False Economy JtLcoNTOMY is the watchword in Washington these days, but tHere are indications that it is being overdone in places.

L· cii\^ i u i ι ι υ ι α ι ι υ υ cue; w n / , w v / u a u i u u u u u u i a u u n \tn viciVCJ to meetings for the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. This is a big department; it includes the-Food and Orug Administration, the Office of Education, the Public Health Service, the National Institutes of Health, and the Social Security Administration as well as Howard University and several Washington hospitals. With scientific and tech­nical personnel making up a substantial percentage of the department's 35,000 employees, $75,000 won't go far.

An example of what this limitation is doing was given at tlie recent ACS meeting in Chicago. The National institutes of Health employs upward of 175 chemists. It usually sends between 15 to 30 to ACS national meetings, depending on trie distance from Washington.

This time NIH sent five but did not pay more than half expense for any. Six went at their own expense. One who paid half his expenses is chairman-elect of an ACS division and presided over three sessions. Two others who had papers on the program were unahle to get either official ltfave or travel allowance, and their papers were read hv title.

An ironic twist was added by the fact that NIH research grants have liberal travel allowances. Thus, a great many chemists who are working under NIH grants went to Chicago a t government expense while N I H personnel stayed home.

Attendance at meetings is important to scientists, espe­cially if they are expected to stay in the forefront of their field. Budgetary restrictions which force a major cuthack in attendance at scientific meetings represent a short-sighted, fiilse-economy type of thinking. The Government pays in the neighborhood of $2 billion annually for research. This makes a $T5,000 limit on travel for one of the most important departments look silly.

There is everv indication that the restriction was spiteful and ill-conceived. It came ahout when the House Appropria­tions Committee got wind of a plan of the Office of Educa­tion to send 40 employees to a meeting of the American Asso­ciation of Public School Administrators in Atlantic City early this year. It forthwith decided on the travel limitation be­cause of "the gross abuse of the authority previously ex­tended."

It is quite possible that some bureaus may "do entirely too much traveling to attend meetings and conventions," as t he committee said. But to hog-tie an entire department in order to punish one bureau seems unreasonable. Justice shouldn't be so hlind. Certainly, the committee must have realized the implications of its action, which was obviously intended to be punitive but might well turn out to be crip­pling.

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ν^ρτ ι ι τ ι ι^ ι τ ι o r r c 5 d i m i ) i n JL EO:PLE much more schooled in finance than we tell us that the stock market usually reflects future rather than past per­formance.

WAITER J. MURPHY, Editor

Bo triat as it may, we were more than mildly interested to note that profits in the first six months of the year were the second highest corporate income on record for the nation's manufacturers. Most economists, including those who are somewhat pessimistic about business in the last half, believe that ih>53 profits wiii be rxceeded only by those of the banner year of 1950 when the tax picture was quite different.

Business with the chemical companies showed up well, considering tight profit margins under which most of them operate. The over-all gain in net profit was 14%, with 30 of the 35 «companies listed in the Federal Reserve study earning higher profits. Eleven pharmaceutical companies lumped together, however, showed a 2% decline, while the profits of the five concerns in the agricultural by-products field taken together registered neither gain or loss.

The Chemical Industry Grows and Grows τ HE rnidwestern states of Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin, referred to frequently as the "East North Central States" contribute about one third of the entire nation's "value added by manufacture." This region, which makes up only 8% of the area of the United States, ranks first airaong the Bureau of the Census' nine geographic divi­sions in manufactures and second in value added by its chemical industry.

These and other little known facts about the area were brought out at the symposium on "Resources for the Chemi­cal Industry" sponsored by the ACS Division of Chemical Marketing and Economics at the recent national meeting in Chicago.

The increase in chemical production in the Southwest and in the states along the Pacific Coast has received the most attention from the general press but the fact still remains that the Middle Atlantic States—New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey—are first in "value added by the chemical industry" and the East North Central States rank second.

Abundant reserves of fuels and the common "work-horse" variety of minerals assure the continued expansion of the chemical industry in the five-state area. Salt, brines, and gypsuin are available in huge quantities in Michigan and Ohio; limestone and dolomite in all five states; high purity silica in Illinois, Ohio, and Wisconsin; fluorspar in Illinois; iron ores in Michigan and Wisconsin. All the states have important reserves of coal, petroleum, and natural gas. All have large production of farm products, many of which are used as raw materials by the chemical industry.

The symposium in full will appear early in 1954 in In-dustrktl aixd Engineering Chemistry. So far the Southwest, the Pacific States, New England, the Middle Atlantic States, and four of the Mountain States have heen covered. In all these areas, the chemical industry continues to show spec­tacular growth. Small wonder then that we hear so much in the general press about the twentieth century's being "The Chemical Century."

One speaker after the other on the symposium demon­strated that the area under review is richly endowed in natural resources. The five states are rich also in highly competent technical manpower, a most essential element to the growth of the chemical industry.

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