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If she wanted hard soap she
"salted it out" with brine. The sodium stearate being less soluble was
precipitated to the top and cooled into a solid cake that could be cut
into bars by pack thread. But the frugal housewife threw away in the
waste water what we now consider the most valuable ingredients, the
potash and the glycerin.
But the old lye-leach is only to be found in ruins on an abandoned farm
and we no longer burn wood at the rate of a log a night. In 1916 even
under the stimulus of tenfold prices the amount of potash produced as
pearl ash was only 412 tons--and we need 300,000 tons in some form. It
would, of course, be very desirable as a conservation measure if all the
sawdust and waste wood were utilized by charring it in retorts. The gas
makes a handy fuel. The tar washed from the gas contains a lot of
valuable products. And potash can be leached out of the charcoal or from
its ashes whenever it is burned. But this at best would not go far
toward solving the problem of our national supply.


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