The first of the interesting processes of soap making which is visible to the curious eyes of the foreigner is the boiling of oils and lye in large steam boilers. Each boiler holds about 500 gallons. After this mixture has boiled furiously for about an hour, it is conveyed pipes to a machine that converts it into long bars which later are cut in desirable sizes and stamped. This is known as ' household soap" and is made up into single and double tablets.
When coloured soap is required, this same staple, the long bar, shaved finely ina machine for the purpose and then passed into a grinding machine where it becomes almost a powder. It is then coloured and perfumed and passed into other machinery to be macerated and fashioned into little tablets known as "toilet soap."
it takes soap a week to dry sufficiently for packing, so one sees huge mounds of soap lying al! about the place. We who have a preference for a certain brand and have always hoped that it was made of special oils might have a shock to see how the staple bar can be "all things to all men."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.