one exception, could be performed satisfactorily by the ordinary departments of the Army. An enumeration of such activities, with their disposition according to my idea, may justify this statement.

The study of gas mask chemicals must be made, of course, by chemists and physicists. But why should not this, as well as the production of the finished masks, which is but a manufacturing proposition after all, be under the jurisdiction of the Ordnance Department? Likewise, why should not the chemical research necessary to the study and development of toxic gases, the engineering research necessary to their manufacture, and their manufacture itself, be functions of the Ordnance Department? Another important activity of the Chemical Warfare Service was the training of gas officers who were to be responsible for the "gas discipline" of the troops. It seems to me that this is a purely military matter that can be handled by regular line officers as part of their regular duties. Certainly scientists are not necessary for this duty. I am assuming, of course, that the professional training of these line officers will be modified so as to make them competent to do this. It will be necessary in

this connection for some soldier-chemist to write a text on "Military Gases" of the same general character as Weaver's "Military Explosives."

As the offensive use of gas has become largely an artillery problem, artillerists can be instructed in the special uses of the various gas shells, as they are at present instructed in the particular uses of shrapnel and high-explosive shell. The offensive use of gas from mortars and projectors and the use of smoke has largely been in the hands of specially trained "gas troops" under the Chemical Warfare Service organization. But in my opinion there is no necessity for such classification; they could very well be called engineers, or even given an infantry classification and organized much as the machine gun units are, in their relation to the rest of the Army.

On the other hand, I believe that there should be on the staff of each division, or certainly of each army corps, a soldier-chemist, whose chemical training must be the very best, and whose chemical judgment must be matured by proper experience, whose duty would be to investigate personally the gas activities of the

enemy in his sector, so as to keep his commanding officer of the War Department advised of gas developments during the campaign. There might even need to be an emergency laboratory available to these officers. But this should be so near the front as really to serve its emergency purpose; much too near the front to serve as a research laboratory. These officers might properly be classified as a chemical service. But their number would be so small that even in this case I believe it would be better to classify them in one of the existing departments.

Thus, it seems to me that the proper activities of the Chemical Warfare Service can be apportioned among the existing departments of the Army. Perhaps it is the plan of the Army to do this very thing, and to abandon merely the Chemical Warfare Service classi: fication, not its activities. B. B. FREUD, Associate Professor, Armour Institute of Technology. Late Captain Chemical Warfare Service, A. E. F.

Experimental-Retort Tests of Orient Coal To the Editor of Chemical & Metallurgical Engineering SIR-I have just returned from my vacation and note that you have published "Experimental-Retort Tests of Orient Coal" in the Aug. 15 issue.

In the absence of Mr. McBride, who is at present away on vacation, I want to call to your attention that you omitted the special acknowledgment we gave Mr. Edwin Barnhart, engineer of tests for the Bethlehem Steel Co., who developed the retort, and Mr. D. H. Duvall, assistant chemist, who has conducted the retort tests for the company. We are indebted to them for their valuable assistance rendered at the time the tests were made. I. V. BRUMBAUGH.

A Rapid Method for the Analysis of Red Lead and Orange Mineral

To the Editor of Chemical & Metallurgical Engineering SIR: In the July 15, 1919, issue of CHEMICAL & METALLURGICAL ENGINEERING exception is taken by Mr. Eric John Ericson as to the proper credit for the method used in a paper on "A Rapid Method for the Analysis of Red Lead and Orange Mineral" published in the Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry, vol. 8, No. 3, page 237, March, 1916. It is Mr. Ericson's claim that I failed to give him credit for a prior application of the method as used. The method as used in that paper is taken from the third English edition of Treadwell and Hall's Analytical Chemistry. Reference was made to that edition so that it would be applicable to the latest publication of that book. If Mr. Ericson would acquaint himself with the literature on this subject, he would find that these reactions are described substantially as given in Treadwell and Hall's first English edition.

The question of the decomposition of PbO, by H,O, was first discovered by Thenard and was first carefully studied by Brodie in 1850 (Brodie, Phil. Trans., 1850, p. 759; Chem. Soc. Quart. J., IV, p. 194; Chem. Soc. Quart. J., VII, p. 304). As Thenard discovered hydrogen peroxide and studied its properties in 1818, this phase of the matter seems to have been common knowl

This reaction is also mentioned in Watt's Dictionary of Chemistry, published in 1871, vol. 3, page 198.

In Treadwell and Hall's book credit is given to the method of Lux. In so far as the method under discussion deals with the decomposition of red lead by nitric acid, this is fully described by Lux in his paper on the "Gravimetric Determination of Minium," published in 1880, Zeit. für Anal. Chem., 19. The other part of the reaction is described in Treadwell and Hall's book with no reference given, due probably to the fact that this matter was common knowledge for so long a time.

From a study of these references, it will be seen that I was correct in crediting the method as was done.

It

is to be regretted that anyone making the claims which Mr. Ericson has made would fail to make a thorough

his method is a most excellent one, he has probably claimed too great originality for himself. In the light of these earlier investigations the mere fact that Mr. Ericson used this method for a dozen years in the zinc industry, and on Joplin ores principally, does not establish the claim that he should be credited with the prior application of this method as it refers to the analysis of red lead and orange mineral.

At the same time, it is indeed strange that he has only made the discovery which he did in respect to the credit he presumes to be due him after more than three years, the original paper being published in March, 1916, while his letter appears in July, 1919. It is apparent he has shown a great disregard of former investigations and publications. JOHN A. SCHAEFFER, Chief Chemist.

The Eagle Picher Lead Co., Joplin, Mo.

Field

Boulder County Tungsten

EADERS interested in tungsten are undoubtedly ac

Rquainted with the fact that this specialized branch of

metallurgical industry has been marking time for several months, but they may not know that the mines and mills in Boulder County, Colorado, are almost completely abandoned. This region, the most important American tungsten source, shows many after effects of the wild flight of market prices. Fabulous quotations early in 1916 produced a record tonnage by the use of unusual expedients, and when the market settled to a relatively narrow fluctuation during 1917 (around $24 per unit), a substantial output was forthcoming from the mines and mills developed during the boom. This price remained approximately stationary up to the end of the war, and was affording a good return, as may be surmised when comparing it to a pre-war price of $6 per unit. Unfortunately, however, when the War Minerals bill was under discussion in Congress, the prediction was freely made that Colorado ferberite would soon be selling for $30 per unit WO,, a prediction never realized, but which caused many of the small leasers and operators to curtail their mining and hold back their concentrates in expectation of the higher price. This somewhat concerted action cut into the 1918 production, and the result was that when the larger producers began shutting down in the fall there was really but a modest amount of spot ferberite in existence.

Thus all the mills in the district are now shut down; the principal ones being the Wolf Tongue Mining Co., at Nederland; Vasco Mining Co. (American Vanadium Co.) at Tungsten; Primos Chemical Co., at Lakewood; Rare Metals Co., at Rollinsville; Tungsten Products Co., at Boulder, and the Red Sign Mill, at Ferberite. Operators, large and small, are waiting for a high tariff to exclude cheap Asiatic ores; meanwhile large quantities. of the latter are being imported and will command the market for months to come, tariff or no tariff. However, there is little or no ferberite to be had, and many users require this pure mineral rather than the imported ore, high in tin, manganese and copper. A decided premium is therefore to be expected, which may well grow to a point where mining in the richer Boulder veins will again be possible. As a matter of fact, leased ore is now

some 4 miles from Nederland, and shipped to Denver for magnetic concentration to supply a sizable contract running over the balance of 1919. This may be the forerunner of a revival in ferberite.

Dr. Eckley and some of his associates at the University of Colorado were able to perfect a chemical process for the production of very pure tungstic oxide from impure materials, and their commercial plant (Black Metal Reduction Co.) at the mouth of Boulder Canyon has been in operation for nearly two years. They first bought up mill wastes from their immediate neighborhood, a fine, impure product which could not be cleaned by water concentration. This was subjected to an alkaline fusion, the mass then leached, the filtrate purified and finally WO, precipitated pure enough to pass the exacting demands of incandescent lamp makers. After the Colorado supply of low-grade tungsten was exhausted, some unsalable fines from Dakota were utilized. More recently good ferberite has been purified, but at present this plant is operating at half capacity on Chinese ore, laid down at the plant at a figure less than it can be delivered from mines a few miles away.

CHEMICAL & METALLURGICAL ENGINEERING has already published detailed accounts of the milling practice in Boulder County.* Briefly the process consists of crushing the ore for jigging to about in. so as to produce the minimum of fines. Jig tails are crushed to about 10 mm., classified, and passed over tables. Table sands are then reground and concentrated as slimes on vanners and canvas tables. Since these articles were published there has been little change in the accepted ideas on gravity concentration-flotation has not been adapted to these ores-but very gratifying results have been obtained by magnetic concentration, especially by the Tungsten Products Co. All its intermediates needing cleaning are dried and then carefully sized in a series of impact screens, and the sized material passed in a thin stream through 3-magnet Wetherell separators adjusted to the product being handled. The first cross belt picks out most of the iron at a low impressed amperage, the second picks up some magnetizable silicates at intermediate amperage, while the last at high density takes out a high grade concentrate, commonly averaging well above 60 per cent, and leaving a tungsten-free residue.

*S. Fisher, "Modern Concentration of Colorado Tungsten Ores," vol. 16, May 15, 1917, p. 559; vol. 17, July 15, 1917, p. 73.