No. 111.

Leblanc Syndicates

Knowledge is Power.

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Metal Market Report

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Feeding Cattle for Dairy Purposes

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LEBLANC SYNDICATES.

Vol. V.

The next few days will bring its pains and pleasures. To the works chemist, whose dull routine is scarcely broken from year's end to year's end, the visit to London and the communion with his fellows at the forthcoming meeting of the Society of Chemical Industry will be a pleasure indeed. But while those who occupy a position of lesser responsibility are enjoying a mental repose from the extra watchful. ness necessary at home, how are the principals of those establishments about to spend their chemical holiday? Fact does not require us to herald it, that the Leblanc alkali makers have no mean task before them to maintain the necessity for their existence. Most of the makers of bleach are of Liberal views in politics; and wedded to the free trade ticket, so that if an opportunity was given for a thorough discussion of the question, syndicates quá syndicates, we should be able to judge how far protectionist measures and free trade views are consistent with each other.

The opportunity will soon be afforded. Dissatisfied with the working of the various combinations that have in late years been attempted to ameliorate the ever-sinking condition of the Leblanc process, a meeting is to be held next week to consider what is to be the future action and programme of the Leblanc makers, and it is not improbable that the effete and worn-out associations, none of which have ever worked satisfactorily, will be replaced by a much more rational and commendable scheme.

We have never yet been able to see how it has come to pass that men of good business reputation should have supported such schemes of consolidation, and such principles as were involved in the muriatic acid convention, the bleach convention, the chlorate arrangement, and the several other combinations connected with this trade, and we have openly expressed our views from time to time, and having urged our suit perhaps with more zeal than discretion, our remarks have been misinterpreted into open hostility to the Leblanc makers, some of whom have not hesitated to apply to us their most charitable remarks.

The unsatisfactory nature of all the existing arrangements is now amply proved by the proposals to be made to the meeting in London, on Tuesday next, the 9th inst. Had the existing rings, syndicates, conventions, or arrangements proved satisfactory, there would have been no need for any change, and those makers who have blamed us for our outspoken criticisms are unconsciously proving the truth of the position we have from time to time taken up.

Our criticism to-day is of an opposite character. We hear it is the intention of the makers to dissolve all existing arrangements, bleach, chlorate and alkali; all these conventions are to vanish into thin air, and to be replaced by a much more rational convention. The proposal to be made by the Executive Committee is, that every maker shall be bound to decompose not more than a certain fixed quantity of salt, and that in every other particular, as to what articles