The Manitowoc pilot. [volume] (Manitowoc, Wis.) 1859-1932, 1886-07-08
HOW SUGAR is MADE.

The process of "sugar-making," in
its essentials, is simple enough matter
of cookery. The first care of the pro-
ducer is to get all the sugar possible out
of the cane or grass or root, either by
squeezing out the juice or washing out
the sugar; the sugar-maple saves the
sugar-maker this trouble, delivering the
sap ready for the boiler The Juice is
then cleared of its impurities, as coffee
is cleared by the white of an egg. or
water is filtered through charcoal; it is
tlteH boiled, to evaporate as much of
the x>ser as possible, and crystalline
solid sugar; it is then cooled. and the
molasses drained off, leaving the soft
dark sugars, in which each crystal has
It's thin coating of molasSes, or dried by
a centrifugal machine, as clothes are
dried in the whirling drier, whence the
water flies out. or further clarified and
left to crystalline in white loaves, which
are sawed or crushed or ground or pow
dered into several varieties of fine white
sugar. Most of these earlier processes
are performed on the plantation. but in
many cases they are repeated and the
sugar carried through the final process
in the great retineries. Refining" is,
in fact, little more than a finer repeti-
ton of the processes of making" and
to do these simple things on a great
scale and in the best way is the sole
purpose of those enormous beehiyes of
industry.
The sugar makers first aim is to get
from the cane as much of its percentage
of juice as it can be induced TO give up.
The juice is enclosed in little cells of
Ggnose, or woody fibre, which make
the other tenth of the canes weight
There are three ways of extracting the
juice-by crushing, by soaking out the
sugar by the process of diffusion" or
by a combination of crushing and of
maceration in water. Crushing or grind
ing the cane is process in use from the
early times, as seen in primitive sugar
mills of the East, which consist of the
followed stump of a tree, within which
is grinding pestle worked by oxen
treading their round, driven from the
arm of the bar by one man, while an
other feeds in pieces of cane, one by
one, and takes out the crushed remains
A mill almost as primitive as this is
still in use in Arkansas.
The sugar-house on a great plantation
Is large, high building, in the centre
of the farm, to which roads or tram
ways lead from all directions. As a
load Of cane comes up, it is fed upon an
endless belt or railway, which carries it
up slowly to the crushing-mill, an affair
of simple construction but of enormous
power. The crushers are great rollers
of cast-iron, in pairs or triplets, some
times one set, sometimes more, working
at a pressure of from fifty to eighty
pounds to the square inch, and so ar
ranged as to give slightly before any
extraordinary strain. There are all
sorts of opinions as to whether it is bet
ter to crush rapidly or slowly, and to
crush once only or to repeat the opera
ton with increasing pressures. The
juice flows from the crushers in one di-
rection; the residual cane, now known
as "begass,' is carried o% in another
by an endless belt, to be used either for
dressing for the cane fields or as fuel in
the heating processes, which the juice
is next to undergo. One of the great
improvements in modern sugar-making
has been the development of furnaces
which get most of their fuel from the
begass.-R. r. Bol05er, in Harper's s
Magazine.