therefore hotly discussed, Congress at the last moment struck off the
specific duty from two of the most important of the dyestuffs, indigo
and alizarin, as well as from all medicinals and flavors.

The manufacture of dyes is not a big business, but it is a strategic
business. Heligoland is not a big island, but England would have been
glad to buy it back during the war at a high price per square yard.
American industries employing over two million men and women and
producing over three billion dollars' worth of products a year are
dependent upon dyes. Chief of these is of course textiles, using more
than half the dyes; next come leather, paper, paint and ink. We have
been importing more than $12,000,000 worth of coal-tar products a year,
but the cottonseed oil we exported in 1912 would alone suffice to pay
that bill twice over. But although the manufacture of dyes cannot be
called a big business, in comparison with some others, it is a paying
business when well managed. The German concerns paid on an average 22
per cent. dividends on their capital and sometimes as high as 50 per
cent. Most of the standard dyes have been so long in use that the
patents are off and the processes are well enough known. We have the
coal tar and we have the chemists, so there seems no good reason why we
should not make our own dyes, at least enough of them so we will not be
caught napping as we were in 1914. It was decidedly humiliating for our
Government to have to beg Germany to sell us enough colors to print our
stamps and greenbacks and then have to beg Great Britain for permission
to bring them over by Dutch ships.

The raw material for the production of coal-tar products we have in
abundance if we will only take the trouble to save it. In 1914 the crude
light oil collected from the coke-ovens would have produced only about
4,500,000 gallons of benzol and 1,500,000 gallons of toluol, but in 1917