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Show f What Do You Know About Soap? j By Frederic J. Haskin. WASHINGTON, D. C, Sept. 11. Whoever Who-ever you are. you will not dny that you are a regular consumer of soap, that you have been intimately associated with soap every day of your life since early infancy, ar.d that you oujht to know something about soap. As a matter of fact, do you know anything any-thing about it at ail? l'o you know what It is made of? I'o you know what is a fair price for a piece of soap? Lhi you know what kinds of soap are injurious and what are not ? Po you know what kind tf soap will last a long time, and what kind will wear away quickly? The chances are you do not. The consumer con-sumer almost never knows anything about the articles- he buys, either as to their actual value, or as to their comparative-qualities. comparative-qualities. That is one reason why he gets so regularly and thoroughly stung. If the United States government had bought the commodities which it used during the war in the same spirit of happy and reckless ignorance which you bring to your shopping, this nation would now be bankrupt. But the government had scien- tists analyze everything it bought. It found out just what was good and what was not. It also determined just what i it cost to produce an article, and refused to pay more 'than that amount plus a I fair profit. The result was that the gov-; gov-; ernment purchased most of its supplies for a fraction of what they cost the pub-1 pub-1 lie, and even retailed them again through i Its quartermaster stores at prices less j than half of those that you and I pay. w The results of many of the gove.rn- merit studies of articles of common consumption con-sumption have now been embalmed In bewildering technical reports, but out of 1 these reports can be extracted a few facts landideas comprehensible to the layman. Some of these facts about soap are offered of-fered here, in the belief that the general public will enjoy a little gossip about such an old and valued friend, and will perhaps be enabled to understand him a little better in the future. It should be added that the government is not responsible for the conclusions here set forth. They are drawn by the writer from the technical facts in the reports. In the first place, it should be said that there is very little poor soap on the American market. American manufacturers manufac-turers make good soap almost exclusively, and you are hi little danger of getting a soap that will injure your complexion or your hair. In the second place, !t is possible to buy the very best soap for all practical purposes at 5 to 10 cents a cake. When you pay 20 to 50 cents for a cake of soap, you are not getting any more cleansing value for your money than you are when you pay 5 cents. Tho more expensive soap may contain ft perfume which the cheaper lacks, and if this tickles your nose or your vanity enough, you may be getting your money's worth. This more expensive soap probably prob-ably also comes in a fancy paper box or wrapper, and here again your sense of the beautiful may be delighted to 15 cents worth. Many of the expensive soaps are advertised adver-tised to have medicinal value. All soap has a good deal of medicinal value. Inasmuch as soap is one of the best disinfectants, and the medicated soap may have somewhat some-what more medical value than the non-medicated. non-medicated. But do not be too much impressed im-pressed by the soap which is advertised to confer upon you any other boon than that of cleanliness. For all of these soaps are made of about the same thing. The fact o( the matter is that when our forefathers boiled tallow and ashes together to make soft soap, they were doing about the same thing that all soap manufacturers do today. Every soap is a combination of an oil or a fat and an alkali, which is usually either the potash the pioneers used or else soda. Most soap is simply a combination of tallow and soda boiled together, and' provided both constituents are pure and clean, there is no better soap. The terrific multiplicity of form and shape and color and smell which you see in the soap showcase at the drug store is nothing more than the contents con-tents of the good old soap kettle of early days in a host of different disguises. The superficial differences between these cakes of soap are numerous and striking, but there ire only a few fundamental fun-damental differences. The chief one of these is in the amount of -water which the soap contains. Most toilet soap is from twenty to thirty-three per cent water. Naturally, the more water, the less soap. And besides, the water in the soap makes it wear away more easily. A soap containing a large percentage per-centage of water will be somewhat softer than one Avith a small water content. To buy for economy, therefore, choose a rather hard, inexpensive soap. It will make you just as clean as any soap you can buy. .The more expensive soaps are known as milled soaps. They are made by grinding the soap and then compressing it into cakes. The chief advantage of this process seems to be that it makes it possible to mix more perfume with the soap than can be done by merely boiling it. Floating soap is another mystery to the average soap user. This attractive quality is given the soap by blowing it full of tiny air bubbles while it is still hot. These bubbles are invisible to the naked eye. They tend to make the soap w-ear away more quickly than a non-floating non-floating soap. Transparent soaps are made in various ways, some of which tend to purify the soap, while others do not. On the whole transparency is not to be taken as an indication of purity. The liquid soaps which you commonly find in public wash rooms are of a composition com-position different from that of the soaps you buy in cakes. These liquid soaps are almost all made of cocoanut oil and potash pot-ash instead of tallow and soda. Either sugar, alcohol or glycerin is usually added to prevent cloudiness and to keep the soap from foaming in the container. Relatively few of these soaps contain alcohol, so do not try drinking them. The glycerol rather improves the quality of the soap, but the sugar is objectionable. objec-tionable. It is what makes so much of this liquid soap feel sticky. A good deal has been said about the purity and wholesomeness of soaps made from vegetable oils, and the implication has been pretty wtll Implanted in the public mind that there Is something impure im-pure about soaps made from animal fats. According to the scientists, there is nothing noth-ing in this, yoaps made from cocoanut nil nllvo nil and nalm oil are not ner-e- sarily any more pure or effective than j those made from tallow, as nearly all i soaps are. Even refuse fats, which arc -not fit for human food, are just as good as any others for making soap provided they are properly treated. In fact, from the standpoint of national economy, the fats which are not fit to eat are just the ones that should be used in soap. Remember then, that an inexpensive soap Is just as good as an expensive one; but whatever kind you use, use plenty. |