Some Founders of the Chemical Industry. By J. Fenwick Allan.
(Sherratt and Hughes. 5s. net.)—This volume consists of articles reprinted from the Chemical Trade Journal. It has a double interest. It pictures for us some remarkable men, and it suggests
the very serious reflection whether the system which has super- eedleit it may be said, the activities of individual men works for good or net. The province in which these men laboured—there are eight whose biographies are given—was mainly the alkali trade. This trade, in common with many others, has been absorbed in a Trust or Combine named the United Alkali Company. This is not the place to estimate the significance of the change, but we may welcome without hesitation a volume which records the achievements of the men who laid the founda- tion of a great industry. On the whole, they were not ill repaid, —at least they fared better than many inventors have done. The reward did not always come from the quarter whence it might have been expected. William Gossage, for instance, reaped a harvest of wealth, not from the more important, as they seemed, of his many discoveries, but from mottled soap. He had been taking out patents for thirty years with little reward but the suet& d'estitne, when in 1854 he perfected the process of putting into genuine soap silicate of soda and colouring matter, and sub- jecting the mixture to a process which produced semi-crystallisa- tion. There is, of necessity, much technical detail in the book, but it will not be found beyond the comprehension of the ordinary reader.
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