A blue
cotton dyestuff that sold before the war at sixty cents a pound, brought
$34 a pound. A bright pink rhodamine formerly quoted at a dollar a pound
jumped to $48. When one keg of dye ordinarily worth $15 was put up at
forced auction sale in 1915 it was knocked down at $1500. The
Highlanders could not get the colors for their kilts until some German
dyes were smuggled into England. The textile industries of Great
Britain, that brought in a billion dollars a year and employed one and a
half million workers, were crippled for lack of dyes. The demand for
high explosives from the front could not be met because these also are
largely coal-tar products. Picric acid is both a dye and an explosive.
It is made from carbolic acid and the famous trinitrotoluene is made
from toluene, both of which you will find in the list of the ten
fundamental "crudes."
Both Great Britain and the United States realized the danger of allowing
Germany to recover her former monopoly, and both have shown a readiness
to cast overboard their traditional policies to meet this emergency.
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