It's his dope that if some Dutch guy can beat it into some big industrial joint, say like those of the United States Steel Company or the Standard Oil, and by an intelligent application of the laws of nature change waste material into valuable by-products and big dividends, that it is up to society to experiment a little with its social junk pile and see what a little of the right kind of chemistry will do to the waste material to be found therein.
I can distinctly remember when the big blast furnaces around this man's town were cussed right along for dumping slag and cinders into the local river as waste material. The aborigines and other natives hereabouts used to form committees to call on our old college friend, Andy Carnegie, and tell him about it. Andy, of course, felt badly, but used to come back with a "What's biting you people, anyway? Nobody can eat this slag, can they?" He had to put his waste somewhere, so why not use the rivers? Along about this time, however, in blows a Dutch boy named Schwab, he studies the question of slag and other waste material and its utilization; and now said slag is converted into high grade cement, price, $15 per ton, f. o. b. cars, Pittsburgh, Pa.
Ditto the juice from the oil refineries which polluted the rivers when I was a kid. At present writing this former waste material that used to wring hectic curses from all the river water-users from Pittsburgh to Cairo is changed into thirty-two separate compounds; and yet some people actually think that John D. stole his coin when the truth of the matter is that he simply hired a guy to study out plans for the utilization of waste and then beat the other stiffs to it before they were next.
Same way with the slaughter houses. When Charley Murphy was wiping his beezer on the bar towel and asking, "Wot'll youse guys have next?" most every town had an unlovely spot known as the slaughter-house district, and property was valued in an increasing ratio based on its distance therefrom. Because why? Foul-smelling waste. But along comes P. Armour, Esq., studies the waste question and says to the slaughter-house stiffs, "Gimme the leavings and other things you throw away and I'll not only put Chicago on the map, but I'll likewise build one of the loveliest trusts that ever allowed a fourth-rate lawyer to bust into public life by the attacking of the same."