Most interesting we found it, for twenty-three million gallons of milk are used there every year, and are converted not only into butter and condensed milk, but into buttons and cigarette holders and all sorts of things for which celluloid is commonly used. It was in this use of one of the by-products of the business, casein, so our guide explained, that much of the profit was made, since both the butter and the condensed milk had to be sold on a very close margin.
The factory is a very complete one, making everything it uses—its own cans and boxes, its own labels, its own cartons, its containers of every kind and shape, as well as their contents. And the machinery with which this is done is very intricate and ingenious.
Our guide said that one of the principal hazards of the business was the likelihood that some new machine would be invented at any time to displace the old ones, and would have to be purchased in order to keep abreast of competition.
We saw the long troughs into which the milk is poured and strained and heated to Pasteurize it, and then run through the separators. In the next room were the great churns, from which the yellow butter was being taken; and beyond were the mechanical kneaders, which worked out the superfluous water and worked in the salt; and then the butter was put through a machine which divided it into blocks weighing a pound or two pounds, and then each of these blocks was carefully weighed, to be sure that it was full weight, and if it wasn't a little dab of butter was added before it was wrapped up and placed in the carton. And during all these processes it was never touched by any human finger.
On the floor above were the great copper retorts in which the milk was being condensed by boiling. We looked in through a little isinglassed opening, and could see it seething like a volcano. And still higher up were the machines which turned the hardened casein, which would otherwise be wasted, into buttons and novelties of various kinds. The place seemed very prosperous and well-managed, and, so our guide assured us, was doing well. We were glad to find one such place in southern Ireland.
Of course there are many others; and perhaps the impression I have given of Limerick does the town injustice, for it is a busy place. It is famous for its bacon, to the making of which ten thousand pigs are sacrificed weekly. It used also to be famous for its lace, worked by hand on fine net; but Limerick lace is made almost everywhere nowadays except at Limerick, although there is a successful school there, I believe, in one of the convents.
The name of the town has also passed into the language as that of a distinctive five-line stanza, which Edward Lear made famous, and of which such distinguished poets as Rudyard Kipling, Cosmo Monkhouse, George du Maurier, Gelett Burgess and Carolyn Wells have written famous examples. The limerick is said to have been originally an extempore composition, a lot of people getting together and composing limericks, in turn, as a sort of game designed to while away an evening. Whether this was first done at Limerick I don't know, but the name came from the chorus which was sung after every stanza in order to give the next person time to get his limerick into shape:
Oh, won't you come up, come up, come up,
Oh, won't you come up to Limerick?
Oh, won't you come up, come all the way up,
Come all the way up to Limerick?
At least, that is the way I heard the chorus sung once, many years ago, without understanding in the least what it meant. The invitation, of course, is for the passing ship to enter the wide estuary of the Shannon and sail up to Limerick's waiting quays. If the first limerick was composed at Limerick, it must have been a long time ago, and I doubt if any are produced there nowadays.
We took a last stroll about the town, after we had seen the butter-making, and looked at the great artillery barracks, and the big market, and the mammoth jail and the still more mammoth lunatic asylum, where the inmates are decked out in bright red bonnets, which I should think would make them madder still. And then we walked through an open space called the People's Park, whose principal ornament is a tall column surmounted by the statue of a man named Spring Rice. Betty remarked that she had heard of spring wheat, but never of Spring Rice, and asked who he was; but I didn't know; and then we came to the Carnegie Library, and went inside to see what it was like.