Chemical Industries in Czechoslovakia
By J. Pelc, Research Chemist.
It is only natural that a successful economic and industrial revolution in the Czechoslovak lands will follow the successful political revolution which has just taken place. The future of not only Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia and Slovakia, but of all new Slav states in Central Europe is closely bound up with the industrial development of natural resources of these countries.
Several important branches of the chemical industry have flourished in Czechoslovakia. For the last fifty years Czech chemists were leaders in the sugar industry, raw sugar production and refining of sugar. But unfortunately nearly all magnificent researches in the chemistry of sugars, performed by Czech chemists, were published in German chemical journals, and consequently credit for them was given to Germans. Czech metallurgists and mining engineers, graduates of the Příbram Mining Academy and of the Technical Universities of Prague and Brno, could not find employment in mines, steel mills and foundries owned by their own people, since most of the big plants were in German hands. Silver mines of Příbram and the gold and radium ore mines of Jáchymov were the property of the Austrian state, while steel mills and iron ore mines of Nucic, Kladno and Vítkovice were in the hands of the German steel trust, the chief competitor of the United States Steel Corporation.
All chemical patents were published only in German, and for this reason the patentees were all classed as German chemists. Paints, dyes, synthetic drugs, medicines, organic compounds were mostly imported from Germany; the few Czech manufactorers who started chemical works operated under the most unfavorable circumstances, because the Austrian government would not help the Czech chemical industry to established itself.
Soap industry and nitrate production, charcoal, brick anl lime manufacturing, were not concentrated and for that reason were not considered important branches of chemical industries. All this manufacturing was carried on by individuals who did not dare to invest more capital in their factories, because the Austrian government would not encourage their export business and in fact favored imports from Germany into Austria. Czech potteries and ceramic works which were producing very artistic and beautiful objects received no encouragement from the Vienna government. The favor of the German rulers of Austria was extended to breweries and distilleries paying high taxes and owned in most cases by German and Jews; the government was willing to encourage the consumption of beer and alcohol, even though in many parts of Austria alcoholism had come to be a terrible evil.
These are only a few examples showing the attitude of the old Austria toward chemical industries in the Czechoslovak lands. It was impossible that Czech industries should flourish, while the government openly favored both the Austrian Germans and the manufacturers of Germany as against Czech enterprise.
Hard work, very hard work, is in store for Czech chemists and manufacturers, and it will take a long time, before all German influence is removed from technical schools, societies, factories, and from the economic and industrial life in general. The fight for liberation is not completed; Czechoslovaks must keep up their revolutionary struggle, until they win also economic victory and full industrial freedom. Big problems are being solved at the present moment in the chemical world, and Czechoslovak chemists must participate fully in their solution and prove to the world that the energy of the nation was not exhausted in the fight for political liberty.
Agricultural chemistry should above all command the immeliatc attention of Czech chemists. The new government ought to assist them to create a big organisation of analytical, research and manufacturing chemists so as to increase the productiveness of soil and to studv ways of utilising waste and by-products. From the manufacturing point of view will involve princinally the manufacturing of fertilisers first, by fixation of atmospheric nitrogen as nitric acid and its salts or as ammonia and salts, and second from waste products like bones, sugar residues, sewage, etc. The question of atmospheric nitrogen must not be neglected in Czechoslovak lands, because a Ger-
