Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1882 [PAGE 97]

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91 GENERAL CONCLUSIONS. 1. Seed should be planted as early as possible. 2. The proper time to begin cutting the cane for making sugar is when the seed is in the hardening dough. 3. The cane should be worked up as soon as possible after cutting. Cane which is cut in the afternoon or evening may safely be worked up the following morning. 4. The manufacture of sugar can be conducted properly only with improved apparatus and on a scale which would justify the erection of steam sugar works, with vacuum pans, steam defecators and evaporators, and the employment of a competent chemist to superintend the business. The same is true for the manufacture of glucose from the seed. Our experiments were made with the ordinary apparatus used iny manufacturing sorghum syrup, and any person, who desired to work on a small scale, could use the methods with good results, provided he had acquired the necessary skill in neutralizing and defecating the juice and in the treatment of boneblack filters. The manufacture of glucose on a small scale is entirely out of the question. Five hundred to a thousand acres of sorghum would be sufficient to justify the erection of steam sugar works, and this amount could easily be raised in almost any community within a radius of one or two miles from the works.