Raleigh, April 30—Two hundred ninety chemical plants, excluding such industries as furniture, foundries, tobacco, metallurgy and water purification in which chemistry plays an important part, exist in North Carolina as one of the most important enterprises, according to an announcement by Frank C. Vilbrandt, professor of industrial chemistry, University of North Carolina.
“Compared with some of the more important industries in the state, such as cotton knitting and cotton mills, the chemical industries yield greater production in proportion to capital invested and laborers employed than any other class,” said the expert.
“The cotton mills and knitting mills, numbering approximately 625 in all have an invested capital of over $231,150,000, employing over 90,000 people and yielding $320,000,000 of products. The 23 tobacco plants, constituting the industrial side of tobacco, employing 9,300 people, have a capital investment of $130,440,000 and yield $225,000,000 worth of products.
“The chemical industries, of which there are 290 plants, have a capital investment of but $117,500,000 employing but 10,050 people and yielding $201,500,000 worth of products. These figures do not include proprietary drugs and medicines, which rightly belong to the field of pharmacy, but which the layman attributes to chemistry. Statistics show these chemical industries are almost on a par with our great tobacco industry, in which we lead the world.
“It is evident, therefore, that the state is as much of a chemical industrial state as it is a cotton or tobacco state,” he asserted.
From the front page of the Reidsville Review, April 30, 1923
No comments:
Post a Comment