288 NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 



of Agriculture, and is deserving of every aid that Congress may 

 be willing to grant for its encouragement and prosecution." 

 (p. 24.) Again: 



" The spirit of scientific investigation which has led the Department of Agri- 

 culture through its chemical and agronomic researches to results of such impor- 

 tance towards developing a new industry of national value has been liberally fos- 

 tered by the General Government, and to some extent also by certain of the States. 

 The fruits of this policy are already beginning to show themselves in the decided 

 success which has attended the production of sugar from sorghum on a commercial 

 scale in the few cases in which the rules of good practice, evolved especially by 

 the researches made at the laboratory of the Department of Agriculture, have 

 been intelligently followed. Sufficiently full returns from the crop of 1882 have 

 already come to hand to convince us that the Industry is probably destined to be 

 a commercial success " (p. 53). 



The expectations of the committee, though doubtless justified 

 by the knowledge available at the time at which they were 

 formed, were not destined to be fulfilled, owing to a combination 

 of circumstances which could not be foreseen. Congress con- 

 tinued to appropriate money for sorghum investigations for a 

 number of years and the Department of Agriculture carried on 

 experiments with great industry and earnestness, but the scope 

 of these activities gradually narrowed as the real nature of the 

 problem began to be perceived, and finally in 1893, '^hey were 

 discontinued. 



In the same year in which the committee of the Academy 

 reported (1882) the actual manufacture of sugar at the Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture was found unprofitable and was abandoned. 

 Attention was then concentrated on increasing the sugar-content 

 and other desirable qualities of the sorghum plant and on finding 

 a process for the manufacture of sugar at a low cost. It was 

 finally determined that the only ready methods of causing the 

 sugar to crystallize in large quantities and of freeing it from the 

 starch and gummy substances with which it was associated in- 

 volved the use of large quantities of alcohol. The high tax on al- 

 cohol made its use prohibitive and the industry thus encountered 

 an obstacle which it has never been able to surmount. Although 



