from Jamaica and indigo from India had to be imported. That we are not
so independent today is our own fault, for we waste enough coal tar to
supply ourselves and other countries with all the new dyes needed. It is
essentially a question of economy and organization. We have forgotten
how to economize, but we have learned how to organize.

The British Government gave the discoverer of mauve a title, but it did
not give him any support in his endeavors to develop the industry,
although England led the world in textiles and needed more dyes than any
other country. So in 1874 Sir William Perkin relinquished the attempt to
manufacture the dyes he had discovered because, as he said, Oxford and
Cambridge refused to educate chemists or to carry on research. Their
students, trained in the classics for the profession of being a
gentleman, showed a decided repugnance to the laboratory on account of
its bad smells. So when Hofmann went home he virtually took the infant
industry along with him to Germany, where Ph.D.'s were cheap and
plentiful and not afraid of bad smells. There the business throve
amazingly, and by 1914 the Germans were manufacturing more than
three-fourths of all the coal-tar products of the world and supplying
material for most of the rest. The British cursed the universities for
thus imperiling the nation through their narrowness and neglect; but
this accusation, though natural, was not altogether fair, for at least
half the blame should go to the British dyer, who did not care where his
colors came from, so long as they were cheap. When finally the
universities did turn over a new leaf and began to educate chemists, the
manufacturers would not employ them. Before the war six English
factories producing dyestuffs employed only 35 chemists altogether,
while one German color works, the Höchster Farbwerke, employed 307
expert chemists and 74 technologists.