19 



Proximity of cane fields. Another point which must be taken into 

 consideration in the location of a factory is the distance which the cane 

 is to be transported. This is a matter which of course the farmers rais- 

 ing the cane are more interested in than the proprietors of the factory, 

 when the cane is grown by contract. With good roads, in a level coun- 

 try, it is easy to draw from 1 to 2 tons of field cane at each load. The 

 average price which is paid for such cane at the present time is $2 per 

 ton. It is evident that at a given distance, varying according to the 

 price of teams arid labor in each locality, the cost of transportation 

 would equal the total receipts for the cane; in this case the fanner 

 would have nothing left to pay for the raising of the cane and profit. 

 Evidently true economy, from an agricultural point of view, would re- 

 quire the cane to be grown as near the factory as possible. It would 

 be well, indeed, if all the cane could be grown within a radius of 1 

 mile from the factory. This would give, in round numbers, 2,000 acres 

 tributary to a factory. With an ordinary season this ought to produce 

 20,000 tons of cane. The lengthening of the radius of this circle by one- 

 half mile would give the greatest distance to be hauled 1 miles, thus 

 vastly increasing the surface tributary to the central factory. It is 

 true that at the present time farmers are easily found who are willing 

 to draw their cane 4, 5, and even 6 miles, but this condition of affairs 

 can not be continued when the business is fully established and the 

 factories in sharp competition with each other. In case the exhausted 

 chips are to be returned to the soil as fertilizer the importance of a cen- 

 trally located factory, as described, is doubly emphasized. 



Fuel. A cheap and abundant supply of fuel is not less important 

 than the raw material to be manufactured into sugar. As far as the 

 sorghum-sugar industry is concerned the coal which is used for fuel is 

 transported almost exclusively by rail. In locating a factory, therefore, 

 both for convenience of shipping the product and for receiving a sup- 

 ply of fuel, it should be placed sufficiently near a railway line to enable 

 it to be connected therewith by a switch. It is better, however, that 

 the switch should be of some considerable length than that the \va:er 

 supply should be remote or the cane in distant fields. 



The problem of burning the exhausted chips has not yet been success- 

 fully solved, and I doubt very much whether it will be.* Save the soften- 

 eiiiug which the chips undergo in the process of diffusion the diflicult.y 

 of expressing the water from them is as great as that of expressing the 

 juice from fresh chips. Thus to dry the chips sufficiently to make them 

 economical for fuel would require a vast expenditure of power, which 

 would hardly be supplied by the increased supply of steam generated by 

 their combustion. Experiments during the seasons 1887-'88 at Magnolia 

 Plantation, Louisiana, showed that an ordinary cane-mill was poorly 

 adapted to the pressure of exhausted cane chips. The feeding of the 



* Since this was written further experiments are more favorable to the possibility 

 of economically using the chips for fuel. 



