182 FACTS ABOUT CROP TREES
a joyful autumn labor of the American country boy, and much rural sociability has centered around apples and walnuts beside the autumn and winter hearth fire.
THE INFLUENCE OF FOOD FACTORIES ON THE WALNUT
Now the wild black walnut is participating in the new food era—the era of machine-made foods.
Since the commercial manufactures of candy and ice cream have become an established American industry, there has sprung up a surprisingly large trade in wild walnut kernels.* The American Nut Journal for December 3, 1922, reports the following:
"Greene County. Tennessee, this season shipped two hundred and ten thousand pounds of nut kernels, according to a dispatch from Greeneville. On one day late in October seven thousand dollars were paid out in Greeneville for the kernels. A good cracker can earn forty cents an hour."
For two reasons eastern Tennessee and adjacent states are an important region in the production of walnut kernels. One reason is that it is a good place for walnut trees and the other is that it is a country of limited available resources and rather overcrowded population. Many of the families are large, and many boys, girls, and women have few opportunities for employment. Picking out walnut kernels offers profitable addi had gathered. 'Uncle Abe, what are you going to do with all of those walnuts?' I asked. 'Cap'n,' he replied, 'I'se gwine to eat these this winter when I don't have any meat.'" (Letter. J. Ford Wilkinson. Rockport, Indiana. January, 1928.)
"The sale of hulled nuts is increasing. One merchant in Beaverdam. Kentucky (fifty miles southeast of Evansville, Indiana) bought seven hundred bushels this season for shipment to Memphis." (Letter. Sam C. Baker. Beaverdam. Kentucky.)
A walnut-meat factory, employing thirty to fifty women who were receiving twenty cents a pound for picking out the meats after the nuts were cracked, was established in 1926 in Carlisle. Kentucky. It resulted from the efforts of State Forester Merrill to buy a couple of tons of nuts to plant. He received offers of a thousand tons, and the establishment of this industry resulted. (American Nut Journal. December, 1926.)
