The aircraft contractors’ claims proved to be fairly easy to adjust except one, the so-called castor bean case. This proved to be one of the most vexing settlements which came before the War Department Claims Board. From its humble position as an unwelcome medicament of the nursery, castor oil jumped during the war to the eminence of being an indispensable lubricant for the rotary engines used in driving airplanes. The prospective demand in 1918 for castor oil far outstripped the world supply. We needed 6,000,000 gallons by July, 1919. The Air Service therefore took the unprecedented step of attempting to grow castor beans in America, although castor beans, in merchantable quantities, had never been grown here before. Still, in the Southern States we had the correct climate, and no obstacle seemed to stand in the way of a successful crop. Accordingly, through twenty-three prime contractors, the Air Service arranged with some 12,000 southern farmers to plant castor beans in 100,000 acres of land. Glittering prospects were held forth: thirty bushels an acre was only an average yield, and the Government would pay handsomely for the beans. Thus castor beans won 100,000 acres of good American soil away from rice, cotton, and corn, even at the war prices of these commodities. About planting-time in 1918 all was ready--fields, husbandmen, and tools--all except seed. After all, the farmers had to have seed; and to get seed the Government seized a cargo of castor beans from India, originally committed to a more sinister purpose. These beans the Government distributed among the 12,000 prospective producers, who planted them; and then, as the cartoonist so aptly says, the fun began. Certain of the growers, like suburban gardeners, watched for bean shoots that never appeared. Some of these alien beans seemed to derive a sort of floral madness from the heady gulf loam and sent up veritable trunks twenty, thirty, and forty feet in air. But never a bean pod crowned such luxuriant growth. Whether because of the growers’ lack of experience, unfavorable climate, or, more likely, defective seed, there has seldom been an American crop failure more nearly total than this. By gleaning every bean, the producers managed to gather 181,000 bushels, or 1.8 bushels to the acre.