MINUTES OF EVIDENCE.
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PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
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CO. 885
23 PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC- COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO
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24 April 1914.]
WHALING COMMITTEE:
Mr. HOLMAN KINGDON, M.A.
years ago we got hold of a process for hydrogenating ails. It is really the use of that process by us and the development of it that has given us any interest in whale oil at all. Before that whale oil was an article which did not concern us; we did not know its value, and I do not think any of us had even seen a sample of it. I do not know whether you gentlemen would like me to go into the chemical aspect of the thing at all-I do not suppose it is really of interest to show how it is that this hydrogenation makes this oil available for our purposes.
616, I do not think the details would interest us, but we should like to have a general outline, and partien- larly to know whether this process is adapted for fitting the oil for edible purposes That is a very big question. May I start with this: If you take au ordinary chemical molecule composed of carbon atoma-carbon being a tetra- valent body with four bonds or links-you can have these atoms coupled up with two bonds, that is, each having two bonds free, or with one bond, which would leave three bonds free. Soap, as you know, is produced by the saponification of fatty matter the union of an alkali with a fat-and the fate mostly used for sosp manufacture are fats where there is only one bond between the atoms of carbon, and all the spare bonds are taken up, whether by hydrogen or some other stom. It may be a group, of course. Examples of such bodies Ordinary woap is are stearic and palmitic acids. nothing more nor less than sodium stearate. You get a bard soap, and that, of course, is what you want. I am only talking of household soaps and not what is known as soft soap, which is always a soft article sold in tins and quite a different thing. We can take oil like cotton oil, for example, which would give a per- fectly soft soup useless in itself as an article of com- merce, and we can hydrogenate that oil and then saponify it and get a hard soap just as we could have done if we had dealt in the first place with an article like tallow; that is why this hydrogenation process has been called (and I dare say you may have heard it called by that name) a hardening process, and the reason is because it enables you to take an article which in the ordinary way would give you a soft result on saponifica- tion and produce a hard result. Consequently the non- technical commercial world have adopted the name of the hardening process, and the firms which use the hard- ening process (another word comes into the English language) are called "hardeners."
617. Is it what is known as a catalytic process? -Yrs.
Am I trenching
I cannot see any
18. That is the catalytic agrut?
If so I must withdraw the question, of on secrets ?
a good many course?--You will probably ask me questions to which that remark will apply, and in reply I should like to ask you this. objection to my telling you anything that is obtainable in any patent specification that is published to the public at large, and if you get the current numbers of the Seifenseider Zeitung you will find the whole of these things drawn up at great length by people interesteil in the industry and setting out their views either on The catalytic agent is a nickel one point or the other. salt. but the nature of the catalytic agent and the nature of the reaction of course is not a matter which really concerns the result. Shall I show you these samples (producing various bottles of oil). These are whale oils as graded by us. We grade them 01. 0, 03 and 04. We have these made up really as standardis, and you will notice, that the colour darkens na the numbers rise. The lighter are more valuable than the darker. I also brought you samples of the hardened whale oil (pro- That is the whale oil after ducing boxes of the same).
it has been through our process; and of course it is, from a scientific point of view, a wonderful result-there is no question about that. It is the nearest approach to a revolution there has been in soap manufacture in my lifetime.
619. This requires another process before it becomes soap? Yes. It is a fat which is ready to be used in Now you will see na map the manufacture of soap. manufacturers we naturally at once had the greatest interest in an oil which was comparatively cheap and had up to the present not been available for the manu-
[Continued.
facture of soap, and that is the origin of our interest in whale oil. Directly that was the case we naturally studied the thing in all its aspects as far as we were able, and we have of course acquired a certain amount of experience from the commercial point of view in whale oil-how it is made, where it comes from, the people who dea! in it, the value of it, the markets in it, and the points which effect its value and so on. On the natural history side of the question I must admit that I am entirely ignorant.
620. Before we leave the hardening process, you can no doubt tell us something about hardening processes worked by other people, possibly by other methods, of which I think there are some in existence ?-We had great patent law suit a short time ago. We were naturally interested, although, of course, the world is not as a rule sympathetic to a monopoly, in not having other people working our process, and we endeavoured to establish one of our patents as a master patent. Without going into the reasons why we failed in our law suit, we did fail, and the result is that there has been a whole host of other processes which have come out, some of which are to-day working, with what success and with what results I cannot say.
621-625. Are catalysing agents other than nickel salts employed to your knowledge?-I think nickel in some form or other is the main catalytic agent. I was going to tell you that the difficulty of dealing with the whaling companies at the present time is that you can. not persuade them that whale oil is not now being made into an edible product, in fact, their idea of the value of their oil increases, I believe, weekly. I am not speaking of the price they get for it, but their own ideas, because they think it will only be a short time before everybody will be eating whale oil. I may say in order to avoid giving you any qualms on this subject, that if it ever does come to pass you will never recognise it. If you were to ask me whether I believe that whale oil will be made edible I can only tell you I really do not know, but I have seen stranger things happen. There is no doubt at the present time a tremendous amount of scientific work being done on these processes, and on the improve- ment of products generally with the object of getting some edible result. Such extraordinary advances have been made in other directions that I frankly do not see why, if you are able to eliminate some of the difficulties that at present exist, you should not make an edible product out of whale oil. I can imagine that in a severe state of hunger, I would not mind spreading that (indicating the sample of hardened oil) on a piece of biscuit and eating it myself. As far as I know there is no reason absolutely from a chemical point of view why the article should not be perfectly healthy to use; it should be most nourishing. I imagine.
626. Are nickel salts poisonous ?--I do not know. Do you mean if you started to eat nickel, what would happen to you?
627. I mean, would it be necessary to take care that none of the catalyser was left in the product -The manufacturer will take care of that as far as he pos- sibly can. because it is an expensive constituent. "Da you think there is any danger that the product made from oil as an edible product may have some deleterious effect, owing to the presence in it of some portion of the catalyser? Is that what you had in your mind?
62. Exactly, and difficulty in eliminating the cata. lyser might render the process of no commercial value? -If it was proved that the presence of nickel in any shape or form was deleterious to the general health, I should think it most unlikely that the sale of those hardened fats as edible products would long be pre- vented by the presence of nickel. If you did not know Home way of clearing out the last remnant of it. it would be only a short period before such a way would be discovered.
629. That is exactly the point on which I wanted to elicit an opinion?-I believe I am correct in saying this: I heard it mentioned that the German Govern- ment have already prohibited the sale of some of these products from that very point of view, and I was told recently that they had modified their prohibition, be cause this fear was shown to be baseless. That is only report; I have no real knowledge of that myself.
24 April 1914.]
Mr. HOLMAN KINGDON, M.A.
630. Do you make anything else from whale oil besides soap at present-No, nothing at all. Of course, do not misunderstand me, We do not ever make any soap from whale oil only; with us soap. making is, you may say, mixing your constituents in accordance with market prices, and the requirements of the article you want to make. I do not think soap is ever made from any single oil. Possibly in France or Italy you may come across an olive oil soup made by the saponification of olive oil, and nothing else, but not in England. All our soaps are mixtures of fats, and to get the required result in any case you cannot put in more than a certain proportion of any one constituent.
631. I have a few more questions to ask about markets and prices, but no more with regard to uses and products. I do not know whether you have any. thing further to say about uses and products ?—I do not know whether this would be of interest, Mr. Chairman, but it is only the higher grades of whale oil we can use. We practically stop there (pointing to sample No. 02); we cannot do anything with these (pointing to samples Nos. 03 and 04). As I said before, I do not want to go into useless side walks over this, but the free acid in the whale oil in the lower grade is enormous; I have seen a No. 4 with n free acid content of over 25 per cent. All these things mean decomposition, the existence of very complicated organic compounds, and they interfere very much with the carrying out of this process.
632. I cannot pretend to follow these technicalities P -No, but generally speaking, you can understand a process like this-an article in a reasonable state of purity is more amenable to this treatment than when mixed up with a very considerable proportion of com- plicated other products.
633. Quite so --Whale oil of this nature (03 and 04) is used for other purposes; I believe tanners use whale oil, it is also mixed with lubricating oils and for other purposes. We have practically no use for this, but, there again, perhaps in five years' time we shall have found out how to turn this into that (pointing to sample of hardened fut).
634. You would hardly be an expert in the uses to which whale oil is put in other trades?-No, most cer- tainly not I have absolutely no knowledge on the subject, except that I know there is a considerable amount of these varieties of whale oil brought into this country and sold. Glasgow used to be the great centre of this industry long before there was any hardening process, and the mere fact that there was such an outlet for whale oil up there shows that there must be many other uses to which it can be put, irrespective of this hardening process.
635. Could you tell us something about the way in which you get your whale oil, and, if possible, the quantities imported into England and re-exported, or anything of the kind?--Yes, I think I can.
636. Do you buy unrefined whale oil exclusively ?— Yes. I do not think there is any refined whale oil; I never heard of it.
637. I understood there was a refinery in Liverpool? -It all depends upon what you mean by a refinery. A man might get a whale oil which would comprise these four (indicating the samples of oil). He might sell you this, he might sell me that, and he might sell these two to the Secretary, and he might call himself a refiner.
638. In a sense he would be a refiner, but I was thinking of a firm which merely conducted an inter- mediate process and sold the refined products to others who would turn them into commercial products?-1 do not think there is any refinery of whale oil in that
sense.
639. No such industry exists P-I do not think so; I do not see how there can be, because you cannot refine this (indicating sample). You cannot make it any better. If you could turn this into that everybody would do it.
640. (Chairman.) May I direct your attention to paragraph 2, sub-paragraph (2), of the letter about the price and quotations: perhaps you would make a short statement about this -The conditions affecting the price P
641. As regards production we are pretty well in- formed, but we would like to know something about
[Continued.
the demand, and whether you experience any difficulty caused by the tendency to take more of the production abroad-Briefly. I should say the position is this, that the demand for whale oil is sufficient to take care of all the whale oil that exists. Therefore I do not anticipate any marked reduction in price.
642. But there is, of course, a limit to the price at which it is worth while to take whale oil in preference. to other oils: can you say anything about that?—Yes, that limit is not very far off now, but still one may fairly say it has not been reached, because otherwise we should not be using whale oil to-day, and we are. When you have to use whale oil it has to cost you a certain amount to bring it into a condition where it competes with some other article like tallow. It is all a question of whether, when you add on that cost to the initial cost of the whale oil, it is worth while using it.
As you say, quite rightly, if it is more than the cost of the article you are to replace with it obviously the sub- stitute will vanish.
643. We understood that the price of whale oil used to be entirely governed by the price of vegetable oils, such as linseed, but since the invention of the harden- ing process that is no longer the case: is that correct? That will be so, because obviously it has opened up a very wide market for whale oil which did not before exist. I take it that the only use previously for whale oil was such uses as I have referred to, in the tanning industry, lubricating and burning oils, and so on. The soap industry is now a very large user.
644. Pursuing the point rather more in detail, I understand that the price of whale oil was formerly in very close relation to that of vegetable oils; if you drew a diagram showing the price of rape and linseed, the whale oil fluctuations followed very closely. Is that a thing of the past owing to the invention of the harden- ing process? Has whale oil now an independent mar- ket -Independent of these other articles?
645. Yes? I am afraid my reply to that must be both yes and no in that sense; it is independent of the price of the other oils in the sense that it now has a new use and, therefore, can no longer be regarded quits in the same light, but on the other lund many of these other oils are now used for hardening purposes, for example, linseed oil. Linseed oil is exactly like what whale oil was before; we never used the linseed oil before because it could not make a soap we could sell, but now we can harden linseed oil.
646. (The Secretary) It has tended to raise the price of other oils as well?-Yes; either the price of the hard oils had to come down or the price of the soft oils had to go up. Tallow, of which there are many different kinds, is worth, roughly speaking, about 307. to 351, a ton. That is the price at which tallow has been for two or three years more or less, and it is within that period that the great development in the harden- ing process has taken place, and particularly within the last twelve months. If it had not been for this harden- ing process, instead of tallow being at 351. you might have seen tallow well over 407. a ton; but the effect of these hardening processes has been to prevent the price of hard oile rising, and certainly to appreciate the value of the soft ones. There again you must take other things into consideration; for instance, take linseed oil, you might say to me that linseed oil is to-day far cheaper than it was two years ago, perfectly true, but two years ago there was a world shortage in linseed oil and you had it up to nearly 501. a ton, whereas linseed oil to-day is worth under 251. a ton. Do I make myself clear? May I just amplify what I was saying? I think linseed oil has a very great effect on the value of whale oil; for example, supposing linseed oil was to fall now below the value of whale oil we should certainly discontinue using
whale oil.
That is
647. Because they can both be used for the same hardening process - Yes.
648. (Chairman.) Now, suppose that whalers had a good or a bad season and got 25 per cent. more or 25 per cent. less than their usual output, would that affect the price or would the price be governed by other con- siderations ?--You certainly put some rather difficult questions, because any reply I make must be purely