A January"  m5m'}    Development  of  the  Sugar  Industry.  17 
tals  is  poured  into  hogsheads  having  openings  at  the  bottom  for  the 
drainage  of  the  molasses.  The  residue  of  sugar  in  the  cask,  as 
made  by  this  process,  is  usually  termed  muscovado. 
In  some  raw  sugar  factories  the  semi-liquid  mass  of  sugar  crys- 
tals, or  masse  culte,  was  poured  into  a  conical  mould  having  an 
opening  at  the  point  for  the  escape  of  molasses.  The  loaves  of 
sugar  thus  made  varied  in  color  from  yellow  to  nearly  black.  In 
some  cases  the  loaves  of  raw  sugar  were  whitened  by  packing  them 
in  wet  clay.  The  clay  absorbed  the  molasses  by  capillarity  and  left 
a  loaf  of  sugar  which  was  nearly  white.  It  was  recognized  that  the 
loss  by  this  process,  through  solution  of  sugar,  was  considerable; 
nevertheless  this  crude  method  of  refining  was  formerly  quite 
common. 
,  Most  of  the  raw  sugar  made  in  tropical  America  during  the 
early  days  was  sent  to  Europe  for  refining.  Before  this  time  the 
refining  monopoly  of  the  Venetians  had  been  broken,  and  had  passed 
to  Amsterdam,  which  held  the  supremacy  in  this  branch  of  sugar 
manufacture  for  several  centuries  afterwards. 
We  come  now  to  the  birth  of  the  modern  sugar  industry,  which 
may  be  said  to  date  from  1806,  when  Napoleon  announced  his  famous 
blockade  of  the  continent  of  Europe  against  England.  While  his 
famous  edict  failed  in  its  main  purpose,  it  had  a  great  influence 
in  other  ways,  for  it  stimulated  manufacturing  and  the  arts  to  an 
unprecedented  degree.  In  order  to  relieve  the  hunger  of  the  people 
for  sugar,  heroic  efforts  were  made  to  devise  a  substitute.  In  some 
parts  of  Europe,  as  Bohemia,  maple  sugar  was  manufactured,  but 
the  yield  was  not  sufficient  to  supply  even  local  demands.  The 
famous  chemist,  Proust,  then  devised  a  process  for  obtaining  the 
crystallizable  sugar,  dextrose,  from  grape  juice.  Another  chemist, 
Kirchhof,  also  invented  a  process  at  this  time  for  manufacturing 
dextrose  from  starch,  and  efforts  were  begun  to  establish  a  new 
starch-sugar  industry.  Dextrose,  however,  lacked  the  sweetening 
power  of  sucrose,  and  the  consumers  of  sugar  refused  to  content 
themselves  with  such  a  substitute. 
About  50  years  before  this  a  German  chemist,  Margraf,  had  suc- 
ceeded in  isolating  sucrose  from  the  juice  of  the  beet.  Another 
chemist,  Achard,  followed  up  this  discovery  and  in  1800  built  a  small 
factory  for  obtaining  beet  sugar  on  a  commercial  scale.  The  new 
industry,  however,  did  not  prosper  at  first  and  it  was  not  until  some 
ten  years  later  that  improvements  made  in  France  showed  possibili- 
