Chapter 3
February 1938: Popular Mechanics
Magazine:
"NEW BILLION-DOLLAR CROP"
February 1928: Mechanical Engineering
Magazine:
"THE MOST PROFITABLE & DESIRABLE
CROP THAT CAN BE GROWN"
Modern technology was about to be applied to
hemp production, making it the number one agricultural
resource in America. Two of the most respected and influential
journals in the nation, Popular Mechanics and Mechanical
Engineering, forecast a bright future for American hemp.
Thousands of new products creating millions of new jobs would
herald the end of the Great Depression. Instead hemp was
persecuted, outlawed and forgotten at the bidding of W.R.
Hearst, who branded hemp the "Mexican killer weed,
marihuana."
As early as 1901 and continuing to 1937, the
U.S. Department of Agriculture repeatedly predicted that, once
machinery capable of harvesting, stripping and separating the
fiber from the pulp was invented or engineered, hemp would
again the America's number one farm crop. The introduction of
G.W. Schlichten's decorticator in 1917 nearly fulfilled this
prophesy. (See pages 13-15 and Appendix.)
The prediction was reaffirmed in the popular
press when Popular Mechanics published its February, 1938
article, "Billion-Dollar Crop."The first
reproduction of this article in over 50 years was in the
original edition of this book. The article is reproduced here
exactly as it was printed in 1938.
Because of the printing schedule and deadline,
Popular Mechanics prepared this article in Spring of 1937 when
cannabis hemp for fiber, paper, dynamite and oil, was still
legal to grow and was, in fact, and incredibly fast-growing
industry.
Also reprinted in this chapter is an excerpt
from the Mechanical Engineering article about hemp, published
the same month. It originated as a paper presented a year
earlier at the February 26, 1937 Agricultural Processing
Meeting of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, New
Brunswick, New Jersey.
Reports from the USDA during the 1930s, and
Congressional testimony in 1937, showed that cultivated hemp
acreage had been doubling in size in America almost every year
from the time it hit its bottom acreage, 1930 - when 1,000
acres were planted in the U.S. - to 1937 - when 14,000 acres
were cultivated - with plans to continue to double that
acreage annual in the foreseeable future.
As you will see in these articles, the newly
mechanized cannabis hemp industry was in its infancy, but well
on its way to making cannabis America's largest agricultural
crop. And, in light of subsequent developments (e.g. biomass
energy technology, building materials, etc.), we now know that
hemp is the world's most important ecological resource and
therefore, potentially our planet's single largest industry.
The Popular Mechanics article was the very
first time in American history that the term
"billion-dollar"* was ever applied to any U.S.
agricultural crop!
*Equivalent to $40-$80 billion now.
Experts today conservatively estimate that,
once fully restored in America, hemp industries will generate
$500 billion to a trillion dollars per year, and will save the
planet and civilization from fossil fuels and their
derivatives - and from deforestation!
If Harry Anslinger, DuPont, Hearst and their
paid-for (know it or not, then as now) politicians had not
outlawed hemp - under the pretext of marijuana (see Chapter
Four, "Last Days of Legal Cannabis") - and
suppressed hemp knowledge from our schools, researchers and
even scientists; the glowing predictions in these articles
would already have come true by now - and more benefits than
anyone could then envision - as new technologies and uses
continue to develop.
As one colleague so aptly put it: "These
articles were the last honest word spoken on hemp's behalf for
over 40 years..."
New Billion-Dollar Crop Popular
Mechanics, February 1938
American farmers are promised new cash crop
with an annual value of several hundred million dollars, all
because a machine has been invented which solves a problem
more than 6,000 years old. It is hemp, a crop that will not
compete with other American products. Instead, it will
displace imports of raw material and manufactured products
produced by underpaid coolie and peasant labor and it will
provide thousands of jobs for American workers throughout the
land. The machine which makes this possible is designed for
removing the fiber-bearing cortex from the rest of the stalk,
making hemp fiber available for use without a prohibitive
amount of human labor. Hemp is the standard fiber of the
world. It has great tensile strength and durability. It is
used to produce more than 5,000 textile products, ranging from
rope to fine laces, and the woody "hurds" remaining
after the fiber has been removed contains more than
seventy-seven per cent cellulose, and can be used to produce
more than 25,000 produces, ranging from dynamite to
Cellophane.
Machines now in service in Texas, Illinois,
Minnesota and other states are producing fiber at a
manufacturing cost of half a cent a pound, and are finding a
profitable market for the rest of the stalk. Machine operators
are making a good profit in competition with coolie-produced
foreign fiber while paying farmers fifteen dollars a tone for
hemp as it comes from the field.
From the farmers' point of view, hemp is an
easy crop to grow and will yield from three to six tons per
acre on any land that will grow corn, wheat, or oats. It has a
short growing season, so that it can be planted after other
crops are in. It can be grown in any state of the union. The
long roots penetrate and break the soil to leave it in perfect
condition for the next year's crop. The dense shock of leaves,
eight to twelve feet about the ground, chokes out weeds. Two
successive crops are enough to reclaim land that has been
abandoned because of Canadian thistles or quack grass.
Under old methods, hemp was cut and allowed to
lie in the fields for weeks until it "retted" enough
so the fibers could be pulled off by hand. Retting is simply
rotting as a result of dew, rain and bacterial action.
Machines were developed to separate the fibers mechanically
after retting was complete, but the cost was high, the loss of
fiber great, and the quality of fiber comparatively low. With
the new machine, known as a decorticator, hemp is cut with a
slightly modified grain binder. It is delivered to the machine
where an automatic chain conveyer feeds it to the breaking
arms at the rate of two or three tons per hour. The hurds are
broken into fine pieces which drop into the hopper, from where
they are delivered by blower to a baler or to truck or freight
car for loose shipment. The fiber comes from the other end of
the machine, ready for baling.
From this point on almost anything can happen.
The raw fiber can be used to produce strong twine or rope,
woven into burlap, used for carpet warp or linoleum backing or
it may be bleached and refined, with resinous by-products of
high commercial value. It can, in fact, be used to replace the
foreign fibers which now flood our markets.
Thousands of tons of hemp hurds are used every
year by one large powder company for the manufacturer of
dynamite and TNT. A large paper company, which has been paying
more than a million dollars a year in duties on foreign-made
cigarette papers, now is manufacturing these papers from
American hemp grown in Minnesota. A new factory in Illinois is
producing fine bond papers from hemp. The natural materials in
hemp make it an economical source of pulp for any grade of
paper manufactured, and the high percentage of alpha cellulose
promises an unlimited supply of raw material for the thousands
of cellulose products our chemists have developed.
It is generally believed that all linen is
produced from flax. Actually, the majority comes from hemp -
authorities estimate that more than half of our imported linen
fabrics are manufactured from hemp fiber. Another
misconception is that burlap is made from hemp. Actually, its
source is usually jute, and practically all of the burlap we
use is woven by laborers in India who receive only four cents
a day. Binder twine is usually made from sisal which comes
from Yucatan and East Africa.
All of these products, now imported, can be
produced from home-grown hemp. Fish nets, bow strings, canvas,
strong rope, overalls, damask tablecloths, fine linen
garments, towels, bed linen and thousands of other everyday
items can be grown on American farms. Our imports of foreign
fabrics and fibers average about $200,000,000 per year; in raw
fibers alone we imported over $50,000,000 in the first six
months of 1937. All of this income can be made available for
Americans.
The paper industry offers even greater
possibilities. As an industry it amounts to over
$1,000,000,000 a year, and of that eighty per cent is
imported. But hemp will produce every grade of paper, and
government figures estimate that 10,000 acres devoted to hemp
will produce as much paper as 40,000 acres of average pulp
land.
One obstacle in the onward march of hemp is
the reluctance of farmers to try new crops. The problem is
complicated by the need for proper equipment a reasonable
distance from the farm. The machine cannot be operated
profitably unless there is enough acreage within driving range
and farmers cannot find a profitable market unless there is
machinery to handle the crop. Another obstacle is that the
blossom of the female hemp plant contains marijuana, a
narcotic, and it is impossible to grow hemp without producing
the blossom. Federal regulations now being drawn up require
registration of hemp growers, and tentative proposals for
preventing narcotic production are rather stringent.
However, the connection of hemp as a crop and
marijuana seems to be exaggerated. The drug is usually
produced from wild hemp or locoweed which can be found on
vacant lots and along railroad tracks in every state. If
federal regulations can be drawn to protect the public without
preventing the legitimate culture of hemp, this new crop can
add immeasurably to American agriculture and industry.
The Most Profitable and Desirable Crop
Than Can be Grown
Mechanical Engineering, February 26, 1937
"Flax and Hemp: From the Seed to the
Loom" was published in the February 1938 issue of
Mechanical Engineering magazine. It was originally presented
at the Agricultural Processing Meeting of the American Society
of Mechanical Engineers in New Brunswick, NY of February 26,
1937 by the Process Industries Division.
Flax and Hemp:From the Seed to the Loom
By George A. Lower
This country imports practically all of its
fibers except cotton. The Whitney gin, combined with improved
spinning methods, enabled this country to produce cotton goods
so far below the cost of linen that linen manufacture
practically ceased in the United States. We cannot produce our
fibers at less cost than can other farmers of the world.Aside
from the higher cost of labor, we do not get as large
production. For instance, Yugoslavia, which has the greatest
fiber production per are in Europe, recently had a yield of
883 lbs. Comparable figures for other countries are Argentina,
749 lbs.; Egypt 616 lbs.; and India, 393 lbs.; while the
average yield in this country is 383 lbs.
To meet world competition profitably, we must
improve our methods all the way from the field to the loom.
Flax is still pulled up by the roots, retted
in a pond, dried in the sun, broken until the fibers separate
from the wood, then spun, and finally bleached with lye from
wood ashes, potash from burned seaweed, or lime. Improvements
in tilling, planting, and harvesting mechanisms have
materially helped the large farmers and, to a certain degree,
the smaller ones, but the processes from the crop to the yarn
are crude, wasteful and land injurious. Hemp, the strongest of
the vegetable fibers, gives the greatest production per acre
and requires the least attention. It not only requires no
weeding, but also kills off all the weeds and leaves the soil
in splendid condition for the following crop. This,
irrespective of its own monetary value, makes it a desirable
crop to grow.
In climate and cultivation, its requisites are
similar to flax and, like flax, should be harvested before it
is too ripe. The best time is when the lower leaves on the
stalk wither and the flowers shed their pollen.
Like flax, the fibers run out where leaf stems
are on the stalks and are made up of laminated fibers that are
held together by pectose gums. When chemically treated like
flax, hemp yields a beautiful fiber so closely resembling flax
that a high-power microscope is needed to tell the difference
- and only then because in hemp, some of the ends are split.
Wetting a few strands of fiber and holding them suspended will
definitely identify the two because, upon drying, flax will be
found to turn to the right or clockwise, and hemp to the left
or counterclockwise.
Before [World War I], Russia produced 400,000
tons of hemp, all of which is still hand-broken and hand-scutched.
They now produce half that quantity and use most of it
themselves, as also does Italy from whom we had large
importations.
In this country, hemp, when planted one bu.
per acre, yields about three tons of dry straw per acre. From
15 to 20 percent of this is fiber, and 80 to 85 percent is
woody material. The rapidly growing market for cellulose and
wood flower for plastics gives good reason to believe that
this hitherto wasted material may prove sufficiently
profitable to pay for the crop, leaving the cost of the fiber
sufficiently low to compete with 500,000 tons of hard fiber
now imported annually.
Hemp being from two to three times as strong
as any of the hard fibers, much less weight is required to
give the same yardage. For instance, sisal binder twine of
40-lb. tensile strength runs 450 ft. to the lb. A better twine
made of hemp would run 1280 ft. to the lb. Hemp is not subject
to as many kinds of deterioration as are the tropical fibers,
and none of them lasts as long in either fresh or salt water.
While the theory in the past has been that
straw should be cut when the pollen starts to fly, some of the
best fiber handled by Minnesota hemp people was heavy with
seed. This point should be proved as soon as possible by
planting a few acres and then harvesting the first quarter
when the pollen is flying, the second and third a week or 10
days apart, and the last when the seed is fully matured. These
four lots should be kept separate and scutched and processed
separately to detect any difference in the quality and
quantity of the fiber and seed.
Several types of machine are available in this
country for harvesting hemp. One of these was brought out
several years ago by the International Harvester Company.
Recently, growers of hemp in the Middle West have rebuilt
regular grain binders for this work. This rebuilding is not
particularly expensive and the machines are reported to give
satisfactory service.
Degumming of hemp is analogous to the
treatment given flax. The shards probably offer slightly more
resistance to digestion. On the other hand, they break down
readily upon completion of the digestion process. And
excellent fiber can, therefore, be obtained from hemp also.
Hemp, when treated by a known chemical process, can be spun on
cotton, wool, and worsted machinery, and has as much
absorbency and wearing quality as linen.
Several types of machines for scutching the
hemp stalks are also on the market. Scutch mills formerly
operating in Illinois and Wisconsin used the system that
consisted of a set of eight pairs of fluted rollers, through
which the dried straw was passed to break up the woody
portion. From there, the fiber with adhering shards - or hurds,
as they are called - was transferred by an operator to an
endless chain conveyer. This carries the fiber past two
revolving single drums in tandem, all having beating blades on
their periphery, which beat off most of the hurds as well as
the fibers that do not run the full length of the stalks. The
proportion of line fiber to tow is 50% each. Tow or short
tangled fibers then goes to a vibrating cleaner that shakes
out some of the hurds. In Minnesota and Illinois, another type
has been tried out. This machine consists of a feeding table
upon which the stalks are placed horizontally. Conveyor chains
carry the stalks along until they are grasped by a clamping
chain that grips them and carries them through half of the
machine.
A pair of intermeshing lawnmower-type beaters
are placed at a 45-degree angle to the feeding chain and break
the hemp stalks over the sharp edge of a steel plate, the
object being to break the woody portion of the straw and whip
the hurds from the fiber. On the other side and slightly
beyond the first set of lawnmower beaters is another set,
which is placed 90-degrees from the first pair and whips out
the hurds.
The first clamping chain transfers the stalks
to another to scutch the fiber that was under the clamp at the
beginning. Unfortunately, this type of scutcher makes even
more tow than the so-called Wisconsin type. This tow is
difficult to reclean because the hurds are broken into long
slivers that tenaciously adhere to the fiber.
Another type passes the stalks through a
series of graduated fluted rollers. This breaks up the woody
portion into hurds about 3/4 inch long, and the fiber then
passes on through a series of reciprocating slotted plates
working between stationary slotted plates.
Adhering hurds are removed from the fiber
which continues on a conveyer to the baling press. Because no
beating of the fiber against the grain occurs, this type of
scutcher make only line fiber. This is then processed by the
same methods as those for flax.
Paint and lacquer manufacturers are interested
in hempseed oil which is a good drying agent. When markets
have been developed for the products now being wasted, seed
and hurds, hemp will prove, both for the farmer and the
public, the most profitable and desirable crop that can be
grown, and one that can make American mills independent of
importations.
Recent floods and dust storms have given
warnings against the destruction of timber. Possibly, the
hitherto waste products of flax and hemp may yet meet a good
part of that need, especially in the plastic field which is
growing be leaps and bounds.
