THE INDUSTRY in OIL SEEDS. the United States Has

THE INDUSTRY IN OIL SEEDS. By CHAULES ]\Í. DAUGHERTY, Of the Bureau of Statist'ics. COTTON SEilD AND FLAXSEED IN THE UNITED STATES. The United States has, within the past quarter centiny, become by far the heaviest producer of oleaginous seeds in the world. This has been wholly due to the utilization of the cotton-seed crop and the expansion of flaxseed cultivation. Previous to these developments little attention was paid in this country to this class of agriculture. None of that great variety of purely oil-yielding seeds, the oils of which are of well-known edible and industrial importance in many foreign countries, was indigenous to the United States; and, notwith- standing the diversity of tastes and customs introduced into this country by a heterogeneous immigration, little or no effort was made to transplant them for their oil-yielding properties. In fact, it is solely due to the fact that some of the oleaginous-seed plants also yield valuable libers that their cultivation was originally undertaken in this country. Textile materials being a prime necessity of civilized peoples, the flax plant was one of the first agricultural products introduced into the American Colonies. The cotton plant is believed to be indigenous to the New as well as to the Old World. W ith the exception of castor beans, the culture of which is a specialized industry in a few Western States, cotton and flax are the only oleaginous-seed plants that have ever been utilized to a notable extent in the United States for oil- making purposes. Oil has been manufactured in recent years, it is true, from corn, but only as a by-product of the glucose industry. Hemp, which is raised extensively in Russia for the oil from its seed, and peanuts, large quantities of which are imported into France from Senegal and the East Indies for manufacture into oil, are also raised in the United States, but not because oí their oleaginous properties; and the small esteem in which the like properties of flax and cotton were originally held is evidenced by the fact that for two and a half centuries after the settlement of this country flax was cultivated chiefly and cotton exclusively for the value of the fiber. It is only within the X)ast half century that, by an economic revolution almost unique in an age ncfted for the utilization of waste, the once most valued part of the flax plant has degenerated in this country into a waste product, and 411 412 YEARBOOK OF THE DEPAETMENT OF AGRICULTURE. the .seed, f ormerl}^ a secondary consideration, has become the sole object of cultivation. Within the same period, too, the rapidly increasing cotton-seed crop, previousl}'^ only a troublesome waste product, has been made available as the greatest single resource for oleaginous seed in the world. CULTIVATION OF OIL-YIELDING SEEDS IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES. The cultivation of sunflower seed, rape seed, colza, poppy seed, scsamum, ravison, mustard seed, and many other exclusively oil- yielding seeds is a factor of considerable importance in the rural econom}^ of many foreign countries. Some of these seeds yield edible oils, and hence are ranked among the necessities of life. Sunflower seed is extensively cultivated in Russia, where sunflower oil is one of the most popular of table oils; the seeds are also roasted and eaten as peanuts are in the United States. It is stated on good authority that 700,000 acres are annuall}^ devoted to the cultivation of sunflowers in Russia, and that 150 mills turn out an annual product of upwards of 25,000,000 gallons of sunflower oil. The other seeds mentioned are objects of special cultivation in British India and other Oriental countries, and, in a smaller way, in many parts of Europe. In France, Germany, and in most of the western and northwestern sections of Europe the culture of oil seeds has greatly declined, and is now of small importance. But an import demand exists there for practically the entire surplus oleaginous-seed crop of the world. The surplus of the flaxsced crop of Argentina, of the various oil-seed and nut crops of the East Indies, of the peanut and palm-kernel crops of the European possessions on the east and west coasts of Africa, of the cotton-seed crop of Egypt, and of various other crops of oil-yielding seeds and nuts from all parts of the world is annually absorbed by the European trade and converted into oil and oil cake in European factories for the use of European consumers. ANIMAL FATS AND VEGETABLE OILS. That none of the exclusively oil-yielding seeds has ever been cultivated in the United States for oil-making purposes has been due primarily to a lack of demand for their products. A distinctive characteristic of the American people, though modified in recent years, has been the use of animal fats, both in domestic and in industrial life, for many purposes for which the inhabitants of other countries largely employ vegetable oils. In domestic life there has alwaj^s been in the mind of the American housewife a somewhat inexplicable prejudice against the use of vegetable oil for cooking purposes; and until recent years lard had completely usurped the functions here that from remote antiquity had been accorded in many countries to vegetable oils. That THE INDUSTRY IN OIL SEEDS. 413 this prejudice is being gradually mollified there is no doubt, but it is a tribute to its persistency that vegetable cooking oil even now gains surreptitious access to the American kitchen only under the guise of packages and labels suggestive of lard. For most industrial purposes, likewise, animal fats have been utilized to a large extent in the United States when for the same purposes vegetable oils were chiefly used abroad. Until the discovery of petroleum, the tallow candle and animal oils furnished an illuminating power in this country that in older ones was, and to some extent still is, supplied by colza oil and divers other oils of vegetable origin. For lubricating purposes, also, animal fats have been extensively used in the earlier history of the United States when for like purposes abroad the demand has been for rape-seed oil or other vegetable oils. In the manufacture of soap, wherein large quantities and many varieties of vegetable oils have always been utilized abroad, grease has been extensively used in the United States, especially in the homemade product of the farm. In fact, though several varieties of oil-yielding seeds, such as rape seed, poppy seed, and their oils, have been annually imported into the United States in considerable quantities for special purposes, the popularity of animal fats for all uses to which they arc adapted has, together with other causes, had a tendency to restrict the use of such oils, and thereby not only to place a limit upon their importation, but also to discourage the production of the exclusive^ oil-yielding seeds upon American soil. DEVELOPMENT OF FLAXSEED CULTIVATION IN THE UNITED STATES. As late as 1860 the quantity of linseed oil manufactured from seed grown in the United States did not much, if at all, exceed 1,000,000 gallons a year; and, since the value of the oleaginous properties of the cotton-seed crop was then practically unrecognized, this quantity closely represents the total output at that date of all oil made from home-grown oleaginous seed. The use in this country of the products of oil-yielding seeds was at that time largely confined to linseed oil, valuable for its use in paint and varnish. But the domestic output of this product was entirely inadequate to the demand, and the imports of oil and seed, expressed together in terms of oil, amounted to about 6,000,000 gallons. Imports of other fixed or expressed oils, including rape seed, hemp seed, cocoanut, and palm oil, amounted to less than 2,000,000 gallons. The domestic cor sumption, therefore, of all oils of this class amounted in 1860 to less than 9,000,000 gallons. The marvel- ous advance that has been made in the production of oleaginous seeds and in the consumption of their oils in the United States since that date is illustrated b}^ the fact that at the present time there is annually manufactured from the domestic crops of ñaxseed and cotton seed a product of from 160,000,000 to 170,000,000 gallons of oil, three-fourths of which probably enters into home consumption. 414 YEARBOOK OF THE DEPAETMENT OF AÖRICÜLTÜEE. The development of flaxseed cultivation on an important scale in the United States dates from the cessation of the civil war. In the activity of the westward movement of population, incident to the disbandment of the military forces, ilaxseed culture, specialized and limited in terri- torial extent, moved with the tide of progress gradually westward and northwestward from the Ohio into the territory then known as the West and Northwest. Virgin soil seemed to be essential to its profit- able cultivation. In the wake of agricultural expansion followed another economic movement, that of industrial enterprise, the course of which was marked by the building of homes and factories, the equipment of railways, and the growth of towns and cities—a movement that gave great impetus to flaxseed production in that it increased enormously the demand for paint, and hence for linseed oil, the principal object of flaxseed cultivation. The efl'ect was immediately apparent. The flaxseed crop, which by 1869 had already increased to 1,730,000 bushels, was more than quadrupled in the next ten years.

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