The most stringent cleanliness, the most perfect order reign everywhere and when in the evening the vast distilling coppers are resplendent under the rays of the electrical lighting, the effect is truly magnificent. If, after visiting the distillery, we make our way right or left, we enter two large well-lit rooms, the clamor of which contrasts with the calm laboratory where two workmen are sufficient to monitor the distillation and control the equipment. These are the workshops for preparing and shipping bottles. The rinsing machines, manned by eight workers, make the bottles turn between fixed brushes, under hot water jets; they come out perfectly clear, drain on pivoting draining racks and pass to the filling machines which fill them at a rate of 20 a minute; this machine, a little marvel, is special at the Pernod house; it is the work of the technical director, Mr. Arthur Borel, who with meticulous care occupies himself with the improvement of the equipment. The filled bottles come from there to the corkers, who only have to place them under their machines, which, driven by an ingenious mechanism, insert the stopper automatically.
The bottles then pass to the hands of the labelers, who affix labels gummed on the rubber cylinders of a special apparatus; then they are covered with tin foil which wraps the neck, and are deposited in cases fixed on a tricycle which conducts them to the place where they will be arranged by thousands, sealed, wrapped in paper, and placed into straw casing and boxes; these pass to the nailing machines which, with a single stroke, nail a whole side of the case, without noise and without jolting; these machines thus nail a hundred and fifty to two hundred cases per hour; two are enough to meet the needs of the factory.
^ Tank Cars for Shipping the Alcohol