Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 283, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 November 1910 — CARE OF THE BROOM [ARTICLE]

CARE OF THE BROOM

MAKER TELLS HOW TO PROLONG ITS LIFE. It Should Be Swung Back and Forth From a Point Back of Sweeper to -a Place at an Equal Distance In Front. "It makes me sad," said a broom maker, “to see the way people use brooms. The life of a broom could be twice prolonged by proper usage, and used properly it would be vastly easier to use.

“You’ve seen people sweeping ahead of them, pushing stuff with a broom? Why, the best and most perfectly seasoned broomcorn stock that ever was put into a broom wouldn’t stand such treatment as that “With such handling splints will break off. The splints remaining, Jagged and uneven, bear unevenly on the surface. You never can sweep clean with it after that “Then you know the majority of sweepers always sweep with the same side of the broom to the front, and in this way they soon get the broom lopsided, so that they can't use it any other way. There couldn't be a worse way. “Used in this manner the points of the splints get bent all one way and then they meet together at their ends. They don’t bite, they don’t take hold of dust, as they are meant to do, they don’t sweep clean, and when a broom has come to this condition the sweeper is less careful of it, for then It is not so good a broom. Such a broom the sweeper feels that he may push ahead of him; and when he does this with it the broom is finally and irretrievably ruined. “Of course the correct way to use a broom is with the hA-ndle, in its initial position, held vertically, so that all the splints in the face of the broom will take hold at the same time and evenly. In sweeping the broom should be swung back and forth from a point back of the sweeper to a point at an equal distance in front That is the proper way to use a broom, and then every day the sweeper should turn the broom around, so as to sweep with a different side daily. Used in this manner and turned daily the broom wears down evenly. “I have seen —a delight to the professional eye and a comfort to everybody who likes to see any implement used to the best advantage, thoughtfully and considerately—l have seen brooms that had been so used that they had worn down almost to the binding threads, but that still bit beautifully. I am perfectly well aware that brooms' carelessly used, as commonly they are, wear out faster, with a corresponding benefit to broom manufacturers; but still I do really hate to see anybody misuse a broom.**