ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how the structure of output and employment in the industry has been affected by the longer-term process of change, though not only technological change. It discusses generally the background of the industry so that the nonspecialist reader may appreciate the nature of the industry and its products. The most significant point is that the industry is much more complex than other manufacturing industries, and since the activities of processing, making or compounding chemicals are more or less incomprehensible to a non-scientist, many of the processes by which chemicals are manufactured are difficult to describe without using technical terms. Many of the products of the chemical industry are sold to the final consumer, and many others are used either in other industries as raw materials or essential additives, or in the chemical industry itself as the basis for further stages of processing, compounding or mixing. The chemical industry is very largely a twentieth-century phenomenon.
