The
British Government has discovered that a country without a tariff is a
land without walls. The American Government has discovered that an
industry is not benefited by being cut up into small pieces. Both
governments are now doing all they can to build up big concerns and to
provide them with protection. The British Government assisted in the
formation of a national company for the manufacture of synthetic dyes by
taking one-sixth of the stock and providing $500,000 for a research
laboratory. But this effort is now reported to be "a great failure"
because the Government put it in charge of the politicians instead of
the chemists.
The United States, like England, had become dependent upon Germany for
its dyestuffs. We imported nine-tenths of what we used and most of those
that were produced here were made from imported intermediates. When the
war broke out there were only seven firms and 528 persons employed in
the manufacture of dyes in the United States. One of these, the
Schoelkopf Aniline and Chemical Works, of Buffalo, deserves mention, for
it had stuck it out ever since 1879, and in 1914 was making 106 dyes.
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