THE CHEMISTS\u27 CRUSADE: THE RISE OF AN INDUSTRIAL SCIENCE IN MODERN AMERICA, 1907-1922

This study examines the role of popularization in soliciting industrial support for the discipline of chemistry in early twentieth-century America. It argues that the organized use of popularization during the period surrounding World War I played a constitutive role in the chemical profession\u27s cultivation of industrial patronage and in the transformation of chemistry into an industrialized big science. A vigorous educational crusade, led by American chemists in cooperation with officials of the federal government and the chemical industry, directly contributed to the rise of chemistry as the largest, most industry-oriented science in America. The chemists\u27 crusade was launched in the prewar period by Robert Kennedy Duncan and Arthur D. Little, who effectively preached the gospel of industrial research to manufacturers, capitalists, and their fellow chemists; Duncan\u27s book The Chemistry of Commerce (1907) led to the founding of the Mellon Institute of Industrial Research in 1913. The forging of links between chemistry and industry was decisively accelerated during World War I, the chemists\u27 war, which was marked by the dramatic expansion of chemical manufacturing, a rise in the industrial demand for chemical expertise, and the increased involvement of chemists in political affairs and in military research and development. The war also enhanced the influence of industrial and industry-minded chemists such as Charles H. Herty, who led the American Chemical Society in organizing special meetings, public lectures, industrial expositions, and a news service in order to advance the mutual interests of chemistry and the chemical industry. These efforts at popularization, conducted with the help of professional publicists, helped convince manufacturers, investors, editors, legislators, the military, and other relevant constituencies that chemistry was vital to the nation\u27s industrial progress and national defense. The chemists\u27 crusade culminated in the postwar campaign to protect the American synthetic dye industry, in which the ACS, leading dye manufacturers, and the newly-created Chemical Foundation utilized popular media (especially Edwin E. Slosson\u27s book Creative Chemistry) to persuade Congress to pass the Fordney-McCumber tariff act in 1922