To these causes must be attributed the decreasing
supply of the crude material, but it may be doubted whether this
decrease would be sufficient to materially affect the price for some
time to come were it not for the increased demand for the two industries
to which we have alluded. Obviously, there must be found eventually some
substitute for glycerine, or else some new source from which it may be
procured. The natural place to look for this would be in the waste
lye from the soapmakers' boilers, but so far no one has succeeded in
obtaining from this substance the glycerine it undoubtedly contains by
any process sufficiently cheap to allow of its profitable employment.
We are assured by a veteran soap-boiler who has experimented much in
this direction that it is impossible to recover a marketable article of
glycerine from the lees of soap in which resin is an ingredient. In his
words, it "kills the glycerine," and, as none but a few of the finest
soaps are now made without resin, it would seem that the search for
glycerine in this direction must be a hopeless one. It is a curious
commentary in the present state of affairs that previous to about 1857,
when candles were largely manufactured in this country, there was little
or no demand for glycerine, and millions of pounds of it were run
into the sewers.
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