Sausalito News, 3 January 1925
Tin Can Has Helped Make America Great
The epic of the tin can! Our skill in producing tin plate has developed out of our ability to supply the world with American tin cans. Cans for kerosene, tinned beef, salmon, California fruits, Hawaiian pineapple, Maryland tomatoes.
We lead the world in the production of canned foods; first, because we have the raw fruits; second, because we are proof against old-world prejudices to tinned foods; third, because time grows more valuable as we travel from east to west, is the assertion of a writer in The Nation’s Business. Time means nothing to the oriental, and the typical German hausfrau spends a good part of the day in the kitchen over her pots and pans. The ability to improvise a meal out of tinned foods answers to the demand for short cuts in our swift-moving, complex western life.
The era of abbreviation! “Slow,” as our forefathers knew the term, is not only out of fashion, but we shorten the word itself by 25 per cent. As to the tin can, be it known that tin plate is nothing more than paper-thin sheet iron which our steel companies turn out by the thousands of square feet. These sheets are given a bath in molten tin and are thus presented to the world under the bright and shining aspect of tin plate. In casting about for a container for preserved and concentrated foods the world was smart enough to discover that tin does not tarnish in the air and is proof against meat, fruit and vegetable acids.