PRODUCTION AND CONSERVATION OF FATS AND OILS. 19 
A further economic loss occurs when peanuts are pressed with the 
shells left on, in that the press cake containing shells can not be used 
for human food. When blanched kernels from which the shells have 
been removed are employed in making oil, the cake, which may con- 
tain 7 per cent of oil, can be ground into meal and used with wheat, 
corn, and similar starchy flours to form very palatable and highly 
nutritious cakes, gems, and hot breads. 
COCONUT OIL. 
RECENT INCREASE IN IMPORTATION AND MANUFACTURE. 
For many years we, as a nation, have been using coconut oil in the 
manufacture of the so-called marine soaps, that is, those which 
form a lather in alkali and salt waters, to make pharmaceutical 
preparations, cosmetics, and, to a smaller extent, confectionery and 
cakes. It is only within the last five or six years that this oil has 
received the attention which it deserves as a food product. 
The rapid increase in coconut oil importations, from 46,720,000 
pounds for the year 1912 to 163,091,000 pounds during 1917, is due 
partly to the fact that larger amounts of this oil are now used in the 
soap industry than ever before. Coconut oil yields a higher per- 
centage of glycerin than any of the other soap fats, and it can be 
substituted to some extent for tallows the price of which was ab- 
normally high during 1917. Reports from the soap trade (Table 9) 
indicate a consumption of coconut oil during 1917 of 168,602,000 
pounds, which is 5,500,000 pounds more than the total imports 
for the same period. To furnish the additional oil used by the 
manufacturers of vegetable butter substitutes and other industries 
at least 10 copra-crushing mills are now operating in the United 
States. The 1917 output of the crushers was nearly 188,500,000 
pounds, which is about 26,400,000 pounds greater than the amount of 
coconut oil imported. To supply these mills it was necessary to 
bring in from the Orient and the West Indies, in 1917, 366,700,000 
pounds of dried coconut meat, known commercially as copra. Dur- 
ing 1912 the importations of copra were only 62,168,000 pounds, 
about one-sixth of the amount imported in 1917, in spite of the diffi- 
culties experienced in getting sufficient ships for our overseas trade. 
In the fiscal year 1913 we brought in a little over 1,000,000 pounds 
of coconut oil from the Philippines, and in 1916 over 30,000,000, 
nearly half of our entire importation for that period. 
The absence of German buyers from the foreign copra markets 
caused an increase in the amount of coconut oil produced in the 
United States, during the past five years. Although the difficulty 
in obtaining ships to bring the copra from the tropics has resulted in 
lowering the price of this product in the countries where it is pro- 
