CARROLLVILLE (Otjen P. O.)-The United States Fertilizer Co., c/o the United States Glue Co., will soon award the contract for the construction of a 2- and 3story, 67 x 219 and 50 x 50-ft. fertilizing plant. Estimated cost, $100,000. H. J. Esser, Camp Building, Milwaukee, architect.

GREEN BAY-The Fort Howard Paper Co. has awarded the contract for the construction of a 1-story, 49 x 135-ft. factory, to Ludolph Hansen, 114 South Maple St. Estimated cost, $45,000. Noted April 1. MILWAUKEE-The Pfister & Vogel Leather Co., Virginia St., has awarded the contract for the construction of a 2-story, 60 x 180-ft. addition to its tannery on Bay View St., to C. A. Kleppe, 1026 1st St. timated cost, $30,000.

Es

OWEN SOUND-J. Legate, chairman of the Utilities Commission will soon award the contract for the construction of a concrete slow sand filter at No. 1 spring, Derby Township. Estimated cost, $35,000.

OWEN SOUND-The Utilities Commission is receiving bids for furnishing a slow sand filter. R. McDowell, engineer.

ST. CATHERINES-The city plans to build sanitary sewers and a sewage disposal plant. Estimated cost, $50,000. W. P. Near, City Hall, engineer.

Quebec

GRANBY-The Miner Rubber Co.. 72 St. Peter St., has awarded the contract for the construction of a rubber factory to the Dominion Bridge Co., 285 Beaver Hall Hill, Montreal. Estimated cost, $35,000.

MONTREAL-The Scot-Canadian Magresite Co., Ltd., Power Building, plans to build a plant on Shawinigan St. Estimated cost, $350,000.

VAL JALBERT-The Chicoutimi Paper & Pulp Co., Chicoutimi, is having plans prepared by L. Lamontagne, architect, Chicoutimi, for the construction of a factory. Estimated cost, $75,000.

Industrial Notes

ARTHUR D. LITTLE, INC., of Cambridge, Mass., has designed and is installing improvements and enlargements in the plant of the Minute Tapioca Co. at Orange, Mass. THE NATIONAL REDUCTION Co. is building a large rosin and turpentine plant at Calvert, Ala., designed and erected by Arthur D. Little, Inc., of Cambridge, Mass.

THE NEW YORK TESTING LABORATORIES have been organized by Messrs. L. R. Seidell, G. B. Jack, Jr., and H. H. Geist, formerly chief metallurgist, assistant chief metallurgist and chief chemist respectively of the Wright-Martin Aircraft Corp. The laboratories are at 354 Mulberry St., Newark, N. J., and the New York office is established at 74-80 Washington St. In addition to chemical and physical testing and microphotography, this organization is specializing in the source inspection of materials, and as consultant in smelting foundry, drop-forging and heat-treating practices

and the metallurgical investigation of shop troubles.

THE CARRIER ENGINEERING CORP., announces that Mr. E. P. Heckel has been made vice-president of the corporation and transferred from New York to Chicago as Western manager. Mr. A. E. Stacey, formerly Western manager, has been transferred to New York as head of the department of research and development.

BECKMAN & LINDEN CORP., San Francisco, Cal., has installed a 100-kw. singlephase electric furnace for commercial testing and research on the electric smelting possibilities of the Pacific Coast region.

THE METAL & THERMIT CORPORATION, New York, has recently completed the largest marine weld ever recorded, on the cast steel sternframe of the huge U. S. Army Transport Northern Pacific. The section welded was entirely broken through as a result of the severe strain to which the frame was subjected when this transport, laden with homeward-bound troops. ran aground on Jan. 2, 1919, in a dense fog, off Fire Island, New York. The weld required 1400 lb. of thermit for the chemical production of the necessary amount of molten steel, and was made without removing the casting from the ship.

THE CHEMICAL FOUNDATION, INC. has opened offices at 81 Fulton St., New York City and is ready to discuss the issuance of licenses for the various German chemical and metallurgical patents which it controls. Licensees must be all-American and possess ability and equipment to manufacture under the license.

THE AMERICAN FOUNDRY MEN'S ASSOCIATION will hold its 1919 convention in Philadelphia, Sept. 29 to Oct. 4.

THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF MINING AND METALLURGICAL ENGINEERS will hold its Fall meeting in Chicago, Ill., Sept. 22-27.

THE AMERICAN STEEL TREATERS' SOCIETY will hold its first annual convention in Chicago, Ill., Sept. 22-27.

THE FIFTH NATIONAL EXPOSITION OF CHEMICAL INDUSTRIES Will be held in Chicago, Ill., Sept. 22-27 inclusive.

THE INSTITUTE OF METALS DIVISION of the A. I. M. E. will hold its next meeting in Philadelphia, Pa., Sept. 29 to Oct. 4.

THE INSTITUTE OF METALS will hold its Autumn meeting in Sheffield, England, Sept. 24-25.

THE INTERALLIED CHEMICAL CONFEDERATION will hold its next meeting in London, July 15-18, 1919.

THE TECHNICAL ASSOCIATION OF THE PULP AND PAPER INDUSTRY will hold its Fall meeting in Chicago from Sept. 24 to 27.

THE SOCIETY OF CHEMICAL INDUSTRY Will hold its annual general meeting in London July 15-18, 1919.

Stocks and Bonds

Closing Bid and Asked Quotations June 26, on N. Y. Stock Exchange

CHEMICAL COMPANIES

Coming Meetings and Events

THE

AMERICAN CERAMIC SOCIETY hold a meeting in Chicago, Sept. 24. THE AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY will hold its Fall meeting in Philadelphia, Pa., Sept. 2-6 inclusive..

THE AMERICAN ELECTROCHEMICAL SoCIETY will hold its Fall meeting in Chicago, Sept. 23-25 inclusive.

THE AMERICAN ELECTRO-PLATERS' SoCIETY will hold its 1919 convention in Philadelphia, Pa., July 1-3.

U. S. Steel, S. F. 58, '63. Va. C., I. & C., 1 5s, '49

with the work of the BRAGGS, now appears réasonable, except in the shade of prejudice; and in the end we seem to obtain from it a remarkably practical working concept of chemical processes. It is, however, unfamiliar-and it is a normal human reaction to deny that which is unfamiliar.

Our colleague the ever urbane editor of Scientific Monthly evidently feels that way. After listening to a presentation of the subject by its author during the Convocation Week of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, in Washington, he says, referring to the addresses of Professor BREASTED of Chicago and DR. LANGMUIR of Schenectady, that they (the addresses) "might lead to the inquiry why a student of Mexican archæology is eligible to membership in the [National] Academy but not a student of Egyptian archæology," and "why a metaphysician who calls himself a chemist is eligible, but not one who calls himself a student of philosophy."

As the author of our paper intimates, Dr. LANGMUIR is almost resentful of metaphysics in connection with comprehensible and concrete facts. He does deduce the rule that electrons tend to gather in pairs and octets about positive charges, but if this be metaphysics then so is valence, and so also is the law of definite proportions.

WERNER'S theory of secondary valence, while not wholly in accord with the Langmuir postulates, is illuminated by the octet rule. WERNER'S observations are confirmed, but they are explained by a different method. Neither this feature, however, nor several others of marked importance, are touched upon in our present article. Our immediate business is of an introductory

nature.

Are We Engineers or

A

Are We Economists?

SPECTACLE of high wages together with a surplus of labor, high commodity prices together with a small turnover, extreme spread between wholesale and retail prices and yet moderate purchasing by the ultimate consumer, cold storage and granaries bursting with foodstuffs yet meat and dairy products beyond the reach of ordinary purses-this spectacle certainly holds puzzling inconsistencies to the thoughtful observer. The times are so badly out of joint that his personal experience cannot bridge the gap, and yet he is confronted with the insistent question: "What can I do about it?" What is to be done? Economists who hold the front of the stage assure us that nothing can be done except grin and bear it; make up your mind to buy what you need and pay the price, say they. "Opportunity is here!" shouts the publicist. "The shelves of the world are bare." True, indeed, but has poor Mother HUBBARD a bare purse as well as a hungry dog?

Students of economic life make much of the so-called law of supply and demand, and its many adaptations. Thus--we have recently seen an enormous inflation in currency and credit, the actual amount of usable goods has probably decreased, prices therefore have gone up with the volume of money available. This really seems a good definition of high prices rather than an explanation of how they came about-in other words, the fact that we have a huge gold reserve is not the immediate reason an Oregon horticulturist asks and gets 13 cents for prunes he gladly sold for 5 a few short years ago. On the face of it there seems to be a human

as well as a material element in prices. We are inclined to think-not being economists, merely engineers-that some influential economists have overlooked a profound determining factor in price levels, and this factor is that a price is determined not only by the available supply of needed goods and the total amount of purchasing power in existence, but also in large measure by how badly the individual purchaser thinks he needs and desires the thing, the availability of acceptable substitutes, and the credit or money he actually possesses. When butter goes beyond a certain price, he doesn't buy as much as he needs.

Thus one arrives at the psychological factor, at once ignored and acknowledged by publicists-ignored in arguing for permanence of high prices; acknowledged in their campaign to create a "purchasing state-ofmind." Some even go so far as to print in black headlines "All Price Revisions Will Be Upward!" As a general, long-time trend, yes; as an immediate tendency, by no means! Do they mean that the glaring inefficiency of management, labor and process which was so shamelessly condoned during war time cannot be improved? Do they mean that the exorbitant capital profits, amounting in many cases to the total pre-war cost of the commodity, cannot be eliminated? Do they mean that $12 shall be maintained as a price for a shoe costing $6 simply because the raw material, manufacture and sale are so closely controlled that the higher price can be demanded?

Historical economists are fond of pointing out the rise in commodities which accompanied and immediately followed the four recent wars in justification of their stand that the present price levels will be permanent. Perhaps the analogy is correct. But they fail to add a note explaining the drop in commodities which actually occurred sooner or later. Apparently if it be true that high prices are due to inflation, and inflation is due to the waste of war, it certainly follows that high prices can be cut by reducing waste. Here, indeed, is where the engineer can help-at least he can be of vital force instead of an apologist. The human element is again overlooked when no mention is made of the reason-cited solely as an instance-why pig iron should drop from $53 just after the Franco-Prussian war to $9 just before the Spanish-American war. That was technology! Not only bigger blast-furnaces, but better chemistry and metallurgy, better transportation, better electrical and mechanical engineering, and the application of iron and steel to thousands of everyday uses!

Enough has been said to indicate the extreme complexity of the economic situation. Economic laws are not deducible to mathematical formulæ as are those of gravitation, because the human element-that most complex of variables-enters. Engineers are treading on terra incognita and are in danger of being bogged when they make pronouncements based on economics; far better it would be to insist at all times and places upon the extreme desirability of reducing costs by scientific technological management. Here we can speak with authority, candidly acknowledging in all our dealings the close relationship between the human and the material, the worker and the machine.

Reduce waste, perfect processes, increase efficiency of men and machines, lower costs by increasing the volume of production, raise the standard of living by making it possible for the common citizen to purchase good products, and engineers can then rest assured that

their work has been well done, since it has vastly increased the sum total of human happiness. That is really the end of it all!

A Phase of the

IN

Flotation Decision

N OUR digest of the Supreme Court's decision in the case of Minerals Separation vs. Butte & Superior, we doubt if we emphasized sufficiently those words of the Court's opinion in which it defines the scope of Minerals Separation's right as "limited to the means they have devised and described as constituting the process." Granting the plaintiff its right to the process when oil is used in a fraction of one per cent on the ore, the Court nevertheless holds that the patentees discovered the process and not the result, and limits the process to the means disclosed. Evidently if the same result can be attained by some other means, the industry still has the prospect of working with an economical use of oil. In our judgment the bubble-column process, commonly spoken of as the pneumatic-cell process, is outside the means disclosed by Minerals Separation in patent 835,120 and is therefore open to use with an economical quantity of oil, and without infringement of the patent referred to. This may have a profound influence on future flotation practice.

The Determination

Of Steel Prices

HE steel market has for many years presented an

Tinteresting psychological study. There has been

some evidence of the working of the much mentioned law of supply and demand, but after all the steel market has been made more by psychological than by physical influences. It has been a matter not only of how the minds of producers react to certain influences but also of how the minds of buyers react.

In most of the steel price advancing movements of the past fifteen years the co-operation of buyers has been necessary. It was a case of one advance bringing on another. The buyer, seeing the market exhibiting strength by advancing, would place contracts for forward delivery for additional tonnages and when this buying had encouraged the mills to make another advance the buyer would buy again, thus furnishing the basis whereby prices could be advanced upon him a third time, and so on.

As to the sellers, the mental attitude has influenced conduct, though not always in the same way. In the decade of the 1890's, when the mild-steel business was young as the successor to the wrought-iron business, the mental attitude of the producer was frequently not so much that of endeavoring to secure orders as of preventing his competitor from securing them. It was a common practice to induce a consumer to place a contract for material he did not expect to need, with the idea that he might possibly find occasion to use the material, and then the seller who had seen him first would receive the specifications. The fundamental principle was that of undermining the competitor's business rather than of building up one's own business. The pools and associations that throve on paper were patronized by producers not so much because they individually expected to adhere to the agreements as because hopes were entertained that others would do so, and thus lose orders.

Subsequently the psychology of producers changed.

Passing over a few years, first of the existence of the combinations preceding the Steel Corporation and then the earliest years of the Steel Corporation itself, there began a period in which the idea of domination was definitely and actively renounced. The larger of the individual manufacturers in the early years of steelmaking sought domination as the only safe position. The Steel Corporation, on the contrary, recognized that in the long run domination would be suicidal because neither the law nor the public would give it countenance. Markets, however, must be made through the operation of one influence or another. They do not spring from nothing. Markets are made by men, and the question is only as to the influences to which men allow their minds to react. The influence may be the relation between the tonnage that is likely to be consumed and the tonnage that can be produced, or the mental attitude of buyers, or the mental attitude the producer believes his competitors occupy.

The Great War sent steel prices to undreamedof levels, and then Government control intervened. At the close of the war demand dropped to small proportions. Here was an upheaval or succession of upheavals which one would naturally expect to leave the market in a highly unsettled state, capable of wide fluctuations. A practical question is whether, after so great a disturbance, steel prices are going to fluctuate more or less during the next half dozen years than they did in the decade before the war. After such a disturbance wider fluctuations than usual might reasonably be expected, but having in mind the psychological influences at work one might conclude that the clearly apparent danger of a widely fluctuating market would induce the men who make the markets, irrespective of whether their decisions are individual or collective, to take special pains to prevent such wide fluctuations in prices.

Much has occurred that is suggestive of the possibility that eventually the Federal Government will be largely instrumental in the formulation of steel-market prices. The Federal Trade Commission was organized in March, 1915, and has had more or less to say about steel prices, particularly during the war. The Supreme Court is to decide the Government's dissolution suit against the Steel Corporation, which gives that branch of the Government a vital interest in the subject. It will, in a measure, pass upon the propriety of the steel prices that have obtained during a large part of the Steel Corporation's life, from the viewpoint of the public interest. Last February the Department of Commerce formed the Industrial Board for the purpose of deflating or stabilizing steel prices, and while the Industrial Board had rather an ill-starred and brief career the fact is not modified that there was a desire in Washington that such an organization should exist and function.

Even nearer to the point is the fact that when the organized steel consumers of the Chicago district recently urged that Chicago be established as a separate basing point for steel products, thus reducing the previously universal scope of the Pittsburgh basis, the steel producers proposed that the matter be laid before. the Federal Trade Commission. If it is proper that the Commission should decide what prices should obtain in the Chicago district relative to Pittsburgh basis prices, it is no great step for it to have a voice in determining what prices should obtain at Pittsburgh relative to industrial conditions.

To the Editor of Chemical & Metallurgical Engineering

SIR: I have read with much interest the paper on "Fusibility of Ash From Pennsylvania Coals," which appeared in your issue of June 15, 1919. Messrs. Selvig and Fieldner make one statement in that paper which I feel should not pass without some comment and qualification. The last paragraph on page 629 reads:

"The ash from the anthracite region of Pennsylvania is very refractory, coming in Class I. The softening temperature in practically every instance is above 3000 deg. F."

Now this statement is true in so far as it covers the ashes of coals tested and reported in the paper by Selvig and Fieldner, but the fact remains that ashes from certain anthracite coals have not been included in the published results. In order that the statement made by the authors may not mislead any one into regarding all anthracite coal ash as highly refractory, it has been thought desirable to submit some data on work done in this laboratory.

In a paper on "Chemistry in Coal Mining," published in the Aug. 19, 1916, issue of Coal Age, a table was given showing fusing temperatures and analyses of ashes of coals from different mines. The content of alkalies in the ashes was not determined, and any titanium dioxide was included in the percentage of aluminum oxide. The data are given in Table I.

This table shows that the ash of some anthracite coals fused between 2210 and 2282 deg. F., whereas the ash from other anthracite coals did not fuse at a temperature of 2570 deg. F., this temperature being the highest reached in the tests made at that time.

Later work in which higher temperatures were reached has shown practically the same results. The ashes from Shamokin, Locust Mountain and Hard White Ash coals have, in general, shown high fusing temperatures, mostly above 2600 deg. F. The ashes from Lorberry coals have shown somewhat lower fusing temperatures. The ashes from Lykens Valley coals have shown very much lower fusing temperatures, some such ashes fusing even below 2282 deg. F.

This lower fusing temperature seems to be coincident with relatively higher content of calcium oxide and sulphuric anhydride in the ash of the coal. The sulphur content of the coal itself, in the case of Lykens Valley coals, is very low, but much of this sulphur is left in the ash after burning, possibly in the form of cal

desirable.

It might be remarked, in passing, that while the ash from Lykens Valley coal has a low fusing temperature, yet the ash from bony coal or slate has a fusing temperature above 2600 deg. F.

Unfortunately, our tests on coal ashes were made in a rather crude way. The ashes, molded into form of small cones, were heated in a muffle furnace over a coke fire, the temperature being determined by comparison with Seger pyrometric cones. The atmosphere, if we may judge from the appearance or color of the ash cones, was an oxidizing one.

We do think, however, that our work is of considerable value, at least from a comparative standpoint, and we submit the above statements as information modifying some of the conclusions reached by Selvig and Fieldner. A. G. BLAKELEY.

Philadelphia & Reading Coal & Iron Co.,
Pottsville, Pa.

Tin in Bolivia

To the Editor of Chemical & Metallurgical Engineering SIR: A study of the tin deposits in the world shows that Bolivia occupied a very prominent position, not only on account of the nature of the minerals found in its mountains, but also because of the wealth of its ore deposits. If we consider the various sources of tin, we find the most important to be as follows: The peninsula of Malacca, Banka, Billiton, Sumatra, Siam, New South Wales, Australia, Tasmania, New Zealand, Cornwall, Transvaal, Japan, Finland, China, Korea, Siberia. Other deposits of less importance in central Europe are in Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, Scotland, Ireland and the well-known deposits in Bohemia; some in the United States and Alaska; and none in South America except in Bolivia, which has gradually become second in importance as a producer of tin.

Nevertheless the tin deposits of Bolivia are very little known and up to date only a comparatively small section has been exploited, and that is the region which is richest and possesses minerals of the most desirable composition. In a word, it can be said that the only mines operated in Bolivia are those which contain extraordinary wealth. In the meantime in my opinion the real future of Bolivian tin industry lies in those deposits of lower grade which up to the present time have not been touched.

The country contains extensive deposits of tin in the principal mountain chains; and in some of the rivers