The Hawaiian gazette., 1879-05-21
American Sugar.
From the New York Trlbuns.1

lFrom the New York Tribune.
More than hundred years ago we began making
cane sugar in louisiana and in 1854 it sufced for
half of the conntry's supply. Now we import nine
pounds for every ten used. Forty years ago a corn
stalk sugar mania arose, and the official representa-
tves of agriculture gushed the subject in official
reports, the n. Y. Agricultural Society gave pre-
MUM for the successful making of sugar from maize
and for year two jealous experim entors in this
State, in Indiana, in Tennessee, and all over the
country made a little sugar and great deal of un-
crystallizable mush-a dirty y-lookng agglomeration
OF syrup and grape sugar and then the whole sub
jec sank into oblivion be resurrected as history
IRON time to time repeats itself Then came sorghum
and for more than twenty years sugar. in infnitisma
quantities, has been made from it-in the State of
Ohio, for instance, about pound and four-tenhs per
acre to eighty gallons of syrup for the last fifteen
years, and a smaller proportion in other States.
The difficulty with sorghum with maize, is that
it yields mainly grape sugar, and except at particu-
lar period In its growth, and under favorable
conditions of manufacture is utterly disappointing in
all attempts to produce genuine "cane sugar"
The excitement in sorghum is now "ambur'' va
riety from Minnesota, the reputation of which will
be likely to sell cart-loads of all sorts of seed at
orbitant prices 1t will be fortunate il the result
shall add appreca0ly to sugar supply in the next
ten years 1t is also highly probable that corn
harvests will continue to swell the National supply
of beef and pork and butter and cheese and even of
liquid extracts of maize, and equally probable that
our sugar supply must come from some other source
Even the California experiment with watermeons
seems more hopeful than any recent official or other
manufacture of corn sugar.
1t is important that the United States should pro.
duce the required supply of sugar, which will in ten
years reach 100000 tons per annum. We use now
about one-seventh of the production of the CONNER
cial world which is made from the sugar-cane and
the sugar beet-about six-tenths of the former and
fourtenths of the latter-and it is likely we shall OBJ
tain our future supply from the same sources. The
beet sugar product of Europe is nearly equal to
two years consumption of the United States. There
is nothing apparently in climate soil to forbid
its production here, and the cost of labor will not
always remain an insuperabe obstacle to success
The European success has not been the work of a
day. In ls4S France produced but 80 900 900 kilo-
grams l33, 100000 in 1885, 2lI 900 900 in 1868, ana
reached 462 ,OO0,0 600 in 1s75-equivalent to about
twenty nine pounds per capita. And nineteen.
tWentieths of it is produced in a few departments
north Of Paris.
The beet sugar experiment in the United States
in Hampshire county in Massachusetts in Living
ston and Stephenson in Illinois. Fond du Lac in
Wisconsin, Alameda and Sacramento and Santa Cruz
IN Callfornia-may yet prove to have been pioneer
enterprises of magnificent industry. The difficulty
TO overcome appears greater than the cotton manu-
faet7re has accomplished in underselling Manchester
The Maine achievement is now attracting attention
and exciting hopenlness; aud it is to the ventiye
genius and manufacturing skill of the East that the
country naturally looks for organizing success in
beet sugar making. Could It be attained-and who
dares say it shall nOt?-the result would pe greater
boon to agriculture, East and West. in its stimulus
to intensive culture, in its aid to cattle feeding than
the mere addition to the wealth Of the country by
the amount of sugar produced.