The daily morning journal and courier., 1900-05-28
THE MANY-sIDED PEANUT.
Some Interesting Facts Concerning the
 Popular Product.

! Some Interesting Facts Concerning the Popular Product.
 Americans have come to look on the peanut chiefly as an article of food, as- l sociating it with circuses county fairs,
 prize fights and the Bowery. It's em- 1 ployment for food purposes is, however
 one of the least important Of it's rses.
 Although Europeans seldom eat the
 nuts, says the Boston Transcript, Maj seilles Is the peanut center of the world.
 In 1899 that city imported 61241 tons Of unshelled and 9,579 tons of shelled pea nuts, and that was not an unusual year.
 Bordeaux also uses large quantities ev. cry year. but the first named city stands in Europe at the head in the pro- duction of vegetable oils from oleag-
 nous seeds. The chief sources of the citys peanut supply are Bombay, Mo
 zambique and Senegal, although largc quantities are received from other
 places.
 Tn the Marseiles crushing mills for
 handling peanuts the shells are broken
 by means of toothed rollers and the ker- nels separated by system of winnow- ing machines such as are used in flour mills The inside red skin is then re- moved by revolving seves, and air blasts, and the kernels are ground af-
 ter which they are ready to be pressed The pressing takes place in the same manner in which other oleaginous seeds are pressed, the meal being enveloped in strong fibrous mats and subjected to hy draulic pressure. The resulting cake IS then regrOund, the oil remaining in the meal secured as in the first instance. The oil Is graded according to first, sec ond or third extraction.
 This oil, after being clarified by filtra- tion and the admixture of fuller's earth is put on the market. and used as an H. l,tminant, and more extensively as an adulterant in olive oil in which latter field it's chief competitor is cotton seed oil
 The cake left is sometimes chemically treated to secure the oil that may have escaped the presses, but whether thus treated or not, it is valuable as food for cattle, The husks are sometimes used for fuel, and they have some value as fodder although goats are about the cnly animals that will eat them when not mixed with the peanut cake
 In the United States the raising of these nuts is not extensively engaged in, except in Tennessee. Virginia and North Carolina, although good many are grown in all the middle couthern states The crop for the entire country in 1899 was about forty-five hundred thousand bushels of twenty-two pounds each which was an increase of about a million bushels over the crop O: 1898 There are some twenty plants for grind ing peanuts in the United States, these being chiefly located in the states where the nuts re extensively grown There Is a single factory in Tennessee which handles five tons of peanuts daily. The output secured at this rate of consump- ton irc'udes 235 gallons of refined oil, which sells ct one dollar per gallon 175 gallons of crude oil at fifty cents 3680 pounds of flour and meal at two cents and z,S00 pounds of stock feed at sixty cenis per hundred pounds, making the gross receipts about $i1590 pc day, and at t!ns rate the annual profit is said to average $19725. These figures may be open to some amendments and modera- ton, but there seems to be no doubt that many of these plants are yielding large return for the small amount of capital invested.