Book excerpt: The peanut, for over 20 years a leading crop in the Southern States, reaches the consumer in many widely different forms. Once grown exclusively for sale roasted in the shell and for feeding to hogs, peanuts are now more widely known in the salted form, and even larger quantities are marketed each year as peanut butter and peanut candy. In some years a considerable volume of peanuts has been crushed and the crude oil shipped to manufacturers of oleomargarine, compounds and vegetable shortenings, and salad oil. The course taken by the peanut in its journey from farm to the consumer, then, is necessarily a varied one, with many bypaths.