40 REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF AGRICULTURE. 



I sent to Mr. E. Sieg, of jSTew Orleans, whom I have to thank for many 

 favors in the preparation of this report, and his answer thereto: 



Deak Sin: I desire to thank you for copies of the "Sucrerie Indigene," containing 

 articles by M. Riffurd on the diffusion process applied to sugar-cane in Aska. It you 

 have leisure and inclination, will you kindly answer the following questions: 



1. Has the diffusion process been tried iu Louisiana any further than indicated in 

 Dr. Kratz's report? 



2. How many factories in the State are now using tins process? 



:5. How do you explain the indifference with which the planters generally regard 

 the process? 



With your permission I desire to publish the answers which you may give. I will 

 return the copies of the "Sncrerie" as soon as 1 have doue with them. 

 Respectfully, 



H. W. WILEY, 



Chemist, 



R. Sieg, 26 Korth Charles Street, New Orleans, La. 



New Orleans, December 15, 1883. 



Demi Sir: Before replying to your questions iu detail you will permit me to give 

 you :t short, outline of the situation of the sugar industry in Louisiana, as wo found 

 it in 1873, when we introduced the diffusion process in this State. 



We were then still sharing the common belief of our planters, that they could and 

 did, with their more powerful mills at least, extract from 70 to 72 pounds of juice out 

 of every 100 pounds of cane. We only hoped to increase this, by diffusion* to 84 to 

 85 pounds, so that by adopting the process our planters should gain about 2U per cent. 



You may, therefore, judge how great must have been our surprise when, by the use 

 of scales, by the measuring of the juice, and by the usual polariseopic tests, we ascer- 

 tained beyond a doubt that only a very few mills in this country did extract more 

 than 55 to 58 pounds of juice; that instead of obtaining only 20 per cent, more juice 

 by diffusion, the yield was really increased from 40 to 50 per cent., and that this juice, 

 in spite of the various defects in our primitive machinery, with its unavoidable irregu- 

 larities and delays, had rather gained than lost in purity. 



The discovery of these important facts made, of course, a deep impression upon our 

 planters, and if our apparatus and some of its accessories had beeu as perfect as they 

 should have been, and as inexpensive as they could be made at present, diffusion 

 would have superseded every other means of extracting the juice from the cane, just 

 as it has done this now in the modern beet-sugar industry. 



Unfortunately, the first apparatus which we imported from Europe had been the 

 one used by Mr. J. Robert, the inventor, and his father before him, iu their original 

 expei iments, and it was handed over to us by the latter, as if for the purpose of get- 

 ting rid of it. Of course, after using it in our first short trial, we, too, concluded that 

 it was utterly useless for the diffusion process in general, and its application to cane 

 in particular. 



Subsequently our mechanics tried their skill upon the improvement of the appa- 

 ratus, designing one, which in some respects was perhaps a trifle better ; iu other 

 respects, however, even less good than the first one had been. 



Wc only gained one point with it — through the reduction of its dimensions the ap- 

 paratus worked faster. But the much desired and promised economies in labor as 

 well as in cost of construction were really not attained. Consequently, when our 

 sugar-planters inspected our work iu 1874-75 they readily jumped at the conclusion 

 that a superior and more reasonable apparatus could not be devised, and these two 

 object ions were, for a time at least, fatal to the process. And then the same me- 

 chanics who at the beginning had helped to advance the cause of diffusion, having 

 lost their pecuuiary interest in it, joined the opposition from rival inventors to pull 

 it down. 



Strangely enough, the same observation has recently been made regarding one of 

 the greatest concerns of Paris, which was criticised for having done a similar service 

 to the sugar manufacturers of their country, by influencing them to use some costly 

 patent presses; and to this circumstance as much as to any other the inferiority of 

 the French sugar industry of to-day was rightly or wrongly principally attributed. 



Another objection was also made", viz., that diffusion would give our planters such 

 an amount of juice that with their former and even present means of evaporation 

 they would be entirely incapable of keeping up with the extraction, and that in con- 

 sequence thereof they could be compelled to work either slower, consuming less cane 

 per day, or to throw their juice away, as they now do, by leaving it in the bagasse. 



After looking very carefully into this last-mentioned objection and finding that it 

 was quite correct, and that out of our 1,200 sugar-houses not more than 16 or 18 had 

 evaporators deserving the name, while the sugar-houses blessed with these had been 



