Louisiana capitolian., 1881-09-24
st. Louis Republican.

The subject of changing the sugar
producing business in Louisiana so as
to separate the agricultural from the
mechanical part is again attracting
attention in that State. 1t ia a little
strange that the Louisiana planters
should be SO slow to adopt a reform
whose advantages are manifest.
There is no more reason why every
canegrower in that State SHOULD make
his own sugar than every Illi-
nois farmer should manufacture his
own cream into butter. This iswhat
the Illinois farmer actually did ten
years ago; but when it was proved
that central creameries run by ma
cbinery and provided with labor-sa-
wing appliances could make better
butter and at a 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 a
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. 1t is 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 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, 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, OF 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
I'LL it could be made to yield; or
the large estates would be divided
i2to small farms and sold to an in
dustrious, thrifty, and independent
class of cultivators. 1t has been sai(
that the soil of Louisiana is capable
ofyielding sugar enough to supply
the United States. Whether this be
true or not, it is certain that it is ca.
pable of yielding twice or thrice as
much as it does now. The Louisiana
sugar crop is now about l7O, 900 hogs
heads-not one-tifth the amount con
sumed in the country. If the busi.
ness were reformed on the centra
mill plan, there is reason for believ
ing that the crop would, in q few
years, rise to 400,000or 100000 hogs
heads.