288 NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 
of Agriculture, and is deserving of every aid that Congress may 
be willing to grant for its encouragement and prosecution.” 
(p. 24.) Again: 
“The spirit of scientific investigation which has led the Department of Agri- 
culture through its chemical and agronomic researches to results of such impor- 
tance towards developing a new industry of national value has been liberally fos- 
tered by the General Government, and to some extent also by certain of the States. 
The fruits of this policy are already beginning to show themselves in the decided 
success which has attended the production of sugar from sorghum on a commercial 
scale in the few cases in which the rules of good practice, evolved especially by 
the researches made at the laboratory of the Department of Agriculture, have 
been intelligently followed. Sufficiently full returns from the crop of 1882 have 
already come to hand to convince us that the Industry is probably destined to be 
a commercial success” (p. 53). 
The expectations of the committee, though doubtless justified 
by the knowledge available at the time at which they were 
formed, were not destined to be fulfilled, owing to a combination 
of circumstances which could not be foreseen. Congress con- 
tinued to appropriate money for sorghum investigations for a 
number of years and the Department of Agriculture carried on 
experiments with great industry and earnestness, but the scope 
of these activities gradually narrowed as the real nature of the 
problem began to be perceived, and finally in 1893, they were 
discontinued. 
In the same year in which the committee of the Academy 
reported (1882) the actual manufacture of sugar at the Depart- 
ment of Agriculture was found unprofitable and was abandoned. 
Attention was then concentrated on increasing the sugar-content 
and other desirable qualities of the sorghum plant and on finding 
a process for the manufacture of sugar at a low cost. It was 
finally determined that the only ready methods of causing the 
sugar to crystallize in large quantities and of freeing it from the 
starch and gummy substances with which it was associated in- 
volved the use of large quantities of alcohol. The high tax on al- 
cohol made its use prohibitive and the industry thus encountered 
an obstacle which it has never been able to surmount. Although 
