American Synthetic Color Company

These two companies—the American Synthetic Color Company and the Oldbury Electro Chemical Company—exhibited many characteristics typical of the firms receiving war gas contracts. Few firms were large, well-known producers most had in-house or academic consulting chemists with close contacts to either the NRC or Bureau of Mines and many were also venturing for the first time into synthetic dyes production. Rarely did experience and expertise run deeply, but these had... 

The American Synthetic Color Company never lived up to expectations, and the disarray that prevailed in the firm s plant and front offices had the military supervisors pulling their hair—and fearing a major accident. First, the firm failed to produce gas in quantities anywhere near the contracted amount by March, they had made just one tenth of the specified quantity. Second, it was an inefficient producer, consuming more raw materials than the reactions ought to have required. Third, the multiple owners provided incoherent leadership. By the end of February, the Ordnance Department prepared to commandeer the plant. In March, the military sent in an investigator. Captain Edward E. Free, to make a thorough report on the failures of the company. 

His reports abandoned staid and bureaucratic military vocabulary to express his growing fear that the American Synthetic Color Company posed an insufferable risk. 

Lybrand, Ross Bros. Montgomery (CPA), The Bayer Co., Inc., Synthetic Patents Co., and Hudson River Aniline Color Works. Report on Examination of Accounts for the Period June 3, 1913 to June 30, 1918, November 1, 1918 Emery, Booth, Janney Varney (lawyers), Synthetic Patents Co., Inc. and The Bayer Company, Inc., Patent and Trade Mark Report, November 14, 1918, NARA, RG 131, entry 155, box 34 McTavish, What s in a Name Aspirin and the American Medical Association, 356-61 Mann and Plummer, The Aspirin Wars, 38. 

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