THE RIVAL SUGARS The sugar beet of the north has become a close rival of the sugar cane of the southTHE RIVAL SUGARS The sugar beet of the north has become a close rival of the sugar cane of the south
INTERIOR OF A SUGAR MILL SHOWING THE MACHINERY FOR CRUSHING CANE TO EXTRACT THE JUICEINTERIOR OF A SUGAR MILL SHOWING THE MACHINERY FOR CRUSHING CANE TO EXTRACT THE JUICE
Courtesy of American Sugar Refinery Co.Courtesy of American Sugar Refinery Co.
VACUUM PANS OF THE AMERICAN SUGAR REFINERY COMPANYIn these air-tight vats the water is boiled off from the cane juice under diminished atmospheric pressure until the sugar crystallizes out
VACUUM PANS OF THE AMERICAN SUGAR REFINERY COMPANY
In these air-tight vats the water is boiled off from the cane juice under diminished atmospheric pressure until the sugar crystallizes out
Sugar is not a synthetic product and the business of the chemist has been merely to extract and purify it. But this is not so simple as it seems and every sugarfactory has had to have its chemist. He has analyzed every mother beet for a hundred years. He has watched every step of the process from the cane to the crystal lest the sucrose should invert to the less sweet and non-crystallizable glucose. He has tested with polarized light every shipment of sugar that has passed through the custom house, much to the mystification of congressmen who have often wondered at the money and argumentation expended in a tariff discussion over the question of the precise angle of rotation of the plane of vibration of infinitesimal waves in a hypothetical ether.
The reason for this painstaking is that there are dozens of different sugars, so much alike that they are difficult to separate. They are all composed of the same three elements, C, H and O, and often in the same proportion. Sometimes two sugars differ only in that one has a right-handed and the other a left-handed twist to its molecule. They bear the same resemblance to one another as the two gloves of a pair. Cane sugar and beet sugar are when completely purified the same substance, that is, sucrose, C12H22O11. The brown and straw-colored sugars, which our forefathers used and which we took to using during the war, are essentially the same but have not been so completely freed from moisture and the coloring and flavoring matter of the cane juice. Maple sugar is mostly sucrose. So partly is honey. Candies are made chiefly of sucrose with the addition of glucose, gums or starch, to give them the necessary consistency and of such colors and flavors, natural or synthetic, as may be desired. Practically all candy, even the cheapest, is nowadays free from deleteriousingredients in the manufacture, though it is liable to become contaminated in the handling. In fact sugar is about the only food that is never adulterated. It would be hard to find anything cheaper to add to it that would not be easily detected. "Sanding the sugar," the crime of which grocers are generally accused, is the one they are least likely to be guilty of.
Besides the big family of sugars which are all more or less sweet, similar in structure and about equally nutritious, there are, very curiously, other chemical compounds of altogether different composition which taste like sugar but are not nutritious at all. One of these is a coal-tar derivative, discovered accidentally by an American student of chemistry, Ira Remsen, afterward president of Johns Hopkins University, and named by him "saccharin." This has the composition C6H4COSO2NH, and as you may observe from the symbol it contains sulfur (S) and nitrogen (N) and the benzene ring (C6H4) that are not found in any of the sugars. It is several hundred times sweeter than sugar, though it has also a slightly bitter aftertaste. A minute quantity of it can therefore take the place of a large amount of sugar in syrups, candies and preserves, so because it lends itself readily to deception its use in food has been prohibited in the United States and other countries. But during the war, on account of the shortage of sugar, it came again into use. The European governments encouraged what they formerly tried to prevent, and it became customary in Germany or Italy to carry about a package of saccharin tablets in the pocket and drop one or two into the tea or coffee. Such reversals of administrativeattitude are not uncommon. When the use of hops in beer was new it was prohibited by British law. But hops became customary nevertheless and now the law requires hops to be used in beer. When workingmen first wanted to form unions, laws were passed to prevent them. But now, in Australia for instance, the laws require workingmen to form unions. Governments naturally tend to a conservative reaction against anything new.
It is amusing to turn back to the pure food agitation of ten years ago and read the sensational articles in the newspapers about the poisonous nature of this dangerous drug, saccharin, in view of the fact that it is being used by millions of people in Europe in amounts greater than once seemed to upset the tender stomachs of the Washington "poison squads." But saccharin does not appear to be responsible for any fatalities yet, though people are said to be heartily sick of it. And well they may be, for it is not a substitute for sugar except to the sense of taste. Glucose may correctly be called a substitute for sucrose as margarin for butter, since they not only taste much the same but have about the same food value. But to serve saccharin in the place of sugar is like giving a rubber bone to a dog. It is reported from Europe that the constant use of saccharin gives one eventually a distaste for all sweets. This is quite likely, although it means the reversal within a few years of prehistoric food habits. Mankind has always associated sweetness with food value, for there are few sweet things found in nature except the sugars. We think we eat sugar because it is sweet. But we do not. We eat it because it is good for us.The reason it tastes sweet to us is because it is good for us. So man makes a virtue out of necessity, a pleasure out of duty, which is the essence of ethics.
In the ancient days of Ind the great Raja Trishanku possessed an earthly paradise that had been constructed for his delectation by a magician. Therein grew all manner of beautiful flowers, savory herbs and delicious fruits such as had never been known before outside heaven. Of them all the Raja and his harems liked none better than the reed from which they could suck honey. But Indra, being a jealous god, was wroth when he looked down and beheld mere mortals enjoying such delights. So he willed the destruction of the enchanted garden. With drought and tempest it was devastated, with fire and hail, until not a leaf was left of its luxuriant vegetation and the ground was bare as a threshing floor. But the roots of the sugar cane are not destroyed though the stalk be cut down; so when men ventured to enter the desert where once had been this garden of Eden, they found the cane had grown up again and they carried away cuttings of it and cultivated it in their gardens. Thus it happened that the nectar of the gods descended first to monarchs and their favorites, then was spread among the people and carried abroad to other lands until now any child with a penny in his hand may buy of the best of it. So it has been with many things. So may it be with all things.
The discovery of America dowered mankind with a world of new flora. The early explorers in their haste to gather up gold paid little attention to the more valuable products of field and forest, but in the course of centuries their usefulness has become universally recognized. The potato and tomato, which Europe at first considered as unfit for food or even as poisonous, have now become indispensable among all classes. New World drugs like quinine and cocaine have been adopted into every pharmacopeia. Cocoa is proving a rival of tea and coffee, and even the banana has made its appearance in European markets. Tobacco and chicle occupy the nostrils and jaws of a large part of the human race. Maize and rubber are become the common property of mankind, but still may be called American. The United States alone raises four-fifths of the corn and uses three-fourths of the caoutchouc of the world.
All flesh is grass. This may be taken in a dietary as well as a metaphorical sense. The graminaceae provide the greater part of the sustenance of man and beast; hay and cereals, wheat, oats, rye, barley, rice, sugar cane, sorghum and corn. From an American viewpoint the greatest of these, physically and financially, is corn. The corn crop of the United States for 1917, amounting to 3,159,000,000 bushels, brought inmore money than the wheat, cotton, potato and rye crops all together.
When Columbus reached the West Indies he found the savages playing with rubber balls, smoking incense sticks of tobacco and eating cakes made of a new grain that they calledmahiz. When Pizarro invaded Peru he found this same cereal used by the natives not only for food but also for making alcoholic liquor, in spite of the efforts of the Incas to enforce prohibition. When the Pilgrim Fathers penetrated into the woods back of Plymouth Harbor they discovered a cache of Indian corn. So throughout the three Americas, from Canada to Peru, corn was king and it has proved worthy to rank with the rival cereals of other continents, the wheat of Europe and the rice of Asia. But food habits are hard to change and for the most part the people of the Old World are still ignorant of the delights of hasty pudding and Indian pudding, of hoe-cake and hominy, of sweet corn and popcorn. I remember thirty years ago seeing on a London stand a heap of dejected popcorn balls labeled "Novel American Confection. Please Try One." But nobody complied with this pitiful appeal but me and I was sorry that I did. Americans used to respond with a shipload of corn whenever an appeal came from famine sufferers in Armenia, Russia, Ireland, India or Austria, but their generosity was chilled when they found that their gift was resented as an insult or as an attempt to poison the impoverished population, who declared that they would rather die than eat it—and some of them did. Our Department of Agriculture sent maize missionaries to Europe withfarmers and millers as educators and expert cooks to serve free flapjacks and pones, but the propaganda made little impression and today Americans are urged to eat more of their own corn because the famished families of the war-stricken region will not touch it. Just so the beggars of Munich revolted at potato soup when the pioneer of American food chemists, Bumford, attempted to introduce this transatlantic dish.
But here we are not so much concerned with corn foods as we are with its manufactured products. If you split a kernel in two you will find that it consists of three parts: a hard and horny hull on the outside, a small oily and nitrogenous germ at the point, and a white body consisting mostly of starch. Each of these is worked up into various products, as may be seen from the accompanying table. The hull forms bran and may be mixed with the gluten as a cattle food. The corn steeped for several days with sulfurous acid is disintegrated and on being ground the germs are floated off, the gluten or nitrogenous portion washed out, the starch grains settled down and the residue pressed together as oil cake fodder. The refined oil from the germ is marketed as a table or cooking oil under the name of "Mazola" and comes into competition with olive, peanut and cottonseed oil in the making of vegetable substitutes for lard and butter. Inferior grades may be used for soaps or for glycerin and perhaps nitroglycerin. A bushel of corn yields a pound or more of oil. From the corn germ also is extracted a gum called "paragol" that forms an acceptable substitute for rubber in certain uses. The "red rubber"sponges and the eraser tips to pencils may be made of it and it can contribute some twenty per cent. to the synthetic soles of shoes.
CORN PRODUCTSCORN PRODUCTS
Starch, which constitutes fifty-five per cent. of the corn kernel, can be converted into a variety of products for dietary and industrial uses. As found in corn, potatoes or any other vegetables starch consists of small, round, white, hard grains, tasteless, and insoluble in cold water. But hot water converts it into a soluble, sticky form which may serve for starching clothes or making cornstarch pudding. Carrying the process further with the aid of a little acid or other catalyst it takes up water and goes over into a sugar, dextrose,commonly called "glucose." Expressed in chemical shorthand this reaction is
C6H10O5+ H2O → C6H12O6starch water dextrose
This reaction is carried out on forty million bushels of corn a year in the United States. The "starch milk," that is, the starch grains washed out from the disintegrated corn kernel by water, is digested in large pressure tanks under fifty pounds of steam with a few tenths of one per cent. of hydrochloric acid until the required degree of conversion is reached. Then the remaining acid is neutralized by caustic soda, and thereby converted into common salt, which in this small amount does not interfere but rather enhances the taste. The product is the commercial glucose or corn syrup, which may if desired be evaporated to a white powder. It is a mixture of three derivatives of starch in about this proportion:
Maltose45 per cent.Dextrose20 per cent.Dextrin35 per cent.
There are also present three- or four-tenths of one per cent. salt and as much of the corn protein and a variable amount of water. It will be noticed that the glucose (dextrose), which gives name to the whole, is the least of the three ingredients.
Maltose, or malt sugar, has the same composition as cane sugar (C12H22O11), but is not nearly so sweet. Dextrin, or starch paste, is not sweet at all. Dextrose or glucose is otherwise known; as grape sugar, for it is commonly found in grapes and other ripe fruits. Itforms half of honey and it is one of the two products into which cane sugar splits up when we take it into the mouth. It is not so sweet as cane sugar and cannot be so readily crystallized, which, however, is not altogether a disadvantage.
The process of changing starch into dextrose that takes place in the great steam kettles of the glucose factory is essentially the same as that which takes place in the ripening of fruit and in the digestion of starch. A large part of our nutriment, therefore, consists of glucose either eaten as such in ripe fruits or produced in the mouth or stomach by the decomposition of the starch of unripe fruit, vegetables and cereals. Glucose may be regarded as a predigested food. In spite of this well-known fact we still sometimes read "poor food" articles in which glucose is denounced as a dangerous adulterant and even classed as a poison.
The other ingredients of commercial glucose, the maltose and dextrin, have of course the same food value as the dextrose, since they are made over into dextrose in the process of digestion. Whether the glucose syrup is fit to eat depends, like anything else, on how it is made. If, as was formerly sometimes the case, sulfuric acid was used to effect the conversion of the starch or sulfurous acid to bleach the glucose and these acids were not altogether eliminated, the product might be unwholesome or worse. Some years ago in England there was a mysterious epidemic of arsenical poisoning among beer drinkers. On tracing it back it was found that the beer had been made from glucose which had been made from sulfuric acid which had been made from sulfur which had been made from a batch of ironpyrites which contained a little arsenic. The replacement of sulfuric acid by hydrochloric has done away with that danger and the glucose now produced is pure.
The old recipe for home-made candy called for the addition of a little vinegar to the sugar syrup to prevent "graining." The purpose of the acid was of course to invert part of the cane sugar to glucose so as to keep it from crystallizing out again. The professional candy-maker now uses the corn glucose for that purpose, so if we accuse him of "adulteration" on that ground we must levy the same accusation against our grandmothers. The introduction of glucose into candy manufacture has not injured but greatly increased the sale of sugar for the same purpose. This is not an uncommon effect of scientific progress, for as we have observed, the introduction of synthetic perfumes has stimulated the production of odoriferous flowers and the price of butter has gone up with the introduction of margarin. So, too, there are more weavers employed and they get higher wages than in the days when they smashed up the first weaving machines, and the same is true of printers and typesetting machines. The popular animosity displayed toward any new achievement of applied science is never justified, for it benefits not only the world as a whole but usually even those interests with which it seems at first to conflict.
The chemist is an economizer. It is his special business to hunt up waste products and make them useful. He was, for instance, worried over the waste of the cores and skins and scraps that were being thrown away when apples were put up. Apple pulp contains pectin, which is what makes jelly jell, and berries andfruits that are short of it will refuse to "jell." But using these for their flavor he adds apple pulp for pectin and glucose for smoothness and sugar for sweetness and, if necessary, synthetic dyes for color, he is able to put on the market a variety of jellies, jams and marmalades at very low price. The same principle applies here as in the case of all compounded food products. If they are made in cleanly fashion, contain no harmful ingredients and are truthfully labeled there is no reason for objecting to them. But if the manufacturer goes so far as to put strawberry seeds—or hayseed—into his artificial "strawberry jam" I think that might properly be called adulteration, for it is imitating the imperfections of nature, and man ought to be too proud to do that.
The old-fashioned open kettle molasses consisted mostly of glucose and other invert sugars together with such cane sugar as could not be crystallized out. But when the vacuum pan was introduced the molasses was impoverished of its sweetness and beet sugar does not yield any molasses. So we now have in its place the corn syrups consisting of about 85 per cent. of glucose and 15 per cent. of sugar flavored with maple or vanillin or whatever we like. It is encouraging to see the bill boards proclaiming the virtues of "Karo" syrup and "Mazola" oil when only a few years ago the products of our national cereal were without honor in their own country.
Many other products besides foods are made from corn starch. Dextrin serves in place of the old "gum arabic" for the mucilage of our envelopes and stamps. Another form of dextrin sold as "Kordex" is used tohold together the sand of the cores of castings. After the casting has been made the scorched core can be shaken out. Glucose is used in place of sugar as a filler for cheap soaps and for leather.
Altogether more than a hundred different commercial products are now made from corn, not counting cob pipes. Every year the factories of the United States work up over 50,000,000 bushels of corn into 800,000,000 pounds of corn syrup, 600,000,000 pounds of starch, 230,000,000 pounds of corn sugar, 625,000,000 pounds of gluten feed, 90,000,000 pounds of oil and 90,000,000 pounds of oil cake.
Two million bushels of cobs are wasted every year in the United States. Can't something be made out of them? This is the question that is agitating the chemists of the Carbohydrate Laboratory of the Department of Agriculture at Washington. They have found it possible to work up the corn cobs into glucose and xylose by heating with acid. But glucose can be more cheaply obtained from other starchy or woody materials and they cannot find a market for the xylose. This is a sort of a sugar but only about half as sweet as that from cane. Who can invent a use for it! More promising is the discovery by this laboratory that by digesting the cobs with hot water there can be extracted about 30 per cent. of a gum suitable for bill posting and labeling.
Since the starches and sugars belong to the same class of compounds as the celluloses they also can be acted upon by nitric acid with the production of explosives like guncotton. Nitro-sugar has not come into common use, but nitro-starch is found to be one ofsafest of the high explosives. On account of the danger of decomposition and spontaneous explosion from the presence of foreign substances the materials in explosives must be of the purest possible. It was formerly thought that tapioca must be imported from Java for making nitro-starch. But during the war when shipping was short, the War Department found that it could be made better and cheaper from our home-grown corn starch. When the war closed the United States was making 1,720,000 pounds of nitro-starch a month for loading hand grenades. So, too, the Post Office Department discovered that it could use mucilage made of corn dextrin as well as that which used to be made from tapioca. This is progress in the right direction. It would be well to divert some of the energetic efforts now devoted to the increase of commerce to the discovery of ways of reducing the need for commerce by the development of home products. There is no merit in simply hauling things around the world.
In the last chapter we saw how dextrose or glucose could be converted by fermentation into alcohol. Since corn starch, as we have seen, can be converted into dextrose, it can serve as a source of alcohol. This was, in fact, one of the earliest misuses to which corn was put, and before the war put a stop to it 34,000,000 bushels went into the making of whiskey in the United States every year, not counting the moonshiners' output. But even though we left off drinking whiskey the distillers could still thrive. Mars is more thirsty than Bacchus. The output of whiskey, denatured for industrial purposes, is more than three times what is was before the war, and the price has risen from 30 cents agallon to 67 cents. This may make it profitable to utilize sugars, starches and cellulose that formerly were out of the question. According to the calculations of the Forest Products Laboratory of Madison it costs from 37 to 44 cents a gallon to make alcohol from corn, but it may be made from sawdust at a cost of from 14 to 20 cents. This is not "wood alcohol" (that is, methyl alcohol, CH4O) such as is made by the destructive distillation of wood, but genuine "grain alcohol" (ethyl alcohol, C2H6O), such as is made by the fermentation of glucose or other sugar. The first step in the process is to digest the sawdust or chips with dilute sulfuric acid under heat and pressure. This converts the cellulose (wood fiber) in large part into glucose ("corn sugar") which may be extracted by hot water in a diffusion battery as in extracting the sugar from beet chips. This glucose solution may then be fermented by yeast and the resulting alcohol distilled off. The process is perfectly practicable but has yet to be proved profitable. But the sulfite liquors of the paper mills are being worked up successfully into industrial alcohol.
The rapidly approaching exhaustion of our oil fields which the war has accelerated leads us to look around to see what we can get to take the place of gasoline. One of the most promising of the suggested substitutes is alcohol. The United States is exceptionally rich in mineral oil, but some countries, for instance England, Germany, France and Australia, have little or none. The Australian Advisory Council of Science, called to consider the problem, recommends alcohol for stationary engines and motor cars. Alcohol has the disadvantageof being less volatile than gasoline so it is hard to start up the engine from the cold. But the lower volatility and ignition point of alcohol are an advantage in that it can be put under a pressure of 150 pounds to the square inch. A pound of gasoline contains fifty per cent. more potential energy than a pound of alcohol, but since the alcohol vapor can be put under twice the compression of the gasoline and requires only one-third the amount of air, the thermal efficiency of an alcohol engine may be fifty per cent. higher than that of a gasoline engine. Alcohol also has several other conveniences that can count in its favor. In the case of incomplete combustion the cylinders are less likely to be clogged with carbon and the escaping gases do not have the offensive odor of the gasoline smoke. Alcohol does not ignite so easily as gasoline and the fire is more readily put out, for water thrown upon blazing alcohol dilutes it and puts out the flame while gasoline floats on water and the fire is spread by it. It is possible to increase the inflammability of alcohol by mixing with it some hydrocarbon such as gasoline, benzene or acetylene. In the Taylor-White process the vapor from low-grade alcohol containing 17 per cent. water is passed over calcium carbide. This takes out the water and adds acetylene gas, making a suitable mixture for an internal combustion engine.
Alcohol can be made from anything of a starchy, sugary or woody nature, that is, from the main substance of all vegetation. If we start with wood (cellulose) we convert it first into sugar (glucose) and, of course, we could stop here and use it for food insteadof carrying it on into alcohol. This provides one factor of our food, the carbohydrate, but by growing the yeast plants on glucose and feeding them with nitrates made from the air we can get the protein and fat. So it is quite possible to live on sawdust, although it would be too expensive a diet for anybody but a millionaire, and he would not enjoy it. Glucose has been made from formaldehyde and this in turn made from carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, so the synthetic production of food from the elements is not such an absurdity as it was thought when Berthelot suggested it half a century ago.
The first step in the making of alcohol is to change the starch over into sugar. This transformation is effected in the natural course of sprouting by which the insoluble starch stored up in the seed is converted into the soluble glucose for the sap of the growing plant. This malting process is that mainly made use of in the production of alcohol from grain. But there are other ways of effecting the change. It may be done by heating with acid as we have seen, or according to a method now being developed the final conversion may be accomplished by mold instead of malt. In applying this method, known as the amylo process, to corn, the meal is mixed with twice its weight of water, acidified with hydrochloric acid and steamed. The mash is then cooled down somewhat, diluted with sterilized water and innoculated with the mucor filaments. As the mash molds the starch is gradually changed over to glucose and if this is the product desired the process may be stopped at this point. But if alcohol is wantedyeast is added to ferment the sugar. By keeping it alkaline and treating with the proper bacteria a high yield of glycerin can be obtained.
In the fermentation process for making alcoholic liquors a little glycerin is produced as a by-product. Glycerin, otherwise called glycerol, is intermediate between sugar and alcohol. Its molecule contains three carbon atoms, while glucose has six and alcohol two. It is possible to increase the yield of glycerin if desired by varying the form of fermentation. This was desired most earnestly in Germany during the war, for the British blockade shut off the importation of the fats and oils from which the Germans extracted the glycerin for their nitroglycerin. Under pressure of this necessity they worked out a process of getting glycerin in quantity from sugar and, news of this being brought to this country by Dr. Alonzo Taylor, the United States Treasury Department set up a special laboratory to work out this problem. John R. Eoff and other chemists working in this laboratory succeeded in getting a yield of twenty per cent. of glycerin by fermenting black strap molasses or other syrup with California wine yeast. During the fermentation it is necessary to neutralize the acetic acid formed with sodium or calcium carbonate. It was estimated that glycerin could be made from waste sugars at about a quarter of its war-time cost, but it is doubtful whether the process would be profitable at normal prices.
We can, if we like, dispense with either yeast or bacteria in the production of glycerin. Glucose syrup suspended in oil under steam pressure with finely divided nickel as a catalyst and treated with nascent hydrogenwill take up the hydrogen and be converted into glycerin. But the yield is poor and the process expensive.
Food serves substantially the same purpose in the body as fuel in the engine. It provides the energy for work. The carbohydrates, that is the sugars, starches and celluloses, can all be used as fuels and can all—even, as we have seen, the cellulose—be used as foods. The final products, water and carbon dioxide, are in both cases the same and necessarily therefore the amount of energy produced is the same in the body as in the engine. Corn is a good example of the equivalence of the two sources of energy. There are few better foods and no better fuels. I can remember the good old days in Kansas when we had corn to burn. It was both an economy and a luxury, for—at ten cents a bushel—it was cheaper than coal or wood and preferable to either at any price. The long yellow ears, each wrapped in its own kindling, could be handled without crocking the fingers. Each kernel as it crackled sent out a blazing jet of oil and the cobs left a fine bed of coals for the corn popper to be shaken over. Driftwood and the pyrotechnic fuel they make now by soaking sticks in strontium and copper salts cannot compare with the old-fashioned corn-fed fire in beauty and the power of evoking visions. Doubtless such luxury would be condemned as wicked nowadays, but those who have known the calorific value of corn would find it hard to abandon it altogether, and I fancy that the Western farmer's wife, when she has an extra batch of baking to do, will still steal a few ears from the crib.
All life and all that life accomplishes depend upon the supply of solar energy stored in the form of food. The chief sources of this vital energy are the fats and the sugars. The former contain two and a quarter times the potential energy of the latter. Both, when completely purified, consist of nothing but carbon, hydrogen and oxygen; elements that are to be found freely everywhere in air and water. So when the sunny southland exports fats and oils, starches and sugar, it is then sending away nothing material but what comes back to it in the next wind. What it is sending to the regions of more slanting sunshine is merely some of the surplus of the radiant energy it has received so abundantly, compacted for convenience into a portable and edible form.
In previous chapters I have dealt with some of the uses of cotton, its employment for cloth, for paper, for artificial fibers, for explosives, and for plastics. But I have ignored the thing that cotton is attached to and for which, in the economy of nature, the fibers are formed; that is, the seed. It is as though I had described the aeroplane and ignored the aviator whom it was designed to carry. But in this neglect I am but following the example of the human race, which for three thousand years used the fiber but made no use of the seed except to plant the next crop.
Just as mankind is now divided into the two great classes, the wheat-eaters and the rice-eaters, so the ancient world was divided into the wool-wearers and the cotton-wearers. The people of India wore cotton; the Europeans wore wool. When the Greeks under Alexander fought their way to the Far East they were surprised to find wool growing on trees. Later travelers returning from Cathay told of the same marvel and travelers who stayed at home and wrote about what they had not seen, like Sir John Maundeville, misunderstood these reports and elaborated a legend of a tree that bore live lambs as fruit. Here, for instance, is how a French poetical botanist, Delacroix, described it in 1791, as translated from his Latin verse:
Upon a stalk is fixed a living brute,A rooted plant bears quadruped for fruit;It has a fleece, nor does it want for eyes,And from its brows two wooly horns arise.The rude and simple country people sayIt is an animal that sleeps by dayAnd wakes at night, though rooted to the ground,To feed on grass within its reach around.
But modern commerce broke down the barrier between East and West. A new cotton country, the best in the world, was discovered in America. Cotton invaded England and after a hard fight, with fists as well as finance, wool was beaten in its chief stronghold. Cotton became King and the wool-sack in the House of Lords lost its symbolic significance.
Still two-thirds of the cotton crop, the seed, was wasted and it is only within the last fifty years thatmethods of using it have been developed to any extent.
The cotton crop of the United States for 1917 amounted to about 11,000,000 bales of 500 pounds each. When the Great War broke out and no cotton could be exported to Germany and little to England the South was in despair, for cotton went down to five or six cents a pound. The national Government, regardless of states' rights, was called upon for aid and everybody was besought to "buy a bale." Those who responded to this patriotic appeal were well rewarded, for cottonrose as the war went on and sold at twenty-nine cents a pound.
PRODUCTS AND USES OF COTTONSEEDPRODUCTS AND USES OF COTTONSEED
PRODUCTS AND USES OF COTTONSEED—ContinuedPRODUCTS AND USES OF COTTONSEED—Continued
But the chemist has added some $150,000,000 a year to the value of the crop by discovering ways of utilizing the cottonseed that used to be thrown away or burned as fuel. The genealogical table of the progeny of the cottonseed herewith printed will give some idea of their variety. If you will examine a cottonseed you will see first that there is a fine fuzz of cotton fiber sticking to it. These linters can be removed by machinery and used for any purpose where length of fiber is not essential. For instance, they may be nitrated as described in previous articles and used for making smokeless powder or celluloid.
On cutting open the seed you will observe that it consists of an oily, mealy kernel encased in a thin brown hull. The hulls, amounting to 700 or 900 pounds in a ton of seed, were formerly burned. Now, however, they bring from $4 to $10 a ton because they can be ground up into cattle-feed or paper stock or used as fertilizer.
The kernel of the cottonseed on being pressed yields a yellow oil and leaves a mealy cake. This last, mixed with the hulls, makes a good fodder for fattening cattle. Also, adding twenty-five per cent. of the refined cottonseed meal to our war bread made it more nutritious and no less palatable. Cottonseed meal contains about forty per cent. of protein and is therefore a highly concentrated and very valuable feeding stuff. Before the war we were exporting nearly half a million tons of cottonseed meal to Europe, chiefly to Germany and Denmark, where it is used for dairy cows. The British yeoman, his country's pride, has not yet been won over to the use of any such newfangled fodder and consequently the British manufacturer could not compete with his continental rivals in the seed-crushing business, for he could not dispose of his meal-cake by-product as did they.
Photo by Press Illustrating Service Cottonseed Oil As It Is Squeezed From The Seed By The PressesPhoto by Press Illustrating Service Cottonseed Oil As It Is Squeezed From The Seed By The Presses
Photo by Press Illustrating ServicePhoto by Press Illustrating Service
Cottonseed Oil As It Comes From The Compressors Flowing Out Of The FaucetsWhen cold it is firm and white like lard
Cottonseed Oil As It Comes From The Compressors Flowing Out Of The Faucets
When cold it is firm and white like lard
Let us now turn to the most valuable of the cottonseed products, the oil. The seed contains about twenty per cent. of oil, most of which can be squeezed out of the hot seeds by hydraulic pressure. It comes out as a red liquid of a disagreeable odor. This is decolorized, deodorized and otherwise purified in various ways: by treatment with alkalies or acids, by blowing air and steam through it, by shaking up with fuller's earth, by settling and filtering. The refined product is a yellow oil, suitable for table use. Formerly, on account of the popular prejudice against any novel food products, it used to masquerade as olive oil. Now, however, it boldly competes with its ancient rival in the lands of the olive tree and America ships some 700,000 barrels of cottonseed oil a year to the Mediterranean. The Turkish Government tried to check the spread of cottonseed oil by calling it an adulterant and prohibiting its mixture with olive oil. The result was that the sale of Turkish olive oil fell off because people found its flavor too strong when undiluted. Italy imports cottonseed oil and exports her olive oil. Denmark imports cottonseed meal and margarine and exports her butter.
Northern nations are accustomed to hard fats and do not take to oils for cooking or table use as do the southerners. Butter and lard are preferred to olive oil and ghee. But this does not rule out cottonseed. It can be combined with the hard fats of animal or vegetableorigin in margarine or it may itself be hardened by hydrogen.
To understand this interesting reaction which is profoundly affecting international relations it will be necessary to dip into the chemistry of the subject. Here are the symbols of the chief ingredients of the fats and oils. Please look at them.
Linoleic acidC18H32O2Oleic acidC18H34O2Stearic acidC18H36O2
Don't skip these because you have not studied chemistry. That's why I am giving them to you. If you had studied chemistry you would know them without my telling. Just examine them and you will discover the secret. You will see that all three are composed of the same elements, carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. Notice next the number of atoms in each element as indicated by the little low figures on the right of each letter. You observe that all three contain the same number of atoms of carbon and oxygen but differ in the amount of hydrogen. This trifling difference in composition makes a great difference in behavior. The less the hydrogen the lower the melting point. Or to say the same thing in other words, fatty substances low in hydrogen are apt to be liquids and those with a full complement of hydrogen atoms are apt to be solids at the ordinary temperature of the air. It is common to call the former "oils" and the latter "fats," but that implies too great a dissimilarity, for the distinction depends on whether we are living in the tropics or the arctic. It is better, therefore, to lump them all togetherand call them "soft fats" and "hard fats," respectively.
Fats of the third order, the stearic group, are called "saturated" because they have taken up all the hydrogen they can hold. Fats of the other two groups are called "unsaturated." The first, which have the least hydrogen, are the most eager for more. If hydrogen is not handy they will take up other things, for instance oxygen. Linseed oil, which consists largely, as the name implies, of linoleic acid, will absorb oxygen on exposure to the air and become hard. That is why it is used in painting. Such oils are called "drying" oils, although the hardening process is not really drying, since they contain no water, but is oxidation. The "semi-drying oils," those that will harden somewhat on exposure to the air, include the oils of cottonseed, corn, sesame, soy bean and castor bean. Olive oil and peanut oil are "non-drying" and contain oleic compounds (olein). The hard fats, such as stearin, palmitin and margarin, are mostly of animal origin, tallow and lard, though coconut and palm oil contain a large proportion of such saturated compounds.
Though the chemist talks of the fatty "acids," nobody else would call them so because they are not sour. But they do behave like the acids in forming salts with bases. The alkali salts of the fatty acids are known to us as soaps. In the natural fats they exist not as free acids but as salts of an organic base, glycerin, as I explained in a previous chapter. The natural fats and oils consist of complex mixtures of the glycerin compounds of these acids (known as olein, stearin, etc.), as well as various others of a similar sort. If you willset a bottle of salad oil in the ice-box you will see it separate into two parts. The white, crystalline solid that separates out is largely stearin. The part that remains liquid is largely olein. You might separate them by filtering it cold and if then you tried to sell the two products you would find that the hard fat would bring a higher price than the oil, either for food or soap. If you tried to keep them you would find that the hard fat kept neutral and "sweet" longer than the other. You may remember that the perfumes (as well as their odorous opposites) were mostly unsaturated compounds. So we find that it is the free and unsaturated fatty acids that cause butter and oil to become rank and rancid.
Obviously, then, we could make money if we could turn soft, unsaturated fats like olein into hard, saturated fats like stearin. Referring to the symbols we see that all that is needed to effect the change is to get the former to unite with hydrogen. This requires a little coaxing. The coaxer is called a catalyst. A catalyst, as I have previously explained, is a substance that by its mere presence causes the union of two other substances that might otherwise remain separate. For that reason the catalyst is referred to as "a chemical parson." Finely divided metals have a strong catalytic action. Platinum sponge is excellent but too expensive. So in this case nickel is used. A nickel salt mixed with charcoal or pumice is reduced to the metallic state by heating in a current of hydrogen. Then it is dropped into the tank of oil and hydrogen gas is blown through. The hydrogen may be obtained by splitting water into its two components, hydrogen andoxygen, by means of the electrical current, or by passing steam over spongy iron which takes out the oxygen. The stream of hydrogen blown through the hot oil converts the linoleic acid to oleic and then the oleic into stearic. If you figured up the weights from the symbols given above you would find that it takes about one pound of hydrogen to convert a hundred pounds of olein to stearin and the cost is only about one cent a pound. The nickel is unchanged and is easily separated. A trace of nickel may remain in the product, but as it is very much less than the amount dissolved when food is cooked in nickel-plated vessels it cannot be regarded as harmful.
Even more unsaturated fats may be hydrogenated. Fish oil has hitherto been almost unusable because of its powerful and persistent odor. This is chiefly due to a fatty acid which properly bears the uneuphonious name of clupanodonic acid and has the composition of C18H28O2. By comparing this with the symbol of the odorless stearic acid, C18H36O2, you will see that all the rank fish oil lacks to make it respectable is eight hydrogen atoms. A Japanese chemist, Tsujimoto, has discovered how to add them and now the reformed fish oil under the names of "talgol" and "candelite" serves for lubricant and even enters higher circles as a soap or food.
This process of hardening fats by hydrogenation resulted from the experiments of a French chemist, Professor Sabatier of Toulouse, in the last years of the last century, but, as in many other cases, the Germans were the first to take it up and profit by it. Before the war the copra or coconut oil from the British Asiatic coloniesof India, Ceylon and Malaya went to Germany at the rate of $15,000,000 a year. The palm kernels grown in British West Africa were shipped, not to Liverpool, but to Hamburg, $19,000,000 worth annually. Here the oil was pressed out and used for margarin and the residual cake used for feeding cows produced butter or for feeding hogs produced lard. Half of the copra raised in the British possessions was sent to Germany and half of the oil from it was resold to the British margarin candle and soap makers at a handsome profit. The British chemists were not blind to this, but they could do nothing, first because the English politician was wedded to free trade, second, because the English farmer would not use oil cake for his stock. France was in a similar situation. Marseilles produced 15,500,000 gallons of oil from peanuts grown largely in the French African colonies—but shipped the oil-cake on to Hamburg. Meanwhile the Germans, in pursuit of their policy of attaining economic independence, were striving to develop their own tropical territory. The subjects of King George who because they had the misfortune to live in India were excluded from the British South African dominions or mistreated when they did come, were invited to come to German East Africa and set to raising peanuts in rivalry to French Senegal and British Coromandel. Before the war Germany got half of the Egyptian cottonseed and half of the Philippine copra. That is one of the reasons why German warships tried to check Dewey at Manila in 1898 and German troops tried to conquer Egypt in 1915.
But the tide of war set the other way and the German plantations of palmnuts and peanuts in Africa havecome into British possession and now the British Government is starting an educational campaign to teach their farmers to feed oil cake like the Germans and their people to eat peanuts like the Americans.
The Germans shut off from the tropical fats supply were hard up for food and for soap, for lubricants and for munitions. Every person was given a fat card that reduced his weekly allowance to the minimum. Millers were required to remove the germs from their cereals and deliver them to the war department. Children were set to gathering horse-chestnuts, elderberries, linden-balls, grape seeds, cherry stones and sunflower heads, for these contain from six to twenty per cent. of oil. Even the blue-bottle fly—hitherto an idle creature for whom Beelzebub found mischief—was conscripted into the national service and set to laying eggs by the billion on fish refuse. Within a few days there is a crop of larvae which, to quote the "Chemische Zentralblatt," yields forty-five grams per kilogram of a yellow oil. This product, we should hope, is used for axle-grease and nitroglycerin, although properly purified it would be as nutritious as any other—to one who has no imagination. Driven to such straits Germany would have given a good deal for one of those tropical islands that we are so careless about.
It might have been supposed that since the United States possessed the best land in the world for the production of cottonseed, coconuts, peanuts, and corn that it would have led all other countries in the utilization of vegetable oils for food. That this country has not so used its advantage is due to the fact that the new products have not merely had to overcome popularconservatism, ignorance and prejudice—hard things to fight in any case—but have been deliberately checked and hampered by the state and national governments in defense of vested interests. The farmer vote is a power that no politician likes to defy and the dairy business in every state was thoroughly organized. In New York the oleomargarin industry that in 1879 was turning out products valued at more than $5,000,000 a year was completely crushed out by state legislation.[2]The output of the United States, which in 1902 had risen to 126,000,000 pounds, was cut down to 43,000,000 pounds in 1909 by federal legislation. According to the disingenuous custom of American lawmakers the Act of 1902 was passed through Congress as a "revenue measure," although it meant a loss to the Government of more than three million dollars a year over what might be produced by a straight two cents a pound tax. A wholesale dealer in oleomargarin was made to pay a higher license than a wholesale liquor dealer. The federal law put a tax of ten cents a pound on yellow oleomargarin and a quarter of a cent a pound on the uncolored. But people—doubtless from pure prejudice—prefer a yellow spread for their bread, so the economical housewife has to work over her oleomargarin with the annatto which is given to her when she buys a package or, if the law prohibits this, which she is permitted to steal from an open box on the grocer's counter. A plausible pretext for such legislation is afforded by the fact that the butter substitutes are so much like butter that they cannot be easily distinguished from it unless the use of annatto is permittedto butter and prohibited to its competitors. Fradulent sales of substitutes of any kind ought to be prevented, but the recent pure food legislation in America has shown that it is possible to secure truthful labeling without resorting to such drastic measures. In Europe the laws against substitution were very strict, but not devised to restrict the industry. Consequently the margarin output of Germany doubled in the five years preceding the war and the output of England tripled. In Denmark the consumption of margarin rose from 8.8 pounds per capita in 1890 to 32.6 pounds in 1912. Yet the butter business, Denmark's pride, was not injured, and Germany and England imported more butter than ever before. Now that the price of butter in America has gone over the seventy-five cent mark Congress may conclude that it no longer needs to be protected against competition.
The "compound lards" or "lard compounds," consisting usually of cottonseed oil and oleo-stearin, although the latter may now be replaced by hardened oil, met with the same popular prejudice and attempted legislative interference, but succeeded more easily in coming into common use under such names as "Cottosuet," "Kream Krisp," "Kuxit," "Korno," "Cottolene" and "Crisco."
Oleomargarin, now generally abbreviated to margarin, originated, like many other inventions, in military necessity. The French Government in 1869 offered a prize for a butter substitute for the army that should be cheaper and better than butter in that it did not spoil so easily. The prize was won by a French chemist, Mége-Mouries, who found that by chilling beeffat the solid stearin could be separated from an oil (oleo) which was the substantially same as that in milk and hence in butter. Neutral lard acts the same.
This discovery of how to separate the hard and soft fats was followed by improved methods for purifying them and later by the process for converting the soft into the hard fats by hydrogenation. The net result was to put into the hands of the chemist the ability to draw his materials at will from any land and from the vegetable and animal kingdoms and to combine them as he will to make new fat foods for every use; hard for summer, soft for winter; solid for the northerners and liquid for the southerners; white, yellow or any other color, and flavored to suit the taste. The Hindu can eat no fat from the sacred cow; the Mohammedan and the Jew can eat no fat from the abhorred pig; the vegetarian will touch neither; other people will take both. No matter, all can be accommodated.
All the fats and oils, though they consist of scores of different compounds, have practically the same food value when freed from the extraneous matter that gives them their characteristic flavors. They are all practically tasteless and colorless. The various vegetable and animal oils and fats have about the same digestibility, 98 per cent.,[3]and are all ordinarily completely utilized in the body, supplying it with two and a quarter times as much energy as any other food.
It does not follow, however, that there is no difference in the products. The margarin men accuse butter of harboring tuberculosis germs from which their product, because it has been heated or is made from vegetablefats, is free. The butter men retort that margarin is lacking in vitamines, those mysterious substances which in minute amounts are necessary for life and especially for growth. Both the claim and the objection lose a large part of their force where the margarin, as is customarily the case, is mixed with butter or churned up with milk to give it the familiar flavor. But the difficulty can be easily overcome. The milk used for either butter or margarin should be free or freed from disease germs. If margarin is altogether substituted for butter, the necessary vitamines may be sufficiently provided by milk, eggs and greens.
Owing to these new processes all the fatty substances of all lands have been brought into competition with each other. In such a contest the vegetable is likely to beat the animal and the southern to win over the northern zones. In Europe before the war the proportion of the various ingredients used to make butter substitutes was as follows: