460 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



must suffer. In this trial we have the surest guarantee against a like occurrence. 

 Our bought wit will be long remembered. It will teach us that caution is the parent 

 of safety, and with this experience and prudence as our guide, we have already 

 passed the Rubicon, and the future will dawn with brighter auspices. The con- 

 clusion of this whole matter can be summed up in a nut-shell. First, sugar and 

 syrup have become staple articles. Our people must have them ; and this being 

 true, can not we supply our o.wn wants cheaper than by procuring them from other 

 hands, paying them a living profit, to which must be added transportation? I be- 

 lieve the question as to the capabilities of our soil in a general way for produc- 

 ing sorghum is an admitted fact. The next, and what most concerns us here in 

 this latitude, is sufficient length of time in which to mature the plant, and allow 

 sufficient time to work it up. 



So far as I have been able to calculate on the matter, our average work season 

 is thirty days. It is often much longer, but frequently short of that length. My 

 observation goes to show that we lose more by not commencing promptly, and hin- 

 derance by inefficient machinery, than we do through actual want of time. An 

 important matter with us, then, is to begin our work as soon as it will do, and be 

 able to prosecute it without interruption until completed. 



This implies the best of machinery, the most efficient mills, and (right here I 

 wish to say) the more complete extraction of the juice, as well as the best methods 

 of defecation and evaporation. 



In justification of some of the foregoing remarks, I wish to quote a much better 

 authority in part of a letter written by Prof. H. W. Wiley, published in the Sorghum 

 Growers' Guide and Farm Journal of the present month. He says : 



"I have been criticized by the over-zealous friends of sorghum for admitting the 

 possibility of failure in the sugar industry. But what could you expect in an im- 

 port industry still tottering on its first legs, when the full-grown ones in Germany 

 and in Louisiana are tottering on their last ones. The sorghum sugar maker who 

 has lost money may console himself with this thought, viz : That his cane-sugar 

 brother in Louisiana and his beet-sugar cousin in Silesia have not done much bet- 

 ter. But sorghum syrup has not proved to be a failure when the industry has been 

 conducted in a small way and by the best methods. It is true that many who have 

 gone into the syrup business on a large scale have felt most seriously the tremend- 

 ous fall in prices and the overstocking of the market. Three years ago I helped 

 make about 200 barrels of syrup which was sold readily in Chicago at nearly 40 

 cents a gallon. This same syrup could hardly be disposed of now at 20 cents. 



" When it is remembered that it costs quite 20 cents a gallon to make the syrup, 

 it is only seen that there is little prospect for a profit. But in a small way much 

 better results are obtained. I suppose that even during this season it is no unusual 

 thing for the small manufacturer to have received an average of 40 cents for his 

 product. The sorghum syrup industry is the true democracy ot nianuf actu ring 

 and so far has not done well as an aristocratic monopoly. The chief thing to be 

 looked at in the future is to secure the production in a small way of the best grades 

 of table syrup. A syrup of proper density, clear and translucent, of a light amber 

 color, and free from all sorghum taste, is the syrup of the future. Such a syrup 

 can be made in a small way. Not that every farmer should have his own appara- 



