SCIENCE IN OUR BIGGEST WAR PLANT
Harding, T. Swann
Science In Our Biggest War Plant By T. SWANN HARDING= YOU have already read about some big war plants in these United States. Do you happen to know offhand what the biggest of the lot is ? To...
...Moreover that farm plant, like all other industry, has had to be converted to war purposes...
...Linseed oil from American flax goes into the paint and varnishes used to preserve battleships, planes, tanks, guns, cantonments, and a host of other kinds of war equipment...
...They have already made excellent woollike fiber from milk and a lacquer suitable for replacing tin on milk cans from a resin composed largely of lactic acid derived from milk...
...A potential use of 15,000 tons of agricultural residue annually for this purpose can be counted upon...
...One person in every four in the United States lives on this war plant and derives that living from its activities...
...American hemp now substitutes for abaca, sisal, and hennequen, the main hard fibers we had before war shut off our supply...
...Oil from a single acre of flaxseed will paint 10 medium bombers, or twenty-five 155-mm...
...The conversion of the farm plant has attained a high point of efficiency...
...There's cotton for balloons, for parachute cloth, for life rafts, aircraft pontoons, and explosives...
...A polymer derived from lactic acid has likewise been developed which both gasproofs and moistureproofs fabrics...
...Naturally its use in turning shoats into pork is very essential in wartime...
...Many wood substitutes for scarce materials have been found...
...Corn likewise helps make artificial leather...
...Do you realize that our land sown to crops alone is larger than Germany, Italy, and Japan combined...
...DURING the war scientists in the Department of Agriculture are rapidly advancing our knowledge of industrial products that may be produced from farm raw materials...
...Castor oil from American castor-beans is used in special airplane engine tests and for oiling high-speed electric motors...
...Cotton is used very extensively for making uniforms for the armed forces and long-staple varieties go into army raincoats, inflatable life rafts, and belts used to feed ammunition into machine guns...
...Meanwhile many urgently needed drug plants that were formerly imported are being grown by our farmers...
...New and improved uses of wood for war have developed from research at the Forest Products Laboratory at Madison, Wis...
...So the Western Regional Research Laboratory sought a substitute and found it in pectin, which is highly satisfactory in preparing stable emulsions of mineral, olive, and cottonseed oils in water...
...Pectin also assumes importance in bacteriological, and especially, in surgical work and war-wound treatment...
...There is flax for parachute harness and rigging, for packing marine engines, and for signal halyards and hemp for cables and hawsers...
...Department chemists have also found emergency uses for apples...
...Methods of eradicating the modular worms which often infest sheep intestines have rendered the casings again fit for use as surgical suture material, at a time when we so greatly need this...
...From soybean oil flow linoleum, oilcloth, medicines, printing inks, and many other products...
...The starch is being so improved that it may soon replace much of the cassava starch formerly imported for special industrial and war uses...
...These scientists did intensive and comprehensive research on the dehydration of meat, eggs, and vegetables, and produced immediately useful results within about five months...
...Many do not realize that quite ordinary food and feed crops now have many war uses...
...it goes into oilcloth, paint, varnish, and soap...
...We have been accustomed to import 24 million pounds a year of tragacanth, acacia, and other water-soluble gums from Eastern Mediterranean countries...
...Like other war industries, agriculture is shooting at specific targets...
...Scientists working in laboratories of industrial chemistry can make synthetic rubber from alcohol derived from corn or wheat, plastics from milk, lignin, and agricultural waste products, drying oils from castor beans, glycerine from soybeans...
...Cotton fabric is used in making many parts of Navy patrol bombers, while cotton linters are soaked in nitric acid to produce a smokeless powder...
...Thus in a wide variety of ways our huge farm plant uses foresight and scientific ingenuity to overcome wartime problems and to deal with emergencies...
...There's fiber too—wool for soldiers' uniforms, for gun mounts, for web belting, and for packing in axle journals...
...The production of a whole-milk powder which keeps well is another wartime development...
...Through the destructive processes of war and the scientific research stimulated by an emergency situation we may all be gainers when peace comes...
...Wool is the basic fabric of a soldier's apparel, but it also goes into many machines, tanks, and big guns...
...Vegetables, for instance, are divided into essential and non-essential, the latter being those relished almost solely for their flavor, but having little nutritive value, and production of non-essential vegetables has been discouraged...
...Through its wartime developments the farm is going to be tremendously important in the postwar period as a source for many non-food commodities formerly imported, or which were never before produced at all...
...Peacetime Gains New products, notably carotene and starch, are being derived from sweet potatoes...
...From that alcohol also synthetic rubber can be made, and dextrine derived from corn is used in manufacturing powder...
...The Northern Regional Research Laboratory, for instance, has developed a resilient disk, composed in part of the pith from peanut shells, cornstalks, or sugarcane, which can be used to replace cork in bottling soft drinks...
...Yet, if it were all in one piece, that is what this war factory would do...
...About 12% bushels of corn or wheat will make a barrel of industrial alcohol, which in turn makes enough smokeless powder to fire a 12-inch shell...
...from the bean proper may be made plastic helmets, or plastic grips on small arms, or dry-glue base...
...Compreg," a wholly new-material formed by the compression of wood and its impregnation with phenolic resins, was shown long since to"have strength properties comparable with mild steel...
...Carotene, or provitamin A, has been obtained economically in crystalline form from sweetpotatoes by three different processes...
...howitzers...
...It has also been adapted for use in airplane spar plates, propellers, and landing wheels...
...There is good prospect that we can meet all our needs for essential drugs domestically...
...Butylene glycol, a relatively rare chemical used to make automobile anti-freeze, and also as a step in synthetic-rubber making, is produced from fermented corn and wheat...
...Jt is derived from apples...
...If an acre of peanuts is used to make cooking oils, that releases enough other fats to provide nitroglycerine for firing 520 anti-tank shells...
...Corn sugar is also used in the manufacture of the vitamin riboflavine...
...While we were at peace it produced certain things for the domestic market and certain commodities for export—among the latter a great deal of wheat, cotton, and tobacco...
...Each region of the nation faces production changes on the farm...
...Cottonseed oil substitutes for oils formerly imported, and cottonseed meal is a component of many plastics...
...Great Changes Ahead But more than food comes rolling from the farm plant...
...It produces sugar and syrup essential to the baking and canning industries and starch used in molds or cores for casting many kinds of machinery...
...Various agricultural-residue materials have been transformed into useful plastics and even cork substitutes...
...Just like other industries agriculture makes what is required for war purposes...
...certain crops stepped up, certain ones tapered off...
...Can you imagine a factory reaching from Canada to Mexico and from the Rockies to the Appalachians...
...But war brought altogether different demands, demands for the domestic production of more fats and oils and for the exportation on Lend-Lease of concentrated protein foods meat, milk, cheese, eggs—things we had rarely exported before...
...Do you happen to know offhand what the biggest of the lot is ? To help you guess—it covers a billion acres of land and is divided up into six million branches or establishments...
Vol. 8 • August 1944 • No. 35
