The Portland daily press., 1885-03-30

penslVe machinery in the refinery is employed
IN Returning the bone black, and S25 600
worth OF TINS sooty substance is in process all
the time The burning of the black is a DELI
cate operation. To procure evenness and pre-.
vent waste, the brains of inventors aud chem
lists have been taxed for many years, and the
result Is a complex arrangement Of furnaces,
tues, pipes and belts, which roasts the null
verified bone to the exact degree required
draws it off when cooked and carries il to its
destination-all automatically, without the
aid of mans hand. Night and dav, burnt
bone black is dropping from these flues and
running off on bucket belts.
The CHARTERS are rows of great iron vessels
twenty-one feet long. Bone black is put into
them and the melted sugar soaks through.
The amount of impurities removed By carif-
cation is about II per cent.
We are now standing in q room in which
men and boys are at work with very little
clothing on, and in which the neat is almost
intolerable. We are standing before great
copper caudron in which en- army of witches
might perform their weird ceremonies. 1t is
Dig enough to swallow small house. 1t is
called vacuum pan" and there is so much
pan and so little vacuum to it that it cost S10,-
OOO. The sugar is boiled two and one-half to
thrse hours in this vacuum pan, and when II
comes cut is OF light yellow color and pulpy
consistency. Next it goes into the "centrifu-
gals"
Out OF the centrifugals it comes in warm
Whlte erystsls-moist sugar Now what is a
centrifugal? 1t is an iron basin OF about tha
azs OF an ordinary washtub, and inside of it is
metallic basket just enough smaller to re-
volve in it without chatting. The boilsd.down
sugar goes into this wire basket, power is let
on, ana the basket is wbirled around at the
rate OF 1, 400 revolutions a minute. This speed
is inconesivable and so great that you cannot
see the basket The Centrifugal" seems mo-
tionlsss and empty, TO the eye. The ear only
detects the motion. The centrifugal force
generated by this speed throws out the liquid
through the perforations of the basket When
one of these machines, of which there are a
dozen or so, has run fifteen minutes and has
stopped, there remains half bushel of white
crystals in the bottom Of the Centrifugal"
The liquid that escapes is boiled over again.
Inc sugar now needs only to be granulated
ana sitted. The granulating process is simply
drying and rubbing. Ii is done automstical-
y The granulator is o great iron drum
twenty feet long and six feet in diameter. To
the inner circumference of this drum are at
Iacned rows OF gutL6rs. The moist white sugar
Is lsd into this revolving drum, and rubs and
losSles through the cutters. By attrition and
heat 1t is dried and polished. This drum re-
wolves night and day. It is stopped twice a
week, only, and then for cleansing purposes.
The sugar is next fed into the sieves, which
separate the fine crystals from the cosrse and
so make the various grades as to fneness
which everyb body who buys sugar has noticed
TWenty-four hours after the raw sugar leaves
the original hogshead, the sieves distribute the
refined sugar through spouts into barrels which
PACK themselves. Each barrel stands on
shaft, which constantly bobS up and down Sc
renely. By this iolting the sugar lis packed
very closely. A characteristic of this estah-
Ilshment is the large amount of work that is
done automatically. Belts, pipes and spouts
carry the sugar from one process to another.
by long study, these contrivances have been
brought to high degree of perfection. One
or two little devices, which have recently been
completed, save the labor of many men.
Ihere are pipes by the mile and dozen diff
1eTent steam engines. As steam and heat play
an important part in the manufacture, the
boilers and furnaces are built on s. gigantic
scale and eat up ten Thousand tons of coal in
year.
The storehouses of the company on their
own premises will !contain 1000 hogsheads of
sugar. One hundred hogsheads OF ray.sugar
are refined daily. This quantity makes about
oOO barrels OF .granulated sugar. These figures
vary slightly in various seasons. The total
annual product OF the refinery is forty million
pounds OF hard sugars. Besides its Maine
trade, the Forest City refinery has large pat
ronage in the West. 1t loaded 1900 cars, to 90
ont OF the State last year. 1t is very large
and successful enterprise and the quality of its
sugars is not beaten by any refinery in the
world.
One OF its necessary equipments is a lsbora-
tory, where skilled chemist is constantly en-
gagged with filters and polariscope, testing the
raw sugar TO determine tie saccharine per-
eentage OF each cargo, as well as the manu-.
tactured article in its various stages
What is the prospect for prices, this sum
msr? L asked Treasurer Hunt.
There is a prospect Of large crop and COM
paratively low prices. Two years ago, we
we're selling sugar for s IA cents pound. To-
day, we are selling the same sugar for 6 IA
cents. Sugar .is lower than is has been for
forty years. The average wholesale price OF
raw sugar in bond, for forty years ending 1854,
was 79 cents To-day it is fully cents less
The canse of this great decline is, OF course,
the immense product of beet sugar in Europe.
The surplus of the beet sugar crop OF France
and Germany, after the homo consumption is
supplied, is equal to the entire sugar crop of
the island of Cuba!
is there any hope of successfully making
beet sugar in this country?"
I'VE cannot do it because we cannot raise
the bests cheaply enough. In 1880, whom We
were making beet sugar, we demonstrated that
good sugar oeets Can be raised in Maine and
good sugar can be made from them, but our
farmers cannot afford to raise them until they
can hire laborers for a ninepence or so, per
day. They cannot pay American prices Tor
labor and compete with the European beet
farmers, With the present prices OF refined
sugar, we could not pay more than SO a ton.
for beots,