Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 40, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 June 1896 — IN A CANDY FACTORY. [ARTICLE]

IN A CANDY FACTORY.

Cleanliness in the Places Where Swept* * meats Are Turned Out. From top to bottom the floors of the factory are covered With tiles, and I noticed that there were people engaged In all parts of the bdilding scrubbing and Washing these tiled floors. For u candy factory it was the least sticky or smeary place I ever saw. Absolute cleanliness and sweetness was the rule. There wqs a slight drift of sugar about, as in a mill where wheat is being ground," and your coat might get a little" powdered, but there was always sweeping going on. Chocolate-making I need not describe, only to state that everything was done here by machinery, for the chocolate as produced enters for a large percentage into the bonbbns manufac-" tured. In the sugar-plum departments handwork seemed to be cconstant. Tidylooking young women, all with gaps on, were working away, each one with a little saucepan before her full of sugar; the sugar Was in a pasty condition, the heat being derived from steam. In these saucepans were sugars of all the hues of the rainbow-. The workwomen would take up an almond or a pistache nut, and drop it in the saucepan, then fish it out with a bit of wire fashioned in loop form. The art was to get just the proper coating. Then with a dexterous motion of the wrist the sugarplum would be placed in a tin pan, and with a deft “motion of the wire loop a nice finish would be given to the top of it, There were some very small sugarplums, and it would take 200 of them to make a pound. They were all exact in form. These little things, ~so the foreman told me,had gone through ten processes before they had arrived at their present cortdition. Some of the sugarplums were made in molds. There was pure legerdemain about these. A man took a funnel, and dropped the sugar, just at the crystallizing point, in molds. They were very small things, not more than an inch long by half an inch wide, but the confectioner never poured a drop in the wrong place. Dear ine! if I tried to do that, I should make a precious mess of it. Here were’ eugar-plunis of, many shades, every workwoman seeming to have a specialty. It was something not alone requiring alertness of hand, but constant watchfulness as to the condition of the material used. If it had been too soft, the bonbon Would have run and been out of shape. If the sugar paste had been too hard it would have been intractable. How they managed not to burn anything was a wonder. — Harper’s Round Table.