Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1911-06-25

showed just what to do with old tin The writer
explained clearly several hundred useful articles that
could be made with the Among these were hang
ing baskets and flower pots, drinking cups and milk
pals salt and pepper holders clock cases. pipe racks,
paper cutters, pen and pencil holders book clips scrap
baskets picture frames fire screens and similar articles
All you needed in making these articles of general
pair of scissors, wire, soldering outfit,
hammer few riveting nails-and little patience
and genius.
The American tin can is really wonderful factor in
national life; but it is of those modest shrinking
little factors that likely to be unnotced unless
stop to consider them We have many tin around
us all the time that take it matter of that
today where American tin is considered Won
deu prize Explorers in the heart of darkest Africa
have found tribal Kings exhibiting with great pride
among their possessions few shiny, well polished tin
cans In Siberia, along the shores of Boring Strait ma
tive tribes picked up empty tin cans thrown away by
some passing whaler and looked upon them of more
value than pearls rubies. In less than South
Sea Island tribes American tin used by chiefs
medicine cups which supposed to possess charms
Danish sickness But all such fetishism is rapidly
being banshed from the face Of the earth by the
facturers of American tin cans They are flooding the
world with their products and cannot be lost
anywhere in the DESERT the Wilderness or in the cold
Arctic regions without finding the companionship of
empty American tin can.
This is said advisedly, may fully realize when
the output of the industry is considered. We
facture only little less than thousand million tin
year, and the output is steadily the increase
If all these laid end to end they would belt
the globe four times more, Think of hundred thou
sand miles of tin cans big and little and all full of some
thing edible or useful They all filed Tin cans
not made for for ideness; they made to
fill and American FARMS orchards, mines and waters
furnish the material that goes into Them If we 60 back
to 1850, we shall find that few tin were made or
used People didn't eat canned food them not to any
great extent In the first place. they afraid of it;
anything put up in cans viewed with suspicion.
Well the country was smaller then, and people got
along with less In season they had all the delicacies
that could be raised in garden and orchard; but out
of season they went without. They didn't begin to
have the variety enjoy tables today-and all
a blessing it could confer upon mankind. Then came
the Civil War; with its great armies in the field to feed
and railroads inadequate that whole regiments halt
starved and the country through which they marched
denuded of crops that the grasshoppers COM
mtted suicide in despair. There only one possible
solution to the problem of feeding the armies in the
field; preserved food of some kind had to be fur
nished and shipped to the men.
Tin Cans Opportunity
THAT the opportunity of the tin 1t rose to
the occasion, and gradually dispelled the suspicion
that attached to it. At the close of the Civil War the
tin can came its own and the following decade wit
messed great interest in the canning industry Expert
carried extensively in every direction,
and meat fruit vegetables, and fish were put up in cans
and shipped to the remoteSt parts of the earth.
BY the time we had another war-the Spanish Amer
lean War of 189Sthere were two thousand canneries
the country which put up canned goods worth sew
entytwo million dollars The old fear of canned food
had disappeared, and about everybody eating 1T.
We eating of this canned food right at home
but for our surplus we shipped three million dollars
worth to other countries Instead OF representing the
high mark of the industry this really only the
beginning of it. We had learned the art of canning