Pollution Solution-1861 Style In 1859, Eben N. Horsford, Rumford Professor of Chemistry a t Haward, and George F. Wilson, a textile chemical jobber uf

Providence, Rhode Island, organized Rumford Chemical Works a t Seekonk, Massachusetts. Two of their main products were baking powder, a Horsford invention, and fertilizer. Air pollution was a legal problem from the very beginning, hut in 1861, they rid themselves of it in a most unusual fashion-they gat the State line changed. Horace Greeley told the story quite proudly in 1873 in "The Great Industries of the United States."

"Prosecutions were foolishly carried out by some of the inhabitants against the works as a nuisance but these were even- tually ended by the settlement of the boundary line between Massachusetts and Rhode Island which Mr. Wilson and his friends had vigorously pushed on to its issue, and by which the westerly portion of Seekank, an which are situated the Rumford Chemi- cal Works, became a part of Rhode Island. Thus were the complaints under the Massachusetts law quashed and Rhade Island gained one of the most important of her manufactories, while she has nothing of which she may more properly boast as being more valuable to the well being of the race in general."

Herbert T. Pratt E. I. du Pont Company Wilmington, Delaware

412 /Journal of Chemical Education