T

BY

HE Government and the rest of the people of the United States are working together for together for greater national efficiency. efficiency. Sometimes the corporations take the initiative in this team work, as they did in the wireless telephone experiments in which two corporations and the Government, by pooling their resources in brains and material, were thereby enabled to produce experimentally, a short time ago, a wireless telephone with which it was possible to talk from New York across four thousand miles of land and sea to Honolulu. Again, some commercial organization may lead the way, as the National Foreign Trade Council did in the matter of the ship registry law by which several hundred thousands of tons of shipping under other flags were transferred to American registry after the war broke out. But more often it is the Government, through one or more of its technologic or scientific bureaus, that conducts the economic concert.

The results that have been achieved by this coöperative work range from conservation of natural resources and the establishment of new industries to the creation of new markets for the Nation's products.

For example, oil and natural gas, for years the source of great wealth, increasing from a total value of $183,000,000 in 1908 to $300,000,000 in round numbers in 1915, have at last reached the crest of production, according to the Government's experts, and are now on the decline. Yet in some oil fields only about 25 per cent. of the petroleum is recovered, and the total value of oil and gas allowed to go to waste is estimated at $50,000,000 a year.

Observing this, the Government, on july 1, 1914, created the petroleum division

of the Bureau of Mines. The first team play of the new division was to collaborate with the Chicago Fire Underwriters' Laboratories in an investigation of fires at oil wells and storage tanks with a view to checking this source of loss. The next. was to send representatives through the oil fields of the Central West to meet state committees to discuss legislation. As the Bureau of Mines was a disinterested party its representatives were able to gain the confidence of all concerned; and in Oklahoma, at least, adequate legislation was enacted for the protection of the state's resources in oil and gas, which became effective as soon as it was signed by the governor. And as a mark of appreciation the Bureau received the thanks of numerous organizations for its assistance. Cooperation did not end here. The producers in the Ada field asked the Bureau to recommend an inspector to be paid by them for work in that field under the supervision of the Bureau. Furthermore, the new division of the Bureau gained the confidence and coöperation of the National Petroleum Refiners' Association, the Oklahoma Independent Producers' Association, and the Oklahoma Corporation Commission.

Elsewhere employees of the Bureau devised traps for the separation of oil and gas coming from wells under high pressure and showed producers how to use them; assisted in the prosecution of persons illegally operating on oil lands; standardized the analytical distillation of petroleum; and did a number of other tasks of that sort.

This might have been considered a fair beginning for a new division in its first year, but what has been related is the least of its achievements. One member of the new division's staff was Dr. Walter F. Rittman, a chemical engineer. Dr. Rittman

wanted to do some original research work but lacked the necessary facilities. Not to be baffled, he sought and obtained the cooperation of Columbia University, where he could have the use of apparatus that the Bureau could not supply, and there invented a process for the manufacture of low-boiling gasolenes from kerosene and other distillates. The immense importance of this discovery is indicated from the fact that the Nation's production of crude oil having a high gasolene content is falling of, while much of the new oil discovered does not naturally contain gasolene, and the likelihood of discovering important new fields is diminishing. At the same time the United States had 2,250,000 automobiles on the first of the year using gasolene at the average rate of 500 gallons a year; and this number was being increased at the rate of more than a million machines a year, not to mention 300,000 motor boats and 700,000 internal combustion engines in use on farms, all with insatiable appetites for gasolene. In addition to all this, we are now exporting approximately 400 million gallons a year as compared with one fourth of that quantity eighteen months ago.

Altogether, it may be perceived that the Rittman process, which recovers three times as much gasolene from a given quantity of distillates as any process hitherto used by independent producers, might have made its discoverer a millionaire many times over. But as it was developed But as it was developed on the Government's time with borrowed apparatus, Dr. Rittman dedicated his process to the public, taking the precaution to apply for a patent to enable the Government to retain proper control of it. Now six concerns are producing gasolene by the Rittman process under contract with the Government to coöperate in the same generous way that Dr. Rittman did by dedicating any new ideas or processes they may develop to the free use of the public. This is the sole condition imposed by the Government.

Dr. Rittman next turned his attention to a matter of still greater moment. This was the discovery and development of a method of producing benzol and toluol and other aromatic hydrocarbons from

petroleum. Toluol is an important base for dyes and it is also used in the manufacture of high explosives. Hitherto it has been derived exclusively from coal-tar, and the United States has been dependent upon Germany for its supply. The country is already suffering from a dye-stuff famine; Dr. Rittman's work may help largely to relieve it and to render us independent of Europe both in peace and in war, so far as toluol is concerned, for several concerns are now manufacturing it by the Rittman process. This discovery might have earned at least a competence for Dr. Rittman, but he dedicated it also to the free use of the public, after taking the precaution to patent it. By this means the Government has been able to stipulate that licensed manufacturers shall give to the public any new ideas or processes they may develop.

Other governmental bureaus have pursued the same policy of insuring the greatest good to the greatest number with results quite as notable as those achieved by the Bureau of Mines. Of them all perhaps none has accomplished more of practical value than the Bureau of Standards.

PUTTING SAFETY IN STEEL RAILS

To give some idea of the character of the diversified work in which the Bureau of Standards coöperates, take the case of the steel rail. Thousands of rails break annually, many of them causing wrecks resulting in loss of life and the destruction of property running into millions of dollars, to say nothing of the interruption of traffic, another source of loss to the railroads and to their patrons. The railroads have done their best, both through organizations and individually, to find out what is the matter with the rails, and the steel makers have done the same.

Outside organizations, like the American Society for Testing Materials and the American Society of Civil Engineers, have tried to help. The latter society appointed a committee to draft a standard design for rails which is in general use, and other committees have studied the causes of the rail failures, which have been the subject of interminable discussions in this and other societies. Most railroads in buying rails,

and certainly all the important lines, have their own engineers or representatives of independent testing bureaus test samples from every heat to make sure that all are up to specifications. Yet rails continue to break at inconvenient times and places.

The Bureau of Standards resolved to see what it could do to help solve the rail problem. Samples of broken rails were subjected to chemical and microscopic analyses and physical tests.

Technologists from the Bureau were sent to four of the principal steel mills where, with optical and total radiation pyrometers, they recorded the finishing temperature of a large number of rails as they reached the hot saws. These observations, supplementing the testimony of the analyses and physical tests, indicated that the rails were finished at too high a temperature. When steel that has cooled down to a certain temperature is worked in the rolling mill or under the steam hammer there is a readjustment of its atoms which gives it the strength and toughness that rails need but do not always have.

Results of this investigation were presented before the American Institute of Mining Engineers. Some of the most eminent authorities in the country took part in the discussion that followed, and it ended in a general confession of ignorance of how methods of manufacture affected the properties of rails.

After this awakening the American Society for Testing Materials instructed its rail committee to coöperate with the Bureau of Standards in a further investigation of this important matter and of several allied questions.

Engineers have never had any authoritative data upon which to base calculations for bridges or other steel structures. The result has been a series of disasters, including the collapse of the Tay bridge, in 1879, carrying down with it a loaded passenger train, and the collapse of the partly finished Quebec bridge, in 1907, in which eighty men lost their lives. The Bureau of Standards has undertaken to supply this lack of information by conducting at its Pittsburg branch a series of tests of bridge members of the actual size of those in important structures now in use. The largest testing

machine in existence had to be built for this purpose. In coöperation with the American Railway Engineering Association and the American Society of Civil Engineers a further series of tests of structural steel columns is now in progress. The researches, when completed, will afford data for the formulation of the real mechanics of the column which will be of the utmost value to the engineering and architectural professions, to say nothing of the railroads and their passengers.

HELPING THE POTTERY INDUSTRY

One of the results of the war was to cut off most of the supply of china and porcelain ware. Heretofore, we imported ten million dollars' worth of these wares a year, and two million dollars' worth of chinaclays. These clays were imported for the limited amount of fine porcelains made in America because no deposits of such clays are known here. Obviously it would be a fine thing to develop the home pottery industry so that it could supply the goods hitherto imported, but how could it be done when the clay was lacking?

The Bureau of Standards had observed that a wide variety of cakes could be made from the same dough by varying the mixture. Some pottery plants were found that were willing to coöperate with the Bureau and the American Ceramic Society and the investigation began. The Bureau's theory was vindicated. Although no single American clay could be found possessing all the properties of the best European plastic materials, a mixture of several domestic clays produced satisfactory results. A method of purifying clays was worked out, and the fact fully established that a high grade of chemical porcelain and of hard fired tableware of excellent whiteness could be produced from native materials. Next, the Bureau perfected a superior enamel and a number of color compositions for clayware and glass to take the place of foreign supplies that had been shut off by the European conflict.

Another new industry which the Bureau is working to introduce is the manufacture of optical glass, the entire supply of which has hitherto come from Europe.

The work of the Government's oldest

scientific bureau, the Geological Survey, is having a cumulative effect, as the years go by, in a thousand different ways in enhancing the economic efficiency of the Nation. The foundation of the Geological Survey's work is the construction of a great topographic map of the United States. Already 1,200,000 square miles, or 40 per cent. of the Nation's area, has been mapped. The distinctive characteristic of these maps, which are minutely accurate in every detail, is the contour lines, each line representing a certain altitude above sea level, the intervals in altitude represented by the distance between the lines being ten to one hundred feet according to the character of the country. These maps These maps are of immense practical value. For example, when the Lackawanna Railroad decided to relocate thirty-four miles of its main line a few years ago, the engineer of construction got down a Geological Survey map and, sitting comfortably at his office desk, ran all the preliminary surveys and even made the final location for this twelvemillion-dollar improvement from the data on the printed sheet. It was only

necessary to shoulder a transit and go out into the brush to verify the final location and drive stakes.

Following the topographers comes a corps of 150 geologists who indicate the location of oil pools, coal beds, phosphate beds, iron ores, and every kind of minerals from radium ores to brick clay deposits. The statistical work of the Survey is of vital importance to the ninety thousand producers through whose efforts the earth is made to yield minerals worth between two and three billion dollars annually.

One of the big problems vitally affecting national efficiency was to find an adequate supply of mineral phosphate for use on American farm soils. The prosperity of the country depends very largely on the crops; and the crop-producing power of the farms depends more and more on the replenishment of the soil with phosphates. Hitherto the supply of rock phosphate has been drawn from South Carolina, Florida, and Tennessee; but at the present rate of increase in consumption this supply will be exhausted in less than a generation. Fortunately, the Geological Survey has

discovered and mapped deposits containing billions of tons of high grade phosphates on public lands in Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana, assuring an ample supply for centuries to come.

Of immense practical value is the Survey's investigation of the water resources of the country to determine quantities available for municipal supply, manufactures, irrigation, and power. A staff of eighty men has been engaged in this work for years, preparing authentic data for public use. The Survey even investigates the supplies of underground water, though it seems that such data is not to be depended upon. For instance, a railroad company wanted a supply of water at a certain point in South Dakota. A Survey geologist familiar with the region assured the railroad management that abundant good water could be found by drilling to a depth of 3,000 feet. The railroad company drilled until it struck an artesian flow of half a million gallons a day. But the water was found at a depth of 2,985 feet, instead of the 3,000 specified by the geologist: a mistake of fifteen feet!

HELPING THE BUSINESS MAN

While the Government scientific bureaus promote national efficiency by pointing the way to a better utilization of materials, the newly created Federal Trade Commission gives promise of rendering a similar service in the utilization of the human element. To be sure, the Trade Commission is supposed to be chiefly a regulative body. But being blessed with a membership that is very much alive the new Commission gives promise of constructive helpfulness.

Help is certainly needed, for the human element is the most neglected element in the industrial life of the Nation. Though a few enlightened employers have discov ered that a good employee is a valuable asset and strive to conserve him as they do their other assets through the medium of so-called "welfare work," which is cold business and not philanthropy as so many imagine, the great majority have not waked up. The result is that, while machinery is nearly 100 per cent. effective, the workman who runs it is on an average not more than 60 per cent. effective.

Yet even at that the workman is more efficient than his boss; for statistics possessed by the Commission show that, exclusive of banking, railroad, and public utility corporations, there are about 250,000 business corporations in the country. Of these more than 100,000 have no net income whatever; 90,000 more make less than $5,000 a year, while only the 60,000 remaining make $5,000 or more. Turning from net income to gross volume of business done by these 60,000 corporations, one third have sales of less than $100,000 a year, another third sell from $100,000 to $250,000, while less than five thousand do a gross business of a million. dollars a year or more, and of these only 462 industrial and mercantile corporations do an annual business of over $5,000,000.

One way of helping the inefficient employer is to exhort him to install a proper system of cost accounting. Unless he knows what his product costs to manufacture he cannot know what his selling price should be or whether he is doing business at a profit or loss. Lacking this knowledge he is not in a position to meet competition, but simply invites disaster, Cf course the Commission cannot compel men to do business on business principles, but it hopes to attain the desired end by indorsing standard systems of book-keeping and cost accounting, and assisting in devising standard systems, either at the request of individual merchants and manufacturers or through associations representing given industries. The Commission will provide for this work an adequate force of experienced accountants and cost experts.

Another way in which the Commission hopes to help is by collecting and publishing the essential data regarding business. Just the simple statistics relating thereto, never before collected, will prove to be of immense importance as a guide for future action when compiled and distributed. This work is now under way.

A NEW ERA IN OUR FOREIGN TRADE

It is a singular fact that while the selling end of the business always has the greatest fascination for the average merchant or manufacturer, it is just this end of our national business organization that has