Card or white soap is made nearly in the same way as mottled, but with a more careful selection of ingredients, and a better management of some of the processes.
Yellow soap is distinguished from the others by the large amount of resin and palm-oil contained in it. The casks of palm-oil, as brought from Africa, are placed over a trough with the bung-hole downwards; the steam-pipo is admitted, and the melted substance flows out. The oil is bleached by n chemical process, and then the soap-making pro ceeds as before. The resin and the palm-oil both serve the purpose of tallow, and are the cause of the relative cheapness of yellow soap.
Soft soap, used principally in the woollen manufacture, is made chiefly of oil and potash. The oil may be whale, seal, olive, linseed, or any that comes most readily to hand, and is combined with a little tallow to increase the stiffness. Soft soap is not shaped in frames, tut is poured at once into barrels or casks.
Fancy soaps, as they are called, such as are sold by perfumers, are generally made from good white soap, remelted, and modified by the addition of perfumes, ke.
Dr. Normandy in 1841 patented an invention for using up all kinds of gums and resins in soap by the addition of sulphate of soda. He made hard soap cheap by that means ; but his operations were checked by the Excise insisting on the same rate of duty as was paid for the high-priced soaps. His patent, not Laving been a profitable one, was renewed in 1855 for three years.
A substance called soap bark was brought to Europe from some tropical country in 1859. It is black without, and yellowish white within, very heavy and dense. When the white layers are macerated in water, they produce an emulsion which, when mixed with oil, may be used as soap.
Soap 7'ra de.—The soap manufacture is one of considerable importance. The principal scats in England are Liverpool and Runcorn, London, Brentford, Bristol, and II ult. Nearly three-fourths of the total quantities of soap are made at these places; but there are also manufactories of considerable extent at Bromsgrove, Newcastle, Gateshead, Warrington, and Plymouth. In Scotland, two-thirds of the total quantity of soap
are made at Glasgow and Leith.
In 1711 an Excise duty of ld. per lb. was first imposed on all soap made in Great Britain, which was raised in 1713 to 14d. per lb. In 1782 the duty was again inereased,and a distinction was,for the first time, in:ale between hard and soft soap, the duty on the former being 24d., and on the latter lid. per lb. In l816 hard soap was subjected to a duty of 3d. per lb. In 1833, the duty was lid. per lb. on hard soap, and Id. per lb. on soft., The interference of the Excise in the manu facture of soap was, until recently, exceedingly arbitrary and vexatious; but in the Seventeenth Report of the Commissioners of Excise Iuquiq,' 1835, the discontinuance of the system of survey which then existed was recommended._ The act 3 and 4 Vict. c. 49, passed in 1840, repealed seventeen other acts, so far as they concerned the making of soap. The article may now be made in any way or of any material which the manufacturer thinks most judicious, as the Excise does not Interfere with the process of manufacture.
When the duty on hard soap was 3d. per lb.,the selling price averaged about 6d., out of which another id. was absorbed in duties on the tallow and other substances used in the manufacture. The 3d. duty, as has been stated, was reduced to lid. in 1833; and in 1853 the duty was wholly repealed. In 1852, the last year for which official returns are obtainable, rather more than. 200,000,000 lbs. of soap were made in the United Kingdom ; of which the largest items were—London and vicinity, 54,000,000 lbs.; Liverpool and vicinity, 47,000,000 lbs. ; Glasgow and vicinity, 16,000,000 lbs. The export of soap is not large ; for the three years, 1858, 1859, 1860, it varied from 160,000 lbs. to 190,000 lbs.
The increasing use of palm oil is perhaps the chief commercial novelty in the soap manufacture.