PART II 



THE MANUFACTURE OF CROP PRODUCTS 



Every important crop affords material for due or more manufuotured products. These products are 

 of several classes or kinds, as: Preserved products for use as food for men or live-stock; construction 

 products, as lumber, in which the plant material is merely put in shape or form for use, without change 

 in its structure; extracted or expressed products, as wines; ground or pulverized products, as flour; 

 transformed structural products, in which the identity of the original materials is lost, as in woven 

 goods, paper. It would be interesting to make a list of the manufactured or manipulated products of 

 the plants described in this book, beginning with the meal made from the alfalfa plant and ending with 

 the flour and other products of the wheat grain. If the list were at all complete, the number would be 

 astonishingly large and would impress the reader with his great dependence on the common crops of the 

 flelds. 



For the most part, the manufacturing of crop products is not agriculture. This manufacture is 

 delegated to other persons who make it their exclusive business. The farmer, however, is closely 

 governed in many cases by the necessities of the manufacturer. In fact, the need of manufactured 

 goods has had a tremendous influence on agricultural practice, dictating the kinds of crops to grow in 

 great regions, the varieties,' the methods of growing them, the season at which they shall be delivered, 

 the methods of harvesting and of marketing. It is clearly not the concern of a work of the nature of 

 this Cyclopedia to discuss in any completeness the manufacture of crop products, for farming properly 

 ends at the factory door. Certain manufacturing processes, however, are home industries, or they may 

 be local and practically cooperative, and are therefore nearly or quite within the sphere of this iJbok. 

 Such processes are the various forms of preseirving crop products for human consumption, and the 

 making of juices and beverages. It is proposed, therefore, briefly to discuss some of these familiar 

 subjects to aid the housekeeper and also to give information on some of the commercial relations of 

 these industries. 



With the increase of population, the utilization of secondary or waste products in manufacture 

 becomes more marked and important. In time, a, use must be found for everything, and everything must 

 be saved. -This is well illustrated in wood products, paper now being made from kinds and sizes of trees 

 that were passed by a few years ago, and lumber being sawn from small and crooked stuff that not 

 long ago was left in the forest to be burned. A closer economy of materials will, of course, augment 

 the influence of manufacture on crop production. 



In the old days, every good farm establishment conducted much of its own manufacture. It did its 

 own weaving of cotton, flax or wool. It tanned its own hides. It "put down " its own meats. In many 

 cases it made its own meal or flour. The manufacture moved to the village and flnally to the city and 

 remote from the farm. There is every reason to expect that manufacture is to return to the farm, 

 perhaps not of the staple articles above mentioned, but of many secondary products that must be saved 

 or that need- to be added to the necessities of living. Every good farm will be equipped with light 

 power, which will be utilized in the saving of labor and in manipulating crop products. Neighborhood 

 manufacture is returning, particularly in dairy regions ; this introduces new methods of cooperation, 

 and produces social as well as economic results. 



Unfortunately, there seem to have been few studies of these subjects in this country from the 

 agricultural point of viewi The literature is of two kinds, — the purely domestic writing, largely of the 

 recipe-book order ; and the technical writing for the use of manufacturers or students of the scientific 

 principles involved in the manufacture. We shall find, however, that these subjects have close relation 

 to farm management and to crop-growing. It is impossible, for example, to find adequate advice on the 

 growing of crops for canning factories. The field or farming phases of these subjects are in need of study. 



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