148 ANNUAL KEPORT. 



Xow, I wish to say in regard to values, I had offered to me 

 there the very best quality of 'New Orleans molasses at twenty- 

 five cents; the second qualitj'^ for eleven cents; the third quality 

 for seven cents a gallon. The price of sugar was quoted to me 

 at two, two and one-half and four cents a pound. Now then, I 

 don't know as there has been a gallon of syrup produced from 

 the crop of amber cane raised in Minnesota during the past year 

 which has sold for less than fifty cents a gallon. There is enough 

 demand for the entire product here in Minnesota, so that we 

 need not trouble ourselves about an over-production until we 

 have met the demand for syrup. Taking all these things into 

 consideration, I do not think that we have met with sufficient 

 drawbacks as yet to discourage us in the growth of amber cane; 

 but there is everything to encourage us. In Louisiana they 

 calculate that they will get only one paying crop out of three or 

 four. 



There were two or three processes that I found in use at Gov. 

 Warmouth's which are not in general use upon other planta- 

 tions. The cane, instead of being put through the crusher in the 

 ordinary way, is torn to pieces by a shreder. The cane is 

 stripped and it is put into this machine and torn to pieces and 

 then passes through the rolls; and they claim that by this pro- 

 cess they make a gain of about twelve per cent in the extraction 

 of the juice. I was talking there with their chemist and he in- 

 formed me that they had raised the product of the juice from 

 sixty-eight to eighty per cent. Gov. Warmouth has introduced 

 the most recent and improved machinery to be had, and one of 

 his improvements is the use of a bagasse burner; by the use of 

 that the cane passes on to a separator which conveys it along 

 until it drops in front of the burner. It is not handled from the 

 time the cane is put in; the men do not touch it from the time 

 it is laid onto the mule cart out in the cane field. He has laid a 

 tramway from the mill out to his cane field, so that one mule 

 can haul seven cars and does the work of twenty-eight mules or 

 horses in the ordinary way; and from the time that the cane is 

 taken up and laid on the car the men do not touch it again until 

 it reaches the mill; it all goes by machinery, and the cane goes 

 oft" into smoke one way and the juice into syrup and sugar the 

 other, and in that way, by the application of labor-saving ma- 

 chinery and the most improved machinery that he can get, Gov. 

 Warmouth is overcoming the discouragements and drawbacks 

 that other planters have been contending with upon their plan- 



