Sugar factory

“ He therefore can afford to take a loss on the sugar he sells for export and still make money on the total operation. The stipulation that the contingent interest in the profitable home market shall keep pace with the growth of the output of the factory is also a substantial encouragement to manufacturers to increase their production. Regulations like these naturally have the effect of supplying foreign markets with cheap sugar. The manufacturer makes an excellent profit and the domestic consumer pays the entire bill. ”

“ The Mindoro and Calamba companies, controlling 55,000 and 20,000 acres respectively, and the San Cárlos Milling company of San Cárlos, Negros, have erected the first and only modern sugar mills in the Philippines, and they have gone into cane cultivation and sugar manufacture in a scientific way. The management of these three enterprises has been entrusted to men who have had thorough field and factory experience in Hawaii. ”

“ Germany has four hundred factories and turns out an average of between four thousand and four thousand five hundred tons of sugar for each factory. The average increase per annum in the consumption of sugar in the United States between 1881 and 1899 was over sixty thousand tons. In order to meet this increase alone, fifteen factories would need to be added each year. It is thus evident that though the industry has grown so markedly, the increase in consumption is not provided for. ”

“ The old mill crushed enough cane during six months to make two or three hundred tons of sugar. The modern factory deals with sufficient to produce anything from six to ten thousand tons, and in some cases more.
Steam has taken the place of fires at the boiling stations, and boiling in vacuo has been as fully adopted in Queensland as in other parts of the sugar-producing world. In the old mill the masse cuite, the last stage of the product before the sugar is dried off, had to be dug out from tanks, men standing up to their knees in the sticky substance, and handling it in buckets. ”

“ The streams of water carry the beets into the factory, where they are cut up into strips by machinery. The juice is then washed out in vats containing warm water, and is boiled down in great tanks. The raw sugar is refined much as the cane sugar is. After the sugar has been dried, it is run through spouts into sacks held open to catch it as it comes out. One hundred pounds are put into each sack. One workman sews the sacks up and another wheels them to the wareroom. Train loads are carried away to be distributed in the parts of our country that do not produce sugar. ”

“ Operations did not amount to much at the outset; a limited amount of cane was ground in small mills and the juice was boiled into sugar. In 1878, however, a factory with the newest equipment of that time was erected at Mount Edgecombe by Mauritius people. Henceforward, the production of sugar in the colony has shown a steady growth, and today there are thirty-four factories in active operation with an output of about 100,000 tons of sugar per annum.
The climate of the valleys and the coast belt is hot and humid. ”

“ The profit thus obtained constituted a working fund to be used in forcing into line such factory owners as remained outside the pool, either by reducing the price when a factory was about to begin to make white sugar, or by buying stock in the corporations that still held out. ”

“ People who are to be believed tell me that the percentage of juice extracted from the cane is 50 per cent. below that attainable with modern machinery in many parts of the West Indies. It is obvious that until up-to-date appliances are substituted for the crude and obsolete methods of manufacture, the sugar industry has no prosperous outlook before it, nor can it hope to compete with beet sugar. ”

“ As business grows, instead of decreasing—risks increase. Any machinery which might operate to eliminate or reduce this uncertainty or speculative element in a jobber's business, would, we believe, be welcomed. Exchanges provide just such machinery.
Other commodities, such as raw sugar, wheat, cotton, pork and coffee have had this machinery for years and it was provided for refined sugar on May 2, 1921, when trading in refined sugar futures was inaugurated on the floor of the New York Coffee and Sugar Exchange, Inc. ”

“ In no industry does the absurdity of the protectionist system make a clearer exhibition of itself than in the trade in sugar. France, Germany, Austria, Italy, Belgium, Holland, and Russia, are each laboring to make their national sugar industry the greatest in the world. Each of them gives premiums, by ingenious devices, upon exportation. The consequence of their efforts is, that this sugar industry, the object of extraordinary favors, has gone entirely astray from its natural ways. Production is pushed everywhere. The cost price is not considered, but only the export price ”

“ The idea that stabilization of prices paid for the only raw material consumed in an industry has no influence toward reducing competition in the distribution of the finished product, in an integrated industry such as this, is impossible to accept. By their agreement the combination of refiners acquired not only a monopoly of the raw material but also and thereby control of the quantity of sugar manufactured, sold and shipped interstate from the northern California producing area. ”

“ Notwithstanding the crude character of the factories and machinery, the recovery of sugar is generally good, the average being between 9 per cent and 11 per cent of the weight of the cane, with single crushing.
Almost all of the factories are managed by Americans, but, as has been said, the equipment they have to work with is by no means modern, and under the extremely uncertain political conditions that prevail there is scant encouragement for outside [232] capital to come in and improve matters. Just when a change for the better will come is impossible to say. ”

“ In forty years, only a little more than a single generation, the world's supply of sugar has been multiplied by five, from a little more than three million tons a year to nearly eighteen million tons. The total world output in 1875 would not today supply the demand of the United States alone. This increase in production has been made possible by improvements in the methods and the machinery of manufacture. Until quite recently, primitive methods were employed, much like those used in the production of maple sugar on the farm, although on larger scale. ”

“ The erection of a large number of sugar works in Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia at the end of the sixth decade of the last century caused a large demand for machinery, which could not be met by the existing machine factories, in consequence of which new factories arose, the founders of which hoped to find ample employment and prosperity greatly aided by the flourishing condition of the sugar-industry. Aided by local experiences an export-business was created, which led to important contracts for delivery of complete sugar works for Italy, Sweden, Russia, South America, Canada and British India. ”

“ Countries with cane plantations have seen the price of sugar fall under the increased output of European factories, equipped and operated with scientific accuracy; they have lost a large part of their former market; some of them have been almost ruined. England, which once made great profit by importing cane sugar and distributing it among the other European countries, now, on the contrary, goes to the Continent for the larger part of its sugar supply; and continental states like Germany and France export sugar instead of importing it. ”

“ They explain that the Institute continued to operate 'under the move system' because it is 'a natural growth essential to the economical conduct of the sugar business.' The cost of raw sugar makes up about four-fifths of the cost of the refined sugar. Raw prices fluctuate widely from day to day and substantially control the price of refined. Wholesale and retail distributors sell on a narrow margin of 5 or 10 cents a bag. They cannot afford to stock large supplies because of storage costs, dangers of deterioration, and the hazardous nature of the business. ”

“ Large refining plants are too expensive to be erected everywhere; it therefore seems better that they should be built in our large cities, where the shipping facilities are good not only for receiving sugar in its raw state but for distributing it after it has been refined and is ready for sale. Here, too, machinery can more easily be bought and the business handled with less difficulty."
"You spoke of a central sugar mill," began Bob.
"Yes. Each plantation does not have a mill of its own or, indeed, need one. Frequently a planter will raise too small a crop to pay him to operate a mill ”

“ This industry, says an eminent writer, gives work to more than 100,000 inhabitants, and represents, as a matter of national wealth, a value in vineyards and factories of some £19,000,000; it produces annually £4,840,000 worth of merchandise, contributes £6,950,000 to the general trade, and surpasses in importance, both in the capital employed and in its products, the sugar industry of the country, which in 1907 manufactured sugar only to the value of £2,772,000. ”

“ The duty levied on imports by the United States cut their margins down to nothing, labor was scarce and the cost of obtaining it great, the rate of interest was from ten to twelve per cent, agents’ commissions for buying and selling ran from five to ten per cent; in short, many plantations were threatened with utter ruin, and so seriously discouraged did the business men become that the only gleam of hope for the salvation of the sugar industry seemed to be annexation. ”

“ Sorghum-sugar will have to be made in large factories. The existing factories have shown that it can be made, but how profitably or unprofitably can not be stated by Prof. Wiley, who suggests that farmers near factories may, in effect, make their own sugar by raising the cane and trading it at factories for sugar. Cane giving sixty pounds of sugar per ton ought to bring the farmer thirty-five pounds, the rest of the sugar and molasses going to the manufacturer to pay expenses and yield profit. The profitableness of making sugar from sorghum depends largely on utilizing all waste products. ”

“ Why, Sir, it amounts to this, that the country giving the bounty encourages the production of sugar within its borders, and at the same time does its best to restrict the consumption of sugar by its own people by every possible means, so that the result is that there is an enormous surplus of sugar produced which must find a foreign market, and which under present circumstances can only find a market here. ”

“ The volcanic soils are the very best sugar-lands, and a large amount of capital is invested in this industry. The sugar-plantations employ more than forty thousand laborers, all Japanese, Chinese, and Porto Ricans. The value of the sugar export is nearly twenty-five million dollars yearly; that of fruit, rice, and hides is about two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Coffee is rapidly becoming a leading product. The bulk of the imports comes from the United States, and consists of clothing, cotton textiles, lumber, and machinery. ”

“ Sugar refineries located at Marseilles claim that it is cheaper for them to purchase sugar in Java than beet sugar of northern Europe. On the other hand, the argument of Paris refiners is just the reverse. The total refined sugar consumed is 375,000 tons, the colonial and indigenous production of raw sugar is nearly 1,000,000 tons more than sufficient to meet the demands of the entire refining industry of the country. ”

“ If we add the molasses at a very small fraction, we may count the average consumption at 70 pounds per head at an average price of five cents a pound or $3.50 per head for refined sugar. But a quantity which cannot be measured is converted over into jams, jellies, preserves and condensed milk. In the latter industry one single establishment is reputed to consume more than the entire product of all the beet-root sugar factories in this country, estimated at about 150,000 tons. If sugar were free of duty an immense impulse would be given to agriculture and to fruit growing. ”

“ In coffee and tobacco there are possibilities on a small scale, and also in fruit-growing, when roads and highways have been sufficiently improved to get the product to market. Herein lies the only feasible opportunity for small American capitalists who desire to live in a tropical climate. It is true, only a small portion of this wonderful Island is under cultivation. In time it might all be utilised, the larger part, of course, in sugar. In the chapter on Sugar the possibilities of this crop and its relation to the sugar-production of the world have been fully discussed. ”

“ The capital invested in this sugar industry is likewise no inconsiderable one. Taking the large and small establishments together, each thousand bushels of daily capacity represents sixty thousand dollars of capital. Over two million dollars are therefore actively employed in the glucose-works. The number of men employed amounts to about sixty for each thousand bushels capacity, making a total of twenty-one hundred. On account of the nature of the process of manufacture, the mills are run night and day, and work is not entirely suspended on Sunday. ”

“ There are not many legitimate enterprises in the world which would bear such charges and leave a profit to the manager. But it is on this system that the planting of sugar has been, to a large extent, carried on for years in the Islands. Under it a good deal of money has been made, but not by the planters. ”