The Jersey City news. (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1889-1906, 1898-05-28


ration was the only one the commissary
department could furnish them On short
notice. Tho mel of the Seventy-frst New
York regiment were glad to get even hard
tack recently, for while still In sight Of
their homes they were cooped up on a
Transport without any provisions for nearly
"a hours.
The hard tack of today is a far different
article from that which was supplied to
| the boys of 1861. Instead of being a great
round disk half an inch thick and almost
as impenetrable as armor plate it is fur
nishcd in thin squares the size of an or
binary soda cracker. 1t is somewhat thick
er and not SO brittle as the soda cracker,
being palatable and easily eaten.
The hard tack of the civil war was made
from inferior flour, mixed with little skill
and SO thick that it required stout teeth
to bite it. The old campaigners used to
say they could use a hard tack as a plate on
which to cut their meat, aud that when
they wanted to break it they took it to the
| conpan blacksmith. What they really
did was to soak it in coffee, and many an
old soldier will tell you that in this way
he has made many a welcome meal.
Hard tack is intended only for field use
LIZ III IL % u AOAS
and is in camp for too short a time to en-
able the army cooks to mix and bake
bread. It is convenient to carry, besides
being wholesome and nourishing. A hard
tack fed soldier fights well. But the chief
virtue of the hard tack is that it is affected
by neither time nor temperature. 1t never
sours, never becomes moldy and is always
ready for use.
A +1anfo 10 tho rr,soof hor1 tpak onnfQ~
Just as it wa in the days of the civil war.
There are several big hard tack factories
in that city. Not long ago, when it was
expected that the invasion of Cuba would
begin within a day or two, q rush order
was distributed among these factories,
| and inside of 48 hours they turned out
over 100, 600 pounds of hard tack. This
| seems q lot, but it would not last the
troops assembled at Tampa now more than
two days.
If hard tack had to be made by hand,
Uncle Sam would need an army of bakers
as well as an army of soldiers. But ma
chinery has made it possible for a small
| squad of bakers to turn out enough hard
tack to supply an army corps.
Flour, lard, salt, soda and water are the
ingredients OF the hard tack. The process
of mixing the -four and baking the hard
| tack is very interesting. The first thing
done is to pour six barrels of -four into a
hugo mixer. Several pounds of lard, with
the salt and soda, is then put in and the
big machine begins to r~eyolye, and in a
few moments the water four is made into
dough. It is taken from the mixer and
slightly kneaded by hand; then it is put
into a brake which kneads the tough
dough out flat.
The dough, after being kneaded to the
right consistency, is put into the machine
which flattens it out and cuts it into the
| size Of tho crackers and also makes the
perforations in the crackers. This ma
chine rolls the fiattened dough out as fast
as two men can move it away IN huge
plattcrs and shove it into the baking ovens.
The ovens are 10 in number and are
hung upon a large revolving wheel like
| the Ferris wheel. The dough is placed
upon the shelves of the oven and by the
timo it makes one revolution the dough is
cooked into a hard, crisp cracker. The
crackers are then caught up by a belt and
carried up stairs to the packing room,
where they are neatly packed into the big
boxes and sent away to the soldiers.
In the permanent camps little or no
hard tack will be used, but as soon as the