Fairhaven herald. [volume] (Fairhaven, Wash.) 1890-????, 1892-03-15
MAKING MANY PILLS.
PELLETS ARE TURNED OUT BY THE
MILLION EVERY WEEK.


When one has begotten pills, so to speak,
three times a day for five and fifty years,
like Superintendent Blandford, of Sing
Sing, you would think that he would be
about ready to repent for his misdoings
and lay down the potion box forever and a
day.
Let us see what he is responsible for
Ten tons or 4O,OJ0,OO cathartic globules a
year for fifty-fve years. That makes 2 200 70
100000 Of the littie demons sort of ma
tional debt of those active little spheres Of
pain and usefulness. As if this offending
were not enough for one man to have over
seen, the gay superintendent admits that he
is guilty also oispreading mile and three
quarters of plaster- every day-plasters as
full Of holes as the DEVILS highway is Of
pitfalls, and with the drawing power Of
mogul engines Of the heaviest caliber.
Six hundred and thirty-nine miles Of
plaster one yard wide, every year Of his
busy life. Over 33, 600 miles of scratcherees
laid up against him in the books of the re-
cording angel. Verify, this man has much
to answer for. 1t is like astronomy. The
figures are appalling.
But, come with me- ye who only know
the pill Of commerce by its works and let
us see some Of the mysterious ways con
nected with it's evolution and manufac-
ture.
You have sat, perhaps, in some apothe-
cary shop and seen the clerk labOriously
working with mortar and pestle with
hcoricc and sugar and magnesia and what
not, slowly compromising half dozen pei
lets by prescription.
This is not the way of making the pill of
commcrce-the festive and famous little
pill which is built for the mastication of
the million, which pokes its nose into the
advertising columns of every newspaper in
the land, whose name is known in many
tongues, from the equator to the pole and
back again, which cures half the real and
many imaginary ills Of mankind and
will swear TO you three-quarters of our ills
are so near imagined that very little pill
with confidence thereadded, will cure
them as well as a CARLOAD Of prescriptions
carefully compounded.
The pin of commerce is such a very gre
garious and wholesale sort of an affair,
there are so very many Of them needed to
supply the demand that they are made,
like pins and buttons, by machinery, and
Yankee ingenuity has invented machinery
which can be depended ON TO measure out
correctly and mix thoroughly.
"Old drugs, when they are vegetable, are
the superintendent. "That is one of the
troubles Of new firms making pills It is
hard for them TO get the matured apples
of colycinth, and fraukincense, the famous
treasure of the east which your Bible has
told you about, and other drugs which are
used in this business and which should be
from eight 90 ten years old before they are
used. II we employed these as they first
come 10 us they would tear the stomach of
the public all TO pieces" Whew. and the
old gentleman laughed as il he had seen
some experiments with new drugs and
knew whore the laugh came in.
Hoity tOiuy, Hayti, Chilli what a place!
As we went ia out of the biting r'wester
which was racing across the Tappan Zee
at fifty miles am hour, mist came before
my spectacies and my head swan and
senses reeled before the hot air and the
OverpOwering, aromatic smell. There was
Whirr of machinery driven at lightning
speed, and the little groupo Of workingmen,
many Of them white haired, hale and
hearty, were bending their energies TO the
task Of turning out 10000 pills in the
allotted four hours
On a broad stone table they were pre-
pairing dough for the two pill machiIes
1t had been for hours in the steam mixers,
stirred again until the ingredients were
absolutely mixed. Now it was rolled out
as If for pie crust and cut into long strips
like macaroni, and these were passed along
to the pill machines, a couple Of grooved
cylinders, with forty grooves in each, which
were making seventy revolutions to the
minute.
Big appettes had these machines. Boa
constructors were not in it. As fast as the
long strips could be fed into them they
whirled them out below completed pills,
all ready to be carted away in trays to the
drying room, and thence TO be packed in
tiny boxes and shipped to the uttermost
parts Of the earth.
How clean is everything, 1t is the first
thing you notice and the last, and every
other room is like it. Nothing is more i'm
pcrative than this. A fly speck in August
would be n high crime and misdemeanor.
The men worked cheerfully and brislly.
Each had "A certain stent to do, and the
quicker it was done the sooner he would be
home. They did not seem to mind the
heat, which / was told was about lO5 degs.,
and when l asked about it they said they
were used to It. They were dressed for the
occasion with heavy sweaters, and il was
plain % see from their clear compilations
and sturdy air that there was nothing
deleterious about the work Like the at
PENDANTS in Turkish baths they seemed to
. thrive and grow fat and strong on it,
fused TO do it," said the superintendent,
casting an affectionate eye at the fast NOV
ing machinery. Indeed, there is no branch
in either pills or plasters in which / have
not put ia my time. Years ago, of course.
we did everything by hand, but as the bust
ness grew the advantages Of machinery
were made manifest, and ingenuity in time
supplied it,"
The packing room was big one and it
was full Of female loveliness for many of
the young ladies Of Sing Sing find work for
their little hands to do in here But there
was much help from machinery here also,
for it is machines which count out the pills,
twenty-five to box, and dump them in