SAPINDACE1E.
The 1914 census of manu factures shows that there were in the United States in that year 371 soap-making establish ments, with a combined capital of $92,871,533 and employing an aggregate of 14,172 hands, who earned in the year a total of $8,087,937 in wages. The raw materials used comprised 546, 289,571 pounds of tallow; 13,225,330 gallons of cocoanut and palm oil; 16,144,786 gallons of cottonseed oil; 123,032,886 pounds of cotton seed roots; 185,310,786 pounds of resin; 55,320 tons of caustic soda, and 140,983 tons of soda ash. The cost of these materials was $88,866, 786. The output comprised 2,064,228,000 pounds of hard soap — of which 169,926,000 pounds were toilet soap — and 57,002,000 pounds of soft soap. The value of the output was $127, 942,441. The increase of production in the 10 years since 1904 was 47 per cent, all in the hard-soap product. The industry is centred in New York, Illinois, New Jersey, Ohio and Pennsylvania, which five States make nearly three-fourths of the entire output of the country.
Brannt, W. T.,
Glycerine' (New York 1906) ; Simmons, W. H.,
the common name of sev eral species of Sapindus and of the fruits, which are so rich in saponin that they were employed for the same purposes as alkaline soap, before the days of that article. The Chinese prefer them even yet for cleansing the hair and delicate silks. Certain species of Sapindus yield also an edible pulp, although the seeds are poisonous. One species (Sapindus utilis) has been cultivated in Algeria for its berries, which the trees begin to hear in from 8 to 10 years, and S. mukorossi, another Chinese species, is found in Japanese gardens. Our two United States species have this saponaceous quality also and tfie berries of S. saponaria, indigenous to tropical America and the West Indies and even growing in Florida, are much used for washing linen, although said to he injurious if employed too frequently. See SOAP