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yellow ocher or a yellowish 
pink; pale blue or green are 
historically correct, too, but 
rather cold and trying. Again, 
the plaster might have the 
usual hard, smooth finish and 
be hung with wall paper, pre¬ 
ferably in a pattern with white 
or gray predominating, lest the 
chair-rail, trim and baseboard 
be too strongly outlined, for 
they, of course, would be 
painted white or a very light 
gray. 
If we desire a perfect 
white, the ordinary white 
lead paint is not satisfactory, 
for the coal-gas and slight 
cooking gases that permeate a 
house act on the lead and turn 
it yellowish, exaggerating the 
natural tendency of linseed oil 
to yellow indoors. Sunlight 
counteracts this and has a 
bleaching action which keeps 
the paint white, but in dark 
corners the yellowish is quite 
marked. Zinc white seems to keep its color better under these 
conditions, but, used alone, it is brittle and there is danger of its 
scaling off. Most house painters use zinc and lead. 
Some of the white lead makers deny that zinc helps the paint 
at all, and claim that lead used alone is the best for all ordinary 
house work, inside or out. On the other hand, the makers of 
ready-mixed paint use not only the zinc in combination with the 
lead, but other pigments in small proportion, as lead sulphate, 
barytes, silica or calcium carbonate. 
The white lead makers cry “Adulteration! Cheap substi¬ 
tutes !” and, with the appearance of truth, since these pigments 
are cheaper than white lead and the last three perfectly useless 
if used alone. The mixed-paint makers have prejudiced their 
cause by not publishing the formulae on their cans, and have thus 
given an opportunity to certain knaves among them to make up 
paint with these cheaper pigments predominating to such an ex¬ 
tent that their material has little body or opacity and less en¬ 
durance. 
The white-lead men make the most 
of this, and point out the danger of 
buying an utterly unknown material; 
they point to white lead’s long and 
honorable record, for, until fifty or 
sixty years ago, lead was the only 
white paint ever used, and therefore 
it has stood the test of time. The 
other side brush this aside as old- 
fogyism; they instance carefully 
recorded tests in different cities 
where hundreds of panels in specially 
built board fences were painted with 
different combinations, where in every 
case the pure white lead paint chalked 
off long before the combined paints 
deteriorated. They quote the great 
railroads whose specifications seem all 
to require a mixture of other sub¬ 
stances with lead; the United States 
Lighthouse Board, which directs that 
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An iron frame binds the tiles of the fireplace. The chair 
rail is a characteristic feature of this type of room 
a small percentage of barytes be used 
with the lead, or a law of the French 
government soon to take effect prohibit¬ 
ing the use of white lead altogether, on 
account of its possible danger to a not 
over-clean workman, a recognition of the 
equal value of other pigments, of course. 
So the bitter dispute goes on ; each new 
presentation is so clever that a layman is 
in danger of being convinced first this 
way, then that! 
The dispute concerns the “pigment" only. All paints are essen¬ 
tially a combination of two elements—a pigment, which is gen¬ 
erally a metallic powder, and a vehicle; in the case of oil paints, 
mainly linseed oil. Now, the special quality of linseed oil is that 
it does not dry in the sense that the water in a water-color or a 
whitewash dries, by evaporation; but it absorbs oxygen from the 
air and changes chemically into a resinous substance which, 
mixed with the pigment, becomes very tough and hard. Its 
actual weight increases as it “dries,” but the process is slow. To 
hasten it, a “dryer,” or “Japan dryer,” is added, which is a 
metallic salt dissolved in turpentine and apparently acts by draw¬ 
ing oxygen from the air and transferring it to the oil. 
Linseed oil is sold either raw or boiled. Boiled oil is thicker 
and darker, and, though it would naturally dry more slowly, the 
makers mix a “dryer” with it before it is put on the market, so 
that what we buy dries more rapidly than raw oil. Raw oil is 
far better in the first, or “priming 
coat,” and, perhaps, in all inside paint¬ 
ing. 
Turpentine is added to the paint to 
“thin” it, for the mixed oil and pig¬ 
ment is too viscid to be properlv 
“brushed out” on inside work. If 
much turpentine is added the paint is 
“flat,” or without gloss; if too much, 
the paint will “chalk” or rub off when 
drv. 
House paint, then, is composed of 
pigment, vehicle, dryer and thinner, 
with perhaps a little coloring added 
to the pigment. The pigments used 
in dark paints are quite different, and 
no lead need be used at all: but we are 
discussing light paints only. The fol¬ 
lowing, perhaps, would be an average 
working formula for indoors: the lead 
should be best Dutch Process white 
(Continued on page 339) 
Comparison of this bare room with the finished product pro¬ 
vokes thought, showing one of the many possibilities in room 
treatment 
375 
