80 COCOA 



The packing-room presents a very different scene 

 from anything we have witnessed in the other depart- 

 ments we have visited. Hitherto the outstanding 

 feature has been machines, but now our attention is 

 held by rows upon rows of women and girls. How 

 fresh and clean and neat they all look in their white 

 dresses and caps ! We are struck, too, by another 

 picturesque note in our surroundings; everything and 

 everybody is patterned over in shades of brown loose 

 cocoa, seeking escape from confinement in tins and 

 boxes, weaves quaint and pretty pictures on any 

 clinging-place it can find. 



All the packers are engaged in some operation con- 

 nected with putting up certain weights of cocoa, 

 mostly pounds and half-pounds, into tins and cartons. 

 There is a wonderful little machine which weighs the 

 cocoa into a parchment packet and slips the packet into 

 a tin ; the cocoa comes streaming through a funnel, and 

 when the packet beneath contains its correct weight the 

 supply is automatically shut off. Another little marvel 

 machine puts labels on the tins. Plain round tins, 

 lying on their sides, go racing along a narrow platform, 

 one behind the other in endless procession, pick up 

 a ready-gummed label en route, and slide gently off the 

 other end of the platform bearing the well-known red- 

 and-yellow identity label of Bournville Cocoa neatly 

 wrapped round their bodies. 



Pure cocoa, as we now know, consists of ground cocoa 

 beans from which part of the fat ingredient has been 

 extracted. Pure chocolate, on the other hand, con- 

 sists of ground cocoa beans containing all their fat, 

 together with a liberal allowance of sugar, and more 

 cocoa butter in proportion to the sugar allowance; 

 sometimes, too, flavouring, such as vanilla, is added 



