Somerville High School - Radiator Yearbook (Somerville, MA)

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SOMERVILLE HIGH SCHOOL RADIATOR 13 chocolate, I will speak of the Walter Baker plant. The plant is located at Milton Lower Mills, Mil- ton, Mass., and consists of six buildings covering- fourteen acres of floor space. Walter Baker’s lirst plant was a small granite building on a corner near the present site. All the buildings are named after pioneer chocolate makers, such as Forbes, Ware, Preston, the former of which is chiefly a storehouse; the latter a receiving station on the railroad. The buildings are equipped with Grinnell Fire Sprinklers, and are inspected monthly to see that no rubbish is allowed to collect. At the foot of every stairway directions are posted for turning off any sprinkler in the vicinity that might ac- cidentally spurt water. All exposed gears and belting are covered by fine, strong grating. The windows are large and are kept clean, thus ad- mitting plenty of light. There is a great feeling of unity among the employees of the factory, which is absolutely necessary to operate a large plant. River water is used for cooling devices and operating elevators. The beans are fed into a hopper and thence into a sorting machine on the floor below. This is a perforated cylinder, slowly revolving, at the highest end of which the holes are smallest, and larger at the lower end. All sticks, stones, and dirt fall out at the side, and beans at the end. Sometimes double beans, or two or three beans grown together come out and have to be cut apart by hand. The beans are then put in several large vats, heated by steam, which the vats slowly revolve. In this way the beans are cooked so that their shells can be removed easily. Up to this time the beans from different countries have been kept separate, but before crushing they are mixed to improve the quality of the finished chocolate. The beans are crushed to the size of a finger- nail, then sorted in a machine something like that previously described. Those crushed finest come out at the high end and so on. Some beans es- cape crushing, and these are scooped up and the crushing process repeated. As the beans are crushed they descend a slide whence they are met by a reverse current of air which blows all shells and stuff lighter than meat back in a room. Such a strong current is necessary that good meat is sometimes blown back also. This bean is then fed into mills composed of two stones; the upper revolving, the lower sta- tionary; which grinds the meat to liquor or thick liquid. The liquor is so thick that the process is repeated in a smaller mill. This liquor is then cooled and hardened until used. In the winter the outdoors is used, in the summer a refrigerat- ing plant. Since probably few of my readers understand the principle of this plant, I will describe it. The principle is this: When aqua ammonia, the same only stronger than that used in the home, under high pressure is forced through a valve into a tank of low pressure it loses a great deal of its heat. In fact, the temperature is about 25, 30 or 5() degrees below zero. This gaseous ammonia is run through pipes of brine which is, in turn, cooled and pumped to the cold rooms. After removing from hardening, all cocoa butter is pressed out, which is mostly used by barbers for massaging. Sugar is next added to sweeten the chocolate. Some chocolate before sweetening, however, is sent to confectioners for covering chocolates. There are two machines turning out 10,000 pounds every day from the crushed meat to sweetened liquor. This sweet- ened liquor is cooled and put in a huge tub. Two huges stones are set opposite each other on an axis suspended from the middle. This immense tub full of cooled chocolate revolves and the chocolate is ground even finer, by the passing over it. This paste is put on little trays the size of the five and ten cent cakes which we buy at the store, and put on machines that shake the chocolate down into the moulding tins. On entering this room the racket is so great, that it is difficult to think. The chocolate is then removed from the trays and wrapped. The ten cent sizes are wrapped by hand, but the others by machines, em- ploying about fifty women and thirty machines. The chocolate is packed in wooden boxes for ship- ment. A very ingenious machine is used to nail the boxes. By placing the cover on the box and pressing it against a horizontal bar, one side and one end are nailed with a single stroke. The nails are dumped into the machine anyway, and are righted on the way to the box. For the cocoa the beans are crushed to a pow- der and then canned. The cocoa is fed into round receptacles. As one-half a pound enters the receptacle, automatic scales close the valve from [Contnued on Page 17]

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12 SOMERVILLE HIGH SCHOOL RADIATOR sewing, so that her daughter might appear as well as the other girls at the High School, who could well afford to dress better. Edith thought that she earned her dresses by working harder at home, and did not realize that the little work she did was not enough to keep her mother from overworking. “O mother! Helen was ever so pleased with her dress. She said she thinks she can get more orders for you! Won’t that be lovely?” cried Edith, coming home two weeks later. “Now we won't have to take the money Uncle Will so be- grudgingly gives us. He’s the stingiest miser 1 ever saw. He thinks he is helping us out a lot, and I’d just like to show him that we can get along without his help.” “You mustn’t talk that way about Uncle Will,” warned her mother, “You know we could not possibly get along without his help.” “Well he’s got so much money and he be- grudges us every cent he gives us,” grumbled Edith. “I’d just like to show him that we can get along without his money.” “But we can’t, Edith, I never could work again the way I have in the last two weeks. I have not very good health and I must take care of it a little,” sighed Mrs. Mason, as she thought of the splitting headache she had had all day. That was only the beginning of it. The next day, when Edith came home, she found a mother too sick to get out of bed. The next day she had to stay at home and the doctor was called. He told her that her mother had been overworked and it would be three weeks and probably longer before her mother would be able to work again. Those were sad weeks for Edith, she had plenty of time to think, and she now saw many things she had never thought of before. She loved her mother, but the trouble was that she had never stopped to think before. She had never realized how her mother had worked and sacrificed for her. I think she would never have forgiven herself if she had known of all the pain and worry her mother went through for her. It was as she knelt each night and prayed for her mother, that she might soon regain her health, and asked our heavenly Father to forgive her and help her to do better in the future, that she realized as never before, that her mother was worth more than all the dresses money could buy. The Manufacture of Chocolate RANDOLPH CHAFFEE, 1D19-B UR1NG the first part of the sixteenth century, Cortez, when he came to America, found the Indians, in a crude way, making cocoa. He carried the idea back to Spain, where it was kept for some time. Later, however, its manufacture spread to France and England, where only the nobility could afford a cup of cocoa, it was so expensive. Th£ cocoa bean pod grows on a tree some- thing like our apple tree, in Venezuela, the Guianas, and West Indian Islands such as Trini- dad. The pod, instead of being suspended from the tip of a branch, projects from the trunk of the tree. Only the ripe pods are picked, for if green pods are mixed in also, the flavor of the chocolate in the end is of an inferior quality. Pickers tell if the pods are green by tapping them or by the size or color. The seeds inside the pod are covered by a very white, delicate skin. All the seeds, about forty-five in number, are sur- rounded by a slimy substance. When the pod is picked it is split through the center. The seeds of beans are scooped out and placed in a huge vat for the process of fermentation, which is not un- like that of a brewery. After six days of fermentation the beans are taken out and placed in a trough, when the hose is turned on, removing the slimy substance and all coarse dirt. During the process of fermenta- tion the delicate white skin is changed to a red- dish-brown shell. After the washing the beans are dried. In olden times the beans were dried in the sun, but later, buildings with movable hip roofs, which could be drawn over in bad weather were used. The latest drying systems use hot air heat to dry the beans. After the beans are dried, they are sent to the chocolate manufacturer, and here, before proceeding to describe the -making of

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14 SOMERVILLE HIGH SCHOOL RADIATOR EDITORIALS With the arrival of the sharp, snappy, autumn atmosphere, we naturally turn our eyes toward football. The season before us promises to prove one of great success if reliable opinion can be formed from hearsay. The student body has not displayed such general interest, and so enthusi- astically supported an athletic team, for many years. The controversy at the outset over the question of whether or not athletics should be continued the coming year has now been for- gotten as far as the school as a whole is con- cerned, but the players cannot free their minds from the recollection. It is this thought alone that will spur them on to many a hard won victory, for in their opinion, the season cannot be successfully completed until they have proved their worth in the eyes of the school, of the faculty, of the School Committee, and of the public. It is the players alone who are making, and will make the team. Their efforts are pitched to the utmost, and under such conditions, defeat is hardly possible. The season has started with a rush; may it finish with a touchdown! Boys, we are behind you, we are supporting you, we are cheering you! Do your best, and the victory you so richly deserve will be yours! Great credit is to be given to the Freshmen in Room 113. All have become members of the Athletic Association, and the pupils were also the largest donators to the Library Fund in the school. The Somerville High School extends to you a hearty welcome, Freshmen, offering you many opportunities of acquiring knowledge and of de- veloping moral, mental and physical strength. Al- though you are much smaller in number this year there is no reason why we should not hear just as much if not more from you. For in these war times each one exerts himself as he never exerted himself before. In starting upon your high school course one thing is especially important and that is: Start well. The way one ends almost always depends upon the way one starts, whether it be success or failure. You have four years ahead of you in which to make either a success or a failure. If you wish the first you must go out after it and work for it. Those who gain honor in school activities get it only by conscientious, steady application and if you once attain this name it is not difficult to keep. School spirit is a thing which the Freshmen, as well as other classes, ought to manifest. So, class of 1921, everyone of you cultivate school spirit. If those cheer leaders at our mass meetings who always tell us how little noise we make would stop trying to stand on their heads and would ask us to rise, better results would no doubt be obtained. “School spirit,” says a teacher of one of the western schools, “is doing by the school what you know down in your heart is right.” How about it?