29 



colored syrup, and because lime darkens it they are afraid to use 

 lime. If every boiler would use lime cautiously next season, let- 

 ting color be considered after flavor, there would be more real 

 advancement in the industry than ten years of present methods 

 of attempted improvement will bring. At present, less than ten 

 per cent, of the boilers use lime or practice defecation of any kind. 



CAN THE FARMER MAKE HIS OWN SUGAR? 



This is a question naturally asked by many who have not 

 studied the problem to any extent. 



Most certainly not, if profit is to be considered. A farmer 

 might have a mill and make his own patent process flour, but it 

 would not pay him. His business is rather to grow the wheat, 

 while skilled men attend to the milling. 



While first class Amber syrup can be made by proper means 

 with a small investment and a fair amount of skill, sugar making 

 must be left to skilled men under the direction of a chemist or 

 expert. Such experts must be trained to work with northern 

 cane, and not brought from southern localities where the con- 

 ditions are very different. Such persons though experts at home 

 would only be students, for a time at least, at the north. In order 

 to manufacture sugar there must be quite a large investment of 

 capital in machinery ; to manage this there must be skilled men, 

 and over all must be a man who by chemical tests reads the vary- 

 ing conditions of the juice as it runs from the crusher from day 

 to day, and whose work is law with all other employees. Until 

 there are such experts capital should be most cautious. Fine 

 sugar works with cosily machinery will not alone bring sugar, as 

 the many past failures show. It would be far better for all con- 

 cerned to wait ten years before another step is taken in this prom- 

 ising industry than to have it blighted in the start by failures. 

 With capital carefully invested in proper machinery, the works 

 located in the midst of cane fields, and run by good workmen and 

 a skilled chemist, there is no doubt but money can be made as 

 rapidly as in any manufacturing busines?. When success comes, 

 the farmer will sell his cane at the sugar works as he does his 

 wheat at the mill, but he will not be a sugar boiler and farmer 

 combined. 



