VEGETABLE AND IMITATION 281 



or 3 sucres (the sucre equals 48.7 cents of our money) per 

 hundredweight. This would bring in on an average about 

 $240 for a ten-ton raft load. About half of this sum has to 

 be deducted for outfit and provisions, leaving $120 or some- 

 thing less as the season's profit for the two or more natives 

 constituting a party. 



From the storehouses of the merchants the nuts, sewed 

 up in sacks, are taken to the seaport warehouses at Esmer- 

 aldas or elsewhere. An export duty, sometimes in Ecuador 

 as high as $1 on unshelled nuts and $1.40 on shelled nuts, 

 trader's profit, cost of handling, brokers' commissions, etc., 

 bring up the price for the United States manufacturers to 

 about 6 cents per pound, making $120 a ton; as we have 

 seen, the native gatherer gets only $24 a ton, but half of 

 this being profit. 



The great use to which this product is put in the United 

 States is for button manufacturing. The ivory nuts usually 

 come to the factory in their original state with the hard 

 encasing rind. So hard is this, indeed, that when the nuts 

 are dried a steel fork will not cut them, but — like the diamond 

 in this — a smart blow of the hammer will fracture them. 

 After having been broken, they are spread out for further 

 drying in a temperature of 100°; by this means the inner 

 part of the nut becomes loosened from the shell. This inner 

 part is then sliced up by circular saws making 600 revolu- 

 tions in a minute, a solid piece being taken from each side, 

 the usually defective core being rejected. 



The solid pieces are then still more thoroughly dried out 

 in a drying room until absolutely no moisture remains; 

 this causes their hue to change from a bluish white to an 

 ivory white or cream colour. Their hardness equals that 

 of bone, and while subsequent soaking during the stages of 

 manufacture swells them temporarily, they return to their 

 former hardness. The dimensions of the pieces secured in 



