Year: 1870




+ In some respects we Americans are the
most wasteful people on the face OF the
earth. Food enough is ruined by vile
cookery, or thrown away unconsumed, to
support good sized colony of French
men. In the article of dress there is
frightful extravaganza, and no fashionable
person thinks of continuing to wear a
piece of clothing until it is worn out.
An immense quantity of excellent paper
and good ink is wasted in the production
of books, some Of which no one ought to
read, and many of which it is impossible
to read without a painful effort.


But, in the processes Of manufacture,
nothing is wasted. No manufacturing
concern can compete with others engaged
in the production of similar goods, except
upon the condition of careful economy in
the use of the raw material, and an equal
ly careful saving of all the odds and ends
pertaining to the work in hand.


A short time ago the manufacturers Of
lighting gas were puzzled to know how to
dispose of the villainous coal tar left in
the retorts. 1t defled the air and cor
rupted the waters. A more useless, nau-
seous substance was hardly known to
exist. Chemistry came to the rescue, and
to-day not less than thirty-six marketable
articles are produced from this black, vile,
sticky slime-a bit of delicious confec-
tionery, happily unconscious that the ex-
quisite taste that you enjoy so keenly
comes from coal tar-you buy at the drug
gists' a tiny phial of what is labeled
Ottor of Rose," little dreaming that the
liz g, tal ~ he
fields of Araby," but the nasty gas retort.


A few years since it was thought to be
the perfection of economy to saw sticks
of mahogany and rosewood into thin We.
nerings; to-day, the loss incurred by this
process is ruinous, because half the tim.
Der is lost in sawdust. By using ma
chine that shaves off the slice, none OF
the material is wasted, and the saving on
a single log of rosewood is said to amount
to not less in some cases than six hundred
dollars.


No person engaged in making jewelry
can thrive, unless he exercises the great
est care in protecting the precious metal
that he handles from the slightest waste.
The water in which the workmen wash
must be preserved, and the sediment made
to yield back the minute items of gold
that are deposited; they must not be
allowed TO wear pomatum or adorn their
flowing locks with bears grease, because
of trick they have of running their au-
riferous fingers through their hair; and
the windows of the establishment must
be kept closed, as far as possible, to save
the precious dust floating in the air and
blowing away. A large manufactures OF
Attleboro jewelry once told the writer
that he probably lost more gold by the
wind than he put upon bis stock. In
Wickford, Rhode Island, the floor of a
jewelry establishment was taken up and
burned in furnace for the sake of col
lecting the dust that had settled in the
cracks.


1t is quite suggestive to glance at the
bales of fbrous conglomerates used in
shoddy- mills, and study the varied con-
tents as they lie spread out for purifica-
ton in the fields. 1t seems impossible
that such heterogeneous mass of shreds,
patches, strings, rags, and wool dust can
ever be made to reappear in the form of
anything like cloth. Strange grasses
sometimes get mixed with this compound,
and if it SO happens that the seeds are not
exterminated, funny results are likely to
ensue. After exposure to the rain and
the sunshine, the manufactured goods
have been known actually to sprout into
life; an awkward thing it would be for
ons'e overcoat on damp day to creep
out between the shoulders into verdant
sward And what a marvellous variety
of waste matter enters into the compost
tion of paperl Near Bergen, in Europe,
there is a church of the Corinthian order,
and large enough to accommodate thous-
and persons, constructed of papier-mache.
If the pulp of which that edifice is built
should become vocal, what strange things
it might tell If all the good and all the
bad, all the serious and all the absurd
words that were once inscribed on the
fibre of that church should appear again,
what sermons would be preached there
If | worshiped in that paper structure, l
should imagine all the while that | heard
the rustling of old letters, written by
hands that are now spectral, and the rat
tling of silken banners that once floated
proudly on the breeze, and the low sigh
ing of mothers over the frayed garments
that used to clothe the little one who
wears no martial vestment now. L should
fancy that saw floating in the air an
cient tombs, modern journals, weary BIZ
ographies, loud-toned orators, high-strung
poems, cloudy PHILOSOPHERS, and rejected
articles, all bringing up at last in the iron
mill and ground down together into a
common pulp.


A somewhat weird affair, that paper
church near Bergen.