But here we are not so much concerned with corn foods as we are with its
manufactured products. If you split a kernel in two you will find that
it consists of three parts: a hard and horny hull on the outside, a
small oily and nitrogenous germ at the point, and a white body
consisting mostly of starch. Each of these is worked up into various
products, as may be seen from the accompanying table. The hull forms
bran and may be mixed with the gluten as a cattle food. The corn steeped
for several days with sulfurous acid is disintegrated and on being
ground the germs are floated off, the gluten or nitrogenous portion
washed out, the starch grains settled down and the residue pressed
together as oil cake fodder. The refined oil from the germ is marketed
as a table or cooking oil under the name of "Mazola" and comes into
competition with olive, peanut and cottonseed oil in the making of
vegetable substitutes for lard and butter. Inferior grades may be used
for soaps or for glycerin and perhaps nitroglycerin. A bushel of corn
yields a pound or more of oil. From the corn germ also is extracted a
gum called "paragol" that forms an acceptable substitute for rubber in
certain uses. The "red rubber" sponges and the eraser tips to pencils
may be made of it and it can contribute some twenty per cent. to the
synthetic soles of shoes.

[Illustration: CORN PRODUCTS]

Starch, which constitutes fifty-five per cent. of the corn kernel, can
be converted into a variety of products for dietary and industrial uses.
As found in corn, potatoes or any other vegetables starch consists of
small, round, white, hard grains, tasteless, and insoluble in cold
water. But hot water converts it into a soluble, sticky form which may
serve for starching clothes or making cornstarch pudding. Carrying the
process further with the aid of a little acid or other catalyst it takes