There is a great variety of soaps upon the market, and language has been ransacked to find appropriate names for them. Among them are “Family,” “Laundry,” “Ivory,” “Best Soap,” “Electric,” “Ozone,” “Borax,” “Sand Soap,” “Silver Soap,” “Sapolio,” etc., and many scouring and detergent articles, as “Pearline,” “Soapine,” “Scourene,” “Washing Compound,” “Washing Crystal,” etc.
In Toilet Soaps there is an equally wide range of choice, embracing every color and variegation of color, and every perfume that is agreeable to the smell. Soaps are also charged with disinfecting substances, as carbolic acid, etc., and variously medicated with sulphur, camphor, glycerine, and other materials for softening and healing the skin.
STARCH.
Laundry starch is mostly made from corn. The grain is crushed and fermented to a degree, when the starch is washed out and allowed to settle in large vats. The best qualities are washed and settled again and again; the number of washings grading the strength, purity and cost. Potato starch is more costly than corn starch, and, as it gives a softer finish to fabrics, is chiefly used by manufacturers. Corn starch for culinary purposes is thoroughly washed, purified and deodorized. Laundry starch should never be eaten.
The best laundry starch is in large, hard, flinty crystals; such indicate a stronger starch, containing less moisture than that with small or soft crystals. Laundry starch comes in bulk or boxes, and in paper packages. There are many fancy proprietary brands of starch, as “Ivory,” “Ivorine,” “Gloss,” “Satin Gloss,” “Silver Gloss,” “Gloss Polish,” “Elastic,” etc. Some of them are powdered, and contain borax, wax, or gum, etc., and are scented with winter-green, etc. Such come higher than the better grades of laundry starch in crystals, but it is a question if they are proportionately superior for family use. Starch polishes are preparations of spermaceti, wax, or paraffine.
Blueing (Laundry).
This article may be had in balls, powders, or in a liquid form. There are a goodly number of proprietary brands, some of which give a tint which appears somewhat greenish when placed by the side of a pure and delicate blue. The coloring principle is usually indigo, Prussian blue, or the favorite ultramarine. The most satisfactory laundry blueing is that which is really and intensely blue in tint, and which is most completely soluble in water, so that it will be well distributed and not make the clothes look streaked.
Candles.
In some sections, candles form an important article of trade. They are now made in a great variety of exquisite tints by the use of analine colors of various sizes and weights, and with patent self-fitting ends. The more costly kinds are made of spermaceti, wax, stearine, paraffine, etc., down to the pressed, adamantine, and common tallow candles. Some carry embossed and handsome decalcomania decorations and are either white, blue, green, pink, yellow, red, etc., or assorted. There are “Boudoir,” “Piano,” “Cleopatra,” “Cable,” and “Flag” candles, wax “Night Lights,” “Christmas Tree Candles,” and wax “Gas Lighters,” warranted not to drip.
Brushes.—No domestic article is in more common use than the brush in its various forms. The best bristles come from the wild hog of Russia and Poland. The whitest and finest are used for paint, tooth, hat, hair, and clothes brushes. Some brushes are made with one tuft only, like the paint brush, others with many. The best are “Wire drawn;” that is, the tufts are bent double to form loops through which wires are passed, to draw and hold them firmly into the holes of the base. Others have the tufts wedged or glued in. Brushes are made with long and short handles, and of every conceivable form and quality, from “Sink scrubs” upward.