The Dyestuff and Chemical Situation

The Aniline Color, Dyestuff and Chemical Conditions
from
August 1st, 1914,
to
April 1st, 1917.
A series of Addresses and Articles
Compiled by:
I. F. Stone
1917Extracts from Address before The National Printing Ink  Manufacturers' Credit Association September 25th, 1914
I. F. Stone

There is no insuperable reason why my company or any other properly equipped chemical manufacturing company in the United States cannot supply the same quality and amount of colors as we are getting from Germany. We have every raw material necessary, and we have the ability and skilled labor. It is not a question of materials or experience or capital we have made all these colors and can do it again. We have an investment of about one and one-half million dollars and stand ready to invest as much more if the proper conditions of trade can be assured. Every time an American manufacturer puts out a color that in any wise competes with the German product, the price of the German article is at once cut to a figure that, with our high-priced labor and higher overhead expense, is impossible to meet. What is needed is a considerable higher tariff on imported colors, and also a patriotic willingness on the part of American buyers for a time perhaps for a long time to pay a higher price for goods than they have been accustomed to doing, to make some personal sacrifices in order to secure a permanent base of supplies in this country. Capital certainly will hesitate or refuse to make the necessary investment simply to bridge over the time until German competitors are again ready with their price-cutting and unfair competition.

German chemists probably have one hundred million dollars invested in the industry. American trade uses but a small part of their output, and if there are losses because of lower prices to us they can easily absorb them in the better prices charged on the bulk of their product going to other countries. They do not intend, if they can prevent it, for the color industry to get a footing in the United States. I believe they will resort to the extreme of pricecutting and unfair methods to kill off any attempt to make colors here, because what they fear, and intend to prevent, is competition in their own export trade. It will, as I have said, require much patriotism and loyalty and no little sacrifice on the part of everyone to bring about a complete establishment of the industry in America.