Davison Chemical Company.
THE importance of American control of the manufacture of chemicals for its own needs has been most emphatically demonstrated by the record of events in recent years.
The old-established chemical firm, the Davison Chemical Company, which has its principal office in the Garrett Building, at Baltimore, Maryland, is one of the most notable. It was founded in 1832 by William Davison and has been controlled by the Davison family ever since.
Following the death of Mr. Calvin Davison, his son-in-law, C. Wilbur Miller, who was then engaged in the practice of law, became actively identified with the company, and has since 1910 been its president. During the fifteen years he has been connected with the company its investment has increased from $600,000 to more than $16,- 000,000, and it is now one of the largest chemical manufacturing plants in the world, producing sulphuric acid, acid phosphate, sodium and magnesium silico fluoride, iron cinder and copper.
Through its subsidiary organization, the Davison Sulphur and Phosphate Company, it owns im-portant raw materials property, including a phos-phate rock mine in Florida and a pyrites mine in Santa Clara Province, Cuba. The Cuban ore con-tains a high percentage of copper, which will be extracted at the copper plant of the company.
The products of the company have been greatly augmented during the war period, and the plant worked up to its capacity to meet the urgent needs of manufacturers who use its products in their processes. The future of the fertilizer industry in the United States, which consumes large tonnage of acid phosphate, is unlimited, and the largest producing center for fertilizer in the world is Baltimore.
The broad policy of expansion, which was adopted by the Davison Chemical Company and which resulted in a vast amount of construction and new development work in the last ten years, is now beginning to show collective results. In the new conditions that are developing as a result of the world war, with an unquestioned expansion in all of the departments of production industries, the manufacture of chemicals and fertilizer material is necessarily one of the branches of production in which the United States is expected not only to supply its own needs but also to take care of the greatly expanded export trade. No concern is better prepared for this program of expansion than the Davison Chemical Company.
In the management of the business Mr. Miller is assisted by an able and efficient official staff, the membership of which includes George W. Davison, vice-president; W. D. Huntington, vice-president in charge of sales; E. B. Miller, vice-president in charge of operations; J. R. Wilson, secretary and assistant treasurer; T. J. Dee, treasurer. The Executive Committee of the company is composed of J. J. Nelligan, A. H. S. Post, Waldo Newcomer, C. Wilbur Miller.
