Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1886-06-17
SUGAR-MAKING.
How the Saccharine Matter Is Extracted
From Canes or Rooty

How the Saccharine Matter Is Extracted
From Canes or Root.
The process of ''sugarynakins in
its essentials, is simple enough matter
of cookery. The first care of the pro.
Queer 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 cleaned of its impurities, as
coffee is cleared by the white of an egg.
or water is filtered through charcoal:
it is then boiled, to evaporate as much
of the water as possible, and crvstallize
the solid sugar; it is then cooled and
the molasses drained off. leaving the
soft dark sugars, in which each crystal
has its thin coating of molasses. or
dried 10y a centrifugal machine as
clothes are dried in the whirlinc drier,
whence the water flies out, or further
Charmed and left to crystalline in
White ioaves, which are sawed or crushed
or ground or powdered into the several
varieties OF fine white sugar Most of
these earlier processes are performed on
the plantation, but IN many cases thew
are repeated and the sugar carried
through the final process IN the great
retineries. Refining is, in fact. little
more than finer repetition of the pro-
cesses of making" and to do these
simple things on great scale and in the
best way is the sole purpose of those
enormous bee-hives of industry.
The sugar-maker' 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
HgnOse, 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 macera-
ton IN water. Crushing or grinding
the cane is a process in use from the
earliest times, as is seen in the primi-
tive sugar mills of the East, which con-
sist of the followed stump of a tree.
within which is;a grinding pestle worked
by oxen treading their round, driven
from the arm of the barely one man,
while another 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 great planta-
ton is a large. high building, the center
of the farm, to which roads or tram
ways lead in all directions. As a load
of cane comes up, it is fed upon an end
less belt or railway, which carries it up
slowly TO the crushing-mill an affair of
simple construction but of enor-
nous power. The crushers are great
rollers of cast-iron, in pairs or trip
lets, sometimes one set. sometimes
more. working at a pressure of from
fifty to eighty pounds to the square inch.
and 80 arranged as to give slightly be-
fore any extraordinary strain. There
are all sorts of opinions as to whether
it is better to crush once only or to re-
peat the operation with increasing
pressures. The juice flows from the
crushers in one direction; the residual
cane, now known as '.begass," is car
ried off 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 fu ell
from the begass.-R. r. BoWker. in Har-
per's Magazine.