Louisiana capitolian., 1881-09-22
SUGAR GROWING IN LOUISIANA.
st. Louis Republican.

The sloJectOI changing tile sugar
producing business in Louisiana SO as
to separate the agricultural from the
mechanical part is again attracting
attention in that State. It is little
strange that the Louisiana planters
should be so slow to adopt reform
whose advantages are manifest.
There IS no more reason why every
canegrower in that State should make
his own sugar than every Hi
nois farmer should manufacture his
own cream into butter. This is what
the Illinois farmer actually did ten
years ago; but when it was proved
thac central creameries run by ma
chinery and provided with labor-sa-
wing appliances could make better
butter and at d smaller cost than the
individual farmers could, they atonce
gave up their home dairies and adop-
ed the practice of selling their milk to
their creameries, or central butter
factories. The lesson ought to be
studied by the Louisiana cane-grow-
ers. A farmer or planter makes
clumsy mechanic. 1t is bis business
to produce the raw material, and when
he goes beyond this and engages in
manufacturing, particularly such ex-
pensive and difficult manufacturing
as sugar making, he does an unwise
thing. One reason why sugar-plan-
ting IN Louisiana falls SO far short of
being as profitable as it ought to be
is that the planter extracts SO small a
proportion Of the saccharine matter
from the cane. Iti stated that his
proportion is only fifty per cent;
that is, one-half the sugar is taken
from the cane, put into hogsheads
and sold, and the other half put into
the bagasse furnace and burned. The
excuse for this waste is that the ma
chinery now in use will not extract
more than one-half the saccharine
matter. But this proves the necessi-
ty for abandoning q system which is
so ineffective and resorting to bet
ter one. If there were large central
sugar mills, provided with improved
machinery and appliances and oper-
ated by experts, established in the
cane growing districts, and if the
planters would limit themselves to
raising and selling cane, o more
thorough economy would attend the
business. The planters would raise
more and better cane, and the mills
would make more and better sugar.
The bagasse, or pressed cane, instead
of being burned with nearly half its
valuable properties, would be treat
ed so as to yield all, or nearly all
these properties, and the planter
would thus get the whole fruit OF his
labor. And still another advantage
would attend the central mill system.
The large plantations, instead Of be-
ing rudely cultivated by hired hands,
would be let out to tenants animated
by the ambition to get from the soil
all it could be made to yield; or,
the large estates would be divided
into small farms and sold to an in
dustrious, thrifty, and independent
class of chltivators. 1t has been said
DllaC Gne sOll OF Louisiana ID capaDle
ofyielding sugar enough to supply
the United States. Whether this be
true or not, itis certain that it is Ca
pable of yielding twice or thrice as
much as it does now. The Louisiana
sugar crop is now about 10000 hogs
heads-not one-fifth the amount con
sumed in the country. If the bust
ness were reformed on the central
mill plan, there is reason for believ-
ing that the crop would, in few
years, rise to 400,M0or 100000 hogs
heads.
----------~~->e . -