Sugar cane.

The main development of the cane sugar industry began about 1885, although it had attained large proportions before the Civil War. Originally, the Jesuits brought cane from San Domingo in 1757. The ribbon cane now cultivated, however, was brought from the island of St. Eustatius to Georgia, whence it was introduced into Louisiana. Over 100 varieties of cane are being experimented with at the Louisiana sugar experiment station at New Orleans. But two kinds are commonly cultivated in Louisiana—the Purple or Black Java and the Purple Striped Ribbon Cane, which were introduced about 1825.

The area of cane in Louisiana is considerably more than 300,000 acres. From four to six tons of cane are necessary to, plant an acre. It is common to plant a few acres, use the entire crop of the next year in planting a larger area, and take the entire crop of the third year to plant the whole plantation.

Sugar cane sugar on the levee at New Orleans.

Several sugar houses in Louisiana work from 1,000 to 1,500 tons of cane daily or from 60,000 to 70,000 tons during the season of from 60 to 90 days. The cane, which grows best in a sandy loam, does not seed. It produces a crop of 20 to 30 tons per acre. Where used only for sugar, the fodder and tops, the bagasse from the mill and the ashes from the sugar house are carefully returned to the soil. In some localities, however, the waste is being utilized in a new way, as hereafter mentioned.

From the field cane is carried to a moving platform which drops it end on into a chute abutting upon a three-roller mill giving two pressures. A conveyor then takes the crushed cane to a second mill where it gets a final squeezing and is ejected in a pretty dry state (called bagasse). This is conveyed by a third carrier to the bagasse furnace, where it is consumed as fuel and supplies steam power and steam heat to the sugar house.

The juice as it runs from the mill is strained and limed and passes into the clarifiers where the temperature is raised and the lighter impurities, coming to the surface, are skimmed off, while the heavier sink to the bottom. The clear juice is then drawn off and sent to the boiling-down apparatus. There it is concentrated into a syrup which is boiled to a grain in the vacuum pan.

The contents of the pan are then sent to the centrifugal machines, which separate the sugar from the molasses and the former is put into barrels. The latter undergoes another process before the final molasses is produced.

By courtesy of the McCormick Division, International Harvester Co. Cutting sugar cane, Lincoln, Nebraska.

The manufacture of sugar cane into paper has taken practical form, and mills for this purpose are being erected in various parts of Honolulu.

The advent of crude petroleum for fuel upon the plantations is making it of little value as a fuel. With the coming of the cane paper mill begins a new epoch in the paper trade.

Experiments made with bagasse have proven that paper can be successfully manufactured from it. In the near future sugar-cane paper will be a strong competitor of its rival , "pulp," or rag paper.

In this connection it may be stated that paper is also being made from the palm leaf found so plentifully in the Southern States. Mills are here and there going up and are converting into profit what was once considered a total waste.

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© 1998, 2002 by Lynn Waterman