Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 January 1910 — CLEVER CHEMISTS. [ARTICLE]

CLEVER CHEMISTS.

In Two Remarkable Cases Have Supplanted the Farmer and Field. There are two remarkable instances In which the chemist’s laboratory has supplanted the farmer and the field. There was a time when India produced large quantities of indigo every year on plantations. The planters were warned that over In Germany chemists were at work making Indigo, but they only laughed. Then the announcement came that the synthetic indigo, made in the laboratory, was a commercial success. It was absolutely the same as the natural Indigo, only, if anything, a little bit purer. Now. India no longer supplies the world with indigo. A German laboratory makes the whole supply, and even India buys in Germany. There was a time when large areas in France were devoted to the cultivation of madder root, from which the red dye alizarine was made. Again a German chemist Improved upon nature and made artificial alizarine at a cost of less than one-third that of the natural product. It wasn’t an inferior imitation; It was the real thing. Now Germany supplies the world with alizarine. The only red cloth you will see to-day that is dyed with the natural dye ’is in the trousers of the French gendarme. And this Is purely for sentimental reasons. The French government maintains a farm -and grows a few serfs of madder, that the French army may not be dependent upon its old enemy, Germany, for anything It uses.