Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 June 1884 — Chewing Gum. [ARTICLE]

Chewing Gum.

“Did you know that nearly threequarters of the chewing gum that tires the jaws of the rising generation in the United States is now made from petroleum?” said a manufacturing confectioner to a reporter. The reporter did not know it. “Oh, yes,” said the confectioner. “Petroleum first knocked the spots off the whale oil business of New England, and now it is clipping into its spruce and tamarack gum industry at a fearful rate. Here’s a lump of petroleum we have just received.” The confectioner slapped his hand on a large oblong block that resembled a block of marble. “A few days ago,” said he, “that came out of the ground in Pennsylvania a dirty, greenish-brown fluid, with a smell that would knock an ox down. The oil refiners took it and put it through a lot of chemical processes that I don’t know anything about, and, after taking out a large percentage of kerosene, a good share of naptha, considerable benzine, a cart-load or so of tar, and a number of other things, with names longer than the alphabet, left us this mass of nice, clean wax. There isn’t any taste to it, and no more smell to it than there is to a china plate. We will tike this lump, cut it up, and melt it in boilers. Th : s piece weighs about two hundred pounds. We add thirty pounds of cheap sugar to it and flavor it with vanilla, Wintergreen, peppermint, or any pleasant essential oil. Then we turn it out on a marble table and cut it into all shapes with dies. After it is wrapped in oiled tissue paper and packed in boxes it is ready for the market. You can imagine that somebody is chewing gum in this country when I tell you that a lump like this one will make 10,000 penny cakes, and we use up one every week. There are dozens of manufactories using almost as much wax as we do. I believe this petroleum chewing gum, if honestly made, is perfectly harmless, and that is more than can be said of some of the gums made from the juices of trees, especially the imported article.” —New York Sun.