The Number of Scrap-Heaps Is Diminishing as Manufacturers Learn that
By-Products Often Are More Valuable than the Things
from Which They Are Taken.
_An original article written for_ THE SCRAP BOOK.
The true test of the industrial civilization of a people is the extent to
which every scrap and grain of its resources are utilized. The motto of a
prosperous nation is: "Gather up the fragments that nothing be lost."
That the last few years have seen such an increase in the production of
wealth as has never been known before in the history of the world is not
to be wondered at when it is realized that in every department of industry
those things that had been previously thrown away have become a source of
revenue, and, in some cases, the by-product has become of more value than
the original product itself.
The recovery of wealth from waste is the distinguishing mark of the age,
because this is the age of industrial civilization. If the increase in the
production of wealth is greater and more rapid than it has ever been since
man first landed on this earth, without either a penny or a pocket to put
the penny in, it is due to the general extension of methods that have been
in use ever since he began to try to pick a living out of the clinched
fist of dour old Mother Nature.
The delicate perfumes of flowers that otherwise would vanish in a day are
trapped in lard, and then snared again from the lard by alcohol. The
crusted argols that gather on the inside of the vats where wine ferments
are utilized to make the cream of tartar for our biscuits.
Tin Pans for Complexions.
The bloom of health that glows upon the cheeks of the ladies of the
chorus may be traced to the tin pans and cups that jingle on the
rag-collector's wagon. These homely and prosaic vessels are made of plates
of iron, coated, all too thinly in these degenerate days, with tin.
These iron plates have to be "pickled," as the trade phrase goes. All the
rust and other substances than the clean iron have to be washed off with
acids and water. The pickling liquor is not emptied out as slops by any
means. There is a finely divided iron rust floating in it, and when the
water is removed by evaporating it, the residue is Venetian red and iron
pigment that, made up as rouge, can counterfeit the ruddy blood that
courses so near the surface of the satin skin of youth.
It is almost a personal triumph to us to know that the broken bits of rock
from the quarry, unfit to use as building material, are turned into
crushed stone, for which there is so large a demand, thanks to the
increasing popularity of concrete, and that its revenues pay the operating
expenses of the quarry, and make the price got from building stone so much
clear money.
Illuminating-gas has to be washed and scrubbed anyhow before it can be
introduced into our houses. The household ammonia with which the kitchen
sink is kept so sweet is taken by the thousand tons from the scrub-water
of the gas-house and the furnace-gas of iron-works.
Only the Pig's Squeal Gets Away.
Meat packers will tell you that nowadays they save everything but the
pig's last dying squeal. Naturally, the hides and skins of the animals
slaughtered are worth saving. The tips of cows' horns are used for the
mouthpieces of pipes; the horns themselves are split and pressed flat, and
combs, the backs of brushes, and large buttons are made of them. What bits
and splinters are too small to be worked up go for fertilizer.
Hoofs are sorted by colors. The white ones go to Japan, there to be made
up into ornaments of artistic merit. We haven't got that far along
ourselves. The striped ones stay here to be made up into buttons. The
black ones are utilized in the manufacture of cyanide of potash, by which
gold is extracted from low-grade ores it formerly did not pay to work.
The bones in the feet of cattle bear up a great weight, so they are hard
and take a high polish. They can be used instead of ivory, which is
getting scarce. Tooth-brush handles and cutlery handles are made of these
bones. The others in the skeleton are built of lime stuck together with
glue and molded into shape by the push and pull of muscles.
The soft bones of the head, shoulders, ribs, and breast do not need to be
so stiff as the bones of the legs; they have more glue in proportion to
lime than the leg-bones. The animal needs a kind of flexible,
weather-proof varnish flowed over it, so to speak, to protect the tissues.
Glue is what makes this coat or hide. So from bones and scraps and
trimmings of hide this glue or gelatin is soaked out. Even the bones on
which meat has been cooked have some little dribs of gelatin and fat in
them, and these are stewed under pressure until there is nothing left in
them of the gelatin, of which they now make the little capsules in which
the druggist puts the medicine whose taste we don't just fancy, and fats
which go to the soap-maker for the want of a better destination.
Drugs from Dead Cattle.
From the bodies of cows is obtained the tallow which is made into
oleomargarin.
The prevailing ailment of the American people is dyspepsia, which is due
to a natural lack of pepsin. But it has been found out that the pig's
pepsin will do as well as our own, so it is prepared for the drug-trade
and sold at considerably above the price per pound of the hog on the hoof.
There are all sorts of obscure nervous troubles which can be very
materially helped by a substance extracted from the gray matter of calves'
brains.
A growing child should make red corpuscles in his blood at a great rate.
All the processes which construct his bones and his flesh and his various
organs should be working full-powered. The red rib-marrow of freshly
killed young animals contains a substance which is soluble in chemically
pure glycerin and can be digested out of that red rib-marrow, and which,
if given to the child, greatly increases the proportion of red corpuscles
in the blood and stimulates all the constructive processes of the body.
This will sell for a much larger sum a pound than veal.
And so there are various other substances taken from the sweetbreads
proper, the neck-and-throat sweetbreads, the thyroid gland, the parotids,
and the suprarenal capsules which can be used in medicine and can be sold
at a large profit to people brought up to believe that "eating the part
strengthens the part."
Glycerin a By-Product.
And when all has been extracted that you would think could be extracted,
all the bits and scraps and scrapings and what not are put into a tank and
cooked and cooked until all is dissolved that can be dissolved. The
residual fat is skimmed off, and the last bit of glue, and the insoluble
matter at the bottom of the tank, go for fertilizer, and then, in the
packing-houses that don't know their business, the tank water is let run
away. But there is much valuable nitrogenous matter in those waters which
the first-rate packers utilize. And there is glycerin there.
In the old days the candle-makers who used palm-oil had their own troubles
with glycerin. If a candle was blown out, the smoldering wick used to
leave an offensive odor. It was the glycerin that caused this. Naturally,
the only thing to do was to take it out of the candle, and the next thing
was to get rid of it down the gulley into the creek. People complained, as
people will; but what else was an honest chandler to do? Latterly they
have been figuring on the matter, and some of them have come to the
conclusion that they used to let as much as two thousand dollars' worth of
glycerin get away from them every week.
In the last five years the soap-makers have learned that they can realize
more money out of the glycerin than they can out of the soap they make.
Some of this glycerin is refined, but the great part of the crude goes to
the manufacturers of dynamite, which is nitroglycerin mixed with
infusorial earth, so as to weaken it.
There is just as much acid after the glycerin is turned into nitroglycerin
as there was before. After it is washed out the nitro is left apparently
unchanged. It is not broken up, but it is on the edge of it. Give it a
knock and it all flies to pieces at once so suddenly that it will loosen
more dirt in a second than a hundred pick-and-shovel men could scoop out
in a week.
Wealth in Refuse Heaps.
Back of the tin shop there used to be a heap of shining clippings. The
heap of clippings isn't there now. If there are any bits of tin too small
to make the backs of buttons, they are pressed together to make
window-sash weights.
Nor is that pile of sawdust back of the sawmill any more. The butchers
want it for their floors, but that isn't the most economical use for it.
There are acetic acid, wood alcohol, naphtha, wood-tar (and all that that
implies) to be had from the distillation of sawdust--to say nothing of
sugar from birch sawdust. The reason there isn't more money in the sawdust
than in sashes, doors, and blinds which the factory turns out is because
we have more faith in cog-wheels than we have in test tubes.
In machinery, big or little, Americans stand at the head of the class; in
industrial chemistry they are at the foot of the class.
We pay the Germans about ten times what we ought to for phenacetin,
because we can't get it into our heads that there is any money in applied
organic chemistry. Coal-tar was once a nuisance, but the Germans make
indigo so much better and cheaper from it now that they have put the
indigo-plant out of business.
The red trousers of the French soldiers are dyed with German alizarin,
also a coal-tar product, because it doesn't pay to raise madder any
longer. In coal-tar are all sorts of valuable drugs, dyes, and perfumes.
But we don't know it--industrially.
Stay! I do my country an injustice. We can make moth-balls and carbolic
acid. But that is as much as ever we can do. And this is why we do not
utilize the saw-dust and make a better business out of it than the sawmill
can.
And garbage! I wonder how much orange-peel and lemon-peel is thrown away
in New York City every day, and how much the neroli or essential oil that
could be got from it would be worth. I wonder if the stalks and fag-ends
of vegetables could not be distilled and something made from them. But the
limit of our wisdom in regard to garbage is: burn it and get power from
it. Somebody is going to get rich from this garbage problem one of these
days. But it will be the test-tube and not the cogwheel that will make the
money. It will be the industrial chemist, not the mechanic.
Fortunes Lurk in Old Wool.
See what a difference such knowledge has made in the wool industry.
Sheep's wool is dirty and greasy when it comes to the mills. Wash it with
strong alkali in running water. That is what has always been done. But a
man in Massachusetts thought it would be a good idea to dissolve the
grease with some such solvent as naphtha. He saved the naphtha to use over
again; he recovered the grease, which is the most softening and
penetrating of all fats and is most valuable for ointments, and he
recovered carbonate of potash. Sheep wearing heavy wool in the hot weather
perspire freely, and this perspiration contains carbonate of potash.
After the wool is once woven into cloth, we may dismiss from our minds all
thought of effecting any more economies. When the suit of clothes is worn
to rags, the rags are still as good as new, for the wool is picked out
into strands of fiber again and woven anew. It isn't ground into shoddy
as it was in the days of the Civil War.
The wool is picked apart as long as it has any staple to it at all, and
forms part of the most expensive and enduring of fabrics. It may be mixed
with cotton, but when it comes to be a rag again, the cotton is burned out
either with acid or with heat, the dust is taken out, and once more behold
absolutely pure wool, much safer to wear than the new wool of the tropics
and semi-tropics. When there is not enough wool to hold together it goes
into our clothing. With wood ashes and scrap iron it ceases to be a fabric
and becomes a dye, Prussian blue.
The cotton rag has no such long life. All it is good for is paper stock.
The paper business is essentially a wealth from waste industry. For a long
time, linen rags, cotton rags, and old rope were the only materials of
which paper was made. Cheap books and magazines and newspapers had to wait
until it was discovered that the resins and gums in which the fibers of
wood are imbedded could be dissolved away, leaving the pulp of the wood in
just the same condition that the pulp of rags was.
Where Old Magazines Go.
If the resins are not thoroughly dissolved away the paper turns brown in
the course of time. Naturally enough, the wood-pulp makers let the
solution of resins run off and become a nuisance, but they, too, are
learning that there are glucoses and pyroligneous acids and all manner of
riches to be obtained from the solution of the vegetable matter, to say
nothing of the possibilities of a sort of gum or glue which is softened
both by heat and by moisture.
And just a word about an economy found necessary by the magazines and
newspapers which take back the copies the newsdealer does not sell. These
"returns" were hard to get rid of. Paper is mean stuff to burn in
quantities. So far as the texture of the wood-pulp paper is concerned, it
might be used to print on again, but how are you going to remove the ink?
Let the ink stay on and use the pulp over again for pasteboard boxes. And
that's what becomes of the newspapers and magazines that nobody buys.
If you will look over journals devoted to concrete and its wonders, you
will see a good deal about the concrete made out of slag. And there was a
neat little point made when it was discovered that about two cents a pound
could be saved in the manufacture of iron by freezing all the moisture out
of the atmospheric air before it was heated for the blast. But the best is
yet to come. Quite a little bit of money has been made in this country
from the manufacture of iron. What do you say to the proposition to make
the iron itself a mere by-product to something even more valuable?
Valuable Gas Ran to Waste.
From the top of the furnace in which iron ore is liquefying in the fervent
heat there rushes out a gas, largely carbon monoxide, whose hunger for
oxygen has been only half satisfied. If it could get that other atom of
oxygen it would be a gas that would only smother us when it didn't make
the soda-fountain fizz. As it is, carbon monoxide is deadly poison.
It has to be put to some use. It doesn't burn under a boiler very well. It
is necessary to keep a bed of coals going so that the furnace-gas may stay
lighted. But it has been found that even when it is too poor to keep
alight it will explode in the combustion chamber of a gas-engine.
It has also been found that a furnace smelting seven tons of pig-iron an
hour will make enough furnace-gas to supply nine thousand horse-power per
hour.
Deducting gas and power that can be economically used on the premises, it
is estimated that there will be a surplus of power to sell of five
thousand horse-power per hour. Now that we are able to transmit power
cheaply by high-tension currents, it is easy to see what this means. In
New York they sell electromotive force for from four cents per horse-power
per hour up to twelve cents. Call it two cents, and five thousand
horse-power per hour means a hundred dollars, which is more money than
seven tons of pig-iron will bring.
A lot has been done with cog-wheels; a lot is being done with wires; but
when it comes to recovering wealth from waste, it is the test-tube that
will do it. And so, study chemistry, young man.