COTTON 
285 
The small mill consumes all the way from two to 
five thousand tons of seed each season and may use 
as much as 25 to 50 tons each day. At the promi- 
nent railroad centers are mills of larger capacity — 
using from 150 to 200 tons of seed daily, or from 
twenty to fifty thousand tons each season. These 
make large profits since seed can be shipped from 
any distance and the product delivered without 
great expense to the mill. 
As a commercial enterprise, this is all very well, 
but the seed is the product of the farm, and should 
be consumed on the farm; there is no other system 
that is not actual land-robbing. Consequently, 
from its nature the oil mill is still a local factor, a 
community factor, and a farm factor, and is just as 
important in the disposition of this part of the 
cotton crop as is the shredding machine or the 
threshing machine for the diposition of the corn 
or wheat crop, the only difference being that 
the mill is stationary and we carry the seed to it, 
while shredding and threshing machines go 
through the community and work on each in- 
dividual farm. 
With this idea accepted, it clearly follows that 
the cotton oil mill is indispensably connected with 
the community, and sooner or later the local co- 
operative enterprise must become the rule wher- 
ever cotton is grown. 
CRUDE OIL 
The operations of the oil mill have to do with the 
production of cake and hulls on one hand, and with 
the production of oil on the other. We may say 
that the mill itself came as a means of securing oil 
from the seed, and that meal and hulls are a by- 
