COMMITTEES ON BEHALF OF THE GOVERNMENT 289 



for many years before and after the Government entered on its 

 investigations a million or more pounds of sugar were manu- 

 factured annually in the United States from sorghum, the in- 

 dustry was always a precarious one, and quite as likely to entail 

 a loss as to yield a profit. At the critical time in its history a 

 number of circumstances besides the difficulty regarding the 

 use of alcohol militated against its development. Among these 

 the most important was that the price of sugar was unusually 

 low, a condition brought about largely by the growth of the beet- 

 sugar industry which proved remunerative and engrossed the 

 attention of agriculturists in those very sections of the country in 

 which it was expected that the cultivation of sorghum sugar 

 would prove a benefit. In 1893 Congress discontinued appro- 

 priations for sorghum investigations, the Secretary of Agricul- 

 ture having remarked in his report for that year: 



" The experiments in sorghum sugar may, it is believed, be discontinued, the 

 results of experiments already made leaving apparently nothing more for the 

 Federal Government to undertake. A stage is now reached when individual 

 enterprise can and should take advantage of what the Department has accom- 

 plished." 128 



Thus the activities of the Government terminated without 

 producing the result which the committee of the Academy 

 expected. The potentialities of sorghum as a source of sugar were 

 demonstrated, however, and the time may yet come when new 

 agricultural and commercial conditions and the progress of inven- 

 tion may bring it into actual use as one of the principal sugar- 

 producing plants. In the meantime, the money and thought 

 expended in investigations were not wasted, as sorghum has 

 proved to be very valuable as a source of table syrups and as a 

 fodder-plant for cattle. 129 



128 Rep. Seer. Agric. for 1893, Nov. 20, 1893, pp. 33, 34 (J. Sterling Morton, Secretary). 

 See also p. 189 of the same report. 



129 See H. W. Wiley. The relation of chemistry to the progress of agriculture. Yearbook 

 U. S. Dep. Agric. for 1899, pp. 242, 243. 



