Juniata sentinel and Republican. [volume] (Mifflintown, Juniata County, Pa.) 1873-1955, 1873-12-03
In q Sugar Refinery.

Refining sugar is not the neatest
business to be found. First, the sugar
in filthy black bags, covered with mud,
and boxes smeared over with bilge
water and filth, is landed at the docks,
where you see those immense sugar
houses. Then steyedores carry it back
to a big copper vat filed with hot
water, break open the boxes, cut open
the bags, and knock in the heads of the
hogsheads, and let it all dirt, mud,
sticks, shoes, old hats, pipes, bones,
undissolved newspapers and sleeveless
shirts-yes, let all slide into the vat
together.
They place the filthy old hogsheads,
soiled bags and dirty boxes into a
steam vat, steam and wash off the dirt
and sugar, and then put that in too.
Then a greasy old man stirs it up, occa-
sionally, expectorating tobacco-iuice
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
colorless and odorless 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 trickles
from crystal spring.
First, the dirty liquid is pumped into
one thousand gallon cauldrons, with a
steam pipe in the bottom. Then blue
litmus (paper soaked in blue cabbage
juice) is dipped into it 90 see if it is
sour. Ii 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 alkaIi (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 gal
Ions of warm bullock's blood, fresh from
the slaughter-houses, into each l, 200
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 ''settles"
the sugar as an egg ''settles" your coffee
that is, the albumen seizes hold of
every particle OF dirt, and holds it.
Then. when they raise the temperature
to $50 degrees, the blood, lime, dirt,
sticks, &C., float to the surface, while
the syrup, yellow and quite transpa
rent, is drawn off through strainers
from the bottom, leaving the scum on
top. This scum and dirt are rinsed
with clean water, the sweet part saved
to wet up fresh lot of sugar, and the
dirt carted off as fertilizer. They take
q 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 heavy dirt,
little stones, sand, &c, and the syrup
leaves them transparent, only slightly
tinged with yellow. These bags take
out about four per cent. of dirt-real
black mucky dirt-the same as you see
in the streets. The syrup is now
ninety-three per cent, pure sugar,
whereas it 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 30, 900 pounds of bone black each.
Through this the syrup is made to
trickle. As it comes out at the bottom
it is pure and transparent as rock crys-
tai. Agoblet of it looks like pure
water.
SIS it perfectly pure now?" I asked
the chemist.
"1eS, sir, as near as possible. 1t is
99s 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 a vacuum. 1t would
boil like water in the open air and vola-
tie at 2l2 degrees Farenheit, but re-
move the air pressure and it viii boil
at 150. This amount of heat never
burns it, and the sugar 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
tllu Hfto d hOlc III II, ttlIOu-u nuACl TIC
water runs out, leaving the sugar to
crystalize in hard white cake. such as
used to be sold in the market. But
nowadays the pure white sugar-loaves
are sawed up into regular shaped pieces
of sugar. The soiled sugar loaves, or
those with yellow streaks in them, are
crushed into Jumps, and the sawdust
and leavings are made into granulated
and pulverized 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 impure or brown
sugar is shovelled into centrifugal re-
volving machine, which revolves two
thousand times per minute. This throws
out the water through strainer, leav-
inc the smear oIIite liglt and nlealy