The Lambertville record. [volume] (Lambertville, N.J.) 1872-1968, 1873-12-31
IN a sUaAR REFINERY.

Refining sugar is not the neatest business
to be found. First, the sugar in filthy black
bags, covered with mud, and boxes slneared
over with bilge water and filth, is landed at
the docks, where you see those immense
sugar-houses. Then stevedores carry it back
to big copper vat filled with hot water,
break open the boxes, cut open the bags,
and knock in the heads of the hogsheatls, and
let it all-dirt, mud, sticks, shoes, old hats,
4 pipes, bones, undissoved newspapers and
sleeveless shirts--yes, let all slide into the
vat together.
They place the filthy old hogsheads, soiled
bags aud dirty boxes into steam vat, steam
and wash off the dirt and sugar, and then
put that in too. Then greasy old man stirs
it up, occasionally, expectorating tobacco
juice here and there, and scraping his filthy
mud into the future frosting of our wedding
cake.
In five hours they draw, from this witches
chowder, syrup as pure, as coorless and odor-
less, as ice water, and as clean, too. All dirt,
Salts smells, and every material obstacle or
gaseous odor is separated, and transparent
liquid sugar runs out as water trckles from
crystal spring.
4 First, tho dirty liquid is pumped into ole
thousand gallon cauldrons, with steam pipe
in the bottom. Then blae litmus paper
soaked in blue cabbage juice is dipped into
il to see if it is sour. If it is sour, the blue
paper is changed to red. Then, they throw
in a pail of lime. This kills the acid, or the
acid leaves the sugar to attack the lime
when, like the Kilkenny cats, they are both
eaten up. If you pour acid in soft SOAP the
alkali (another form of lime) will leave the
grease to feed upon the acid.
Then the half-naked men who work over
the hot cauldrons pour five gallons of warm
bullock's Blood fresh from the slaughter
houses, into each 1000 gallons of melted
sugar. The white of eggs would be better,
but eggs cost too much while blood, which is
almost as full of albumen, only costs eleven
cents per gallon. This blood "settlcs the
sugar as an egg "settlcs Your coffee--that
is, the albumen seizes hold of every particle
of dirt, and holds it. Then, when they raise
the Temperature to 1870 degrees the blood,
lime, dirt, sticks, &C., float to the surface,
while the syrup, yellow aud quite transpar-
ent, is drawn off through strainers from the
bottom, leaving the scum OH top. The scum
and dirt are rinscd with clean water, the
sweet part saved to wet up fresh lot of SUI
gar, and the dirt carted off as q fertilizer.-
They take n ton of rich manure out of the
syrup every day. The syrup is strained
through bags-long cloth bags, having four or
five thicknesses of cloth in them. They catch
all the heavyd dirt little stones, sand &c. and
the syrup leaves them transparent, only
slightly tinted with yellow. These bags take
out about four per cent. of the dirt-real
black mucky dirt--the same MS you see in the
streets. The syrup is now ninety-thrce per
cent. pure sugar, whereas 1t was but eighty
per cent. five hours ago. There remains seven
per cent. of coloring, foreign salts and gases
yet to be removed.
This is done by tiltering the yellow syrup
through bone black or animal charcoal bones
burnt black and ground up). Large iron
tanks, looking like upright steam boilers, are
filled with $4,000 pounds of bone black each.
Through this the syrup is made to trckle.-
As it comes out of the bottom it is pure and
transparent as rock crystal goblet of it
looks like pure water.
g Is it perfectly pure now?" | asked the
chemist.
Eyes sir" as near as possible, 1t is 00t
per cent. pure sugar.
How is this white transparent syrup made
into the sugar?
This is simply done by taking the water out
of it. This is accomplished by boiling it in
vacuum. 1t would boil like water in the open
air and volatile at 212 degrees Farenheit, but
remove the air pressure and it will boil at 100.
This amount ofheat never burns it, and the ST.
gar is white. After boiling the syrup down
to thick PASTE it is drawn off in pots shaped
like the old fashioned sugar-loaf The small
end has hole in it, through which the water
runs out leaving the sugar to crystalze in
hard white cake such as used to be sold in
the market. But w-a-days the pure white
sugar-loaves are sawed up into regular shaped
| pieces of sugar. The soicd sugar-loavcs, or
those white with yellow streaks in them, are
crushed into humps, and the sawdust and
leavings are made into granulated and pulver-
lied sugar.
Where does the yellow sugar come from?
The syrup which runs out when the white
sugar is crystalizing. The syrup grows more
impure each time, until finally it cannot be
crystalized. 1t is sour and salty. This inn
pure or brown sugar is shovelled into a
centrifugal revolving machine, which revolves
two thousand times per minute. This throws
out the water through strainer, leaving the
sugar quite light and mealy.
The number of stars visible to the naked
eye in the entire circuit of the heavens has
been usually estimated at about 6,0OO. An
ordinary opera-glass will exhibit something
like ten times that number. A comparatively
small telescope easily shows 100000; while
there are telescopes in existence with which,
there is reason to believe, not fewer than 3d.
000, 600 stars are visible. And yet, when all
these are seen and numbered, the eye will