The Pensacola journal. (Pensacola, Fla.) 1898-1985, 1916-10-21
SUGAR.

SOGAK.
How many of us, as we put our usuaa
two Jumps Of sugar into the morning cot
fee. or when little Willie asks for n1ckei
to buy some candy, or when we send Dox
Of bonbons around to the goddess OF our
dreams. stop to consider that the yearly
consumption Of sugar and its products in the
United States alone amounts to nearly 324
carloads train 800 miles long, and the
engine of which would be entering Denver
before the caboose had pulled out OF Bos-
ton
How many OF us too, contrast the shim-
mering white of the refined sugar which
is on evervbody's table today with the dark
and gloomy product that was sold in hunks
TO our ancestors, who hacked the pieces off,
as the need rose, very much as if it was
lightwood knot.
AS late as 1870, refining sugar was still
considered a Mystery" solution of which
must needs be entrusted to AN experienced
artist from Europe, according to an adver
tisement in the New York Gazette of Au-
gust IL of that year. There were few
refneries in the country at the time of the
Revolution-two of them in New York
City, became famous as British prisons;
but the clean product was so hight was
something like 20 cents a pound in 1916,
with the purchasing power of money dou-
bic that the unrehned product was still in
principal use. The o1dsters of today can
indeed recall how they tempered their boy
hood coffee with brown sugar. In 1888,
the Secretary of the Treasury wrote thus
pessimistically about the Fabrication and
Refinement of Sugar
ct is thought that the consumption of loaf or
refined sugar viii not, in the west keep pace with
the progress of population, because of the cheap
ness of coffee which, to considerable extent, is
taking the place of tea well of ardent spir-
its; and IN coffee, brown sugar is generally pre-
ferred Still, much refined sugar is used to quail
ify whiskey, which, unhappily, continues TO be
extensively used in the west by certain classes of
persons"
So it IS to the foresight of those whiskey
drinking pioneers of the west that we owe
the encouragement of the infant industry
OF the east and south, the output of which
today needs about twenty million barrels
to supply which the refining companies
own many hundred square miles of timber
landl
Sugar now, because of abnormal world
conditions, is higher than it has been for
many years; but it is cheaper in the United
States than in any other country of the
world. Manufacturing on large scale has
m1nlm1zed waste Nowadays there is only
SIX or seven-pound loss in refining a hun
dred pounds of crude product; the methods
OF century ago allowed a ffty-pound loss.
AGAIN the tariff has been lowered For
merly cents pound, the duty on dutiable
raw sugar imported into the United States
is only / cent pound now.
Nothing is more typical of the deve1op.
ment OF this country than the DEVELOPMENT
OF the sugar industry. And sugar is more
than luxury, it is food: as one of tbf
most competent experts of TODAY has said
lhere have been few more important adj
d1tions to our dietary, or which have done
more 10 promote the health of the rising
generation, than our cheap and abundant
supply of pure sugar 90
The war is over-baraI