344 
Cotton-Seed  Oil  Industry. 
Am.  Jour.  Pliann. 
July,  1881 
as  40  per  cent.  The  chief  liindrances  to  the  business  are :  had  seeds, 
which  it  is  almost  impossible  to  detect;  danger  from  fire,  the  mills 
being  thoroughly  saturated  with  oil,  and  prejudice  of  the  farmers,  the 
selling  of  cotton-seed  being  regarded  as  impoverishing  the  land  by 
withdrawing  an  important  fertilizer  from  it.  Last  year  the  New 
Orleans  mills  paid  out  about  $360,000  for  freight  alone.  The  sacks 
cost  the  companies  $100,000  a  year.  ' 
The  region  tributary  to  New  Orleams  raises  each  season  nearly  a 
million  tons  of  seed.  If  but  half  of  this  be  consumed  by  the  oil 
mills,  allowing  the  other  half  for  planting,  wastage,  etc.,  this  will 
leave  enough  to  give  employment  to  8,000  hands  and  to  turn  out 
$12,000,000  of  products,  to  produce  25,000  bales  of  cotton  now 
wholly  lost  and  35,000,000  gallons  of  fine  vegetable  oil.  The  very 
refuse,  180,000  tons  of  cake,  will  supply  the  region  tributary  to 
New  Orleans  with  all  the  meat  it  wants,  and  the  soap-stock  left 
behind  with  an  ample  supj^ly  of  soap. 
In  Italy  the  duty  on  cotton-seed  oil,  pure  or  mixed  with  other 
oils,  has  been  increased  from  6  to  20  lires  per  quintal,  and  a  tax 
of  14  lires  per  quintal  has  been  fixed  on  cotton-seed  oil  made  in 
Italy,  according  to  Vice  Consul-General  Hooker,  of  Rome.  This 
action  was  deemed  necessary  in  view  of  the  heavy  adulteration  of 
olive  oil  with  cotton-seed  oil  for  table  use,  which  was  injuring  the 
home  production  and  discrediting  it  on  foreign  markets.  During 
the  five  years,  1875  to  1879,  there  were  imported  from  the  United 
States  and  Canada  140,000  quintals,  the  imports  increasing  to  213,- 
754  quintals  during  the  year  1880. 
Mr.  J.  B.  Gould,  the  U.  S.  Consul  at  Marseilles,  re])orts  that  in  the 
neighborhood  of  that  city,  and  especially  at  Avignon,  cotton-seed  oil 
mixed  witli  palm,  cocoa  and  other  nut  oils,  is  chiefly  used  for  an 
inferior  quality  of  soap  known  as  savon  hlanc  a  froid ;  that  used  in 
soap  factories  chiefly  comes  from  England,  and  more  particularly  from 
the  crushing  works  at  Hull.  American  cotton-seed  oils  are  now 
granted  great  favor,  because  they  are  entirely  tasteless,  but  they  con- 
^al  at  a  higher  temperature  than  pure  olive  oil.  However,  samples 
of  American  oil  have  been  received  which  keep  their  fluidity  as  low 
as  — 5°C.  This  improvement  is  not  likely  to  be  taken  into  much 
account  at  Marseilles,  as  the  price  of  such  oils  is  naturally  higher 
than  that  of  the  simply  purified  oil,  but  it  is  expected  to  give  an 
opening  to  American  cotton-seed  oil  in  the  North,  where  the  higher 
