50 THE ALUMNI JOURNAL 



$1,670 in 1908. Exports to the United States fell off in 1908 in 

 sympathy with general business conditions, but otherwise the trade 

 tends to develop in a satisfactory manner, thus establishing a new 

 consuming market in Germany for an agricultural product. 



The inventors of the process have succeeded in obtaining an 

 article which does not readily burn like celluloid, which is odorless, 

 and which takes a high polish and any color desired. It is con- 

 verted into toilet articles, buttons, dominos, dice, chess figures, 

 piano keys, electrical fixtures, etc. The Hamburg manufacturers, 

 as a rule, sell only the raw material, called galalith, which is after- 

 wards worked up by other manufacturers, who treat it just ibout 

 as they would horn or celluloid. 



How Supplies are Secured, Capital Necessary, etc. 



While the perfected process of conversion cannot be described, it 

 is known that it consists in hardening casein which nnist be pro- 

 duced from fresh, skim milk, as distinguished from commercial 

 casein used in the manufacture of paper, glue and color. The Ger- 

 man concern finds its best casein in France, where the butter in- 

 dustry is carried on upon a large scale. It contracts with butter 

 makers for their skim milk, which now costs about 30 cents per 

 220 pounds, and returns the whey to the buttermakers. The skim 

 milk is coagulated with rennet, and the curds after being pressed 

 until they contain about 50 per cent, of water, are shipped to Ger- 

 many for the finishing process, by which they are made into blocks 

 and tubes. It requires about 3,000 liters (liters 1.0567 quarts) 

 of skim milk to make 220 pounds of dry casein, and this quantit}' of 

 casein is worth about $15.50. 



To set up a plant large enough to make i ton of finished galalith 

 per day, excluding cost of land, building and boilers, but including 

 sufHicient working capital, stock and special machinery, would re- 

 quire about $300,000. In Hamburg the only factory now in opera- 

 tion employs 200 operatives, and turns out about 800 tons of gala- 

 lith per 3^ear. 



BENZOATE OF SODA DECISION IS NO. 104. 



New Regulation as Promulgated at Washington Amends Food 



Inspection Decisions 76 and 89. 



Although the secretaries comprising the Board of Food and 

 Drug Inspection at Washington signed the order on March 3, pro- 

 mulgating the benzoate of soda report of the Referee Board of 

 Experts, it was not until the 8th that copies were received in New 



