DEHYDRATION OF FRUITS AND VEGKTABLES. 15 



and according to the temperature of the air that you are using. 

 Tomatoes we dry in about 7 to 10 hours. 



Senator Eansdell. You slice them, I suppose. 

 Mr. HoKST. Yes, sir. 



Senator Ransdell. All vegetables have to be sliced up, or practi- 

 cally all of them? 



Mr. HoBST. You have to slice your products in order to dry the 

 vegetables on the inside ajid core. If you leave a wet place in the 

 inside of the veisetable, then your vegetable is liable to spoil, and that 

 has been the mistake of the past, -before that was fully understood, 

 that the inside of the vegetables — that is, the core — ^has to be dried, 

 and v.hen the core is not dried your vegetable will spoil, and when 

 the core is dried you can not spoil it afterwards. 



The Chairman. You were telling me about some saving in the 

 drying of apples under this process, as compared with the old process. 

 Mr. HoEST. There is a great saving in the drying of apples, in this 

 particular respect, that you get much more for the apples that are 

 dried b3' the indoor process than you do for apples which are dried 

 by the outdoor process, and in that way you get your saving. 



The Chairman. Was there not some bleaching process that you 

 told me about? 



Mr. HoRST. Whenever you dry anything in the open air, likt 

 peaches, pears, or apples, and lay the stuff on trays, the drying 

 process is so slow, no matter how hot the sun may be, that the out- 

 side of the fruit becomes oxidized, and during the exposure there 

 are flies and bugs and dust and dirt which get on it and damage 

 the product more or less. 



In order to make the product presentable, it is imperative to bleach 

 it, or you can not dispose of it, the way people look at goods now- 

 adays. The sulphur bleaching proposition will all be done away 

 with by this dehydrating process, because there is no need of sulphur, 

 since you get your first-class product without its iiwe. The danger 

 of sulphur is not so much in the sulphurous acid that is formed in 

 the process of the burning of the sulphur, the sulphur smoke. Sul- 

 phur smoke coming in contact with the food makes sulphurous acid, 

 and then that is the bleaching agent. Bad as that is, the real 

 trouble is that it is very difficult to get sulphur that is free from 

 arsenic, and when you burn sulphur under fruit the arsenic burns 

 along with the sulphur, and that is immediately precipitated when 

 it hits anything wet. 



The first product it hits when the smoke is cooled, wherever that 

 happens to be, the arsenic is precipitated, and when this arsenic is 

 precipitated on the lower layers of the fruit, and if perchance some- 

 body eats the lower layers and gets a little too much arsenic, there 

 is a funeral in the family. The amount of arsenic, for instance, in 

 Hakodate sulphur and Sicilian sulphur runs as high as 1 part of 

 arsenic to 1,500 parts of sulphur. -r . •' 



Senator Eansdell. How it is with respect to the Louisiana sul- 

 phur ? 



Mr. HoEST. Louisiana sulphur is considered pure; that is, free 

 from arsenic. So is the Nevada sulphur, but we never get any of the 

 Nevada sulphur, nor do we ever get any of the Louisiana sulphur 

 out in our part of the country, and the only sulphurs used are the 



