The Newberry herald and news. (Newberry, S.C.) 1884-1903, 1891-11-05

decade. The present farmers move
ment in the South has encouraged the
erection of numerous small and inde-
pendent mills, crushing 20 or 80 tons
a day. These have sprung up in great
numbers during the past eighteen
months. The tendency seems to be to-
wards the smaller mills, indeed, the
talk is now of mills 80 small that every
cotton ginnery can have one attached,
and the planter find no difficulty IN
converting his own seed into oil. In
this way the meal can be at once re-
turned TO the soil, and as it contains
all the elements Of fertility, the land
will grow richer instead of becoming
IMPOVERISHED. If the cotton seed Is
taken from the soil and not returned,
or if the land is not properly fertillzed
in some way, it will soon destroy its
agricultural value. The seed takes ten
times as much nutriment from the soil
as the lint or staple, and therefore I'M
poverishes it ten times as rapidly. This
nutriment however is wholly in cake
and hulls, not in the oil. If, there
fore the latter is extracted, and what
remains is returned to the land it will
not only not impoverish it, but actually
strengthen and enrich 1t.
The farmers, at first did not fully ap-
preriate this. They found if they sold
their cotton seed, their land rapidly
decorated and many of them refused
to sell on that account. Now that they
understand the matter better, the op-
position to feeling has died away. In
many parts of the Southern cotton
States, the farmer sells his seed to the
mills, gets back the meal, which he
can return to the soil, making the land
more fertile each year.
PRESENT CONDITIONS.
Cotton seed oil had so generally su-
perseded olive oil here and elsewhere
that the Italian, and other govern
ments where the cotton is produced,
legislated against it and attempted to
drive it out of use as an adulterant or
substitute. In this, however, they only
partially succeeded, for the Southern
product, which sold 40 cents a agallon,
was just as good and half as cheap as
olive oil at 40 cents.
If the foreign market was at ali cut
off by this hostility, a new field was
found at home for the oil as a substi-
tute for lard. It has been seen at an
early day that for culinary purposes,
refined cotton seed oil was as good as
lard. It had been used as substitute
for it in the South from the day that
it was first manufactured, and in En-
gland as we'll. The Italian, the Jew,
and hundreds of other people object to
hog fat, and use olive or other oils to
fry their food with. In cotton seed oil
they get the same article much cheap
er, at or cents pound.
The oil had been in use for number
of years both in this country aad Eu-
rope as substitute for lard when the
lard refners of Chic go first thought OF
utilizing it in their business. The
American hog did not produce enough
fat to supply the market with lard and
refners had taken to throwing the
heads, entrails and other refuse into
the lard kettles in order to increase the
products. With lard at II and y cents
a pound and cotton seed oil just as
good or better, worth only 8 or 4 cents,
the temptation to use the latter product
was irresistible. It was tried and the
so-called "refned lard" came into use.
It gave boom to the cotton seed oil
business. Of the 6o0,O00,000 pounds OF
lard now manufactured in this country
32O,OOO,OOO or II per cent is the so
called pure lard. In the "compound
lard," 100000 pounds or $780, OO(
gallons of cotton seed oil are used.
The result has been to arouse move
ments against "the compound lard, u
and cotton seed itself on the part Of
Western farmers. 1t has shown itself
in the Conger bill which passed the
House and is now before the Senate
and which places duty on compound
lard similar to that on oleomargine, in
tended to drive it from the market
Such has been the career of cotton OF.
and other cotton seed products since
they were first manufactured, a varied
career with ups and downs.