Creative Chemistry Part 12

It might have been supposed that since the United States possessed the best land in the world for the production of cottonseed, coconuts, peanuts, and corn that it would have led all other countries in the utilization of vegetable oils for food. That this country has not so used its advantage is due to the fact that the new products have not merely had to overcome popular conservatism, ignorance and prejudice--hard things to fight in any case--but have been deliberately checked and hampered by the state and national governments in defense of vested interests. The farmer vote is a power that no politician likes to defy and the dairy business in every state was thoroughly organized. In New York the oleomargarin industry that in 1879 was turning out products valued at more than $5,000,000 a year was completely crushed out by state legislation.[2] The output of the United States, which in 1902 had risen to 126,000,000 pounds, was cut down to 43,000,000 pounds in 1909 by federal legislation. According to the disingenuous custom of American lawmakers the Act of 1902 was pa.s.sed through Congress as a "revenue measure," although it meant a loss to the Government of more than three million dollars a year over what might be produced by a straight two cents a pound tax. A wholesale dealer in oleomargarin was made to pay a higher license than a wholesale liquor dealer. The federal law put a tax of ten cents a pound on yellow oleomargarin and a quarter of a cent a pound on the uncolored. But people--doubtless from pure prejudice--prefer a yellow spread for their bread, so the economical housewife has to work over her oleomargarin with the annatto which is given to her when she buys a package or, if the law prohibits this, which she is permitted to steal from an open box on the grocer's counter. A plausible pretext for such legislation is afforded by the fact that the b.u.t.ter subst.i.tutes are so much like b.u.t.ter that they cannot be easily distinguished from it unless the use of annatto is permitted to b.u.t.ter and prohibited to its compet.i.tors. Fradulent sales of subst.i.tutes of any kind ought to be prevented, but the recent pure food legislation in America has shown that it is possible to secure truthful labeling without resorting to such drastic measures. In Europe the laws against subst.i.tution were very strict, but not devised to restrict the industry. Consequently the margarin output of Germany doubled in the five years preceding the war and the output of England tripled. In Denmark the consumption of margarin rose from 8.8 pounds per capita in 1890 to 32.6 pounds in 1912. Yet the b.u.t.ter business, Denmark's pride, was not injured, and Germany and England imported more b.u.t.ter than ever before. Now that the price of b.u.t.ter in America has gone over the seventy-five cent mark Congress may conclude that it no longer needs to be protected against compet.i.tion.

The "compound lards" or "lard compounds," consisting usually of cottonseed oil and oleo-stearin, although the latter may now be replaced by hardened oil, met with the same popular prejudice and attempted legislative interference, but succeeded more easily in coming into common use under such names as "Cottosuet," "Kream Krisp," "Kuxit,"

"Korno," "Cottolene" and "Crisco."

Oleomargarin, now generally abbreviated to margarin, originated, like many other inventions, in military necessity. The French Government in 1869 offered a prize for a b.u.t.ter subst.i.tute for the army that should be cheaper and better than b.u.t.ter in that it did not spoil so easily. The prize was won by a French chemist, Mege-Mouries, who found that by chilling beef fat the solid stearin could be separated from an oil (oleo) which was the substantially same as that in milk and hence in b.u.t.ter. Neutral lard acts the same.

This discovery of how to separate the hard and soft fats was followed by improved methods for purifying them and later by the process for converting the soft into the hard fats by hydrogenation. The net result was to put into the hands of the chemist the ability to draw his materials at will from any land and from the vegetable and animal kingdoms and to combine them as he will to make new fat foods for every use; hard for summer, soft for winter; solid for the northerners and liquid for the southerners; white, yellow or any other color, and flavored to suit the taste. The Hindu can eat no fat from the sacred cow; the Mohammedan and the Jew can eat no fat from the abhorred pig; the vegetarian will touch neither; other people will take both. No matter, all can be accommodated.

All the fats and oils, though they consist of scores of different compounds, have practically the same food value when freed from the extraneous matter that gives them their characteristic flavors. They are all practically tasteless and colorless. The various vegetable and animal oils and fats have about the same digestibility, 98 per cent.,[3]

and are all ordinarily completely utilized in the body, supplying it with two and a quarter times as much energy as any other food.

It does not follow, however, that there is no difference in the products. The margarin men accuse b.u.t.ter of harboring tuberculosis germs from which their product, because it has been heated or is made from vegetable fats, is free. The b.u.t.ter men retort that margarin is lacking in vitamines, those mysterious substances which in minute amounts are necessary for life and especially for growth. Both the claim and the objection lose a large part of their force where the margarin, as is customarily the case, is mixed with b.u.t.ter or churned up with milk to give it the familiar flavor. But the difficulty can be easily overcome.

The milk used for either b.u.t.ter or margarin should be free or freed from disease germs. If margarin is altogether subst.i.tuted for b.u.t.ter, the necessary vitamines may be sufficiently provided by milk, eggs and greens.

Owing to these new processes all the fatty substances of all lands have been brought into compet.i.tion with each other. In such a contest the vegetable is likely to beat the animal and the southern to win over the northern zones. In Europe before the war the proportion of the various ingredients used to make b.u.t.ter subst.i.tutes was as follows:

AVERAGE COMPOSITION OF EUROPEAN MARGARIN

Per Cent.

Animal hard fats 25 Vegetable hard fats 35 Copra 29 Palm-kernel 6 Vegetable soft fats 26 Cottonseed 13 Peanut 6 Sesame 6 Soya-bean 1 Water, milk, salt 14 ___ 100

This is not the composition of any particular brand but the average of them all. The use of a certain amount of the oil of the sesame seed is required by the laws of Germany and Denmark because it can be easily detected by a chemical color test and so serves to prevent the margarin containing it from being sold as b.u.t.ter. "Open sesame!" is the pa.s.sword to these markets. Remembering that margarin originally was made up entirely of animal fats, soft and hard, we can see from the above figures how rapidly they are being displaced by the vegetable fats. The cottonseed and peanut oils have replaced the original oleo oil and the tropical oils from the coconut (copra) and African palm are crowding out the animal hard fats. Since now we can harden at will any of the vegetable oils it is possible to get along altogether without animal fats. Such vegetable margarins were originally prepared for sale in India, but proved unexpectedly popular in Europe, and are now being introduced into America. They are sold under various trade names suggesting their origin, such as "palmira," "palmona," "milkonut,"

"cocose," "coconut oleomargarin" and "nucoa nut margarin." The last named is stated to be made of coconut oil (for the hard fat) and peanut oil (for the soft fat), churned up with a culture of pasteurized milk (to impart the b.u.t.ter flavor). The law requires such a product to be branded "oleomargarine" although it is not. Such cases of compulsory mislabeling are not rare. You remember the "Pigs is Pigs" story.

Peanut b.u.t.ter has won its way into the American menu without any camouflage whatever, and as a salad oil it is almost equally frank about its lowly origin. This nut, which grows on a vine instead of a tree, and is dug from the ground like potatoes instead of being picked with a pole, goes by various names according to locality, peanuts, ground-nuts, monkey-nuts, arachides and goobers. As it takes the place of cotton oil in some of its products so it takes its place in the fields and oilmills of Texas left vacant by the bollweevil. The once despised peanut added some $56,000,000 to the wealth of the South in 1916. The peanut is rich in the richest of foods, some 50 per cent. of oil and 30 per cent. of protein. The latter can be worked up into meat subst.i.tutes that will make the vegetarian cease to envy his omnivorous neighbor. Thanks largely to the chemist who has opened these new fields of usefulness, the peanut-raiser got $1.25 a bushel in 1917 instead of the 30 cents that he got four years before.

It would be impossible to enumerate all the available sources of vegetable oils, for all seeds and nuts contain more or less fatty matter and as we become more economical we shall utilize of what we now throw away. The germ of the corn kernel, once discarded in the manufacture of starch, now yields a popular table oil. From tomato seeds, one of the waste products of the canning factory, can be extracted 22 per cent. of an edible oil. Oats contain 7 per cent. of oil. From rape seed the j.a.panese get 20,000 tons of oil a year. To the sources previously mentioned may be added pumpkin seeds, poppy seeds, raspberry seeds, tobacco seeds, c.o.c.kleburs, hazelnuts, walnuts, beechnuts and acorns.

The oil-bearing seeds of the tropics are innumerable and will become increasingly essential to the inhabitants of northern lands. It was the realization of this that brought on the struggle of the great powers for the possession of tropical territory which, for years before, they did not think worth while raising a flag over. No country in the future can consider itself safe unless it has secure access to such sources. We had a sharp lesson in this during the war. Palm oil, it seems, is necessary for the manufacture of tinplate, an industry that was built up in the United States by the McKinley tariff. The British possessions in West Africa were the chief source of palm oil and the Germans had the handling of it. During the war the British Government a.s.sumed control of the palm oil products of the British and German colonies and prohibited their export to other countries than England. Americans protested and beseeched, but in vain. The British held, quite correctly, that they needed all the oil they could get for food and lubrication and nitroglycerin. But the British also needed canned meat from America for their soldiers and when it was at length brought to their attention that the packers could not s.h.i.+p meat unless they had cans and that cans could not be made without tin and that tin could not be made without palm oil the British Government consented to let us buy a little of their palm oil. The lesson is that of Voltaire's story, "Candide," "Let us cultivate our own garden"--and plant a few palm trees in it--also rubber trees, but that is another story.

The international struggle for oil led to the part.i.tion of the Pacific as the struggle for rubber led to the part.i.tion of Africa. Theodor Weber, as Stevenson says, "harried the Samoans" to get copra much as King Leopold of Belgium harried the Congoese to get caoutchouc. It was Weber who first fully realized that the South Sea islands, formerly given over to cannibals, pirates and missionaries, might be made immensely valuable through the cultivation of the coconut palms. When the ripe coconut is split open and exposed to the sun the meat dries up and shrivels and in this form, called "copra," it can be cut out and s.h.i.+pped to the factory where the oil is extracted and refined. Weber while German Consul in Samoa was also manager of what was locally known as "the long-handled concern" (_Deutsche Handels und Plantagen Gesellschaft der Sudsee Inseln zu Hamburg_), a pioneer commercial and semi-official corporation that played a part in the Pacific somewhat like the British Hudson Bay Company in Canada or East India Company in Hindustan. Through the agency of this corporation on the start Germany acquired a virtual monopoly of the transportation and refining of coconut oil and would have become the dominant power in the Pacific if she had not been checked by force of arms. In Apia Bay in 1889 and again in Manila Bay in 1898 an American fleet faced a German fleet ready for action while a British wars.h.i.+p lay between. So we rescued the Philippines and Samoa from German rule and in 1914 German power was eliminated from the Pacific. During the ten years before the war, the production of copra in the German islands more than doubled and this was only the beginning of the business. Now these islands have been divided up among Australia, New Zealand and j.a.pan, and these countries are planning to take care of the copra.

But although we get no extension of territory from the war we still have the Philippines and some of the Samoan Islands, and these are capable of great development. From her share of the Samoan Islands Germany got a million dollars' worth of copra and we might get more from ours. The Philippines now lead the world in the production of copra, but Java is a close second and Ceylon not far behind. If we do not look out we will be beaten both by the Dutch and the British, for they are undertaking the cultivation of the coconut on a larger scale and in a more systematic way. According to an official bulletin of the Philippine Government a coconut plantation should bring in "dividends ranging from 10 to 75 per cent. from the tenth to the hundredth year." And this being printed in 1913 figured the price of copra at 3-1/2 cents, whereas it brought 4-1/2 cents in 1918, so the prospect is still more encouraging.

The copra is half fat and can be cheaply s.h.i.+pped to America, where it can be crushed in the southern oilmills when they are not busy on cottonseed or peanuts. But even this cost of transportation can be reduced by extracting the oil in the islands and s.h.i.+pping it in bulk like petroleum in tank steamers.

In the year ending June, 1918, the United States imported from the Philippines 155,000,000 pounds of coconut oil worth $18,000,000 and 220,000,000 pounds of copra worth $10,000,000. But this was about half our total importations; the rest of it we had to get from foreign countries. Panama palms may give us a little relief from this dependence on foreign sources. In 1917 we imported 19,000,000 whole coconuts from Panama valued at $700,000.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SPLITTING COCONUTS ON THE ISLAND OF TAHITI

After drying in the sun the meat is picked and the oil extracted for making coconut b.u.t.ter]

[Ill.u.s.tration: From "America's Munitions"

THE ELECTRIC CURRENT Pa.s.sING THROUGH SALT WATER IN THESE CELLS DECOMPOSES THE SALT INTO CAUSTIC SODA AND CHLORINE GAS

There were eight rooms like this in the Edgewood plant, capable of producing 200,000 pounds of chlorine a day]

A new form of fat that has rapidly come into our market is the oil of the soya or soy bean. In 1918 we imported over 300,000,000 pounds of soy-bean oil, mostly from Manchuria. The oil is used in manufacture of subst.i.tutes for b.u.t.ter, lard, cheese, milk and cream, as well as for soap and paint. The soy-bean can be raised in the United States wherever corn can be grown and provides provender for man and beast. The soy meal left after the extraction of the oil makes a good cattle food and the fermented juice affords the shoya sauce made familiar to us through the popularity of the chop-suey restaurants.

As meat and dairy products become scarcer and dearer we shall become increasingly dependent upon the vegetable fats. We should therefore devise means of saving what we now throw away, raise as much as we can under our own flag, keep open avenues for our foreign supply and encourage our cooks to make use of the new products invented by our chemists.

CHAPTER XII

FIGHTING WITH FUMES

The Germans opened the war using projectiles seventeen inches in diameter. They closed it using projectiles one one-hundred millionth of an inch in diameter. And the latter were more effective than the former.

As the dimensions were reduced from molar to molecular the battle became more intense. For when the Big Bertha had shot its bolt, that was the end of it. Whomever it hit was hurt, but after that the steel fragments of the sh.e.l.l lay on the ground harmless and inert. The men in the dugouts could hear the sh.e.l.ls whistle overhead without alarm. But the poison gas could penetrate where the rifle ball could not. The malignant molecules seemed to search out their victims. They crept through the crevices of the subterranean shelters. They hunted for the pinholes in the face masks. They lay in wait for days in the trenches for the soldiers' return as a cat watches at the hole of a mouse. The cannon ball could be seen and heard. The poison gas was invisible and inaudible, and sometimes even the chemical sense which nature has given man for his protection, the sense of smell, failed to give warning of the approach of the foe.

The smaller the matter that man can deal with the more he can get out of it. So long as man was dependent for power upon wind and water his working capacity was very limited. But as soon as he pa.s.sed over the border line from physics into chemistry and learned how to use the molecule, his efficiency in work and warfare was multiplied manifold.

The molecular bombardment of the piston by steam or the gases of combustion runs his engines and propels his cars. The first man who wanted to kill another from a safe distance threw the stone by his arm's strength. David added to his arm the centrifugal force of a sling when he slew Goliath. The Romans improved on this by concentrating in a catapult the strength of a score of slaves and casting stone cannon b.a.l.l.s to the top of the city wall. But finally man got closer to nature's secret and discovered that by loosing a swarm of gaseous molecules he could throw his projectile seventy-five miles and then by the same force burst it into flying fragments. There is no smaller projectile than the atom unless our belligerent chemists can find a way of using the electron stream of the cathode ray. But this so far has figured only in the pages of our scientific romancers and has not yet appeared on the battlefield. If, however, man could tap the reservoir of sub-atomic energy he need do no more work and would make no more war, for unlimited powers of construction and destruction would be at his command. The forces of the infinitesimal are infinite.

The reason why a gas is so active is because it is so egoistic.

Psychologically interpreted, a gas consists of particles having the utmost aversion to one another. Each tries to get as far away from every other as it can. There is no cohesive force; no attractive impulse; nothing to draw them together except the all too feeble power of gravitation. The hotter they get the more they try to disperse and so the gas expands. The gas represents the extreme of individualism as steel represents the extreme of collectivism. The combination of the two works wonders. A hot gas in a steel cylinder is the most powerful agency known to man, and by means of it he accomplishes his greatest achievements in peace or war time.

The projectile is thrown from the gun by the expansive force of the gases released from the powder and when it reaches its destination it is blown to pieces by the same force. This is the end of it if it is a sh.e.l.l of the old-fas.h.i.+oned sort, for the gases of combustion mingle harmlessly with the air of which they are normal const.i.tuents. But if it is a poison gas sh.e.l.l each molecule as it is released goes off straight into the air with a speed twice that of the cannon ball and carries death with it. A man may be hit by a heavy piece of lead or iron and still survive, but an unweighable amount of lethal gas may be fatal to him.

Most of the novelties of the war were merely extensions of what was already known. To increase the caliber of a cannon from 38 to 42 centimeters or its range from 30 to 75 miles does indeed make necessary a decided change in tactics, but it is not comparable to the revolution effected by the introduction of new weapons of unprecedented power such as airplanes, submarines, tanks, high explosives or poison gas. If any army had been as well equipped with these in the beginning as all armies were at the end it might easily have won the war. That is to say, if the general staff of any of the powers had had the foresight and confidence to develop and practise these modes of warfare on a large scale in advance it would have been irresistible against an enemy unprepared to meet them. But no military genius appeared on either side with sufficient courage and imagination to work out such schemes in secret before trying them out on a small scale in the open. Consequently the enemy had fair warning and ample time to learn how to meet them and methods of defense developed concurrently with methods of attack. For instance, consider the motor fortresses to which Ludendorff ascribes his defeat. The British first sent out a few clumsy tanks against the German lines. Then they set about making a lot of stronger and livelier ones, but by the time these were ready the Germans had field guns to smash them and chain fences with concrete posts to stop them. On the other hand, if the Germans had followed up their advantage when they first set the cloud of chlorine floating over the battlefield of Ypres they might have won the war in the spring of 1915 instead of losing it in the fall of 1918. For the British were unprepared and unprotected against the silent death that swept down upon them on the 22nd of April, 1915. What happened then is best told by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in his "History of the Great War."

From the base of the German trenches over a considerable length there appeared jets of whitish vapor, which gathered and swirled until they settled into a definite low cloud-bank, greenish-brown below and yellow above, where it reflected the rays of the sinking sun. This ominous bank of vapor, impelled by a northern breeze, drifted swiftly across the s.p.a.ce which separated the two lines. The French troops, staring over the top of their parapet at this curious screen which ensured them a temporary relief from fire, were observed suddenly to throw up their hands, to clutch at their throats, and to fall to the ground in the agonies of asphyxiation. Many lay where they had fallen, while their comrades, absolutely helpless against this diabolical agency, rushed madly out of the mephitic mist and made for the rear, over-running the lines of trenches behind them. Many of them never halted until they had reached Ypres, while others rushed westwards and put the ca.n.a.l between themselves and the enemy. The Germans, meanwhile, advanced, and took possession of the successive lines of trenches, tenanted only by the dead garrisons, whose blackened faces, contorted figures, and lips fringed with the blood and foam from their bursting lungs, showed the agonies in which they had died. Some thousands of stupefied prisoners, eight batteries of French field-guns, and four British 4.7's, which had been placed in a wood behind the French position, were the trophies won by this disgraceful victory.

Under the shattering blow which they had received, a blow particularly demoralizing to African troops, with their fears of magic and the unknown, it was impossible to rally them effectually until the next day. It is to be remembered in explanation of this disorganization that it was the first experience of these poison tactics, and that the troops engaged received the gas in a very much more severe form than our own men on the right of Langemarck. For a time there was a gap five miles broad in the front of the position of the Allies, and there were many hours during which there was no substantial force between the Germans and Ypres. They wasted their time, however, in consolidating their ground, and the chance of a great coup pa.s.sed forever. They had sold their souls as soldiers, but the Devil's price was a poor one. Had they had a corps of cavalry ready, and pushed them through the gap, it would have been the most dangerous moment of the war.

A deserter had come over from the German side a week before and told them that cylinders of poison gas had been laid in the front trenches, but no one believed him or paid any attention to his tale. War was then, in the Englishman's opinion, a gentleman's game, the royal sport, and poison was prohibited by the Hague rules. But the Germans were not playing the game according to the rules, so the British soldiers were strangled in their own trenches and fell easy victims to the advancing foe. Within half an hour after the gas was turned on 80 per cent. of the opposing troops were knocked out. The Canadians, with wet handkerchiefs over their faces, closed in to stop the gap, but if the Germans had been prepared for such success they could have cleared the way to the coast.

But after such trials the Germans stopped the use of free chlorine and began the preparation of more poisonous gases. In some way that may not be revealed till the secret history of the war is published, the British Intelligence Department obtained a copy of the lecture notes of the instructions to the German staff giving details of the new system of gas warfare to be started in December. Among the compounds named was phosgene, a gas so lethal that one part in ten thousand of air may be fatal. The antidote for it is hexamethylene tetramine. This is not something the soldier--or anybody else--is accustomed to carry around with him, but the British having had a chance to cram up in advance on the stolen lecture notes were ready with gas helmets soaked in the reagent with the long name.

The Germans rejoiced when gas bombs took the place of bayonets because this was a field in which intelligence counted for more than brute force and in which therefore they expected to be supreme. As usual they were right in their major premise but wrong in their conclusion, owing to the egoism of their implicit minor premise. It does indeed give the advantage to skill and science, but the Germans were beaten at their own game, for by the end of the war the United States was able to turn out toxic gases at a rate of 200 tons a day, while the output of Germany or England was only about 30 tons. A gas plant was started at Edgewood, Maryland, in November, 1917. By March it was filling sh.e.l.l and before the war put a stop to its activities in the fall it was producing 1,300,000 pounds of chlorine, 1,000,000 pounds of chlorpicrin, 1,300,000 pounds of phosgene and 700,000 pounds of mustard gas a month.

Chlorine, the first gas used, is unpleasantly familiar to every one who has entered a chemical laboratory or who has smelled the breath of bleaching powder. It is a greenish-yellow gas made from common salt. The Germans employed it at Ypres by laying cylinders of the liquefied gas in the trenches, about a yard apart, and running a lead discharge pipe over the parapet. When the stop c.o.c.ks are turned the gas streams out and since it is two and a half times as heavy as air it rolls over the ground like a noisome mist. It works best when the ground slopes gently down toward the enemy and when the wind blows in that direction at a rate between four and twelve miles an hour. But the wind, being strictly neutral, may change its direction without warning and then the gases turn back in their flight and attack their own side, something that rifle bullets have never been known to do.

[Ill.u.s.tration: International Film Service

GERMANS STARTING A GAS ATTACK ON THE RUSSIAN LINES

Behind the cylinders from which the gas streams are seen three lines of German troops waiting to attack. The photograph was taken from above by a Russian airman]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Press Ill.u.s.trating Service

FILLING THE CANNISTERS OF GAS MASKS WITH CHARCOAL MADE FROM FRUIT PITS IN LONG ISLAND CITY]

Because free chlorine would not stay put and was dependent on the favor of the wind for its effect, it was later employed, not as an elemental gas, but in some volatile liquid that could be fired in a sh.e.l.l and so released at any particular point far back of the front trenches.

The most commonly used of these compounds was phosgene, which, as the reader can see by inspection of its formula, COCl_{2}, consists of chlorine (Cl) combined with carbon monoxide (CO), the cause of deaths from illuminating gas. These two poisonous gases, chlorine and carbon monoxide, when mixed together, will not readily unite, but if a ray of sunlight falls upon the mixture they combine at once. For this reason John Davy, who discovered the compound over a hundred years ago, named it phosgene, that is, "produced by light." The same roots recur in hydrogen, so named because it is "produced from water," and phosphorus, because it is a "light-bearer."