Until very recent years the demand for the "meat" of the cocoanut
or its products was limited to the uses of soap boilers and
confectioners. Probably there is no other plant in the vegetable
kingdom which serves so many and so varied purposes in the domestic
economy of the peoples in whose countries it grows. Within the past
decade chemical science has produced from the cocoanut a series of
food products whose manufacture has revolutionized industry and placed
the business of the manufacturer and of the producer upon a plane of
prosperity never before enjoyed.
There has also been a great advance in the processes by which the
new oil derivatives are manufactured. The United States took the
initiative with the first recorded commercial factories in 1895. In
1897 the Germans established factories in Mannheim, but it remained
for the French people to bring the industry to its present perfection.
According to the latest reports of the American consul at Marseilles,
the conversion of cocoanut oil into dietetic compounds was undertaken
in that city in 1900, by Messrs. Rocca, Tassy and de Roux, who in
that year turned out an average of 25 tons per month. During the year
just closed (1902) their average monthly output exceeded 6,000 tons
and, in addition to this, four or five other large factories were
all working together to meet the world's demand for "vegetaline,"
"cocoaline," or other products with suggestive names, belonging to
this infant industry.
These articles are sold at gross price of 18 to 20 cents per kilo to
thrifty Hollandish and Danish merchants, who, at the added cost of a
cent or two, repack them in tins branded "Dairy Butter" and, as such,
ship them to all parts of the civilized world. It was necessary to
disguise the earlier products by subjecting them to trituration with
milk or cream; but so perfect is the present emulsion that the plain
and unadulterated fats now find as ready a market as butter. These
"butters" have so far found their readiest sale in the Tropics.
The significance of these great discoveries to the cocoanut planter can
not be overestimated, for to none of these purely vegetable fats do the
prejudices attach that so long and seriously have handicapped those
derived from animal margarin or margarin in combination with stearic
acid, while the low fusion point of pure dairy butters necessarily
prohibits their use in the Tropics, outside of points equipped with
refrigerating plants. The field, therefore, is practically without
competition, and the question will no longer be that of finding a
market, but of procuring the millions of tons of copra or oil that
this one industry will annually absorb in the immediate future.
Cocoanut oil was once used extensively in the manufacture of fine
candles, and is still occasionally in demand for this purpose in the
Philippines, in combination with the vegetable tallow of a species
of Stillingia. It is largely consumed in lamps, made of a tumbler or
drinking glass half filled with water, on top of which float a few
spoonfuls of oil, into which the wick is plunged. In remote barrios it
is still in general use as a street illuminant, and so perfect is its
combustion that under a constant flicker it emits little or no smoke.
When freshly expressed, the oil is an exceptionally good cooking fat,
and enters largely into the dietary of our own people. The medicinal
uses of the oil are various, and in the past it has been strongly
advocated for the cure of eczema, burns, as a vermifuge, and even
as a substitute for cod-liver oil in phthisis. Its medicinal virtues
are now generally discredited, except as a restorative agent in the
loss of hair resulting from debilitating fevers. Its value in this
direction may be surmised from the splendid heads of hair possessed
by the Filipino women, who generally use the oil as a hair dressing.
Cocoanut oil is derived from the fleshy albumen or meat of the ripe
fruit, either fresh or dried. The thoroughly dried meat is variously
known as copra, coprax, and copraz. The exportation of copra is
detrimental to the best interests of the planter, tending to enrich
the manufacturer and impoverish the grower. The practice, however,
is so firmly established that the writer can only record a probably
futile protest against its continuance.
The causes which for a long time will favor the exportation of copra
instead of oil in this Archipelago may be briefly stated as follows:
(1) An oil-milling plant, constructed with due regard to economy of
labor and the production of the best quality of oil, would involve
an outlay of capital of $2,500, gold, and upward, according to
capacity. The production of copra requires the labor of the planter's
hands only.
(2) The oil packages must be well-made barrels, casks, or metallic
receptacles. The initial cost of the packages is consequently great,
their return from distant ports impracticable, and their sale value
in the market of delivery is not sufficient to offset the capital
locked up in an unproductive form. On the other hand, copra may be
sold or shipped in boxes, bags, sacks, and bales, or it may even be
stored in bulk in the ship's hold.
(3) When land transportation has to be considered, the lack of good
roads still further impedes the oil maker. He can not change the
size and weight of his packages from day to day to meet the varying
passability of the trail. On the other hand, packages of copra may
be adjusted to meet all emergencies, and the planter can thus take
advantage of the market conditions which may be denied to the oil
maker.
(4) Perhaps the most serious difficulty the oil maker has to contend
with is the continuous discouragement he encounters from the agent
of foreign factories, who buys in the open market and, bidding up to
nearly the full oil value of the copra, finds an ample manufacturer's
profit paid by the press cake, so valuable abroad, but, unfortunately,
practically without sale or value here. The residue from the mill may
be utilized both for food and for manure by the oil maker who is a
tree owner and who maintains cattle. For either of these purposes
its value rates closely up to cotton-seed cake, and the time is
not remote when it will be recognized in the Philippines as far
too valuable a product to be permitted to be removed from the farm
excepting at a price which will permit of the purchase at a less
figure of an equivalent in manure. So active are the copra-buying
agents in controlling this important branch of the industry, that
they refuse to buy the press cake at any price, with the result that,
in two instances known to the writer, they have forced the closure
of oil-milling plants and driven the oil maker back to his copra.
Many copra-making plants in India and Ceylon are now supplied with
decorticating, breaking, and evaporating machinery. The process
employed in this Archipelago consists in first stripping the ripe
fruit of the outer fibrous husk. This is effected by means of a stout,
steel spearhead, whose shaft or shank is embedded firmly in the soil
to such a depth that the spear point projects above the ground rather
less than waist high. The operator then holds the nut in his hands
and strikes it upon the spear point, gives it a downward, rotary
twist, and thus, with apparent ease, quickly removes the husk. An
average operator will husk 1,000 nuts per day, and records have been
made of a clean up of as many as 3,000 per day. The work, however,
is exceedingly hard, and involves great dexterity and wrist strength.
Another man now takes up the nut and with a bolo strikes it a smart
blow in the middle, dividing it into two almost equal parts. These
parts are spread out and exposed to the sun for a few hours, or such
time as may be necessary to cause the fleshy albumen to contract and
shrink away from the hard outer shell, so that the meat may be easily
detached with the fingers.
Weather permitting, the meat thus secured is sun dried for a day
and then subjected to the heat of a slow fire for several hours. In
some countries this drying is now effected by hot-air driers, and a
very white and valuable product secured; but in the Philippines the
universal practice is to spread out the copra upon what may be called
a bamboo grill, over a smoky fire made of the shells and husks, just
sufficient heat being maintained not to set fire to the bamboo. The
halves, when dried, are broken by hand into still smaller irregular
fragments, and subjected to one or two days of sun bath. By this time
the moisture has been so thoroughly expelled that the copra is now
ready to be sacked or baled and stored away for shipment or use.
All modern cocoanut-oil mills are supplied with a decorticator armed
with revolving discs that tear or cut through the husk longitudinally,
freeing the nut from its outer covering and leaving the latter in
the best possible condition for the subsequent extraction of its
fiber. This decorticator is fed from a hopper and is made of a size
and capacity to husk from 500 to 1,000 nuts per hour.
Rasping and grinding machinery of many patterns and makes, for
reducing the meat to a pulp, is used in India, Ceylon, and China;
and, although far more expeditious, offers no improvements, so far
as concerns the condition to which the meats are reduced, over the
methods followed in the Philippines. Here the fleshy halves of the
meat are held by hand against a rapidly revolving, half-spherical
knife blade which scrapes and shaves the flesh down to a fine degree
of comminution. The resulting mass is then macerated in a little water
and placed in bags and subjected to pressure, and the milky juice which
flows therefrom is collected in receivers placed below. This is now
drawn off into boilers and cooked until the clear oil is concentrated
upon the surface. The oil is then skimmed off and is ready for market.
The process outlined above is very wasteful. The processes I have seen
in operation are very inadequate, and I estimate that, not less than
10 per cent of the oil goes to loss in the press cake. This is a loss
that does not occur in establishments equipped with the best hydraulic
presses. It is true that very heavy pressure carries through much
coloring matter not withdrawn by the primitive native mill, and that
the oil is consequently darker, and sooner undergoes decomposition;
but modern mills are now supplied with filtration plants through
which this objection is practically overcome.
The principles of the above process are daily reproduced in thousands
of Filipino homes, where the hand rasping of the nut, the expression
of the milky juice through coarse cloth, its subsequent boiling down
in an open pan, and the final skimming off of the oil are in common
practice. Notwithstanding the cheapness of labor, it is only by
employing a mill well equipped with decorticating, rasping, hydraulic
crushing, and steam-boiling machinery, and with facilities to convert
the residue to feeding or other uses, that one may hopefully enter
the field of oil manufacture in these Islands in competition with
copra buyers.