Staunton vindicator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1860-1896, 1890-01-03
FROM WOOD TO TIN PLATE.
ADVANCES MADE IN A GENERATION
BY DAIRY FARMING.

Timed Plate Is blade in SoutI, Wales
oniy-In Effect, Therefore, 1t Is a Raw
Material in the United states-The Tariff
Thereon Is Nonsense.
People of middle age can well remem-
Der the old wooden and earthenware
utensils used in dairy farming thirty
years ago. The cows were MIXED into
small wooden pitcher, and then the milk
was passed through a hair strainer with
wooden sides. Then the milk found its
next resting place in large, cool, earthen-
ware pans, where it remained until The
cream came to its surface.
As soon as this happened the skimmed
milk was given to the calves for food,
while the cream was turned into butter
or cheese. Everything was hard work
in those good old days. There was much
scalding dairy utensils, and everything
had to be kept scrupulously clean. But
all this was before the introduction of
timed plate for general use.
Timed plate contains very little tin.
The body of timed plate is now COM
posed of the finest Bessemer Siemens-
Martin steel. Formerly, it was made Of
sheet iron. These steel sheets are first
rolled out of bar steel and afterward
dipped in pure melted tin. Then the tin
is thoroughly incorporated by means of
acids with the surface of the steel sheets,
and the sheets, consisting of 95 per cent.
of steel and per cent. of pure tin, are
polished, cut in squares and packed in
wooden boxes.
There is apparently only one place in
the world where the operation of max
ing timed plates can he carried out on
profitable basis. Even at that place it is
a very poor business. There are no more
miserable wage earners in Great Britain
than the South Wales tinned-plate work
ers. But the process is largely one car
ried out by simple hand labor. In one
sense the work is unskilled, but, like the
manufacture of horseshoe nails, it seems
to run in families. The entire cost of
making and packing timed plate in
Wales is only 8 cents a pound. In the
United States the steel plates alone would
cost cents a pound without the addi-
tional cost of timing.
Nothing ever struck the American
people as being so useful as timed plate
It could be turned into pots and pans
and light saucepans. 1t made conven-
lent nutmeg crater, and still more con-
venient spice box. It drove out the
clumsy wooden dairy utensils used in
dairy work. 1t found place on roof
tops to keep out the rain. No other ma
lion could have found the innumerable
uses for timed plate that this country
has done; but then no other people have
our practical inventive powers.
When timed ware began to be extern
sively used in dairy work, it created a
revolution in this industry. For the
first time it became possible to transport
fresh milk to points distant from the
dairy. 1t is not SO many years back
since the milk supply of New York city
was obtained from dairy farms within
walking distance. Now procession of
milk trains, from points eighty to hun
dred miles distant, each morning roll
into the railroad stations around and in
the city.
Timed plate utensils are not so easily
kept clean as glazed crockery ware, but
then the timed plate vessels are not
broken so easily as crockery ware But
timed plate is much cleaner for dairy
purposes than the wooden ware which
it drove out.
No timed plate is made in the United
States. To all intents and purposes
timed plate is ra.7,x4 material as ii
reaches our .,nores. AS raw material
it give, rise to many very large indus
ties. The canned goods industry had
its rise and enormous development il
the cheap tin wrappers which could be
put around meats and fruits to preserve
them, and which could l3s afterwards
thrown away as practically valueless
The size of this trade may be inferred
from the fact that 6O0,OO0,O 900 tinnee
cans are used in it every year.
The petroleum refners are also large
users of timed plate. Last year they
took 100000 110-pound boxes o.
timed plate. But nearly one-third O.
the total quantity of tin imported intt
this country is used in dairy farming.
In all these industries it is importan
that the raw wrapping material should
be as cheap as possible Every ont
would grumble if they had to pay hal
cent to the United States government
on every piece of paper with which they
wrapped up parcel. If it was in wal
time or with an empty treasury, it would
not so much matter. But in time O.
peace, with overfowing Golfers, it would
soon be intolerable.
Yet every tomato can pays half cen
duty to the government through the
tariff on timed plate. Every forty quar-
milk can has in like manner paid duty
to the amount of thirty cents. Thirty
cents is not much in itself, but when it il
found that fully S2,500,000 is paid every
year in duties on timed plate which goe
to make dairy utensils, the effect ough
to be startling.
Farmers are slow to realize their share
of this tax. But let each dairy farmer
who reads these lines go around his farm
and count up all the half cents he ha:
given unnecessarily to the government
then all the cents on larger articles
finishing up with thirty cents on hi
forty quart milk cans. When he has
done this let him add them up and figure
out what he could do with the money il
it was in his pocket where it ought to be
The Spanish Language.
The Spanish woman is romantic in tn
broadcast sense of the expression. From tn
cradle to the grave her life is one of romanti
intrigues 1t must be or she is intensel,
miserable She lives her inner life in mad
passionate way that would utterly eclipse
heroine of Mrs Amelia Rives-Chanler. TIL
Spanish language is admirably adapted to tn
Spanish people. 1t is a language of must
and sentiment Any one who has ever hear'
Spanish spoken as it should be, with grace AM
elegance, cannot fail to have been charlne'
with the rich contralto sound of the Spanisl
voice and the sonorous novels, pronounce
: strono and clear with which the SpaniSl