FIG. 171.—SCALDING TO LOOSEN THE HAIR.
FIG. 172.—SCRAPING OFF THE HAIR BY MACHINERY.
From 10 to 15 minutes only are required to convert the living animal into dressed pork. Every part of the animal is utilized. The lungs, heart, liver and trimmings go to the sausage department. The feet are pickled or converted into glue. The intestines are stripped and cleaned for sausage casings. The soft parts of the head are made into so-called cheese, and the fat is rendered into lard. The finer quality of bristles goes to the brushmakers, and the balance is used by upholsterers for mixing with horse hair. The blood is largely used for making albumen for photographic uses, as well as in sugar refining, for meat extracts, and for fertilizers. The bones are ground for fertilizer, and even the tank waters are concentrated and used for the same purpose.
Oleomargarine.—About 1868 M. Mege, a French chemist, commissioned by his government to investigate certain questions of domestic economy, was led into the study of beef fat, and to make comparisons of the same with butter. He found that when cows were deprived of food containing fat they still continued to give milk yielding cream or fatty products. He therefore concluded that the stored-up fat in the animal was then converted into cream, and that it was practicable, therefore, to convert beef fat into butter fat. Physiology taught that in the living animal the change was wrought through the withdrawal of the larger part of the stearine by respiratory combustion, while the oleomargarine was secreted by the milk glands, and its conversion into butyric oleomargarine effected in the udder under the influence of the mammary pepsin. In the process of making butter by the ordinary method of churning the cream, the finely divided butter fat globules are united into masses, containing by mechanical admixture from 12 to 14 per cent. of water or buttermilk carrying a fractional per cent. of cheese. This buttermilk contributes somewhat to the flavor, but at the same time furnishes a ferment which ultimately spoils the butter by making it rancid. It is a purely accidental ingredient, and one not at all desirable. To some extent the same may be said of the soluble fats which give to the butter its variable though characteristic flavor. They are unstable compounds, decomposing readily, and furnish the acrid products which make “strong” butter. M. Mege sought to imitate the natural process of butter-making, which was first to separate from the oily fat of suet the cellular tissue and excess of stearine or hard fat; second, to add to the oil a sufficient proportion of butyric compounds to give the necessary flavor, and third, to consolidate the butter fat without grain, and to add at the same time the requisite proportion of water, salt, and coloring matter, to make a compound substantially the same in composition, flavor, and appearance, as butter churned from the cream, and all this without adding to the original fat anything dietetically objectionable, and without submitting it to any process capable of impairing its wholesome quality. These objects were fairly obtained in the product known as oleomargarine, the United States patent for which was granted to Mege Dec. 30, 1873, No. 146,012.
The process in brief is to take fresh beef fat, which is first chopped up and thoroughly washed. It is then placed in melting tanks at a temperature of 122° to 124° F, and the clear yellow oil is drawn off and allowed to stand until it granulates. The fat is then packed in cloths set in moulds and a slowly increasing pressure squeezes out the pure amber colored oil, leaving the stearine behind. This sweet and pure yellow oil is then churned with milk for 20 minutes until the oil is completely broken up, and a small quantity of annato, a vegetable coloring matter, is added to give a yellow color. The product is then cooled in ice, and after a second churning with milk it is salted and finished like butter. Chemical analysis shows oleomargarine to have substantially the same constituents and in almost the identical proportions of pure butter. It is equally wholesome, and while it does not have the same rich flavor, it has the advantage that it keeps better, and is not so liable to become rancid or strong. The oleomargarine industry is closely related to the beef packing industries of the United States, and its growth has been enormous. Notwithstanding the stringent laws on the subject, much of the oleomargarine made is sold for, and by the average purchaser is not distinguishable from, pure butter. In 1899 there were 80,495,628 pounds of oleomargarine made in the United States, or more than a pound for every man, woman, and child in the country. The internal revenue tax paid on it was $1,609,912.56. The exports for the year 1899 were 5,549,322 pounds of the artificial butter, and 142,390,492 pounds of the oleo oil prepared for conversion into the complete product by simply churning with milk.
Sugar.—Sugar-cane, beets, and the sap of the maple constitute the sources from which sugar is extracted, but the cane furnishes by far the largest supply. When crushed between rolls it yields 65 per cent. of its weight as juice, and 18 per cent. of this juice is sugar. It is concentrated by evaporation at a low temperature, the crystallized portion being known as “raw” or brown sugar, which is subsequently refined, while the uncrystallized portion forms molasses.