THE MANUFACTURE OF CROP PRODUCTS Every important crop affords material for one or more manufuctured products. These products are of several classes or kinds, as: Preserved products for use as food for men or live-stock; construction products, as lumber, in which the plant material is merely put in shape or form for use, without change in its structure; extracted or expressed products, as• wines; ground or pulverized products, as flour; transformed structural products, in which the identity of the original materials is lost, as in woven goods, paper. It would be interesting to make a list of the manufactured or manipulated products of the plants described in this book, beginning with the meal made from the alfalfa plant and ending with the flour and other products of the wheat grain. If the list were at all complete, the number would be astonishingly largo and would impress the reader with his great dependence on the common crops of the fields.
For the most part, the manufacturing of crop products is not agriculture. This manufacture is delegated to other persons who make it their exclusive business. The farmer, however, is closely governed in many cases by the necessities of the manufacturer. In fact, the need of manufactured goods has had a tremendous influence on agricultural practice, dictating the kinds of crops to grow in great regions, the varieties, the methods of growing them, the season at which they shall be delivered, the methods of harvesting and of marketing. It is clearly not the concern of a work of the nature of this Cyclopedia to discuss in any completeness the manufacture of crop products, for farming properly ends at the factory door. Certain manufacturing processes, however, are home industries, or they may be local and practically cooperative, and are therefore nearly or quite within the sphere of this book. Such processes are the various forms of preserving crop products for human consumption, and the making of juices and beverages. It is proposed, therefore, briefly to discuss some of these familiar subjects to aid the housekeeper and also to give information on some of the commercial relations of these industries.
With the increase of population, the utilization of secondary or waste products in manufacture becomes more marked and important. In time, a use must be found for everything, and everything must be saved. This is well illustrated in wood products, paper now being made from kinds and sizes of trees that were passed by a few years ago, and lumber being sawn from small and crooked stuff that not long ago was left in the forest to be burned. A closer economy of materials will, of course, augment the influence of manufacture on crop production.
In the old days, every good farm establishment conducted much of its own manufacture. It did its own weaving of cotton, flax or wool. It tanned its own hides. It "put down" its own meats. In many cases it made its own meal or flour. The manufacture moved to the village and finally to the city and remote from the farm. There is every reason to expect that manufacture is to return to the farm, perhaps not of the staple articles above mentioned, but of many secondary products that must be saved or that need to be added to the necessities of living. Every good farm will be equipped with light power, which will be utilized in the saving of labor and in manipulating crop products. Neighborhood manufacture is returning, particularly in dairy regions ; this introduces new methods of cooperation, and produces social as well as economic results.
Unfortunately, there seem to have been few studies of these subjects in this country from the agricultural point of view. The literature is of two kinds,—the purely domestic writing, largely of the recipe-book order ; and the technical writing for the use of manufacturers or students of the scientific principles involved in the manufacture. We shall find, however, that these subjects have close relation to farm management and to crop-growing. It is impossible, fcr example, to find adequate advice on the growing of crops for canning factories. The field or farming phases of these subjects are in need of study.