130 ANNUAL REPORT. 



The Ottawa companv was, however, a failure financially, and for 

 the following year, 1886, the Parkinson Sugar Company was organ- 

 ized at F'ort Scott, Kansas, and a commodious works or factory estab- 

 lished as a nucleus in which the department could pursue experiments 

 still further. The buildings, and to a great extent the machinery, for 

 these works was furnished by the compauy, but the more important 

 aids and fixtures, in the form of a coraplets difi"usion battery, carbon - 

 atative apparatus, filter presses and vacuum pans, were furnished by 

 the department of agriculture. 



Almost, if not the entire, sorghum crop for 1886 tributary to Fort 

 Scott was consumed at these works in purely theoretical and experi- 

 mental work, concerning which Dr. Wiley, the United States chem- 

 ist in charge, states in his official report as follows : 



"In a general review of the work the most important point sug- 

 gested is the failure of the experiments to demonstrate the commer- 

 cial practicability of manufacturing sugar from sorghum." 



Thus far upwards of $100,000 of public money had been expended 

 in these experiments, and with failure as the only acknowledged re- 

 sult; but the management of the Fort Scott company, having an abid- 

 ing faith and being still possessed of undaunted perseverance, " made 

 careful selection of the essential parts of the process already used, 

 omitted the non-essential and cumbrous parts, availed themselves of 

 all the experience of the past, and, in the season of 1887, attained 

 that success which finally placed sorghum sugar making among the 

 profitable industries of the country," 



The experiments of 1886 were substantially an effort to adapt the 

 juice of sorghum cane to the diffusion and carbonatative process, 

 instead of which the process should have been so modified or changed 

 as to meet the requirements of sorghum. 



Diffusion and carbonatation are employed in Germany and France, 

 and with great success, in extracting sugar from the beet root, but 

 the process in full and as there employed is not adapted to the manu- 

 facture of sugar from sorghum. 



This fact was recognized in 1886 by the Fort Scott management, 

 and in 1887 they, having by experience learned what best not to do 

 in order to treat sorghum juice successfully, were in a position of ad- 

 Tuntage, and prepared to derive all the benefits possible from the work 

 which had been undertaken by the department. 



The process of sugar making, as now developed is, briefly, nearly as 

 follows : The seed tops are removed from the cane while yet in the 

 field where grown. The fir.-st step at the factory is to separate the 



