Soap factory

“ Since cattle will not eat it there remains no other field of utilization beyond the soap factory, for which it is eminently suited. In addition to the above-mentioned quantities ample supplies of this material are forthcoming, because it is freely used as ballast in ships sailing from the corner of the world in which the plant [Pg 194] grows in profusion. Should the demand for the food product which this substance yields increase it would not exercise any stringency, because the offal alone would be adequate to satisfy soap-making requirements. ”

“ No fixed plan for the construction and equipment of a soap plant can be given. The specifications for a soap factory to be erected or remodeled must suit the particular cases. Very often a building which was constructed for a purpose other than soap manufacture must be adapted for the production of soap. ”

“ MY NEW ACQUAINTANCE AND OUR CO-PARTNERSHIP—THREE WEEKS' EXPERIENCE MANUFACTURING SOAP—THE COLLAPSE—HOW IT HAPPENED—BROKE AGAIN—MORE HELP FROM MR. KEEFER—A TRIP TO INDIANA—SELLING PRIZE SOAP WITH A CIRCUS—ARRESTED AND FINED FOR CONDUCTING A GIFT ENTERPRISE—BROKE AGAIN.
On my way home, I formed the acquaintance of a young man, Fleming by name, who had been employed in a soap factory in Chicago, and was on his way to Toledo, where his parents resided. ”

“ As the manufacture of soap from waste vegetable bases represents something entirely new, so do the actual methods of production. The revolution is complete. In preparing the conventional soap from 10 to 16 days are necessary. By the new process the cereal soap can be made in sixty minutes! Furthermore, the operation is clean, absolutely free from odour, and cold, no heat whatever being required, except to warm the factory during the winter for the comfort of the employees. ”

“ The acid component of the grease partially neutralizes the base, and a new substance is formed, namely, soap.
With the advance of civilization the labor of soap making passed from the home to the factory, very much as bread making has done in our own day. Different varieties of soaps appeared, of which the hard soap was the most popular, owing to the ease with which it could be transported. Within the last few years liquid soaps have come into favor, especially in schools, railroad stations, and other public places, where a cake of soap would be handled by many persons. ”

“ The soap maker, an assertive positive man who manufactured a product called Horn's Household Friend Soap, had his own notion of what a young man should be and how he should make his way in the world, and had taken pleasure in talking to Steve. He told the Bidwell jeweler's son of how he had started his own factory with but little money and had succeeded and gave Steve many practical hints on the organization of companies. ”

“ In the factory the alkali is proportioned by weight, so that as little free alkali is left as possible. Such a soap is called “neutral.” Resin is added, in yellow laundry soaps, and is supposed to aid in forming suds. When there is an excess of resin, as in some cheap soaps, it is hard to rinse out and colors the clothes. Borax is sometimes added to soap, and is useful when the water is hard, but not necessary in soft water. Naphtha or some other petroleum oil in soap increases the cleansing property of soap, by dissolving fatty or greasy impurities. ”

“ In West Central Africa, moreover, the natives, especially the Fanti race, have been accustomed to wash themselves with soap prepared by mixing crude palm oil and water with the ashes of banana and plantain skins. The manufacture of soap seems to have flourished during the eighth century in Italy and Spain, and was introduced into France some five hundred years later, when factories were established at Marseilles for the manufacture of olive-oil soap. Soap does not appear to have been made in England until the fourteenth century, and the first record of soap manufacture in London is in 1524. ”

“ It is one of the few substances which are entirely consumed by use, leaving no product of any worth. Broken glass and bottles are by no means absolutely worthless; for rags we may purchase new cloth, but soap-water has no value whatever. It would be interesting to know accurately the amount of capital involved in the manufacture of soap; it is certainly as large as that employed in the coffee trade, with this important difference as respects Germany, that it is entirely derived from our own soil. ”

“ It is often necessary to manufacture a cheaper grade of soap for toilet purposes to meet the demand of a certain class of trade as well as for export. To accomplish this it is of course necessary to produce a very inferior product and run down the percentage of fatty acids contained in the soaps by the addition of fillers or to use cheaper oils in manufacturing. The most simple method of filling a soap is to load it at the mill with some substance much less expensive than the soap itself. ”

“ Of course, these soap makers are not interested immediately in altering habit or raising the standard of cleanliness. They want to sell the full extent of their possible output of soap under the present cheap and efficient manufacturing conditions; so they are trying to make enough people use soap or more soap to exhaust their supply. They persuade us to make additional effort to be clean and, having once put us on the higher level of more unexceptional cleanliness, they keep us resisting the tendency ever to remain soiled. ”

“ Instead of competing with other soap manufacturers who depended for their sales upon their ability to raise enough people up from the class of cheap soap users to fine soap users, the manufacturers went for those who had to take the more elemental elevation from dirt to soap. We all remember how, when the same firm were pushing their kitchen Sapolio a few years ago, they erected before us all, in the magazines and in the street cars, a higher standard of pot-and-pan brightness and kitchen cleanliness. ”

“ Thus we can take a combination of tallow and cocoanut oil and make a great many presumably different soaps by combining these substances with caustic soda, by different methods of manufacture and by incorporating various other ingredients, as air, to form a floating soap, alcohol to make a transparent soap, dyestuffs to give a different color, etc., but essentially it is the same definite compound.
The manufacturer can best judge the brand of soaps he desires to manufacture, and much of his success depends upon the name, package, shape, color or perfume of a cake of soap. ”

“ As to the total production and consumption of soap in this country, no figures are available, but everyone knows how enormous is the consumption of soap produced by English firms whose names are household words. In addition to their providing for the wants of probably ninety-nine out of a hundred of their own countrymen, our soap manufacturers do an enormous and rapidly growing business abroad. ”

“ Soap is a very important product to every branch of the textile industry. For woolen fabrics it is used for scouring, fulling and throwing the wool; in the silk industry it is necessary for degumming the raw silk, as well as for dyeing; in the cotton mills it is used to finish cotton cloth and to some extent in bleaching; it is, furthermore, employed in a number of ways in the manufacture of linen. Large quantities of soap are thus consumed in an industry of so great an extent and the requirements necessitate different soaps for the different operations. ”

“ The cloth-workers of Yorkshire use tons and tons of soap for scouring their materials, and throw away millions of gallons of soap-suds. Besides this, there are manufactories of sulfuric acid near at hand, and a large demand for machinery grease just thereabouts. He accordingly bought iron tanks, and erected works in the midst of the busiest center of the woolen manufacture. But he failed to pay expenses, for in his calculations he had omitted to allow for the fact that the soap liquor is much diluted, and therefore he must carry much water in order to obtain a little fat. ”

“ The cold process for manufacturing soap is the simplest method of soap making, and the equipment required is small when compared to the other methods. All the more expensive equipment that is necessary is a crutcher, a tank to hold the lye, frames, a slabber or cutting table, and a press. Yet, in spite of the simplicity of thus making soap, the disadvantages are numerous for the production of a good piece of soap. The greatest difficulty is to obtain a thorough combination of oil or fat and lye so that there will not be an excess of one or the other in the finished soap. ”

“ Cocoanut oil is used very largely in the manufacture of cold-made soaps as it is well adapted for this purpose, although it is by no means true that other oils may not be employed. Since by this process of manufacture no impurity contained in the fat or oil is removed in the making of the soap, it is necessary that in order to obtain a fine finished product, any impurity contained in these may be removed if present, or that the fats be as pure as can be obtained. If inedible tallow is used for cold-made soap, it is advisable to bleach it by the Fuller's Earth Process. ”

“ If we gather together scrapings of lard, butter, bits of tallow from burned-out candles, scraps of waste fat, or any other sort of grease, and pour a strong solution of lye over the mass, a soft soapy substance is formed. In colonial times, every family made its own supply of soap, utilizing, for that purpose, household scraps often regarded by the housekeeper of to-day as worthless. Grease and fat were boiled with water and hardwood ashes, which are rich in lye, and from the mixture came the soft soap used by our ancestors. ”

“ And for the better preventing the elandestine making of soap, without payment of the duties for the same; be it further enacted, by the authority aforesaid, That from and after the said 20th day of September 1784, it shall be lawful for any officer or officers of Excise to take an account from time to time, as often as he or they shall think fit, by gauging, weighing, or otherwise, as to him or them shall seem most proper and convenient, of all tallow, oil, rosin, and grease of every kind, and of all materials for making soap, which any maker of soap shall at any time have in his possession ”

“ Through the acid properties of the fats, the oleine, stearine, margarine, etc., which they contain, combine with the alkali to produce the saponified compound.
Hard soap is made with soda; soft soap with potash. The more oleine in the fat, the softer the soap; the more stearine the harder. Rosin is also largely used, sometimes to the extent of one-third the weight of the soap. It increases its hardness, makes it dissolve easier in water and forms a more copious lather.
The Most Economical Soap. Soap may be two-thirds water and still remain solid. Even dry, hard soap contains 20 or 25 per cent. ”

“ Completely neutral soaps, however, are more difficult to manufacture—requiring more skill and care than those in which no attention is paid to excess of alkali—and consequently cost more than the general public are accustomed, or, in fact, care to pay for soaps. While this is true, one must not judge the quality of a soap by the price demanded for it. Some of the manufacturers of miserable soaps charge the public some of the most outrageous prices. Neither can a soap be judged by its odor or its style of package and putting on the market. ”

“ So far as industry is concerned the use of nitrogenous and oil wastes in the form of soap has enabled startling economies to be effected. In the woollen industry alone the saving in the soap-bill ranges from 20 per cent. ”

“ Now, although the soap may be economized in personal ablution by the uncomfortable method here described, it is impossible to obtain this economy in the washing of linen. In this case, the whole of the water must be saturated with soap before it is available. Soda is, to a certain extent, substituted with a view to economy, as much as £30,000 worth of soda being annually used in the metropolis to compensate for the hard quality of the water; and, perhaps, as an approximative calculation, £200,000 worth of soap is annually wasted without being useful as a detergent. ”

“ The materials employed in making mottled soap comprise bleached palm oil, tallow, bone fat, cocoa-nut oil, palm-kernel oil, cotton-seed oil, and, in some instances, rosin.
The choice of a charge will naturally depend upon the cost; the property of absorbing a large amount of liquor, which is characteristic of soaps made from cocoa-nut oil and palm-kernel oil, is taken advantage of, as are also the physical properties of the various fats and oils, with a view to the crystallisation of the resultant soap and the development of the mottle. ”

“ Only soap made from best quality fats is usually milled, a suitable base being that obtained by saponifying a blend of the finest white tallow with a proportion, not exceeding 25 per cent., of cocoa-nut oil, and prepared as described in Chapter V.
The first essential of a milling base is that the saponification should be thorough and complete; if this is not ensured, rancidity is liable to occur and a satisfactory toilet soap cannot be produced. The soap must not be short in texture or brittle and liable to split, but of a firm and somewhat plastic consistency. ”

“ It is impossible to use a good grade of fats and make a profit upon laundry soap at the price at which it must be retailed. The manufacturer of this grade of soap must look to the by-product, glycerine, for his profit and he is fortunate indeed if he realizes the entire benefit of this and still produces a superior piece of laundry soap. ”

“ Recently a company has been formed in this country for hardening oils and it is very probable that the future will see this material extensively used in our own country, as these appear to be the one present hope of the soap manufacturer as a check on the ever increasing cost of fats and oils now used in making soap. ”