8 



In regard to the methods of manufacture employed at this station, it 

 is necessary to speak with some degree of caution. In the report of 

 Mr. Hughes we have, from his stand-point, a brief but graphic descrip- 

 tion of the method employed. I have never been of the opinion that 

 sugar making from sorghum could be successfully practiced on a small 

 scale, and the experiments carried on by the Department of Agriculture 

 for two successive seasons at Eio Grande have only served to confirm 

 me in this belief. The nature of the processes employed, the character 

 of machinery required, and the kind of skilled labor needed, all com- 

 bine to render the manufacture of sugar on a small scale commercially 

 unsuccessful. I do not see any favorable result in this direction from 

 the two years' trial at Eio Grande. For the present manufacturing 

 season Mr. Hughes does not give the total amount of sugar made, ex- 

 cept from a portion of the crop, and this is no evidence whatever that 

 its cost has been sufficiently low to enable it to be put upon the market 

 in competition with other sugars. I should have been glad had the re 

 suit been otherwise, for the successful inauguration of an era of sugar- 

 making conducted by farmers would have been a great blessing to vast 

 agricultural regions. 



In regard to the machinery employed my opinion has already been 

 expressed. I have said repeatedly, both in official publications and in 

 other places, that I regarded the system of cutting and preparing the 

 cane devised by Mr. Hughes, and now in use in every sorghum factory 

 in the United States and in at least one cane-sugar factory, as the very 

 best which has yet been invented. I have long been convinced that 

 for the extraction of sugar from cane of both kinds the greater the de- 

 gree of comminution of the chips the more successful the process will 

 be. The system of double shredding inaugurated by Mr. Hughes during 

 the past season tends to secure this end. It was in this direction also 

 that I urged last year for sugar-cane the construction of a shreddiug- 

 machine on* the principle of the shredder built by the Newell Universal 

 Mill Company of New York, for the purpose of preparing the pieces of 

 cane properly for the diffusion battery. This shredder I suggested 

 should be furnished with very fine steel knives, of the general pattern 

 of the shredder now in use, with short cylinders of large diameter, 

 driven at a very much higher rate of speed. Last year I suggested to 

 Mr. Fiske, the inventor of the machine above mentioned, the advis- 

 ability of building such a machine in duplicate for the purpose of re- 

 ducing the cane to as fine pieces as possible. The advantage of such a 

 shredder as this over the one used by Mr. Hughes would be principally 

 in its greater strength, and in the assurance that it could be run for 

 days, and perhaps a whole season through, without any necessity for 

 repairs. It is of the highest importance that the apparatus for cutting 

 and pulping the cane should be as effective as possible and built in two 

 sets, so that if one should be out of order the second could still be 

 used . 



