The Birmingham age-herald., 1917-12-04
MEN, WOMEN
 AND THINGS

can't make a man in south AlaDanA mad by calling him "goober grabber' for one of the biggest planters confessed to me that if the present prices kept up the hitherto despised peanut will prove a veritable gold mine.
 I had read much about the peanut com
 ing into it's own and what could be done pig was turned into a field of them to root or die, he would soon be big hog and furnish the meat and lard for his master.
 A year or two ago I got into the pea nut region at Brundige and saw a mill and listened to what I thought was fairy tale, but instead of stuffing me, my informant was breaking the full value of the infant industry in homeopathic doses.
 I got my real sure enough eye opener took me through a s100o0o plant, built to show just what peanuts could do if given a fair chance and handled scen- tifically. Now, I had always thought that a peanut had served it's usefulness when roasted or made into peanut candy.
 When saw wagon load after wagon load drive up to be weighed and car load after carload being unloaded, and looked into the great warehouse and saw what seemed to me to be mountains of pea nuts, had the feeling that I must have eaten too many raw ones and was hav- ing bad dream. But was wide awake, and there they were in quantities so great as to be almost unbelievable. Think of nearly s100,000 worth of them waiting to be crushed and converted into oil.
 It's the little things in this world that change the course of human events. It would have been a wild romancer who, peering in the future would have cred- ited little insect, the boil weevil, with changing the farming methods of cen- tury, and starting not merely crop di- versification, but an entirely new indus try which promises to partially drive out the cotton seed oil business or take it's toll in converting many plants into pea nut mills
 have just been through the Eufaula cotton oil mill, but nary a cotton seed
 seed eye," but the pesky little Spanish peanut was everywhere in evidence, and the smell of crushed peanuts filled the air. The mill is just in the rear of the home in which I spent my happy boy hood days. Next to the garden are two great tanks Qike city water reservoirs), filled with peanut oil, and the great barns are piled high with the marvellous little nuts that are enriching whole coun- ties and doing their part to help win the war.
 It's like a fairy story. I look back at the old days when my gang slid over the
 back fence of the old home, and lit out for the branch, thence to the creek, and the Chattahoochee. I am just trying to think what we would have done to the pile of peanuts if they had been there then, not to mention what they would have done to us. But why picture the agony?
 Now few people realize how peanuts
 run into money. I said to my friend Connor who was showing me the plant; T suppose the trouble is to get ware house capacity?" "No," said he, the great trouble is to get money to pay for them. Then turning to a truck which held about as much as the body of Q two-horse wagon would hold, he said ]:
 There is about $125 worth of peanuts in that load" I got some idea then of how much his concern had tied up in them. Eufaula has done wise thing and has organized a market bureau to buy pea nuts, velvet beans, corn and other food stuffs, and pay cash for them. l had 1 talk with my friend, Warren Dent, who l looks after the details. I went through | the storage house and saw the stacks 1 of food stored saw him weigh wagon 1 loads of peanuts listened with intense | interest as he told me that 1t was a city enterprise and that they paid the high est market price for all products brought. hope soon to see the day when every I town and city in the state will be equally l as fair to the farmers and as enterpris- ing It is working wonders in business way.
 | But digress. Back to the peanut
 mills. Good Spanish peanuts will yield I from between 70 and 80 gallons of oil to
 one ton of nuts. They are not bought by the bushel, but by the pound. and
 reckoned in ton lots. The meal from
 the crushed peanuts that is used for cat
 tie is relished by them, just as is the l oil found to be good cooking oil and palatable in many forms of food The re- fined oil competes with and is now large
 ly used as substitutes for olive oil -or
 salads, etc. pr. William F. Brady says; i Peanut oil is as nourishing as olive oil.
 Food value for food value, peanuts are l cheaper than bread"
 l Now here is where I want to put in a I good word for the peanut which has | made good in it's efforts to serve man and beast. I plead that our people lay aside their prejudces and give the pea
 nut and the products therefrom a fan
 chance and increase their daily con sumption of these products, and thereby promote their own health as well as the peanut industry which is literally causins south Alabama lands to go up py seap' and bounds, and giving many dept slSs' den farmer a chance to pay what ii'