Sugar mill

“ A sugar refinery is operated the entire twelve months of the year, while a raw-sugar mill must of necessity take care of the crop of cane in about eight months. To refine sugar where it is grown would require refining machinery capable of handling the entire output in the eight-month period, and during the remaining four months the plant would remain idle. This would mean a larger investment proportionately than that made in a refinery in a consuming center, running steadily the year round. ”

“ 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 sugar mill is going all night long; several pairs of oxen are kept ready, and as soon as one becomes tired, a fresh pair is hitched in; the boy that thrusts the cane between three perpendicular cogged cylinders, and the driver of the team, often fall asleep at work, but are kept at it by those put over them to keep the mill going. The mill and oxen all belong to the State, as well as the chacra, from which this cane came. After the Indians have manufactured the government's sugar and rum, then the mill is loaned to them, and their own oxen are hitched to. ”

“ There is a sugar mill near by with lots of sugar and molasses in it. The best thing is an immense cornfield right beside us, and the corn is just right to roast or boil. It is the southern variety, great big stalks, with great big ears on, and we can get a mouthful at every bite. There are a lot of troops here—I should think at least 10,000. Just what we are here for none of us have yet found out. The colored population is all I have yet seen. I visited the sugar mill and from an old darkey learned all about making sugar and molasses. ”

“ He has twenty machines run by water or steam power for cleaning coffee, and acres upon acres of drying yards, all of which are scenes of activity in the harvesting season. Nearly a thousand horses are employed in the work of the plantations, besides more than that number of mules and oxen. There is also a fully-equipped sugar mill, which turns out thousands of pounds of refined sugar each year. ”

“ In case one was so fortunate as to secure a sugar mill with iron cylinders, it used to go the rounds of its immediate vicinity, as the portable threshers did. First one and then another of the neighbors would use it till their crop of cane was [28] ground and made into syrup and sugar. The furnaces for sugar and syrup making were built of rocks, if bricks were not convenient. They held one or two kettles, according to the quantity of cane to be ground and of juice to be boiled. ”

“ Here is a view across the Rewa, showing a 29 sugar mill; inside the ugly buildings we find the elaborate European machinery for extracting the juice 30 from the cane. Here again we are in the cane fields with Indian women at work. It is all unlike the native 31 agriculture, though it is very profitable to Fiji, since sugar is the most valuable of all its exports. ”

“ The second year the cane is sweeter and yields more than the first, and the third year more than the second.
During the three seasons I labored on Hawkins' plantation, I was employed a considerable portion of the time in the sugar-house. He is celebrated as the producer of the finest variety of white sugar. The following is a general description of his sugar-house and the process of manufacture:
The mill is an immense brick building, standing on the shore of the bayou. Running out from the building is an open shed, at least an hundred feet in length and forty or fifty feet in width. ”

“ Opposite the sugar-mill is a huge building containing a rice mill, saw-mill, &c. The sugar machinery and distilling apparatus are from Hamburg, the steam-engines and boilers from England, and the rice and saw-mills from Boston and San Francisco. Everything consumed on the place is raised on it. ”

“ It is conveyed from the mills to the boiler house on a wide slat conveyor, and fed directly into the furnaces under the boilers that generate the steam for power and boiling purposes. A modern raw-sugar mill requires practically no other fuel than that obtained as a by-product from the crushing of the cane. ”

“ There is more steadiness in the price of sugar, and a greater certainty of an average crop. But the cost of a sugar-house, with its mill, boilers, vacuum pans, centrifugal and drying apparatus, cannot be less than £10,000, and the consumption of fuel, thousands of cords of which are cut up by the “hands,” is enormous. There were cases of large fortunes earned by planting sugar with small beginnings, but these had chiefly occurred among early settlers, who had obtained their hands for a song. ”

“ Then they drove out to a plantation noted for its fine grade of sugar and molasses.
“As all of you know,” said Professor Strong, while waiting for an attendant to take them around, [174] “Sugar in the West Indies is made almost wholly from the sugar cane, which is cut down when it is ripe and hauled to the mills. The mills are of all sorts, from the most primitive of old Spanish days to the up-to-date American mill which costs many thousands of dollars to erect. ”

“ As the sugar-cane is usually cultivated all over India, and the produce of its juice, in some form or other, is universally [458] used, and constitutes a valuable article of export from India when converted into sugar, it may not be out of place to describe the construction and use of the patriarchal and simple form of mill represented in the drawing, which is at the village of Belaspore, on the left bank of the Ganges, near Mirzapore, about thirty miles below Allahabad. ”

“ L. D. STICKNEY, says in his pamphlet on Florida, “It is a great mistake to suppose that sugar cannot be made to advantage without the investment of large capital. The cane produced on less than ten acres of ground, is usually ground in a wooden mill, which does not cost more than $100 (generally the work of the farmer himself) , while the juice is boiled in the common utensils of the kitchen, or at best, as the New England farmer manufactures his maple sugar. The yield is usually greater, in proportion to the stock worked, than where the machinery has cost ten or fifteen thousand dollars! ”

“ In contrast with the cultivation of cacao, coffee and tobacco, sugar planting requires a large outlay of capital. The fields must be carefully prepared, extensive ditching must be done in order to provide irrigation during the dry season; the fields must be cleaned repeatedly while the cane is growing; and when the cane eventually matures, after fourteen to eighteen months of growth, it must upon cutting be immediately transported to the mill, where expensive machinery grinds it and fabricates sugar from the cane juice. ”

“ If the soil is not rich and moist replanting is more frequently necessary and in places like Louisiana, where there is annual frost, planting must be done each year. When the cane is ripe it is cut and brought from the field to a central sugar mill, where heavy iron rollers crush from it all the juice. This liquid drips through into troughs from which it is carried to evaporators where the water portion of the sap is eliminated and the juice left ”

“ 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. ”

“ The fields are divided into sections and cut at different intervals so as to provide a succession of ripe cane for the mill, and furnish steady employment for the several hundred peons.
The factory is modern in nearly every respect; its capacity is from five to eight tons of sugar daily, of good quality. It required a number of years to bring the heavy machinery over the mountains from Buenaventura. The more cumbersome pieces were slowly drawn up the steep slopes with the aid of block and tackle and oxen ”

“ There are about 900 other men, Kafirs and Coolies, employed on the farm. I was shown all the various processes of sugar manufacture, from the crushing of the cane, to the crystallising of the sugar. The first sorts are ready for sale in forty-eight hours; other qualities require a week, and again even as much as six monthsPg 92 to perfect them. There is some wonderful machinery in the mill.
The Trappist establishment at Marionhill is one which should be seen by everyone visiting Natal. It is reached by rail from Durban in about an hour's ride to the Pine Town station. ”

“ But in many parts of the island sugar is also made from the sugar-cane. The rollers of the mill used for this purpose are worked by the endless screw instead of cogs, and are turned with the hand by means of a bar passing through one of the rollers which is higher than the other. As an article of traffic amongst the natives it is not considerable, nor have they the art of distilling arrack, the basis of which is molasses, along with the juice of the anau or of the coconut palm in a state of fermentation. ”

“ This mill is owned by the descendants of Cortés and is still in operation.
Thirty years later sugar was shipped from Mexico to Peru and Spain, and the production of the commodity was maintained steadily until 1791. In that year all the cane-growing countries of western America received a stimulus from the wholesale destruction of the plantations and mills of Santo Domingo.
In Mexico natural conditions are very favorable to sugar culture, but the growth of the industry has been retarded by the primitive methods in vogue, the inadequacy of transportation facilities and political disturbances. ”

“ I have been taking my daily walk round the island, and visited the sugar mill and the threshing mill again. ”

“ All castes plant sugarcane, turmeric, and opium, although potatoes, tobacco, ginger, ghuiyán (arum) , shakarqand (sweet potatoes) are only grown, as a rule, by Kachhis and Muráos. "The sugar mills are always of wood. The ordinary succession is sugarcane, then wheat or gram, then barley. The produce is sold in the form of gur, or coarse brown sugar, to merchants from Shábjahánpur who make advances to the cultivators. An average crop is 1,100 lbs. per acre, and the price is about 30 tbs. for a rupee. The bye products, the crushed stalks, are in- valuable as food for cattle. ”

“ The departments of Escuintla, Amatitlan, and Baja Verapaz are the districts in which the largest areas are under cultivation. As a rule the small sugar mills are crude and modern machinery has not been introduced to a great extent, although the largest plantations are already supplied with the latest improvements. With the introduction on a larger scale of modern machinery and the latest processes the sugar industry would be certain to afford satisfactory profits. ”

“ It saves much trouble and expense. It also encourages small growers who could not afford to build mills and might in consequence abandon sugar raising. The leaves are all stripped off before the cane is shipped so that nothing but the stalks are sent. As the largest portion of sugar is in the part of the cane nearest the ground it is cut as close to the root as possible. After the juice has been crushed from the stalks by putting them several times through the rollers the cane, or begass, as it is called, is so dry that it can be used as fuel for running the mill machinery. ”

“ This statement at once discloses the great difficulty of adapting the free-labor system to the culture of sugar. A freeman naturally looks forward to the time when he can own the soil he cultivates. But for a negro, or for a Northern farmer without capital, to attempt the sugar culture on a small scale, would, as matters now stand, be utter folly. Perhaps, in time, we shall have large sugar-mills erected here as flour-mills are at the North; every man’s growth of cane to be manufactured for a fixed toll, or sold to the miller at current rates ”

“ Every mill has an extensive laboratory where skilled chemists are constantly engaged in sampling and analyzing cane, raw juices, syrups, sugars and molasses. In fact the chemical work is a most important feature in the raw-sugar house, beet-sugar factory or refinery. The superintendent should be an expert chemist, as the proper recovery of the sugar from the cane and beet juices is wholly dependent upon the technical control of manufacturing processes. ”

“ The capacity of the mill is 1000 tons of cane per day, which means about 125 tons of centrifugal sugar. It was completed at the end of 1913 at a cost of about one million dollars, and the first cane ground was from the 1914 crop.
In the Philippines cane is not planted every year. Herbert S. Walker, in his work “The Sugar Industry in the Island of Negros” (Manila, 1910) , says: “A decidedly large proportion of the total land under cultivation in Negros is not replanted every year, but is allowed to ratoon, from two to eight crops being taken off without replanting. ”