id 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
up water and goes over into a sugar, dextrose, commonly called
"glucose." Expressed in chemical shorthand this reaction is

C_{6}H_{10}O_{5} + H_{2}O --> C_{6}H_{12}O_{6}
starch water dextrose

This reaction is carried out on forty million bushels of corn a year in
the United States. The "starch milk," that is, the starch grains washed
out from the disintegrated corn kernel by water, is digested in large
pressure tanks under fifty pounds of steam with a few tenths of one per
cent. of hydrochloric acid until the required degree of conversion is
reached. Then the remaining acid is neutralized by caustic soda, and
thereby converted into common salt, which in this small amount does not
interfere but rather enhances the taste. The product is the commercial
glucose or corn syrup, which may if desired be evaporated to a white
powder. It is a mixture of three derivatives of starch in about this
proportion:

Maltose 45 per cent.
Dextrose 20 per cent.
Dextrin 35 per cent.

There are also present three- or four-tenths of one per cent. salt a