GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Dec 1. 



the Ohio State Board of Health, I am sure, 

 will bear us out in declaring we can not have 

 tobacco spittle on the floors of our premises, 

 even in closets. The one who must use tobac- 

 co in such quantities as to expectorate such a 

 large amount of filth must provide himself 

 with a spittoon, and empty it or burn it up 

 when it gets to be unsightly. The health of 

 all of us — in fact, your own health — depends 

 upon it. I am not suspicious enough to be- 

 lieve that any one of you " laughs in his 

 sleeve" when he thinks The A. I. Root Co. 

 can not tell who does the spitting. We can 

 easily tell by having a janitor employed to 

 watch every one who goes into the closet and 

 leaves it. In fact, this is done in many of our 

 large hotels and in other places where the 

 closets are largely frequented, and where it 

 seems impossible otherwise to get rid of this 

 sort of vandalism. I have not talked about 

 turning anybody off, mind you, no matter how 

 much tobacco he uses ; but I am thinking of 

 dismissing the men who are not only killing 

 themselves but seem determined on killing 

 their shoprrates, or at least subjecting them 

 to these things I have talked about in the fore 

 part of this paper — that is, if there is no other 

 way. Every doctor in the land will bear me 

 out, even if that doctor does use tobacco him- 

 self to excess. We simply ask that you for- 

 bear spitting on the floors anywhere. If you 

 have a cold, and must expectorate, just step 

 outdoors. Doors are near you all. When you 

 go to the closet, deposit the filth which is in 

 your mouth in the places provided for the filth 

 that nature throws off. Surely you can hold it 

 in your mouth a minute or two at a time, un- 

 der special circumstances. From personal ac- 

 quaintance I am sure most of you are with me 

 in my great desire to have all our rooms not 

 only comfortable but pleasant-looking. We 

 all enjoy seeing visitors go through our work- 

 ing-rooms, and we like to see them admire our 

 arrangements Well, I want to be able to 

 take our visitors into our closets and show 

 them what we have been doing there in the 

 line of modern improvements. And, by the 

 way, there is one thing I had almost forgotten. 

 You can gauge the intelligence of a people al- 

 most anywhere on the face of the earth by 

 visiting their closets. When our stalwart 

 friend Ivar S. Young was over here from Nor- 

 way some years ago to study up advanced bee 

 culture and some other things he told me 

 frankly that, in the way of closets and ar- 

 rangements for personal comfort, America was 

 far behind his own country. 



Now, dear friends, I should like to know 

 how many are with me in this new undertak- 

 ing. From personal observation I judge that 

 ninety out of every hundred of our people 

 will say I am exactly right. Five more out of 

 the ten remaining can perhaps be persuaded to 

 agree with me. I am sure there are not more 

 than five or six among our 150 or so employees 

 who help make these filthy places, and who 

 think it is the right and proper thing to use a 

 closet in this way; and I am rather inclined to 

 think that these five or six persons, after read- 

 ing what I have said, or the greater part of 

 them, will turn in and help us fight the good 



fight for health, decency, and every thing else 

 that is good and pure. A great many times it 

 is an excellent thing to have business contracts 

 down in black and white; and with this end in 

 view I am going to inclose a card in this en- 

 velop, to be considered when you get your pay 

 Saturday night. If you feel like making any 

 suggestions or additions to what I have said, I 

 should be exceedingly glad to hear them. If 

 you want to present the other side of the mat- 

 ter — that is, if there is any other side — I want 

 to hear that too. If you can not do any thing 

 more than to give me a little word of encour- 

 agement, please do that, even if it is nothing 

 more than writing " O. K." on the card and 

 signing your name to it. By this means I 

 think we shall be able to manage without hav- 

 ing any janitor at all; but if it is really neces- 

 sary to go to the expense of hiring a janitor to 

 do nothing but watch the closets, the question 

 is, who is going to pay this janitor for nis ser- 

 vices? Surely not those who have been pain- 

 ed and offended by such places of filth for 

 several years past. Will it be too hard to say 

 that those who expectorate on the floor must 

 pay the janitor? I hardly need tell you that 

 this whole thing was suggested to me while 

 we were building this new Smead closet. 

 When I thought of the money it is going to 

 cost, and the time and money that have been 

 expended on it (we paid $100 to the patentee 

 for the right to build the closet), I felt as if I 

 could not have it share the fate of our old clos- 

 et right near our office, that has been in use 

 for the last nine years. 



Let me explain to the readers of Gleanings 

 that the Smead system is an arrangement 

 whereby a current of hot air evaporates or 

 dries out the moisture from the accumulation 

 in the closet. This is secured by keeping up 

 a draft of hot air by means of a little fire be- 

 low, once a day or oftener. In our case we 

 have in the base of our building a coil of pipe 

 heated by means of exhaust steam from our 

 factory. Just above these hot pipes is a floor 

 of dry hot bricks supported on iron bars; then 

 a tall chimney keeps a draft of hot air con- 

 stantly passing over and under these bricks. 

 The chimney makes draft enough so that, 

 when one of the lids is open anywhere in the 

 closet, the air sucks down through the floor, 

 passing off up the chimney. In this way 

 there is never any smell or foul gases. The 

 chimney is tall enough to deliver the impuri- 

 ties so high up in the air overhead that they 

 are carried off by the wind, and never make 

 themselves known to anybody. 



Now, while every home in the land may not 

 be able to make use of an expensive apparatus 

 such as I have described, every home in the 

 land can have a neat, tidy, and pleasant closet. 

 The use of dry earth, which is now so well 

 understood, is many times the safest and eas- 

 iest method of getting rid of unpleasant smells, 

 and materials disagreeable to handle. Where 

 there is a safe outlet for the sewage, without 

 inconveniencing your neighbors, a water-closet 

 is a very nice thing. I have described these 

 so fully in former numbers that I need not go 

 over the ground here. 



Permit me to say that, in traveling about 



