The Dawson news. (Dawson, Ga.) 1889-current, 1909-11-03
MILLIONS IN THE PEANUT
THE GOOBER BRINGS BIG RE-
TURNS TO THE FARMER.
Now Il National Food, and Is Liked
by Everything From Circus EIe-
pant to Turkey on the Farm.

| pant 10 turkey OH tDe FaIUl.
The discovery of the new world
gave to the people of the earth five
treasures that are cotton,
corn, potatoes, tobacco and the pea
nut BY grace of the first four whole
nations have been saved from extir-
! patton. BY grace of the last a food
which proved as important as maize
is added to the resources which the
whole world can utilize
| Like those invaluable staples
maize and potato--the peanut orig
| mated in America, a native wild vine
of Brazil. For years and years after
some few of the pods were brought
north as vegetable curiosities it held
| its place as a humble garden vine,
iperpetuated only because some few
| of the earlier generations happened
to have taste for them, as you have
to be born to olives. America, the
birthplace of the peanut, really lin
gered behind all the rest of the world
in it's exploitation.
Until the civil war it was grown
in some of the gardens of the south,
harvested, as now, just prior to the
danger of frost, and laid away for a
few months, to be hailed eargerly by
the children as a Christmas dainty
Now it occupies permanent position
among the nations. food staples for
man, beast, bird and field
Every living thing likes peanuts,
and they prove it all the way from
the elephants at the circus to the
turkeys on the farm. The greatest
single market is at Suffolk, Va,
where 100000 bushels are handled
annually and eight big factories are
in operation. The labor is largely
negro.
At harvest time in the section
where peanuts are raised extensively
for market the vines are plowed from
the ground and, with pods attached,
are stacked around poles for dry
ing. Late in the fall the fields are
occupied by whole families of ne
groes, who pick the pods from the
dried vines by hand Machine pick
ing is practicable, but, unlike ma
chine planting and digging, the re-
Isults are an inferior grade because
of indiscriminate collection of prime
and defective pods. Farmers haul
their wagon loads of pods to the near
est factory, where the weight is cred
lited to the growers. The whole
cleaning and grading process which
follows works by gravity, for the pods
are raised from the farmers wagons
to the top floor of the factory, and
every process ensuing runs them
down to a lower floor Sorted,
cleaned and certain selected grades
polished they are finally bagged by
the same automatic process and are
READY for dispersal.
The farmer is far from having ex-
hausted his profits when he disposes
of his crop to the factory. There
are the big piles of culls, which he
has left, to feed to his poultry and
pigs. There are the vines, which,
properly cured, make the finest kind
of hay for his COWS, and there is all
the nitrogen which the growth of
the vine has left in the soil, fixed in
it's root nodules.
An acre of first-class peanuts, cal
culating a ton of vines at So to $40,
and so bushels of peas at $40 to $50,
gives an income of between $48 and
$40. The cost of growing such an
acre of peanuts, including seed and
! fertilizers is variously estimated at
from $12 to $25. There is a net
return of from $50 to $45 on the
crop per acre, an amount of money
sufficient to pay plenty of farmers
we'll
The farmer is. however, only the
beginning of this immensely profita-
BILE national enterprise. Three
fourths of the annual crop, some g.
100000 bushels, ultimately sell at
| five cents a pint More than S25,-
100000 comes in nickels and dimes
from the pockets of the people for
the peanuts sold that way. The g.
100000 bushels remaining go into
CONNECTIONS, and the export trade at
! 81 per bushel; so there's 100000
more. The farmers utilization of the
waste" products nets them about
$4,000,000. In all, it has been cal
culated that the peanut now brings
a revenue of $36,O0O,0OO annually,
without reckoning on the increased
I r