SUGAR FROM SORGHUM 
231 
Years of struggle preceded the final success of the best sugar 
production, made possible only by the persevering investiga¬ 
tions of chemists supported by the determination of the French 
Government to prevent the admission of foreign sugars. The 
full profitable employment of the beet-sugar factories of Europe 
and the financial success of the one enterprise in California, 
all warrant the hope of our establishing an indigenous sugar 
industry from sorghum as well. By means of scientific dis¬ 
covery carried on if requisite at experimental stations sup¬ 
ported by Government aid, or if undertaken commercially 
by private enterprises aided by full protection or an adequate 
system of bounties, the final result will be reached, and we 
shall save the millions now sent abroad for sugar, and estab¬ 
lish our independence in this particular of the rest of the world. 
It is not meant that the sorghum growers should profit at 
the expense of other sugar growers. It has been indicated 
that our great country can grow several kinds of sugar crops. 
Each is to contribute its share. “There should be no enmity 
between the grower of sorghum, the sugar beet, and the sugar¬ 
cane, but all should work in harmony for the general good.” 1 
It will be observed that I have not attempted to give a his¬ 
tory of the sorghum enterprise, nor to dwell upon the evolu¬ 
tion of the mechanical or chemical methods which have cost 
so much time and money with so little success. The very 
latest series of experiments of diffusion and its chemistry as 
conducted under the direction of the chemist of the Agricul¬ 
tural Bureau himself, at Fort Scott, is placed at your service, 
and the failure to solve the sugar problem but increases the 
duties of students of plant chemistry, whose researches and 
faithful studies will alone make it possible to surmount many 
of these difficulties, we trust in the near future. 
1 Bui. No. 5, p. 187. 
