212 ANNUAL REl'ORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



OTHER MANUFACTURERS 



Not only is this true of the manufacturer in (be limited way 1 

 liave here indicated in the local jiroductiou of beef and pork, but 

 all other food stufls are so high already that they will not stand 

 the added cost of transporting the raw material long distances to 

 be manufactured into edible forms and then reshipped to the con- 

 sumer in the immediate vicinity where they were grown and where 

 they might have been manufactured as well or better for no more 

 cost than at the distant center, without the cost of transportation. 

 This the co-o])erative societies of the West have been recognizing 

 and they have been working along the lines of manufacturing the 

 raw materials of our food stuffs in the vicinities where they are 

 grown. Certainly the natural conclusions is that sections should 

 raise the crops for Avhich their soil, climate, market and labor con- 

 ditions are best adapted. 



POWER 



This naturally brings us to the question of power. The manu- 

 facturer must have cheap power to run his factory and if the farmer 

 is to become a manufacturer he must have cheap power for it is he 

 who must reduce the high cost of living. It is my firm conviction 

 that one of the most paramount duties of the State and the Nation 

 is to inaugurate a series of investigations and experiments with the 

 end in view of conserving, developing and utilizing for power and 

 where needed for irrigation, the energy that now flows down our 

 rivers and streams undeveloped and unused. But there is another 

 source of power which is grown and available on every farm in the 

 land in the shape of indigestible cellulose, both by man and animals, 

 that has not been used by the farmer. Fifty per cent, of corn stover 

 and little if any of the cellulose of the corn cob can be digested by 

 our animals and we know that tons and tons of these substances 

 are ])roduced on all our farms. We have now discovered that those 

 can be converted into power by making them into alcohol. 



INDUSTRIAL ALCOHOL FROM SAW DUST 



At a meeting of the Canadian Section of the English Society of 

 Chemical Industries, held at INFontreal, Canada, October 22, 1909, 

 Prof, R. F. Ruttan, M. D., read a paper on Ethyl Alcohol from Saw 

 Dust and other Wood Waste, published in the Journal of the So- 

 ciety of Chemical Industries of England, December 31, 1909, pp. 

 1290-91, also in the Scientific Supplement, April 10, 1910, in which 

 he shows that the Classen process for the manufacture of alcohol 

 from tlie waste material of wood has been so modified and improved 

 by two chemical engineers, Messrs, Malcolm F. Ewen and G, H. 

 Tomlinson that it now has become a financial success. These 

 gentlemen conducting their experiments at Chicago Heights, near 

 the city of Chicago, with a plant erected by the Wood Waste Pro- 

 ducts Company, now the Standard Alcohol Company, under their 

 direction and by the use of their patents. It is known that the 

 raw material out of which denatured alcohol is made at the present 

 time costs from 20 to 24 cents a gallon. These men have shown that 

 from the wood waste of large saw mills and wood manufacturing 



