LECTURES AND ESSAYS READ AT INSTITUTES. 247 



hear the wind whistle through its frost-bitten leaves. A few efforts were made 

 to convert it into sweets for the table, but, as a rule, they were miserable fail- 

 ures; and even to the present day the bare mention of the word "sorghum" 

 almost operates as an emetic upon weak stomachs. But while the unthinking 

 masses had become disgusted and faithless there was a thinking few whose 

 minds grasped the fact that the Chinese cane, under all its opprobrium and 

 prejudice, was very rich in saccharine matter; but individual knowledge of 

 this fact had scarcely kept its memory alive, but for the persevering efforts of 

 one single man. That man was the honorable W. Gr. L'Duc, our late Com- 

 missioner of Agriculture. Deeply imbued with a conviction of the intrinsic 

 value of sorghum, or Northern cane, as it is now appropriately named, he insti- 

 tuted and for years continued a series of experiments in which the scientific 

 and practical were combined. Much ridicule was heaped upon him by the 

 unthinking public, but still he pressed steadily and perseveringly forward. It 

 was Byron who said of old General Suwarrow — 



"Your wise cues sneei-ed at him in phrases witty, 

 To which he answered not — but took the city." 



This was substantially the case with Commissioner L'Duc. There are 

 living men, who ten years ago ridiculed his action, who would now be glad to 

 arrogate the credit of this action to themselves. Those musty and prosy and 

 much ridiculed volumes went out from the Department of Agriculture 

 throughout the laud. A few men besides myself thought them worth reading. 

 Some proved to be "seed sown in good soil," though much of it "fell upon 

 rocks and among thorns." After a long silence, the first voice we heard was 

 from far off' Minnesota. There in their frigid and snow-bound climate they 

 had acclimated this semi-tropical cereal, and succeeded in perfecting a variety 

 now known far and wide as the Minnesota Amber. Meanwhile, a four-years 

 war had cut off our intercourse with the south, and almost annihilated our 

 foreign commerce. In the absence of sugar from Louisiana and Cuba, the 

 home-made production tasted better than ever before. Southern Ohio, Illi- 

 nois, Missouri, and Kansas all began to dabble in the sugar business with 

 varied success. Whether these experimenters stimulated the Department of 

 Agriculture, or the Department stimulated them, is a question I will not 

 further discuss, but will proceed to results. Careful experiments, aided by 

 science, demonstrated that the northern cane possessed as pure elements of 

 sugar as the cane of the south. It was found that defecation, or cleansing as 

 we used to call it in old sugar bush vocabulary, could remove all unpleasant 

 flavors and produce a syrup as pure and palatable as strained honey, and a 

 sugar equal to the best granulated article on the market. Very few persons 

 in these parts have atiy conception of the magnitude of this new sugar 

 industry. It is receiving more or less attention in almost every State in the 

 union, south as well as north. Kansas now holds the front rank with a pro- 

 duction of 3,899,440 gallons of syrup in 1881, and 6,181,020 gallons in 1882. 

 From other States of the union we have no condensed statements, but I trust 

 no one will accuse me of extravagance when I assume that all the other States 

 combined must have produced as much as Kansas. There we have a total of 

 12,362,040 gallons as the product of the northern cane crop of 1882. Kansas 

 estimates her product at $2,781,459, which doubled would produce the sum of 

 85,562,918. Now the sugar crop of the south for 1882 was unprecedently 

 large, being estimated at 250,000,000 pounds of sugar and 18,000,000 gallons 

 of syrup. For purposes of comparison were this all reduced to sugar, it would 

 appear that about one-quarter of the entire quantity was the product of the 



