2,500,000. In 1917 it amounted to over $57,000,000. This does not mean
that the problem was solved, for the home products were not equal in
variety and sometimes not in quality to those made in Germany. Many
valuable dyes were lacking and the cost was of course much higher.
Whether the American industry can compete with the foreign in an open
market and on equal terms is impossible to say because such conditions
did not prevail before the war and they are not going to prevail in the
future. Formerly the large German cartels through their agents and
branches in this country kept the business in their own hands and now
the American manufacturers are determined to maintain the independence
they have acquired. They will not depend hereafter upon the tariff to
cut off competition but have adopted more effective measures. The 4500
German chemical patents that had been seized by the Alien Property
Custodian were sold by him for $250,000 to the Chemical Foundation, an
association of American manufacturers organized "for the Americanization
of such institutions as may be affected thereby, for the exclusion or
elimination of alien interests hostile or detrimental to said industries
and for the advancement of chemical and allied science and industry in
the United States." The Foundation has a large fighting fund so that it
"may be able to commence immediately and prosecute with the utmost vigor
infringement proceedings whenever the first German attempt shall
hereafter be made to import into this country."

So much mystery has been made of the achievements of German chemists--as
though the Teutonic brain had a special lobe for that faculty, lacking
in other craniums--that I want to quote what Dr. Hesse says about his
first impressions of a German laboratory of industrial research:

Directly after graduating from the University of Chicago in
1896, I entered the employ of the largest coal-tar dye works in
the world at its plant in Germany and indeed in one of its
research laboratories. This was my first trip outside the
United States and it was, of course, an event of the first
magnitude for me to be in Europe, and, as a chemist, to be in
Germany, in a German coal-tar dye plant, and to cap it all in
its research laboratory--a real _sanctum sanctorum_ for
chemists. In a short time the daily routine wore the novelty
off my experience and I then settled down to calm analysis and
di