Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 302, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 December 1916 — PROFITS TO COME FROM SCRAP HEAPS [ARTICLE]

PROFITS TO COME FROM SCRAP HEAPS

EUROPE SETS EXAMPLE FOR OUR MANUFACTURERS Means of Saving Found by Foreign Experts Should Be > Adopted Here. ••x will American manufacturers have to face when they come into competition with foreign factories after the war? First, tffe cooperation of their rival foreign manufacturers to eliminate any waste connected with their output. Second, factories which employ “ minds," men trained for theeir positions from boyhood, instead of the American factory’s -hands,” men who work here a while and there a while as wages or fancy directs them. William C. Redfield, Secretary of Commerce, in an interview has discussed the situation. Part of his remarks follow:

Tap any business man on the shoulder and he will tell you that European nations are ahead of the United States when it comes to utilizing the waste products of their industries. For example: The average American business man if he were making catsup wpuld be satisfied to get money for 90 per cent of his raw product.

Consider the tomato canners of Italy who supply that commodity to almost all Europe. The case is typical of the whole European system. To turn a liability into an asset was a problem which confronted the Italian growers in 1908. They experimented and found they could use the waste skins of the tomatoes by manufacturing from them a cattle and horse feed. They then pressed an oil from the seeds, which was excellent for illuminating purposes in lamps, and by refining it found that it was suitable for the table. A number of tomato canning establishments located near one another erected a drying plant, and here the waste skins and. seeds were brought from the various factories. Experiments were carried on for two years until a successful drying apparatus was found. The percentage of waste in Italian tomatoes ranged from 3 to 5 per cent in weight. This waste was represented by skins and seeds. The Italians now sell the stock food from the seeds for 53 cents a hundred pounds, the crude oil for $7 a hundred pounds artd the refined oil for $8.75. Before, they were obliged to pay to have the waste hauled away. -

Not content with getting 20 per cent of oil by means of a hydraulic press, the Italian canners went on experimenting until by use of solufons. they could get 22 per cent oil. And the residue of seeds was not thrown away. It was reground in revolving mills and made into cattle feeu. ' Witness the tons of “waste” from Germany in the Deutschland at Baltimore harbor. One of the most glaring instances of her neglect of waste utilization is found in our great coal and coke industry. Year after year its by-products have been thrown away, while Germany’s wonderful dyestuff industry has been built entirely on this waste. Slag in Europe is the body material for concrete and granulated, is used for making, building blocks, brick tiles and for the manufacture of cement. The Europeans also use slag to a lesser extent as a raw material in glass making and in the production of artificial marble and artificial pumice stone. In America slag is given to the railroads, who haul it away under protest and use it for track ballast. For many years German manufacturerers have been making kraft wrapping paper from wood waste. Most of the American lumber mills have paid dearly to have this waste burned. —'

Sweden and Norway maintain their place in the paper industry by using only the scraps. No timber from which a "four-by-four" can be cut is allowed to go to the pulp vat. In America the reverse is the rule. It would be laughable, if it were not in its larger aspects so tragic, to recount the experience of a larger copper company. A recent court decision compelled the company to install methods for saving sulphuric fumes which were denuding the surrounding country of vegetation and destroying the lands of nearby farmers. As an outcome of this litigation that particular company is now making profits by utilizing the sulphuric acid waste. European countries have been for years installing such methods, not to comply with the law,, but as economic assets —as dividend payers. Much is said about industrial preparedness. It should begin at home. Each business man, if he is true to himself and to his country, will see to it that when this country faces new industrial conditions at the close of the war he will be prepared to meet them. His waste, both economic and social, will be at a minimum; his byproducts l at a maximum. This will enable us to meet more- successfully the avalanche of foreign competition, with its attendant “dumping’’ demoralization, and its price cutting, that is likely to follow tbe close of the European war.

THE BLACK MOUNTAIN The road you travel from Cattaro tG Cettinje, Lieut. Col. J. P. Barry wrote tcme ten years ago in his book, “At the Gates of the East,” “is fche finest piece of engineering in that ‘genre’ in Europe. It has a cut-stone parapet, which will soon be completed, so that two roomy carriages can pass each other comfortably without incommod iug the wayfarer on foot. It is k maze of ziz-gags cut into overhanging mountains; for the Lovcen saddle is more than three thousand feet above you, and the precipice in parts is a sheer drop. The first road, built in the forties, had zig-zags. The new road has much fewer, for the serpentines have a long stretch and rentier slopes. Looking up from the waters of Cattaro, you see line upon line of ribbony folds of white ma cadana ns of some son of Vulcan had caught up these gigantic declivities like a potter-.and molded their crystallizations into a ladder of terraces for the feet of horse and man.” “I was thankful,” the writer contin ues, “for the comfort of knowing that the gradient was not hard on the horses, and for the rich harvest ol impressions it enabled me to gamer in without a jolt while overlooking the precipitous depths beneath me, that weird spectacle of the Bocche di Cattaro, with its primeval wastes, its bays, peninsulas, islets, terraced towns, and screen of fortifications.... A solitary figure on the flanks of the Black Mountains, face to face with gathering night, the only sound the champing bits and the monotonous echo of the horses’ feet upon the limestone, aiv abyss alternating at every turn from the right side to the left, what wonder if now and then there came a transient thrill,... while the young moon shone dim and wan athwart the wintry twilight of the Adriatic.” "The natural fastness of Cettinje, ’ the writer goes on, “is a mere dorf, situated some two thousand five hundred feet above the sea, and entirely surrounded by mountains. Barren, bleak and gray, they raise their multitudinous peaks in a savage grandeur that is singularly imposing, and in places with an effect of lonely desolation that positively appalls. You might in twenty minutes at an easy trot sound this Lilliputian capital, this veritable outwork of civilization, this oasis in a Sahara of rock-”

“And wherefore this name of the Black Mountain? As a matter of fact, the formation is a white limestone. The specimens I examined have near ly as fine a grain as. marble. It is tne very stone universally employed for decorative architecture along the Eastern Adriatic. It takes a fine porcelaneous polish, without the cracks and veining of marble or the bubbles of travertine. But in weathering, the surface has assumed the deep tints of plumbago. You haye only to chip off the shell to get the contrast of the white and dark effects. No language can convey the terrific sullen majesty of the rocks along the pass between Cettinje and Rieka, near the head of Scutari Lake. Accompanied by two othermen, I went along this -road on foot in the brightness of a Sunday mornirig, and I still seem to shudder at the recollection of these appalling wonders. ... There is not in any of this rock the smallest hint of the leisureliness of stratification. Nature, in some gigantic mood of tempestuous wrath, whipped these mountains into responsive fury till tney became a sea of towering billows, and in that position ordered* tnem to }y?ep still. This tumbling swelter of rock on rock, this hum cane of the primeval hiUfiT'tffls typhoon in petrification, is set in a frame'-of absolute solitude, made ad ditionally thrilling by the unbroken gloom of graphite grays. No speck of verdure, no note of bird or hum of cricket, no presence of any living thing comes forth among the crags to redeem the completeness of this stony desolation.’’