Creative Chemistry: Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical IndustriesSlosson, Edwin E. (Edwin Emery)
Science
Creative Chemistry: Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries
Slosson, Edwin E. (Edwin Emery)
Chemistry, Technical
It would be impossible to enumerate all the available sources of
vegetable oils, for all seeds and nuts contain more or less fatty matter
and as we become more economical we shall utilize of what we now throw
away. The germ of the corn kernel, once discarded in the manufacture of
starch, now yields a popular table oil. From tomato seeds, one of the
waste products of the canning factory, can be extracted 22 per cent. of
an edible oil. Oats contain 7 per cent. of oil. From rape seed the
Japanese get 20,000 tons of oil a year. To the sources previously
mentioned may be added pumpkin seeds, poppy seeds, raspberry seeds,
tobacco seeds, cockleburs, hazelnuts, walnuts, beechnuts and acorns.
The oil-bearing seeds of the tropics are innumerable and will become
increasingly essential to the inhabitants of northern lands. It was the
realization of this that brought on the struggle of the great powers
for the possession of tropical territory which, for years before, they
did not think worth while raising a flag over. No country in the future
can consider itself safe unless it has secure access to such sources. We
had a sharp lesson in this during the war. Palm oil, it seems, is
necessary for the manufacture of tinplate, an industry that was built up
in the United States by the McKinley tariff. The British possessions in
West Africa were the chief source of palm oil and the Germans had the
handling of it. During the war the British Government assumed control of
the palm oil products of the British and German colonies and prohibited
their export to other countries than England. Americans protested and
beseeched, but in vain. The British held, quite correctly, that they
needed all the oil they could get for food and lubrication and
nitroglycerin. But the British also needed canned meat from America for
their soldiers and when it was at length brought to their attention that
the packers could not ship meat unless they had cans and that cans could
not be made without tin and that tin could not be made without palm oil
the British Government consented to let us buy a little of their palm
oil. The lesson is that of Voltaire's story, "Candide," "Let us
cultivate our own garden"--and plant a few palm trees in it--also rubber
trees, but that is another story.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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