Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1873-08-21
miscellaneous &eadimg.
AROJJT .SUGAR.

nally purified till 1t IS white and Immaculate
New York has thirty-fve out Of the fifty
sugar reineries in the United States, the other
refineries being in Boston, Philadelphia, Bal
timore and St. Louis The largest refinery in
the world is that of Constance Sey, in Paris.
Sey re6nes 5000 barrels per day. The next
largest is that of Havemeyer & Elder, Of New
York They refine 5000 barrels per day.
How does the sugar come here?
Last year the 48,769 tons of sugar ship
ped to this country came mostly from Cuba,
Porto Rico, Brazil, Manila, Jamaica, San
Domingo and Barbados. 1t came in hogs
heads weighing 1900 pounds, boxes weighing
45O pounds and bags weighing 15O pounds.
A large part of it came in black, dirty,
"raw' state, and some called centrifugal"
had the water whirled out of it in centrifugal
machines before it left Cuba. So sugar is
quoted as "raw" and "centrifugal." Raw su.
gar is worth about eight cents and centrifugal
nine cents per pound. Cuban sugar is the
best sugar, but it all has to be cleaned be-:
fore it is fit for use, and then the raw sugar
WHOLESALERS for about three cents per pound
more. From dirty eight cent sugar they
make white lump sugar worth III, light yel.
low worth 1O4, dark yellow worth 81, and
syrup worth 4.
How do they do this?
This is what I saw for the Graphic, yester-
day, in the largest sugar refinery in the United
States:
First, the sugar in filthy black bags, hogs:
heads covered with mud, and boxes, smeared
over with bilge water and filth, was landed at
the Williamsburg docks, where are those i'm
mense sugar houses. Then stevedores carried
it back to big copper vat filled with hot wa
ter, broke open the boxes, cut open the bags,
and knocked in the heads Of the hogsheads
and let it all-dirt, mud, sticks, niggers' shoes,
old hats, pipes, bones, undissolved newspap-
pers and sleeveless shirts-yes, let it all slide
into the vat together
What! all this dirt?
Yes, and more too. They placed the filthy
old hog gsheads, soiled bags and dirt boxes into
a steam vat, steamed and washed off the dirt
and sugar, and then put that in too Then a
greasy chap stirred it up occasionally, expec.
torating tobacco juice here and there, and
scraping his Williamsburg mud into the fu-
turefrosting of our wedding cake.
What next?
Well, the hogshead.staves, after the sugar
and dirt are worked off, are sent back to Cuba,
and 400 hogsheads of sugar per day are
pumped, in liquid form, into the fifth story,
to be cleaned and purified.
What! can they take out filthy cigar stubs,
dead rats, negro babies, bilge water and eve
rything?
Yes; in five hours they draw from this
witches chowder, syrup as pure and as color
less and odorless as ice-water, and as clean,
too. All dirt, salts, smells and every mate
rial obstacle or gaseous odor or oxyd is sepa-
rated, and transparent liquid sugar runs out
as water trickles from crystal spring.
How do they do it?
First, the dirty liquid is pumped into one
thousand gallon caldrons, with a steam pipe
in the bottom. Then, blue litmus paper (pa-
per soaked in blue cabbage juice) is dipped
into it to see if it is sour. If it is sour, the
blue paper is changed to red. Then they
throw it in 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.
What next?
Then the halfnaked men who work over
the hot caldrons pour FIVE gallons of warm
bulock'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 "settles" the sugar as
an egg settles your cofee-that is, the albu-
men seizes hold of every particle of dirt and
holds it. Then, when the ey raise the tempera-
ture to $50 degrees, the blood, lime, dirt
sticks, etc., float to the surface, while the
syrup, yellow and quite transparent, is drawn
off through strainers at tho bottom, leaving
the scum on top. The 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 ton of
rich manure out of the sugar every day.
How is the syrup strainedp
Through hags-long cloth bags, having four
or five thickncsses of cloth in them. They
catch all the heavy, little stones, sand, etc.,
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 street,
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 re-
moved.
How are these salts and gases to be re-
moved?
This is done by filtering the yellow syrup
through bone black or animal charcoal (bones
burnt black aud ground up). Large iron
tanks, looking like upright steam boilers, are
filled with 100000 pounds of bone black each.
Through this the syrup is made to trickle.
As it comes out at the bottom it is as pure
and transparent as rock crystal. A goblet of
it looks like pure water.
"Is it perfectly pure now?" I asked the
chemist
"Yes, as near as possible Its ninety-nine
and a half per cent. pure sugar. You might
pour five gallons of kerosene and smallpox
patient cut into sausage meat into. the first
tank, and I tell you, Perkins, that | wouldn't
have the slightest objection to drinking the
syrup five hours afterward. 1t is perfectly
clean and pure.
How is this white, transparent syrup made
into sugar?
This is simply done by taking the water
out of it. This is accomplished by boiling it
in an open vacuum. 1t would boil like water
in the open air and volatilize at PIP degrees
Fahrenheit, but remove the air pressure and
it will boil at $50 Fahrenheit; $50 degrees
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-fash-
ioned sugar.loaf. These pots hold five gallons
and are open at thelarge end. The small end