INDUSTRIAL DEPENDENCE

Otautau Standard and Wallace County Chronicle, Volume X, Issue 494, 10 November 1914, Page 7

INDUSTRIAL DEPENDENCE

The "New York ' Evening Post,' in discussing the subject of the dependence of many American industries on other industries in Continental Europe, remarks : —

"At first it was only the steel trade and the textile industry; the one had been buying ferro-manganese from Germany, the other had relied almost entirely on the German chemists for the dyes AA-hich gave the requisite .colors to its fabrics. But the startled outcry from tlie two trades was only the beginning. The electrical industry was presently heard from, with the word that the platinum supply from the Ural Mountains Avas cut off, and that certain carbons and metal filaments, made by German manufacturers and essential for the arc-light, could not be obtained after existing supplies on hand in the United States were used up. The drug and chemical trades Avere as quick in coining into view; an astonishing number of indispensable materials for these industries appeared to have their single source of production in Germany. Drug dealers here trebled their price of such products as citric acid, tartaric acid, carbolic acid, gum camphor, and dandelion root, and Avarned' consumers of an impending failure of supplies. In quick succession the same word came from manufacturers of glass, soap, matches, artificial fertiliser, gunpoAvder. In all these industries potash is an essential raAV material. Natural potash is a German monopoly, and Avith the Avar tho supply Avas naturally blockaded. Misgiving spread after this to the manufacturers of photographic materials, becatise of the prospective embargo on German-made oxalic acid. Then tlie glove, shoe, and hat trades had their turn; nobody outside the trades had suspected to what extent they depended on Continental Europe for their particular kinds of material. Even certain kinds of felt roofing were draAvn into the dilemma, for the curious reason that the rags from which it has been made are imported from Belgium. As a highly interesting climax London raised the alarm over the Transvaal gold mines — the last of all places to be suspected in this case. These, like our own Rocky Mountain gold mines, extract the metal by the cyanide process, and cyanide of potassium, again a byproduct of German potash, was about to bo cut off."