The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1899-11-24
USE OF SCNFLOWER SEED,
Thousands of Pounds Sold But No
One Knows Its Utility.
[Lawrenceville Gll0 CORES. Of Chicago
RecOrd.1

ILawrencevilIe QIl) Cores. of Chicago |
Record
A man down here is advertising for |
I ZOO. 600 pounds of sunf1OWer seed He
has bought three-fourths of million
pounds of sunflower seed and expects
to ship 5000 000 pounds.
Practically all of this crop raised in
the world goes out of Lawrence county.
This same man. who is now buying the
seed by the trainlOad, got rich by rails
ing such things on his rented farm, go
ing into the market for strange and I'M
usual things, while his neighbOrs stuck
to wheat and corn and hogs His name
is W. r. Crackel and he is both shrewd
and inQuisitiVe, but while supplying the
world with what sunfiOwer seed It
needs he has never been able to hnd
out what the world does with it. 1hlS
sunlOwer seed industry is not only an
art exhibit and poem. but one OF the
greatest mysteries as we'll
A good many people here are engag-
ed in it now. but it is not so profitable
as it was to the grower. Farmer Crack
81 sold his first big crop for cents a
pound; the next year his neighbOrS put
J out a good deal of land in sunflOwers,
and sold the product for 3 cents a
pound which was some hundreds OF
! dollars per acre. Then came the deluge.
Everybody in Petty township planted
sunf1OWers instead of corn. and the
| farmers accomplished their own undo
| ing. One township in this county broke
! the market from cents to cents by
causing an OVerprOductOn in the
! worlds supply. Then many went back
| to corn and wheat, and now things have
! settled down to q basis that pays well
| enough but does not make men rich.
/ The yield per acre varies greatly A
| field of flowers only as large as a dessert
! plate will not have the amount of seed
/ as field of flowers as large as half
| bushel Almost any kind of land with
| slight attention will yield 600 pounds to
| the acre and crops of 1000 pounds to
! the acre are not very uncommon, al
| though they are the result of extra at
! tention by growers who have studied
| the habits and needs of the sunhOwer
and who also have very rich land
Just now the buyers are paying from
S1.25 to $3.50 per hundred pounds for the
| seed, delivered at the warehouse. The
| cost of raising an acre OF sunhOWerS
/ is very much less than the cost of an
| acre of wheat or corn and the crop is
| much more certain. This city is the
| great Sunf1OWer seed market of the
| world, but small quantities, compare
/ lively, are bought at Bridgeport, St
FranciSVille. Sumner. Birds and others
the smaller towns in this county, each
| station sending out several car loads a
| year The crop of 1899 is now being
thrashed and sent to market, and in
this county will aggregate about $780,
600 pounds, in the opinion Of those most
{ interested. Small quantities of sun
| flower seed are sent to market OcCa-
! siOnally from widely separated points
in the United States. but in no other
place is the seed raising made bust
| ness
What does the world do with 100000
| pounds Of the seed of a plant common
| ly associated only with an aesthetic
| CTaze2 Only a very few men know, and
| they won't tell The secrecy w hich en-
| VelOpS the whole matter of its use, like
| the hist of stage burglar, suggests
! that it is an adulterant. 1t once sold
| readily at 10 cents pound, which was
! the equivalent. of nearly 81 gallon fu1
| the oil. and What oil can be used for an
| adulterant at such a price? The same
| man. Cracked. who started the whole
thing here as farmer and now han
dies nearly the whole crop as a dealer
in grain, thought of all that. He is a
man who takes excellent care of his
own business. and at the same time has
Il philanthrOpic interest in the dOings
! of his neighbOrs down here, where ev-
. erybody visits everybody else. Some
other people had a casual curiosity
j about the matter. but when they dis
| covered that Cracked had to shame
facedlv admit what he did not know
and could not find out they let it go a
! that. Crackel found out that the OF
: was pressed from the seed, and thai
} ! was all.
After several years dealing with the
I | Cincinnati firm who buys the seed. fin
| ally he took an excellent opportunity
q and made it clear that he thought he
might now be admitted into the degre,
/ which enlightened about what was
| done with the sunfiOWer seed. The sen
| iOr member of the firm acquiesced ant
| after initiatory ceremonies over an al
| tar with a big mirror behind it, h,
- gravely told CrackeI that the seed wa!
! USED 10 I3e0 canary D1rQS, at the In
- time giving sign by slowly lowering
| and raising his left eyelid. one o
= | these days Crackel will take in cap
italist and corner the market on sun
. flower seed; then he viii loosen III
| only on condition that he is allowed t,
e see exactly what becomes of the see,
- in its final resting place. In the mean
= time the public Will have to DO Withou
2 knowing for what the seed really i
z used
e sunfowers have always fourishe,
here in this oldest part of the state
where Jesse K. Dubois belongs to it
modern history. and George Roger
2 | Clark passed on hos way to captur
the neighbOring Fort Nincennes an
= the northwest from Great Britain. Blu
II they were used to feed chickens and [
keep off ''feVerunager'' until recen
| years It is q fact that plenty of sun
flowers growing around a place Wi
| lessen the malaria there. They take Il
e so much moist ure from the grOun
If that the latter s a less healthy cultur
e medium for tie plasmOdium malariaC
l. and perhaps the chemistry of their oW
IS existence ard growth is antiseptic [
lie | that qEeer-shaped germ which the Ital
j. ian scietist discovered to be the essenc
IS of malarial poisoning.
d AS a consequence of the great chang
k in farming in Lawrence county, bring
!e ing the sunfiower crop into such promi
id hence there is more money and les
re malaria along the banks of Mudd
- creek and in the valley of the histOrica
" Embarras river.
y, WHEN THE SCENE WAS I'M
y