APPENDIX. 157 



success of the efforts and experiments has proved fully com- 

 mensurate with the expectations that had been entertained. 

 Sugar of the first quality has been produced, and with no 

 more trouble than is experienced in the manufacture of 

 maple sugar. These processes have been carried on in 

 Maine, in Massachusetts, in New York, in Pennsylvania, in 

 Ohio, and in Illinois, with equal success. 



" But, though the experiments alluded to amounted to 

 actual demonstration, no experiment or enterprise on a large 

 scale, with machinery or equipments to manufacture sugar in 

 large quantities, was attempted. Indeed the prevailing idea 

 seemed to be, at that time, to introduce beet-sugar as a do- 

 mestic manufacture, and efforts were directed rather to the in- 

 troduction of processes and machinery whereby each farmer 

 might make his own sugar, than to the establishment of the 

 business on a large scale. If this was an error, as we are 

 disposed to think it was, no great harm arose from it, inas- 

 much as, from the prevailing low price of sugars, interest in 

 the subject subsided, and finally it was laid aside altogether. 



" The truth is, the country was not ripe for the enterprise. 

 It did not feel the need of emancipating itself from depend- 

 ence upon the sugar of other nations. The people were re- 

 covering from the great commercial disaster of 1837, and new 

 enterprises and new speculations that promised readier and 

 greater returns engaged their energies, 



" Besides, the country was not ripe for it in another respect. 

 We were less than twenty millions of people. The emigra- 

 tion to the West was draining the young and active elements 

 of the population from the old States, and the emigrants 

 were more intent upon establishing their domiciles in new 

 locations than upon engaging in new manufactures. Those 

 great States, which have outstripped in population, wealth, 

 and influence so many of the older States, were then set- 

 tling; their character had not been determined; their re- 

 sources had not been ascertained ; their great and glorious 

 future had not been revealed. 



" We are now in a changed condition of things : our twenty 



