8 



THE PEANUT— THE UNPREDICTABLE LEGUME 



cleaning, grading, and polishing peanuts to be roasted in the shell. Ap- 

 parently, however, another factory was built in New York City about the 

 same date (21), probably for cleaning imported stock. 





K 



Figure 1. — Typical modern peanut processing plant. 



More important for development of the peanut industry was the in- 

 vention and manufacture of machinery for planting, cultivating and 

 harvesting the plant, picking the nuts from the plants, and for shelling 

 and cleaning the seed. Without these labor-saving machines, peanut 

 production would undoubtedly have declined with the gradual increase 

 in cost of human labor. In 1872, H. E. Colton ( 12) writing about pea- 

 nuts, said that under stress of producing peanuts for oil during the Civil 

 War, a mechanic, Thomas L. Colville of Wilmington, North Carolina, 

 built machines for threshing the nuts from the vines and winnowing them 

 and also built machines for removing the shells. Neither machine was 

 patented and many variations and improvements were tried before a 

 really satisfactory picker was built about the beginning of the present 

 century. Development of a successful planter, of the scraper plow, the 

 weeder, and the peanut wing for cutting the roots in harvesting, are 

 among the important inventions that materially reduced the labor of 

 producing peanuts and led to vast expansion of the peanut industry 

 during the present century. The mechanical sheller has been an espe- 

 cially important factor in increasing the use of peanuts and peanut pro- 

 ducts such as peanut oil, roasted and salted nuts, peanut butter, peanut 

 candy, and other confections. 



