26 THE SUGAR INDUSTRY. 



tions for culture of the cane in a small way. A copy of it will be sent free to any- 

 one who applies to Baton Rouge for it in person or by mail. 



The difficulties in securing a central factory for working up sugar cane are 

 dependent entirely upon the slowness with which sugar cane plantations can be 

 established. Cane plantations must be established before the factory will be secured, 

 and farmers are slow to establish a crop which requires three years of work and 

 patience, unless they have "an assurance doubly assured" of a factory. 



DESCRIPTION OF MANUFACTURE. 



Cane is hauled from the field and dumped alongside a moving platform, which 



SUGARHOUSE ON ADELINE PLANTATION, FRANKLIN, LA. 



This plant is owned and operated by the Oxnard family, who are also interested in the beet sugar 

 factories at Norfolk and Grand Island, Nebraska, and Chino, California. Like the latter plant, the 

 Adeline sugarhouse has all modern improvements. This is the only instance we know of in the 

 United States in which the comparative merits of the cane and beet have been closely compared for 

 a series of years. 



conveys it to the mill, and drops it, end on, into a chute which abuts upon the first 

 mill generally a three-roller mill, giving two pressures. Thence a conveyor takes 

 the crushed cane to a second mill, where it gets a final squeezing and is ejected in a 

 pretty dry state (called "bagasse"). This is conveyed by a third carrier to the 

 bagasse furnace, wherein it is consumed as fuel and supplies steam power and 

 steam heat to the sugar house. 



Or, the cane may be cut up into small pieces by specially designed knives and 

 carried into large cast-iron cells known as diffusers. Here they are treated by the 

 diffusion process, as described later on in the chapter on manufacture of sugar from 

 beets. 



The juice, as it runs from the mill, is strained and limed and passes into theclari- 

 fiers, where the temperature is raised and the lighter impurities come to the surface 



