By: Rénald Fortier
Ingenium – Canada's Museums of Science and Innovation
“Is This Prophetic of Future?”: University of Saskatchewan professor Robert Dawson MacLaurin and the billowing saga of straw gas, part 3
Dec 3, 2023
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The main protagonists of the University Crisis of 1919. Anon., “Professors Asked To Resign From University.” The Saskatoon Daily Star, 28 July 1919, 3.
Greetings, my reading friend. I can only presume that you are intent on learning how the billowing saga of straw gas came to an end, and…
Let me guess. You have a question. Who were the main protagonists of the University Crisis of 1919, you ask? A good question.
From let to right, they were John L. Hogg, Professor of Physics and Head of the Department of Physics, Ira Allan MacKay, Professor of Philosophy and Political Science, Robert Dawson MacLaurin, Professor of Chemistry and Head of the Department of Chemistry, and Samuel E. Greenway, Director of Agricultural Extension Education.
And yes, all four of them were employed by the University of Saskatchewan, in… Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, but back to our story.
In March 1919, Greenway made some very serious allegations of financial misdeeds against that institution’s president, Walter Charles Murray, during a meeting with the Provincial Treasurer, Charles Avery Dunning. He also claimed that Murray had lost the confidence of all but a few faculty members.
Informed of all this by a rather shaken Dunning, an equally shaken Murray asked for a vote of confidence in early April. Of the 31 faculty members present at that meeting of the University Council, 27 voted in favour of Murray. Four people abstained. MacLaurin was one of them. The other abstainees were MacKay, Hogg and John Mead Adams, Assistant Professor of Physics. Greenway was absent and could not have voted anyway, as he was not a faculty member.
From the looks of it, the root cause of the discontent of the abstainees / dissenters was the rigid pay system of the university, which did not take into account the talent / reputation of individual professors. Mind you, they also believed that said pay system did not provide them with enough moolah given the increasing cost of living which resulted from wartime inflation.
For his part, MacLaurin might, I repeat might, have thought that he deserved to have most, if not all of the dough provided to the university by the government of Saskatchewan for research purposes.
In any event, the Board of Governors of the University of Saskatchewan asked Greenway and Hogg to submit their grievances verbally, while MacKay and MacLaurin were asked to do the same in writing. Greenway, Hogg and MacKay did as they were asked, more or less quickly. MacLaurin seemingly did not, claiming later on that no one had contacted him.
How Adams was asked to submit his grievances was / is unclear. In any event, having been given the opportunity to teach at the Southern Branch of the University of California, he left in June 1919. Would you believe that Adams was / is the father of the Department of Physics at what is now the University of California, Los Angeles?
The four remaining dissenters, or Big Four as some referred to them, were given paid leave in July on condition they retire at the end of said leave.
Greenway, Hogg, MacKay and MacLaurin had no plan to go quietly, however. They politely rejected and / or ignored the offer made to them. Indeed, one or more of the four men managed to stir up the pot to such an extent that the Premier of the Saskatchewan, William Melville Martin, felt the need to intervene to try to calm the waters.
Before I forget, the first newspaper articles on what became known as the University Crisis of 1919 seemingly appeared in late July. These articles were the first of a real blizzard of articles which continued until the spring of 1920, but I digress.
In any event, some / many members of the public and press, not to mention many University of Saskatchewan students, were not happy with the actions of the Board of Governors. They asked for, or even demanded, an explanation. When none was put forth, they asked for, or even demanded, a public inquiry.
A brief digression if I may. An extraordinary session / meeting of convocation called by the Chancellor of the University of Saskatchewan and Chief Justice of the Court of Appeal for Saskatchewan, Sir Frederick William Alpin Gordon Haultain, and held in November, did not end too well for the Board of Governors. And yes, the term extraordinary was used at the time.
While it was true that a resolution calling for the creation of a board of inquiry was defeated, after many hours of heated debate however, it was equally true that a resolution deprecating the way the Big Four had been sacked did pass, with a significant majority.
Would you believe that one of the students who spoke in favour of the dissidents with a passion which would characterise many of his future public speeches actually threatened to burn his diplomas in public? I kid you not. The name of that student? John George Diefenbaker, the first student to secure three degrees (Bachelor of Arts degree in 1915, Master of Arts degree in 1916 and a law degree in 1919) from the University of Saskatchewan.
You will of course remember that this future Prime Minister of Canada was mentioned many times in our magnificent blog / bulletin / thingee, and this since October 2020, but back to our saga.
Greenway, Hogg, MacKay and MacLaurin might, I repeat might, have contacted the Lieutenant Governor of Saskatchewan, Richard Stuart Lake, who, in accordance with the Act to establish and incorporate a University for the Province of Saskatchewan of 1907, had the legal right to investigate this whole mess.
In turn, to settle said mess, the Legislative Assembly of Saskatchewan passed a bill which authorised Lake to authorise the Court of King’s Bench for Saskatchewan to conduct an investigation on his behalf. Hearings began in early March 1920. The judges involved were John Fletcher Leopold Embury, Henry William Newlands and George Edward Taylor.
Hoping to further stir up public support, or so it seemed, the four dissenters indicated that, while they readily acknowledged they would be dismissed if the court found in favour of the Board of Governors, they would resign even if said court found in their favour, as a matter of principle.
As was to be expected, Greenway, Hogg, MacKay and MacLaurin were asked to testify.
The latter indicated that he had not invested a penny in Saskatchewan Straw Gas Company Limited, the firm which was to produce the straw gas production devices. He owned, however, 20 % of the organisation involved in the development of straw gas, the Dominion By-Product and Research Society. Under cross examination, MacLaurin admitted that, had that research society taken over Saskatchewan Straw Gas, as had been planned, he would have shared in the profits made by the latter.
The judges of the Court of King’s Bench for Saskatchewan ultimately found in favour of the Board of Governors, in late April 1920. The board’s decision, they claimed, had been “regular, proper and in the best interest of the university.” Greenway, Hogg, MacKay and MacLaurin were employed “at the pleasure of the board.” They had been disloyal toward Murray and that was that.
As you might well imagine, the University of Saskatchewan was not a happy place in the spring of 1920.
Greenway no longer made the news after his dismissal, which did not necessarily mean that he lived from hand to mouth in the following months and years.
Hogg, on the other hand, did not do too badly. At some point in 1920, he became a research engineer at Western Electric Company, in New York City, New York. In January 1925, the research outfit he worked for within that firm became the world-famous Bell Telephone Laboratories Incorporated.
MacKay did not suffer at all from his dismissal. He became the first Constitutional (and International?) Law professor at McGill University of Montréal, Québec, in October 1920. In January 1924, MacKay became the Frothingham Professor of Logic and Metaphysics at that institution, as well as the Acting Dean of the Faculty of Arts, an appointment made permanent in late May or early June 1925.
Given the post-University of Saskatchewan careers of MacKay and Adams, dare one suggest that the Big Four had a point when they complained that the rigid rigid pay system of the university did not take into account the talent / reputation of individual professors? You be the judge.
Did MacLaurin’s dismissal signal the end of all discussions regarding the straw gas production project, you ask, my energy conscious reading friend? Well, not necessarily, and…
Why are you raising your arms, my puzzling reading friend? Do you need to stretch or something?
And you derailed my train of thought. Where was I? Oh, yes.
University of Saskatchewan professor Alexander Roger Greig. Anon., “Cannot Produce Straw Gas Without Its Cost Proving Too High To Be Practicable.” The Morning Leader, 12 September 1919, 18.
You see, Alexander Roger Greig, yes, the professor of Engineering and Farm Mechanics at the University of Saskatchewan in the photograph above and the one mentioned in the second part of this article, had begun to conduct experiments on straw gas at some point in 1917, thanks to a small sum of money provided by the university to the Department of Engineering. Said experiments were conducted on a straw gas production device put together with the help of its inventor, George H. Harrison, a gentleman we have also met earlier.
Greig’s conclusions, stated at a meeting of the Saskatchewan branch of the Engineering Institute of Canada held in Regina, Saskatchewan, in September 1919, were, and I quote, “that straw gas cannot be produced by any method yet tried without costing so much as to be impracticable.” Indeed, the gas produced using the existing device was 8 more times expensive than commercially produced coal gas, and that was not all.
Heating a typical 7-room Saskatchewan house on a cold winter day would require 360 or so kilogrammes (800 or so pounds of straw). Bringing the straw gas production device to the temperature required to produce the gas would require an additional 1 630 or so kilogrammes (3 600 or so pounds) of straw, for a grand total of almost 2 000 kilogrammes (4 400 or so pounds) of straw.
It so happened that an experiment involving only 250 or so kilogrammes (550 or so pounds) of straw had required 8 or 9 hours of work by an individual.
Worse still, the energy contained in the straw processed during said experiment was equivalent to that contained in… 7.2 to 8.2 or so kilogrammes (16 to 18 or so pounds) of good quality coal. I kid you not. True enough, coal was expensive back then but a domestic straw gas production device was not exactly cheap.
Incidentally, the charter of Saskatchewan Straw Gas was revoked in December 1920.
Straw gas, it seemed, was a bust. Or was it?
You see, there were still believers. Pfeifer Straw Gas Producer Company of Fargo, North Dakota, was incorporated in March 1920. Even so, no production of straw gas production devices took place until the winter of 1921-22. At least a few units were sold. Pfeifer Straw Gas Producer presumably went belly up in the mid-1920s.
And then there was Farmers Straw Gas Producer Company of Lewiston, Idaho, a firm founded in November 1921 and dissolved prior to 1923, possibly as a result of issues with one or more clients which led to at least one fraud suit launched against it in the state of Washington, in 1924, I think.
In turn, Montana Straw Gas Company of Helena, Montana, was incorporated in October 1926. That firm was demonstrating a straw gas production device at the time. Better yet, it had two more under construction, possibly for use in branch agencies in other locations. Montana Straw Gas presumably went belly up in the late 1920s.
Were there other firms involved in straw gas production, you ask, my curious reading friend? You bet. One only needs to mention Washington Straw Gas Company, a firm active for a moment in 1927 in Washington. Yes, the state, not the district.
Yours truly would be remiss if I did not mention a resident of Moccasin, Montana, who had a small straw gas production device his family used to cook its food, heat and light its home, and run its various stationary farm engines, and this no later than August 1930. That gentleman had obtained some of the information needed to build his device in an article published by Harry Edward Roethe, Junior, of the Bureau of Chemistry of the United States Department of Agriculture, in a November 1923 bulletin of that same department.
The name of that gentleman? Clifford M. Strawman. I kid you not, but I do digress, and…
What are you doing, my reading friend? Are you actually activating your favourite search engine to check what you just read?! I cannot believe this.
If I may be permitted to quote the late and great American actor / author / stand-up comedian / social critic George Denis Patrick Carlin, “Tell people there’s an invisible man in the sky who created the universe, and the vast majority will believe you. Tell them the paint is wet, and they have to touch it to be sure.”
Speaking (typing?) of belief, would you believe that, no later than mid 1935, the Vsesoyuznogo Nauchno-issledovatel’skogo Instituta Mekhanizatsii i Elektrifikatsii Sel’skogo Khozyaystva of the Narodnyy Komissariat Zemledeliya SSSR, in other words the all-union scientific research institute of mechanisation and electrification of agriculture of the people’s commissariat of agriculture of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, claimed to have developed a straw gas production device small enough to be installed on a tractor, or stationary engine?
And no, yours truly does not know if that device was actually put in production.
Harry Edward Roethe, Junior, of the Bureau of Chemistry of the United States Department of Agriculture loading straw in the straw gas production device of the Arlington Experimental Farm, Alexandria, Virginia. Anon., “Making Gasoline from Straw Is U.S. Chemist’s Job.” The Atlanta Tri-Weekly Journal, 13 November 1920, 6.
You do remember that the Arlington Experimental Farm was mentioned earlier in this issue of our breathtaking blog / bulletin / thingee, do you not, my reading friend? Well, construction of a straw gas production device began on that site in May 1920. The team there had copies of MacLaurin’s work, as well as other material.
And you will never guess who was in charge of the project, my reading friend? The aforementioned Roethe, you state? Well, yes, you are right. He was indeed in charge. You do read the captions of the illustrations and the text which accompanies them. That is… good.
Did the American team know about the scathing conclusions of the aforementioned Greig, you ask? A good question. I wish I knew. You see, it seemed to think that straw gas had a future in large farming communities. That gas might even be of interest to the automotive community, if a way could be found to transport it in compressed form.
In any event, a straw gas production device was in operation at the American experimental farm no later than early September 1920. The gas produced through the processing of wheat, rye and oat straw was used for cooking and illuminating purposes. Mind you, it was also used as a fuel for stationary engines. And yes, at least one automobile ran on straw gas in 1920-21.
Incidentally, the construction of the straw gas production device, excluding of course the building which housed it, had cost US $ 1 500, a sum which corresponds to approximately $ 31 500 in 2023 Canadian currency.
Roethe concluded in an article published in a November 1923 bulletin of the United States Department of Agriculture, yes, the one used by the aforementioned Strawman, that the straw gas production device employed in the tests conducted at the Arlington Experimental Farm was “not practicable as a farm unit, even though the gas produced can be satisfactorily used for heating, lighting, and stationary power purposes.”
You see, the American calculated that a typical farm family located in some unidentified states of the United States would require 40 800 to 45 350 or so kilogrammes (90 000 to 100 000 or so pounds) of dry straw a year to produce the straw gas needed for heating and cooking purposes, and to bring the straw gas production device to the required temperature. Using straw gas to run the family’s various stationary farm engines would of course add to that already impressive volume of straw.
Speaking (typing?) of volume, do you have any idea of the size of a 40 800 to 45 350 or so kilogrammes (90 000 to 100 000 or so pounds) pile of loose dry straw? That pile would be 6 or so metres (almost 20 feet) high and 25.5 or so metres (almost 86 feet) in diameter.
And yes, 110 to 125 or so kilogrammes (245 to 275 or so pounds) of straw would have to be processed each and every day. Ow, my poor back!
The cherry on top of the cake was that the energy contained in that daily dose of straw was equivalent to that contained in… 3.2 to 3.6 or so kilogrammes (7 to 7.9 or so pounds) of good quality coal. True enough, coal was expensive back then but a domestic straw gas production device was not exactly cheap.
Topping that off, the straw gas used to cook food, heat and light homes, and run various stationary farm engines would cost more than 6 to 9.6 times more than a volume of coal producing the same amount of energy.
Decreasing the cost of the straw gas production device and / or increasing the sales value of the gas would of course make its production of more attractive. This being said (typed?), the financial success of the venture would still be doubtful.
And yes, as was to be expected, the American team also concluded that flexible and collapsible gas bags were an unsatisfactory and impracticable way to contain the straw gas consumed by an automobile.
The only way straw gas might be used on vehicles would be in a compressed form. Performing this function on a farm was not practicable, however, given the added cost and the need to have a trained individual on hand at all times, to avoid incidents or accidents.
So, are we done for today, you ask, my reading friend eager to go outside play in the snow? Well, not quite.
The gentleman who had originated the straw gas production project, yes, the aforementioned Harrison, moved to St. Paul Park, Minnesota, shortly after the end of the First World War, in 1919 perhaps. He set up a (large?) research laboratory and continued to work with straw.
By early 1927, Harrison had developed a new device which could be used to extract a great variety of byproducts from straw. The most important of these were a germicide, a damp-proof paint and an insect killing spray.
Harrison’s device could also produce a gaseous fuel which could power automobiles. Indeed, the inventor was fueling his own automobile with straw gas. He did, however, acknowledge that this new fuel was still not cheap enough to be worth producing commercially.
For some reason or other, the renewed interest surrounding Harrison’s lasted but a few weeks.
By 1928, the inventor was based in Merrill, Wisconsin, where he headed Harrison Paint and Chemical Company Incorporated. You might be pleased, or not, to learn that Harrison’s firm was producing a variety of straw-derived products: from automobile body enamel and non-flammable dry-cleaning fluid to liquid asbestos roof coating and newspaper ink.
Would you believe that a firm by the name of Harrison Paint and Chemical Company Limited was incorporated in November 1933 in… Ottawa, Ontario? Indeed, Harrison was living in Ottawa in June. I kid you not. Mind you, yours truly cannot say if that firm actually made a single product – or if Harrison remained in Ottawa.
Sadly enough, yours truly does not know what happened to that gentleman after 1933, and…
Why are you agitating your arms so frantically, my reading friend? You wish to know what happened to MacLaurin? Good for you.
Sadly enough, yours truly has been unable so far to figure out what the former university professor did to earn a living during the weeks and months which followed his final dismissal.
This being said (typed?), would you believe that MacLaurin was seemingly hired in 1923 by the Canadian manufacturers and distributors of oleomargarine? You see, the firms in question were deeply concerned that the ban on the fabrication, distribution and sale of oleomargarine in Canada, which had been lifted in October 1917, as a temporary wartime measure, because the price of butter had reached unprecedented levels, was about to be brought back.
In September 1923, the weekly magazine Canadian Grocer published the first of a series of 15 articles in which MacLaurin launched what could be described as an all-out attack on the Canadian dairy industry. He denounced the poor quality of its products and their propensity to carry deadly diseases, not to mention the industry’s irrational devotion to protectionism.
By comparison, the dairy ingredients used by Canadian manufacturers of oleomargarine, a food product which was as nutritious as butter by the way, or so claimed MacLaurin, had to be pasteurised or else be produced by tested cows. Better yet, added MacLaurin, Canadian oleomargarine bore Canada’s Department of Agriculture Canada Approved mark; Canadian butter did not.
Why was the managerial team at Canadian Grocer willing to incur the wrath of Canada’s mighty dairy industry, you ask, my puzzled reading friend? A good question. I wish I knew.
In the end, as was to be expected, the dairy Goliath prevailed upon the oleomargarine David. The ban on the fabrication, distribution and sale of oleomargarine in Canada was reinstated in March 1924.
Yours truly has also been unable so far to figure out what MacLaurin did to earn a living during the weeks and months which followed the reinstatement of said ban.
By 1927 at the latest, however, MacLaurin was the commissioner of trade waste of the Department of Public Health and Welfare of Cleveland, Ohio.
And yes, my attentive reading friend, Cleveland was / is the city where the billowing saga of straw gas had begun 20 or so years before. Ours is a small world, is it not? But you digress. Yes, yes, you.
At some point, MacLaurin apparently became the superintendent of an air purification program in Cleveland. Yours truly cannot say if he occupied that position after, or before, his work at the Department of Public Health and Welfare.
In any event, no later than 1934, MacLaurin joined the staff of the research division of Industrial Rayon Corporation, an American firm involved in the production of… rayon / artificial silk / viscose. He might, I repeat might, have retired in the late 1940s.
MacLaurin passed away in late December 1951, in Lakewood, Ohio. He was 72 years old.
A postscript if I may. Countries as far apart, both politically and geographically, as the United Kingdom and China have developed and are still developing small and large-scale renewable energy plants that use straw and other biomass feedstocks to produce energy, either in the form of gas or electricity, or both. Some of that work began in the 1990s, if not earlier. It is currently taking place on every inhabited continent of our big blue marble.
Rénald Fortier
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