Jasper Republican, Volume 1, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 September 1874 — WASTE MATERIAL. [ARTICLE]

WASTE MATERIAL.

Not long since, at the meeting of a club in New York, a jelly was exhibited on the table, and alongside of it an old, well-worn, leather boot. The spectacle of the boot waa a mystery until it was explained by one of the members that from the fellow of the boot the jelly had been made by some chemical process. Jelly for the table made out of old boots! What next? We do not hear that the jelly in question was much appreciated as an article of diet. Its manufacture, however, suggests the propriety of reserving old boots and shoes for one or the other of the many purposes in which they may be employed, instead of absolutely throwing them away. Indeed, scraps of all sorts can be advantageously utilized, and now very much more so than ever. “ Waste materials” is.a kind of misnomer, for there is almbst nothing absolutely “ waste.” What with chemistry and manufacturing ingenuity, there go on around us the most extraordinary transformations. “ Chemistry, like a prudent housewife,” says Dr. Lyon Playfair in one of his lectures, “ economizes every scrap. The clippings of the traveling tinker are mixed with the parings of horses’ hoofs from the smithy, the cast-off woolen garments of the poorest inhabitants of the sister isle, and soon afterward, in the form of dyes of the brightest blue, grace the dress of courtly dames. The main ingredient of the ink with which I now write was possibly once part of the broken hoop of an old beer barrel. The bones of dead animals yield the chief constituent of lucifer matches. The dregs of port wine, carefully rejected by the port-wine drinker in decanting his favorite beverage, are taken by him in the morning as Seidlitz powders. The offal of the streets and the washings of coal gas reappear carefully preserved in the lady’s smelling-bottle, or are used by her to flavor blanc-manges for her friends. This economy of art is only an imitation of what we observe in the chemistry of nature. Animals live and die; their dead bodies, passing into putridity, escape into the atmosphere, where plants again mold them into forms of organic life; and these plants, actually consisting of a past generation of ancestors, form our present food.” It is quite evident from daily experience that there is an immense mass of material thrown away as useless that might be easily saved and disposed of for general advantage. Paper, for example. What a prodigious waste of note papers, envelopes, pamphlets, circulars, and so on! Basketfuls burnt or carried to the dust-bin. Mr. Simmons asks: “ What becomes of the envelopes of the 3,000,000 letters passing daily through our postoffices? all of which are worth preserving, for they will fetch from two to three shillings per cwt.” Bags, as a more marketable material, are better taken care of; yet, as we are informed, six-tenths are irrevocably wasted.

Marine stores, as they are called, are the well-known establishments at which waste materials are purchased, but much never reaches them. Some years ago a committee of the London Ragged School set on foot a rag-collecting brigade of boys, with the help of trucks. The enterprise was attended with considerable success. Paper, rags, bones, fat, old carpets, metal, ropes, hats, were collected from householders who were glad to get rid of the refuse. In nine months the boys gathered upward of eighty-two tons of these materials, besides about 50,000 bottles. One of the articles was a bag containing a million of used postage stamps, which had been collected and stored up by some fanatic. On old, used leather, such as that of the boot, there have been various schemes of utilization. By dissolving the leather by steam and certain acids it is possible to produce printing rollers for cotton fabrics; but it seems preferable to cut the leather in pieces, mix them with a cementing liquid, and then squeeze the whole into a mass of different thicknesses, according to the purpose required, such as material for making up the soles and heels of boots and shoes. With a quantity of paste and the force of a steam engine shreds are made to assume the appearance of cakes of leather—technically, pancakes or pasted stock—which are largely used in the wholesale shoe manufacture of Massachusetts. There is another method in this country of using up shavings and scraps of leather. “ These are ground to a powder resembling coarse snuff, and this powder is then mixed with certain gums and other substances so thoroughly that the whole mass becomes a kind of melted leather. In a short time this dries a little, and is rolled out to the desired thickness, perhaps one-twelfth of an inch; it is now quite solid, and said to be entirely waterproof.” There are various processes patented for melting down leather waste and producing large sheets of artificial leather, possessing water-proof qualities, but we have not the space to go into any account of them.

Bones, new and old, wherever they can be picked up, are put to a variety of uses. The fresher kinds of shank-bones serve for making the handles of knives, forks and toothbrushes. From some gelatine is extracted. When not serviceable for these purposes they are crushed into powder for manure. Bone dust is worth from £5 to £5 10s per ton. Farmers buy it in large quantities for fertilizing their fields. The importation of this convenient fertilizer from foreign countries is immense. Stories are told of battle-fields being plundered for the sake of the decaying bones of soldiers who have fallen. Researches for the material of bone dust are carried on upon a large scale in the ancient cemeteries and pyramids of Egypt. Long ago, when the people of that country mummified the bodies of their relatives and stowed them unceremoniously away in caverns, they were not aware that they were only preserving them for manure in a distant European island. A correspondent of the Times, writing from Alexandria, facetiously remarks: “Fancy mutton fattened on ancient Egyptians! The other day at Sakhara I saw nine camels pacing down from the mummy pits to the bank of the river, laden with nets, in which were femora, tibia and other bony bits of the human

form, some 200 weight in each net on each side of the camel. Among the pita there were people busily engaged in searching out, sifting Mid sorting the bones, which almost crust the ground. On inquiry I learned that the cargoes with which the camels were laden would be sent down to Alexandria, and thence be shipped to English manufacturers. They make excellent manure, I am told, particularly for Swede and other turnips. The trade is .brisk, and has been going on for years, and may go on for many moie. It is a strange fate —to preserve one’s skeletons for thousands of years in order that there may be fine Southdowns and Cheviots in a distant land! But Egypt is always a place of wonders.” Nothing seems to be so thoroughly used up as old clothes. The buying and selling of cast-off apparel is a great business in London. Usually the worn garments are freshened up by dye stuffs, pressed and otherwise 'doctored for the market. The process of dressing them is called clobbering, and this in itself is a business. The better class of old dress coats, when nicely clobbered, have a respectable appearance. Clerks with poor salaries, waiters, small tradesmen and curates with meager stipends, are among the purchasers. Coats and other woolen garments which have done good service are exported to Ireland and Holland, where you may see them in great quantities for sale at the fairs and markets. As xy gards the sale of second-hand ladies’ dresses, the trade is everywhere on the increase. Silks, laces, shawls, frills and all sorts of frippery are purchased by dealers whose names are seen in advertisements, and are retailed by them on a very comprehensive scale. Servants are not said to be the buyers. The chief customers for the used, though in many cases elegant, dresses are ladies who aspire to a showy exterior. Second or third hand chignons, we doubt not, are eagerly pounced on. It is amusing to know that liveries, scarlet military tunics and various official garments, decorated with lace, find a ready sale on the west coast of Africa, to which ship-loads are exported. There these gaudy articles of apparel, and the gaudier the better, are purchased for purposes of barbaric splendor. Think of a negro chief seated complacently under his court umbrella, dressed in a cast-off tunic of the Life Guards, or in one of the livery coats of the Lord-Mayor’s attendants! Used scarlet regimentals are said to be largely exported to Russia to be cut up as facings for civil officials, though this we can hardly credit. Silk velvet waistcoats, when even pretty well worn, find a market among German and Polish Jews to be made into skull caps; it being one of the points of Hebrew etiquette to have the the head covered on ceremonious occasions, dinner-parties included. Old velvet waistcoats from England turned into caps for Jewish worshipers in that strangely antique synagogue on the banks of the Moldau ! However woolen garments may be disposed of time after time, they are at length no longer passable, and then comesa total revolution in their character; the buttons are taken off, the limbs torn out and what remains Of the fabric is ground into “devil’s dust.” This is the first step in what may be called the resurrection in old clothes. When a coat will not so much as hang together to dress up a scare-crow it will still make down into very cood shoddy, as the devil’s dust is politely named. The meaning of this is that the garment is torn up by toothed wheels into a condition of loose fibers, which on being properly sifted are mixed with fresh wool, carded, spun and woven into cloth. There is a triumph of art! The shoddy, or mungo, as it is sometimes called, after being fit for the dung-heap, is incorporated with what appears exceedingly beautiful cloth, and is again proudly exhibited as Sunday clothes on the backs of thousands of wearers. The thing seems ridiculous, if not a bit of a cheat; but let us not be too hard on shoddy. There is not a sufficiency of fresh wool for all the world. And as woolen goods are in an overgrowing demand, what better can be suggested than that the elastic fibers of the old garment should be wrought up into an article agreeable to the eye and productive of bodily comfort? All hail to the value and virtues of shoddy! He was a great man who thought out that marvelous invention.

After all, shoddy cannot be expected to stand more than a single bolting. Usually, when the garment which is half shoddy has served its turn, it is thought to have fairly done its duty; the time has come when it should be resolved into its original elements and, by a chemical change, help on our social system. In plain English, the shoddified rags must sink into the condition of manure for various vegetable products. In the south of France and of Italy old woolen rags are used as manure for olive trees, for which purpose they are in popular request. In England they are appreciated as manure for hops; wherefore, we may say that the ultimate destiny of our old coats and trowsers is the imparting of a certain savory bitter to the beer in general use. The substance of old clothes a property in an ordinary beverage! Of all things in the world which appear utterly worthless are soap-suds. Mr. Simmons takes a different view. He tells us that soap-suds as a stimulant of vegetable life cannot be too. highly appreciated. We cannot go into his argument on the great value of soap-suds, and it is sufficient to say that, when poured out as a manure, they are of prodigious efficacy. The French, who are up to everything in the chemical line, have taken a proper view of the value of soap-suds. Whether from private dwellings in Paris, or from the barges of the blanchisseuses, the Seine must have a good deal of sap floating about it in a wasteful kind of way, to say nothing of the greasy pollution from dead dogs and cats. There was a fortune, if properly looked after. An enterprising firm, fortified by the authority of the Prefect, determined to begin a system of skimming the Seine. You would imagine it was a nonsensical idea. Quite a mistake. By uniting the skimmings of the river with the oflal from hospitals the firm is able, by the aid of chemistry, steam and cookery, to fatten 8,000 pigs and to produce annually 500,000 pounds of soap,—> Chambers' Journal.