The Colfax Chronicle

THE CHOICE OF PAINT.

Fifty years ago a well-painted house was a rare sight; to-day an unpainted house is rarer. If people knew the real value of paint a house in need of paint would be "scarcer than hen's teeth." There was some excuse for our forefathers. Many of them lived in houses hardly worth preserving; they knew nothing about paint, except that it was pretty; and to get a house painted was a serious and costly job. The difference between their case and ours is that when they wanted paint it had to be made for them; whereas when we need paint we can go to the nearest good store and buy it, in any color or quality ready for use. We know, or ought to know by this time, that to let a house stand unpainted is most costly, while a good coat of paint, applied in season, is the best of investments. If we put off the brief visit of the painter we shall in due time have the carpenter coming to pay us a long visit at our expense. Lumber is constantly getting scarcer, dearer and poorer, while prepared paints are getting plentier, better and less expensive. It is a short-sighted plan to let the valuable lumber of our houses go to pieces for the want of paint.

For the man that needs paint there are two forms from which to choose; one is the old form, still favored by certain unprogressive painters who have not yet caught up with the times --lead and oil; the other is the ready-for-use paint found in every up-to-date store. The first must be mixed with oil, driers, turpentine and colors before it is ready for use; the other need only be stirred up in the can and it is ready to go on. To buy lead and oil, colors, etc., and mix them into a paint by hand is, in this twentieth century, about the same as refusing to ride in a trolley car because one's grandfather had to walk or ride on horseback when he wanted to go anywhere. Prepared paints have been on the market less than fifty years, but they have proved on the whole so inexpensive, so convenient and so good that the consumption to-day is something over sixty million gallons a year and still growing. Unless they had been in the main satisfactory, it stands to reason there would have been no such steady growth in their use.

Mixed paints are necessarily cheaper than paint of the hand-mixed kind, because they are made in a large way by machinery from materials bought in large quantities by the manufacturer. They are necessarily better than paints mixed by hand, because they are more finely ground and more thoroughly mixed, and because there is less chance of the raw materials in them being adulterated. No painter, however careful he may be, can ever be sure that the materials he buys are not adulterated, but the large paint manufacturer does know in every case because everything he buys goes through the chemist's hands before he accepts it.

Of course there are poor paints on the market (which are generally cheap paints). So there is poor flour, poor cloth, poor soap; but because of that do we go back to the hand-mill the hand-loom and the soap-kettle of the backwoods? No, we use our common sense in choosing goods. We find out the reputation of the different brands of flour, cloth and soap; we take account of the standing of the dealer that handles them, we ask our neighbors. So with paint: if the manufacturer has a good reputation, if the dealer is responsible, if our neighbors have had satisfaction with it, that ought to be pretty good evidence that the paint is all right.

"Many men of many kinds"- Many paints of many kinds; but while prepared paints may differ considerably in composition, the better grades of them all agree pretty closely in results. "All roads lead to Rome," and the paint manufacturers, starting by different paths, have all the same object-to make the best paint possible to sell for the least money, and so capture and keep the trade.

There is scarcely any other article of general use on the market to-day that can be bought with anything like the assurance of getting your money's worth as the established brands of prepared paint. The paint you buy to-day may not be like a certain patent medicine, "the same as you have always bought," but if not, it will be because the manufacturer has found a way of giving you a better article for your money, and so making more sure of your next order.

P. G.