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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



enemy, England, was quick to take up the 

 discovery and to utilize it for her own 

 purposes. About 1815 Ezra Daggert 

 brought to the United States a process 

 for canning salmon, lobsters, and oysters. 

 This process was gradually extended to 

 pickles, jellies, and sauces. 



HOUSEWIVES ADOPT SCIENTIFIC 

 DISCOVERIES 



It is rather striking to pause and reflect 

 that in a single century humanity has pro- 

 gressed to such an extent that the most 

 ignorant housewife in America can now 

 do work that formerly defied the best 

 scientists of the world (see page 107). 



Only the first centennial has passed 

 of William Underwood's invention of a 

 process of canning tomatoes, and it is 

 only seventy - eight years since Isaac 

 Winslow learned how to can corn at 

 Portland, Maine. Today the glass jars 

 of Appert have been succeeded, except 

 in the household canning art, by the tin 

 can, and many wonderful machines have 

 been devised to save labor in the canning 

 industry. 



There are hulling machines which will 

 take green peas out of the pods at the 

 rate of a thousand bushels a day : there 

 are separators which will grade the peas 

 according to size ; there are corn-cutters 

 which remove the grain from the cob at 

 the rate of four thousand ears an hour, 

 and silking machines which work at equal 

 speed ; and there are automatic machines 

 which will fill twelve thousand cans a day. 

 If Nicholas Appert could come to life and 

 go through a modern cannery, with its 

 wonderful equipment, he would doubtless 

 marvel at the mighty oak that grew from 

 the tiny acorn of his discovery. 



THE PLACE OF POULTRY 



There are no statistics showing the 

 number of domesticated fowls the world 

 possesses, but if the United States' ratio 

 of three per capita were the rule, there 

 would be some five billion of them. It 

 is probable, however, that there are not 

 half that many. 



The annual product of the American 

 chicken yard is estimated at $509,000,000. 

 During the last census year the American 

 hen produced nearly twenty billion eggs, 



of which eleven billion were sold. It will 

 be seen from this that the American 

 farmer keeps a liberal supply of eggs for 

 his own table and for hatching purposes. 

 His receipts from the sale of eggs totaled 

 $202,000,000 (see pages 80 and 81 ). 



We annually raise nearly a half billion 

 chickens in the United States. Out of 

 488,000,000 raised in the last census year, 

 the farmer kept all but 153,000,000 for 

 his own purposes, which again shows that 

 the farmer's table is not skimped in order 

 that his urban neighbor may eat well. 



THE INDUSTRIOUS BEE 



Nowhere else in the world is the maj- 

 esty of small things more strikingly re- 

 vealed than in the story of the produc- 

 tion of honey in the United States. That 

 great decennial interrogation mark which 

 marches every ten years through the 

 homes of the American people and asks 

 them a thousand and one questions, has 

 ascertained for us that the bees of the 

 country annually produce twenty-seven 

 thousand tons of honey. That means 

 fifty-four million pounds. 



Truly the busy little bee must improve 

 each shining hour to give to the Amer- 

 ican people fifty-four million pounds of 

 honey, in addition to providing for its 

 own needs. The number of trips from 

 hive to flower and from flower to hive 

 with their tiny loads of honey-making 

 materials that the bees must have taken 

 to bring us these fifty- four million pounds 

 of honey defies estimate, but they afford 

 us an inspiring lesson of what the faith- 

 ful doing of small things may accomplish. 



THE SUGAR INDUSTRY 



When one writes of honey his mind 

 turns to sugar — a crop which occupies a 

 very important place in the world's mar- 

 ket basket. Humanity always has had a 

 sweet tooth, and the day when sugar was 

 first made from cane is so remote that 

 history is not certain that it can fix the 

 date. And yet in one generation the 

 world has increased its sugar production 

 more than nine-fold. Forty years ago it 

 took only 2,200,000 tons to satisfy the 

 world's sweet tooth ; today it takes more 

 than 20.300,000 tons. And still the world 

 is hungry for sugar (see page 87). 



