Daily tobacco leaf-chronicle. (Clarksville, Tenn.) 1890-1895, 1892-03-18
MAKING MANY PILLS.
PELLETS ARE TURNED OUT BY THE
MILLION EVERY WEEK.

When one has begotten pills, so tospeak,
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
day.
Let us see what he is responsible for.
Ten tons or 10000 coo cathartic globnles a
year for Gfty-ive years. That makes 1900 |
00O, 900 of the little demons--a 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 of spreading mile and three |
quarters Of slasters 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-nin miles of
plaster, one yard wide, every year of his
busy life! Over $4,000 miles of scratcherees
laid up against him in the books of the re-
cording angel Verify, this man has much
to answer for. It 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
ture
You have sat- perhaps in some apothe-
cary shop and seen the clerk laboriously
working with mortar and pestle with
licorice and SUGAR and magnesia and what
not, slowly compromising half dozen pei
lets by prescr ptiOn.
This is not the way of making the pill OF
commerce--th. 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 pill of commerce is such 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
one of the secrets of success in pills" said
the superintendent "That is one of the
troubles of new firms making pills. 1t is
hard for them to get the matured apples
of colyeinth and ffankincense, 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 to ten years old before they are
used If we employed these as they first
come to MS they would tear the stomach OF
the public all to pieces.' Whewl and the
old gentleman laughed as If he bad seen
some experiments with new drugs and
knew where the laugh came in.
Hoity toity, Hayti, Chilli what a placel
AS we went in out of the biting norwester
which was racing across the Tappan Zee
at fifty miles an hour, mist came before
my spectacies and my head swan and
senses reeled before the hot air and the
oyerpowering, aromatic smell. There was
whirr OF machinery driven at lightning
speed, and the little group of workingmcn,
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 machines.
II had been for hours in the steam mixers,
which stirred and cut and ground and
stirred again until the ingredients were
absolutely mixed. Now it was rolled out
as II for pie crust and cut into long strips
like macaroni, aud these were passed along
to the pill machines, n couple of grooved
cylinders, with forty grooves IN each, when
were making seventy revolutions to the
minute.
Big appetitcs had these machines, Boa
constructors were not in it. AS fast rs 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
driving room, and thence to be packed il
tiny boxes and shipped to the uttermos'
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
perative than this. A fly speck in August
would be high crime and misdemeanor'
The men worked cheerfully and brlskly
Each had a certain stent TO do ana tn,
quicker it was done the sooner he would b.
home. They did not seem to mind TIT
heat, which | was told was about lOo degs.
and when asked about it they said the.
were used to it. They were dressed for tn
occasion with heavy sweaters, ana 1t wa
plain to see from their clear complexion
and sturdy air that there was nothing
deleterious about the work. Like the M
tendants in Turkish baths they seemed L
thrive and grow fat and strong on IT,
FUSED 60 do it" said the superintendent
casting an afTectionate eye at the last NOV
ing machinery. Indeed, there Is no hranc
in either pills or plasters in which ! hay
not put in my time. Years ago, of course
we did everything by hand, but rs the bus
ness grew the advantages of macRlner
were made manifest, a,tl ingenuity in TIM
supplied it, -.-..,
The packing room was a big one and
was full of female loveliness, for many {
the young ladies of Sing Sing find work ie
their little hands to do in here. But theI
was much help from machinery here als'
for il is machines which count out the pin
twenty-five to box, and dump them
ready for the covers to be put ON ana tn
labels in many different languages to |
gummed on the top. Then they were pllt
up on white platters and sent to the othe
hacking rooms to be cased for shipmen
FIRST TO the warehouses and atterWard
everywhere. .--.---,,
We had a pleasant little experience wit
cha apples of colycinth which we four
stored in barrels in one of the grindir
rooms The artist wanted to know If tbs
tasted GOOD, and was cheerfully told TO u
for himself. He tried Somehow or oth
he did not seem 20 care TO venture peyol
his first bite. II you do not know the re
son. why lust invest in colycinth app
and follow il up with little Socratil
aloes. | promise that YOU will widen yo
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