"WHAT! NO SOAP?"

Evening Star, Issue 19786, 9 February 1928, Page 4

"WHAT! NO SOAP?"

Probably there are persons who think that soap came into common use many thousands of years ago. This is not so, however, for though, to be sure, a great many centuries have elapsed since China discovered the art of making soap, only a few decades have passed since England removed u tax on it which several centuries before had been imposed on the ground that it was a luxury (says the * Christian Science Monitor ’). In the light of this there would seem to be little or no reason for serious complaints against some of the luxury taxes which various Governments have felt it necessary to impose since the World Way. It is surprising to note that soap did not easily slip into the scheme of things as civilisation advanced. We have been wont to think of our forefathers as enjoying all the pleasure and benefit which a cake of modern soap in conjunction with a basin of water can convey. And yet our earlier forefathers, if traced back to ancient Greece and Rome, knew nought of soap as it is understood to-day. They laved themselves with oil and then rubbed themselves with ashes, as we aro told. The Gauls mixed tallow and wood ashes and boiled the combination. But soap did not appear in England until late in the fourteenth century, when the utter foolishness of its use was immediately recognised by the Government, which promptly applied not a common, ordinary little luxury tax, but a super-luxury tax. Like various other commodities, soap lias advanced since then not onlv in public estimation but also in quality. Soap of a few generations ago would hardly be recognised by the most ardent disciple of the article of to-day. Made in a deep pan and cut out in rough, oblong cakes, it often had the texture of pigiron, and_ presented about as much disinclination to lather. Few, i any, attempts were made to take away the not altogether pleasing scent which persisting as it did in hanging about the person of the user long after applied, often brought the remark from Grandmother, “Yon ncedn t turn up your nose, it’s nuthm’ but clean soap 1