The coco-nut oil industry.

Abstract

Although coco-nut oil has been used extensively by the natives in the tropical lands of its origin for many centuries, it was not exported to European countries in any appreciable quantity until the middle of the Nineteenth Century. At that time the industry was entirely in the hands of the natives, who expressed the oil by very primitive and unhygienic methods, so that the resulting product was vastly inferior to the oil produced in recent years. As the demand for coco-nut oil increased, due chiefly to its adoption in soap manufacture, the crude
methods of producing it were improved, and the systematic cultivation of the coco-nut palm was commenced.