Seed Oils

It was the oil, nevertheless, that gave the name, rise, and chief value to the industry based on cottonseed as its raw material. The promoters had prior to the Civil War considered this oil as a possible strong competitor of whale oil for illumination, but there was recognition by 1860 that petroleum might materially reduce this demand for cottonseed oil.4″ But its uses as an edible oil, which had been demonstrated in the fifties, were effectively emphasized after the Civil War. There was French complaint in 1880 that refined cottonseed oil was reaching France under the name of olive oil from Spain and Italy.42 With New Orleans shipping 73,782 barrels to Europe, including 40,000 barrels to Italy, in the year ending August 31, 1879, there might be a question as to spurious olive oil, concerning which “the world must draw its own conclusions.“43 The statistical connections between Italian imports of American cottonseed oil and Italian exports of olive oil in the eighties were suggestive of the Atlanta Constitution’s comment on cottonseed oil that “frugal Italians placed a cask of it at the root of every olive tree and thus defied the Borean breath of the Alps.“44 The new product was destined to circle the globe in competition with olive oil and eventually under correct labels. It found its way to the Maine coast for sardine-packing, and certain grades continued to be used in the manufacture of soap in America and also abroad, as at Marseilles. Still greater demands for cottonseed oil came through the manufacture of artificial butter and compound lard or vegetable shortening. The beginnings and developments of these uses were as surreptitious as had been its early use as an adulterant or substitute for olive oil, with the American dairyman or hog-raiser becoming the foeman in place of the foreign olive grower. It was also necessary to fight down the antipathy or prejudice of the consumer, as revealed in the statement, “Give me some pure hog lard, I don’t want any of that old cottonseed stuff.“4

Image from: https://purefood.lafayette.edu/maps/cottonseed-exports/

About 1880 cottonseed oil was introduced into hog lard to temper it for use in cold climates, and thus began a story that “is filled with the intrigues of competitive industries.“ In the spring of 1883 compound lard, so a champion of hogs and grain complained, was an important factor in breaking a corner in lard. The new product, it was estimated in 1888, constituted about half the total of 600,000,000 pounds of lard produced in the country and about two-fifths of 320,000,000 pounds exported, and this compound consisted of mixtures of hog lard, beef stearine, and cottonseed oil, with the oil estimated at 40 per cent. A little later, it was calculated that the compound was making annually a net market displacement of 160,000,000 pounds of hog lard and furnishing consumption for one-third of the output of cottonseed oil. Chicago was at this time the chief center of manufacture of the synthetic product, with Armour and Company and N. K. Fairbank and Company as the leading producers. Southern farmers were receiving millions for cottonseed, but it was asserted, on the other hand, that the new industry reduced considerably the value of 50,000,000 American hogs. The fight was on between industries, between farmers, and between sections, though the hog-raisers were unable to imitate the dairymen’s successful drive for protective legislation. 

Vegetable shortening held its own, remaining the chief channel for the consumption of cottonseed oil and even becoming independent of hog lard in both label and content. It was to receive a new impetus in the twentieth century with the development of hydrogenation for the transformation of the oil into shortening. 

The American cottonseed oil mills by 1890 numbered 119, were crushing annually a million tons of seed, as compared with 80,000 tons twenty years earlier, and were turning out products of a value of $19,790,000. The seed consumption and the output were to double in the nineties and again in the twentieth century, with nearly three-fourths of the seed crop eventually going to the mills instead of only one-seventh as in 1880. During the eighties the annual export of oil reached over I3,000,000 gallons. The ramifications and integration of the industries based partly or entirely on cottonseed were exemplified by the growth of the American Cotton Oil Trust, which was terminated as a legal “trust” at the end of the eighties. In 1889 this trust owned or included fifty-two crude-oil mills, seven refineries, nineteen ginneries, three compressors, seven fertilizer plants, four soap factories, and four lard manufactories. The capitalization was more than $42,000,000, and the profits for fifteen months were reported as $I,655,784.

The continuation of this story after 1890 would be an expanding statistical account and a listing of the multifarious new uses of cottonseed products. Cottonseed has been a prominent feature in the industrial revolution in the American cotton belt, and the world’s leading region in the production of cotton has become the world’s leading region in the production of cottonseed oil. 

H. C. NIXON 

TULANE UNIVERSITY

These maps show the export flow of cottonseed oil from U.S. ports to the world from 1880 to 1900. Overall, the trade grew from two export cities in 1880 (New York and New Orleans) to nine in 1900 and from six global regional destinations to nine. That was an increase from 8 million to over 260 million pounds. The largest export stream went to Southern Europe across all twenty years (principally Italy and southern France). By 1900, northern European nations (The Netherlands, Belgium, and the UK) played a bigger part in the trade. Note that trade records show the British holding of Gibraltar in 1880 and 1890, but then directly to the UK in 1900.

The width of the arrows represents the quantity of oil from tens of thousands to hundreds of millions of pounds. Because the specific locations (export locations) from trade records were too numerous to include with individual arrows, the maps show regional flows rather than specific national ones. Also note that inconsistency in record keeping leads to inconsistent labels for the export locations. Thus, some are continents, some are regions, and some are nations. We have sought to provide as much consistency as possible across the range of maps.

These maps show the growth in exports of finished oleomargarine from the United States to other regions in the world from 1890 to 1910. The government distinguished these exports from raw oleo oil (see this page), which producers also shipped by the thousands of tons to foreign markets.

For margarine, the trade grew from five export ports in 1890 (Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Detroit, and New Orleans) to six in 1910 and from five main global regional destinations to eight. This was an increase from about 6 million pounds to 26 million pounds by the first decade of the twentieth century. Most of those foreign shipments first went to British colonial holdings in the West Indies, before being displaced in priority by shipments to Germany, Norway, and The Netherlands by the early twentieth century. As with shipments of raw oleo oil, notable trends include a change in destination into the early 1900s to include expanding markets in Asia, Central America, South America, and Africa.

1. Because trade records provide a wide range of quantities per year, for the sake of reader legibility the maps represent proportions. For example, an arrow five-hatch-marks wide is five orders of magnitude greater than an arrow with one hatch mark, while the width of the five-hatch arrow is five times the width of the one-hatch arrow. Readers can thus view the maps to gain a sense of growth in export markets, relative quantities to various parts of the world, and sense of scale in the global marketplace for supposed adulterants.

2. The maps derive from government trade statistics that listed departure ports (export locations) and final destinations (import locations), but not together. For instance, while we know manufacturers shipped x pounds of raw oleo oil from New York in 1890, we do not know where, specifically, that specific quantity ended up. Therefore, the maps show the commodities shipped from individual U.S. ports to meet in the Atlantic before dispersing to final destinations.

3. In general, government statistics used to construct theses maps documented foreign imports by country. Thus, in creating these maps the countries were aggregated into regions such as Northern Europe, Southern Europe, South America, Central America, Africa, and Asia. On the export side, various cities were aggregated into regions based on geographical proximity. The full data sets show specific nations.

The development of cottonseed oil from Southern cotton plantations helped fill the void. Americans still didn’t consider oil acceptable for cooking or baking, but that didn’t stop some companies from mixing the oil with beef fat to make a “compound lard.” Swift & Co., for instance, introduced a product called Cottonsuet in 1893. Unbeknownst to consumers, manufacturers had also been sneaking cottonseed oil into butter from the 1860s on as a way of reducing costs. Indeed, here was the enduring and compelling logic of vegetable oils: they were cheaper than animal fats. Starting in the early 1930s, when the mechanized process of hulling and pressing cottonseeds came to be widely used, this and then other oils pressed from seeds and beans were simply less expensive than raising and slaughtering animals.