COMMITTEES ON BEHALF OF THE GOVERNMENT 289 
for many years before and after the Government entered on its 
investigations a million or more pounds of sugar were manu- 
factured annually in the United States from sorghum, the in- 
dustry was always a precarious one, and quite as likely to entail 
a loss as to yield a profit. At the critical time in its history a 
number of circumstances besides the difficulty regarding the 
use of alcohol militated against its development. Among these 
the most important was that the price of sugar was unusually 
low, a condition brought about largely by the growth of the beet- 
sugar industry which proved remunerative and engrossed the 
attention of agriculturists in those very sections of the country in 
which it was expected that the cultivation of sorghum sugar 
would prove a benefit. In 1893 Congress discontinued appro- 
priations for sorghum investigations, the Secretary of Agricul- 
ture having remarked in his report for that year: 
“The experiments in sorghum sugar may, it is believed, be discontinued, the 
results of experiments already made leaving apparently nothing more for the 
Federal Government to undertake. A stage is now reached when individual 
enterprise can and should take advantage of what the Department has accom- 
plished.” 15 
Thus the activities of the Government terminated without 
producing the result which the committee of the Academy 
expected. The potentialities of sorghum as a source of sugar were 
demonstrated, however, and the time may yet come when new 
agricultural and commercial conditions and the progress of inven- 
tion may bring it into actual use as one of the principal sugar- 
producing plants. In the meantime, the money and thought 
expended in investigations were not wasted, as sorghum has 
proved to be very valuable as a source of table syrups and as a 
fodder-plant for cattle.*” 
™ Rep. Secr. Agric. for 1893, Nov. 20, 1893, pp. 33, 34 (J. Sterling Morton, Secretary). 
See also p. 189 of the same report. 
™ See H. W. Wiley. The relation of chemistry to the progress of agriculture. Yearbook 
U. S. Dep. Agric. for 1899, pp. 242, 243. 
