THE ALABAMA OPPORTUNITY. 69 



was spent on the farm. It was a picturesque sight, this old 

 cane mill, when it was at -work in the short cane season, but, 

 like the old style cotton gin it is destined to disappear from the 

 earth. "Efficiency," "utility," the eternal cry for these things 

 has sounded the doom of the old style mule power cane mill 

 and its day is closing. 



It did not extract a sufficient amount of juice. That 

 was what w^as the matter with it. They went to putting 

 up steam rollers for cane mills in Louisiana. These rollers 

 were in three sets and fastened close together. Instead of the 

 mule and his tread mill a puffing and noisy but powerful station- 

 ary engine was used. 



The boiler of this stationary engine had three or four ob- 

 jects in life. In the first place it operated the close grinding 

 cane rollers, then it furnished the steam to force the cane juice 

 from its tank through a pipe into the boiling vats, the steam 

 then filled the coils of pipe for the cooking of the syrup. This 

 is the sort of machinery that Mr. Black has established on his 

 sugar farm. 



OLD VERSUS THE NEW. 



The per cent, of juice that the old-fashioned tread miM rollers 

 squeezed out of the cane was the subject of an interesting dis- 

 cussion at the recent meeting of the Interstate Cane Growers 

 Association at Montgomery. Dr. H. W. Wiley, of the National 

 Agricultural Department was of the opinion that the old style 

 roUers' ext'-acted 50 per cent, in juice, of the weight of cane. 

 \V. B. Roddenberry, the famous syrup raiser of Cairo, Ga., did 

 not concede this. He argued that when the mill started its 

 Cay's work all screwed up it no doubt got out 50 per cent, of 

 the juice, but before night invariably the screws were loosened 

 ?nd the mill was squeezing out only 30 per cent, in juice, of 

 the weight of the cane. 



But there is no room for argument on the advantages of the 

 close set steam operated rollers, as long as they extract 80 per 

 cent, and sometimes more than that. 



It is the intelligent use of modern machinery, the steam 

 rollers, the coiled steam pipes and all that which has made ex- 

 Sheriflf Black's Syrup producing so successful. 



