Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 91.djvu/535

 Popular Science Monthly That Bit of Butter Left on Your Plate — What Eecomes of It?

THERE are about sixty-four individual helpings of butter in a pound, each helping equaling about one fourth of an ounce. If the accumulated "scrapings" from the butter-plates after the meal were estimated there would probably be about one "pat" collected each day, in the average household.

But if every one of our 20,000,000 house- holds should waste one fourth of an ounce of butter daily, it would mean 312,500 pounds a day, or 114,062,500 pounds a year. To make this butter would require the product of over half a million cows. Even if such a waste occurred in only one home out of one hundred, the waste would still average over a million pounds — which is intolerable to think of, when the value of butter is so great intrinsically and gas- tronomically, and when those bits of butter might be put to such good usage if collected in a crock by the cook.

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���Shipping butter in crates in which an ice container is inclosed for refrigeration

��This Vacuum Cleaner Is Used Like an Ordinary Broom

��How Print Butter Is Shipped to the Retailer

��ANEW vacuum cleaner which operates wil

��ithout electricity combines the fea- tures of a carpet-sweeper and ordinary broom with the special vacuum feature. A bellows, which is operated by the backward and forward motion of the cleaner, furnishes suction which draws the dirt and dust up into the retaining bag.

Revolving brushes in the central portion of the cleaner and a row of stiff bristles around the border serve to stir up the dust and loosen its hold on the threads of the carpet. As the particles are dislodged by the bristles, the brushes sweep them under the mouth of the suction tube and the bellows pressure sucks them up into the vacuum. In this way every particle of dirt is removed.

The work is thorough and is accomplished with little effort The cost of the cleaner is low and the operation is as little complicated as that of the ordinary broom. * The brushes may be used alone.

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���The vacuum-broom, which sweeps the carpet and then takes up the dirt by suction

��HE wholesaler who sends his butter out to the retail trade in neatly wrapped pound-packages or "prints," runs less risk of having his product spoiled in transit than if the butter were shipped in tubs. The accom- panying photograph shows how he manages to keep the butter fresh and in shape until it is delivered. Into each packing box a closely covered tin filled with ice is placed. Around this the prints of butter are packed. Then the cover of the packing box is nailed on. The cold air is thus confined inside the box. \ The ice melts very slowly, so that the butter is kept firm and hard for many hours. Even when there are long delays in transit so that days instead of hours are consumed, as sometimes happens, the butter re- mains hard and firm; for if the ice should fin- 1 ally melt, the water in the tin would still re- main almost Jce-cold.

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