Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1911-01-03
HOW MILLIONS ARE WASTED.
Fortunes Often Exiat IN Discarded
Scraps,

Scraps.
Toward the close Of the year some
body or other Of 2 mathematical ol
frugal turn of miad begins to figure
out how much we might have saved
had we begun harvesting our pennies
oil and wine at the beginning of the
year This time it is John T. Schaf'
fer, inventor of labor saving and waste
preventing Devices of Rochester, N
T., who leads the van with interest
ing finarcifl statistics Of what might
have Been"
Mr.. Schaffer, by The ;way, was the
fifSt man to put wire into glass fSy
pracncat cGmmerciar purposes, there
by causing a saving in bills for broken
glass. He also applied the pneumatic
cushion 10 car bumpers for the re-
duction of shock in rebound, thereby
causing a saving in nerves. His great
hobby for thirty years has been q
assets of the industrial world. Ac-
cordiTg to data compiled by him,
many in4lliGns Of dollars were simply
thrown away. du1ing 1910 because we
let them dribble through opr fiuglrs
He has more statistics on the Waste
pf9bism Than probably any other
man in the cg4Htry. OK the long list
of materials most grossly wasted IN
America corn cobS. oily waste, CORN
stalks, sugarcane stalks and waste
leather scraps are perhaps the msst
valuable when scientifically treated
for conservation
According to Mr.. Schaffer, the lu-
bricating boxes on railroad car wheels
are one great source Of unconserved
wealth. There are 10,249,642 car
whoels in the United States on its
passeHget si2d freight cars and loco
motives. They IeqliFe. on an aver
erage, thirty gallons Of oil Per year,
of Bil for car and engine wheels alone
3O7, 1883, $50 gallons. -
To soak up this vast amount Of lu-
bricatOr 51,247,310 pounds Of waste
are used, or an average Of five pounds
to each wheel A demonstration Of
saving oil from waste used was made
by Mr. Schaffef, ana from sixty
pounds of the oily waste seven gall
Ions and one quart of Oil was
squeezed
If. on the average, 100 pounds OF
waste produces only eight gallons Of
oil. the amount possible to save from
the oily waste used by the railroads
of the United States in one year
would reach the total Of 4,097,7S4
gallons, and at an average price Of
only 33 1-2 cents per gallon its cash
value would be $1,366,595.
Discarded corncorbs are another
neglected source of wealth. Mr..
Schaffer claims that they can be con-
verted into wood block in many forms,
. l,a Of yNrhi oh INN
Der. ssjlyoad ties and the basis of
many kinds of furniture. He esti-
mates that this years crop Of approx
imately 3,00O,000,009 bushels would
produce 1,650,000,Q 900 bushels of
cobs on the basis of So per cent cob,
and these pressed into boards would
yield ,3GG,60Q,Q00 feet Of lumber.
Made into railroad ties the cobs would
produce 412, 100000 ties. which would
be enough for 1873 miles of rail-
road. The cobs of the 1910 yield
would, If pressed into lumber, make
$50 solid piles the size OF the Pulitzer
building.
OF the neglected and undeveloped
sources of wealth of this country peat
rs foremost Some of the richest peat
Black Lake, 81, Lawrence county, N.
Y. The Great Dismal Swamp Of
Virginia is worth more tfan many
gold mines. Cape Elizabeth, Maine,
has great vein of peat, located
three years ago by the United States
geological surrey. There are vast
quantities ia the Dakotas, Minnesota,
Wisconsin, Michigan. the New Eng
land states, and their total value, at
SO per ton, has been estimated by
Federal experts at $3S,00O, 600, ,000.
One OF the most successful uses TO
which peat has been put Is I'm the
production of gas. 1t has been used
by the Notla Steel Works In Sweden
for thirty years for the making OF
gas. and from 1900 to $4,000 cubic
yards of dry kneaded peat are used
for gasmaking annually. Peat gas
is used in several parts of Europe for
glass melting and furnaces.
\ ton of dry peat will yield forty,
three gallons of alcohol when treated
with suiphuric acid and special
yeast. and the alcohol will cost about
one-fourth what potato alcohol does.
Tar is also d product OF peat. The
use Of peat for fuel is known the
world over and peat bficklets nave
proved successful il EGroBe,-New
York World.