The suburban citizen., 1902-05-17
USE OF WASTE MATERIAL
MILLIONS OF DOLLARS DUG OUT
OF SCRAP PILES.

Little Wasted In tn lnduhtnhi NOriu'
One of the tlme-honored jokes at the
Chicago Stockyards is that every part
of a pig is saved except its squeal.
Men in the packing business have
added their names 10 the list Of mil
Iionaires because they discovered
methods for utilizing that which had
been thrown away as waste material.
Great factories are running the year
round in Chicago whose raw material
is the cast.off stuff gathered by scav-
eugers and rag men. Men OF science
are ever at work tearing Dy-products
and waste material to pieces to re-
group the elements into new material
which has Il commercial or industrial
value. Little is wasted in the indus
trial world.
Old iron is worked over into new
iron. Linen rags are reincinerated
and live as paper. Woolen rags are
shredded and made into shoddy.
Bones are made into bone black, to
clarity sugar syrup. Old rubbers, bits
OF garden hose, exploded bicycle tires,
and cast-offs in which rubber is
part are made over into new rubber.
Worn steel rails are re-rolled into
lighter sections. Old rusty pipe is
drawn down into bright new pipe.
The tin cans which are gathered up in
alleys and from garbage boxes are
melted down and east into window
sash weights and counter weights for
bascule bridges,
The blood which runs into the
slaughter house wells is transformed
into buttons, and other articles re-
quiring dense bodies and taking high
polish, and into fertilizers. Boys and
girls collect cigar stubs which are
made over into snuff, smoking tob0c-
co and cigarettes. Rags and old car
pets are cut into strips and woven into
handsome rugs. The list OF old cast
off things that are rescued from ash
piles and garbage dumps to be born
again can be extended for columns,
and the list would never cease grow
ing, for every day some new use for
some wasted product is discovered.
There was a time when tons of
blood, fresh from slaughtered cattle,
flowed unheeded through the sewers
under the stockyards. To-day this
blood is saved put through several
processes and comes out as a fertilizer
or in the form OF cakes, which are sent
to sugar refneries to assist in clarity
ing the sweet liquor, Some of the
handsomest buttons worn on new
dresses once ran as warm blood
through the veins Of fat steers.
Heat and hydraulic pressure are the
agents which separate the water from
the albumen in the red fluid, and pre-
pare the dried blood for the pulveriz-
ing process which fits it for use as a
fertilizer. After being boiled down,
pressed, crushed and ground to
powder, the dried blood is mixed with
potash and phosphoric acid and sent
out as q complete fertilizer.
Many years ago in England a wool
famine confronted the weavers. A
bright man with currycomb took ad-
vantage Of the situation and started
the "shoddy" business. He bought up
old blankets, flannel and old wooden
clothing. This old material was cut
and torn into small pieces, and then
stripped into shreds with currycombs.
This process resolved the wooden
fabric into something akin to its origi-
nal elements, wool fibers, and the man
with the ourrycomb mixed this new
raw material with woods and made
cheap, Servlceable cloth. The shears
and currycombs Of the original shoddy
man have long since passed from use,
for expensive and intricate machinery
now is required to make shoddy.
There is shoddy and shoddy. A man
who makes shoddy said there are more
than forty different grades and quail
ties OF the commodity, and that many
kinds of wool cloth in which shoddy is
a constituent element are not cheap,
inferior fabrics, but are more service
able and the better for the shoddy.
Shoddy is useful product of waste
material. 1t is never used alone, but
in combination with new woods. The
woolen rags from which shoddy is
made are first thoroughly busted by
machinery before they are sorted. Any
cotton which may be m the rags Is
got rid of by dipping the rags in
boiling mixture Of sulphuric acid.
Long experience has demonstrated
the exact proportion of the acid re-
quired to eat out the cotton fibers
without destroying the wool. The eff
feet of dipping the rags into the water
and acid is to rot the cotton so that
the woolen part of the fabric falls to
pieces easily. After being dried, the
rags are run through machine that
removes every bit Oh dust, leaving the
pure, clean wool. The wouien rags
and cloth are dyed, and then run
through a machine whose thousands of |
steel pins not only shred the rags, but
split the threads so that the rags
which enter the machine leave it in
the form of wool fibers.
The wool is put through a carding |