DEPARTMENT OP AGRICULTURE 
presses. After removal from the press the cocoa cakes are allowed 
to cool and are then reduced in disintegrators and finally pulverized 
to yield cocoa powder. In short, the cocoa press cake, from which 
cocoa powder or breakfast cocoa is prepared by pulverizing, is 
merely chocolate deprived of a portion of its fat or cacao butter. 
The expressed butter also may now be considered a primary prod- 
uct of the cacao bean, since the demand for cacao butter has outrun 
the supply from normal cocoa manufacture. During the last tAvo or 
three years the market has been extraordinarily favorable to the pro- 
duction of the butter; so favorable that its manufacture, generally, 
has become economically independent of the commercial value of its 
complementary product, the press cake. It has paid American man- 
ufacturers to grind and press cacao beans for the butter alone, even if 
dead loss of the press cake had to be assumed. 5 The primary cause of 
this novel condition is, of course, the enormous demand for cacao 
butter, but a contributing cause is the low cost of the imported beans 
concomitant with the protective tariff on the butter. 6 
For many years cacao beans were pressed in order to prepare cocoa 
powder and the butter was an incidental product. Indeed, in the 
early days of cocoa manufacture in this country the cacao butter 
was often a by-product of little value, used to a limited extent as 
an unguent, as a base for toilet preparations, and in pharmacy. At 
times profitable disposal of this fat became a real problem to the 
maker of cocoa. Conditions changed entirely, however, with the 
development of the great trade in such chocolate confections as milk 
chocolate, sweet chocolate, and chocolate coatings. In the manu- 
facture of these commodities more cacao butter is required than is 
present in the chocolate liquor used, so that additional cacao nibs 
must be deprived of a part of their fat to furnish this extra butter. 
For a time the quantity of cacao butter produced in the manufacture 
of cocoa was sufficient to supply the requirements for the special 
confectionary chocolate trade, and importations of the cheaply pro- 
duced European butter also helped to maintain the balance when 
the domestic supply became inadequate. 
BY-PRODUCTS 
In the past the only important by-product of the industry in the 
United States normally cheap enough to be of interest to the 
fertilizer trade has been the husk or shell refuse. 7 There was no 
such commodity as by-product cocoa cake a few years ago, and of 
course no solvent-extracted cocoa was produced. Under the new con- 
ditions, however, there has not been sufficient increase in the demand 
for powdered cocoa to take care of the very great increase in the 
production of the press cake. As a consequence a varying but 
important proportion of the cake produced has been a drug on 
the market. Also, since the manufacturer's chief concern has been 
5 As one manufacturer has pointed out. this does not necessarily mean that the pressing 
of cacao for its butter is a profitable commercial undertaking by itself, but that under cer- 
tain market conditions a chocolate manufacturer may be warranted in pressing for butter 
for his own use, especially if his pressing equipment is not being operated at capacity on 
regular cocoa. 
6 Under the tariff act of 1922 (50), cacao beans are imported duty free, whereas cacao 
butter is dutiable at L'o per cent ad valorem. Powdered cocoa also bears a duty of 17% 
per cent ad valorem, but not less than 2 cents per pound ($40 per ton). 
7 A small amount of the hues may occasionally have been available for use as fertilizer 
material ; but in general this refuse has been burned, it is believed. 
