made during those three eventful years. The Treasury Department report of
February 28, 1898, gives seventeen successful operations. As a matter of
fact, more than forty landings were made, although in a few cases a single
expedition accounted for two, and in one or two instances for three
landings. The experiences run through the entire gamut of human emotions,
from absurdity to tragedy. The former is illustrated by the case of the
_Dauntless_ when she was held up by a vessel of the United States navy, and
boarded by one of the officers of the ship. He examined the tug from stem
to stern, sat on boxes of ammunition which seemed to him to be boxes of
sardines, stumbled over packages of rifles from which butts and muzzles
protruded; and failed utterly to find anything that could be regarded as
contraband. The mere fact that a vessel is engaged in transporting arms and
ammunition does not, of necessity, bring it within reach of the law. But
that particular vessel was a good deal more than under suspicion; it was
under the closest surveillance and open to the sharpest scrutiny. The
temporary myopia of that particular lieutenant of the United States navy
was no more than an outward and visible sign of a well-developed sense of
humor, and an indication of at least a personal sympathy for the Cubans
in their struggle. Tragedy is illustrated by the disaster to the steamer
_Tillie_. One day, late in January, 1898, this vessel, lying off the end
of Long Island, took on one of the largest cargoes ever started on a
filibustering expedition to Cuba. The cause is not known, but soon after
starting a leak developed, beyond the capacity of the pumps. A heavy
sea was running, and disaster was soon inevitable. The cargo was thrown
overboard to lighten the ship and the vessel was headed for the shore on
the chance that it might float until it could be beached. The water in the
ship increased rapidly, and extinguished the fires under the boilers; the
wind, blowing a high gale, swung into the northwest, thus driving the now
helpless hulk out to sea. Huge combing waves swept the decks from end to
end. O'Brien tells the story: "We looked in vain for another craft of any
kind, and by the middle of the afternoon it seemed as though it was all up
with us, for there was not much daylight left, and with her deck almost
awash it was impossible that the _Tillie_ should keep afloat all night. The
gale had swept us rapidly out to sea. The wind, which was filled with icy
needles, had kicked up a wild cross-sea, and it was more comfortable to go
down with the ship than even to think of trying to escape in the boats." At
last, when there seemed no longer any hope of rescue, the big five-masted
schooner _Governor Ames_ came plunging through the heaving seas, and,
by masterly seamanship and good fortune, backed by the heroism of her
commander and crew, succeeded in taking off all except four, who went down
with the ship. But the work went on. There is not space here to tell of the
several vessels whose names, through the engagement of the craft in these
enterprises, became as familiar to newspaper readers as are the names of
ocean liners today. A few months later, the United States Government
sent its ships and its men to help those who, for three hard years, had
struggled for national independence.
XII
_THE STORY OF SUGAR_
Chemically, sugar is a compound belonging to the group of carbohydrates, or
organic compounds of carbon with oxygen and hydrogen. The group includes
sugars, starches, gums, and celluloses. Sugar is a product of the vegetable
kingdom, of plants, trees, root crops, etc. It is found in and is
producible from many growths. As a laboratory process, it is obtainable
from many sources, but, commercially, it is derived from only two, the
sugar cane and the beet root. This statement, however, has a certain
limitation in that it omits such products as maple sugar, malt sugar, milk
sugar, and others having commercial or chemical uses on a limited scale.
But it is only with the crystallized sucrose, the familiar sugar of the
market and the household, that we are dealing here. The output of the other
sugars is measurable in hundreds or even thousands of pounds, but the
output of the sugar of commerce is measured in millions of tons. Long
experience proves that the desired substance is most readily, most
abundantly, and most cheaply, obtained from the juices of the plant
commonly known as sugar cane, and from the vegetable known as the sugar
beet.
The mechanical processes employed in producing sugar from cane and from
beets, are practically the same. They are, broadly, the extraction or
expression of the juices, their clarification and evaporation, and
crystallization. These processes produce what is called "raw sugar," of
varying percentages of sucrose content. Following them, there comes,
for American uses, the process of refining, of removing the so-called
impurities and foreign substances, and the final production of sugar in
the shape of white crystals of different size, of sugar as powdered, cube,
loaf, or other form. In the case of cane sugar, this is usually a secondary
operation not conducted in the original mill. In the case of beet sugar,
production is not infrequently a continuous operation in the same mill,
from the beet root to the bagged or barrelled sugar ready for the market.
The final product from both cane and beet is practically the same. Pure
sugar is pure sugar, whatever its source. In the commercial production, on
large scale, there remains a small fraction of molasses or other harmless
substances, indistinguishable by sight, taste, or smell. With that fraction
removed and an absolute 100 per cent. secured, there would be no way
by which the particular origin could be determined. For all practical
purposes, the sugar of commerce, whether from cane or beet, is pure sugar.
It is doubtful if an adulterated sugar can be found in the United States,
notwithstanding the tales of the grocer who "sands" his sugar, and of the
producer who adds _terra alba_ or some other adulterant. In some countries
of Europe and elsewhere, there are sugars of inferior grades, of 85 or 90
or more degrees of sugar purity, but they are known as such and are sold at
prices adjusted to their quality. Sugars of that class are obtainable
in this country, but they are wanted almost exclusively for particular
industrial purposes, for their glucose rather than their sucrose content.
The American household, whether the home of the rich or of the poor,
demands the well-known white sugar of established purity.
There is still obtainable, in this country, but in limited quantity, a
sugar very pleasantly remembered by many who have reached or passed middle
age. It was variously known as "Muscovado" sugar, or as "plantation sugar,"
sometimes as "coffee" or "coffee crushed." It was a sugar somewhat
sweeter to the taste than the white sugar, by reason of the presence of
a percentage of molasses. It was a superior sugar for certain kitchen
products, for pies, certain kinds of cake, etc. It has many times been
urged in Congress that the employment of what is known as the Dutch
Standard, now abolished, excluded this sugar from our market. This is not
at all the fact. The disappearance of the commodity is due solely to change
in the mechanical methods of sugar production. It would be quite impossible
to supply the world's sugar demand by the old "open kettle" process by
which that sugar was made. The quality of sugar is easily tested by any one
who has a spoonful of sugar and a glass of water. If the sugar dissolves
entirely, and dissolves without discoloring the water, it may be accepted
as a pure sugar.
In his book on _The World's Cane Sugar Industry--Past and Present_, Mr.
H.C. Prinsen Geerligs, a recognized expert authority on the subject, gives
an elaborate history of the origin and development of the industry. His
chapters on those branches are much too long for inclusion in full, but the
following extracts tell the story in general outline. He states that the
probability that sugar cane originally came from India is very strong, "as
only the ancient literature of that country mentions sugar cane, while we
know for certain that it was conveyed (from there) to other countries by
travellers and sailors." The plant appears in Hindu mythology. A certain
prince expressed a desire to be translated to heaven during his lifetime,
but Indra, the monarch of the celestial regions, refused to admit him. A
famous Hindu hermit, Vishva Mitra, prepared a temporary paradise for the
prince, and for his use created the sugar cane as a heavenly food during
his occupation of the place. The abode was afterward demolished, but the
delectable plant, and a few other luxuries, were "spread all over the land
of mortals as a permanent memorial of Vishva Mitra's miraculous deeds." In
the time of Alexander the Great (356-323 B.C.) there appear tales of "a
reed growing in India which produced honey without the aid of bees."
The early references are to sugar cane and not to cane sugar. While there
may have been earlier experiences, the history of sugar, as such, seems to
begin in the 7th century (A.D.). There is a story that the Chinese Emperor,
Tai Tsung (627-650 A.D.) sent people to Behar, in India, to learn the art
of sugar manufacture. The Arabs and the Egyptians soon learned how to
purify sugar by re-crystallization, and to manufacture sweetmeats from the
purified sugar. Marco Polo, who visited China during the last quarter of
the 13th Century, refers to "a great many sugar factories in South China,
where sugar could be freely bought at low prices." The Mohammedan records
of that period also show the manufacture, in India, of crystallized sugar
and candy. The area of production at that time covered, generally, the
entire Mediterranean coast. The crusaders found extensive plantations in
Tripoli, Mesopotamia, Palestine, Syria, and elsewhere. The plant is said to
have been introduced in Spain as early as the year 755. Its cultivation is
said to have been a flourishing industry there in the year 1150. Through
China, it was early extended to Japan, Formosa, and the Philippines. The
records of the 14th Century show the production and distribution of sugar
as an important commercial enterprise in the Mediterranean region. The
Portuguese discoveries of the 15th Century carried the plant to the Azores,
the Cape Verde islands, and to possessions in the Gulf of Guinea. The
Spaniards took it to the Western Hemisphere in the early years of the 16th
Century. The Portuguese took it to Brazil at about the same time. While a
Chinese traveller, visiting Java in 424, reports the cultivation of sugar
cane, it was not until more than twelve hundred years later that the
island, now an important source of sugar supply, began the production of
sugar as a commercial enterprise. By the end of the 18th Century there
was what might be called a sugar belt, girdling the globe and extending,
roughly, from thirty-five degrees north of the equator to thirty-five
degrees south of that line. It was then a product of many of the countries
within those limits. The supply of that time was obtained entirely from
cane.
The early years of the 19th Century brought a new experience in the sugar
business. That was the production of sugar, in commercial quantities,
from beets. From that time until now, the commodity has been a political
shuttlecock, the object of government bounties and the subject of taxation.
In 1747, Herr Marggraf, of the Academy of Sciences, in Berlin, discovered
the existence of crystallizable sugar in the juice of the beet and other
roots. No practical use was made of the discovery until 1801 when a factory
was established near Breslau, in Silesia. The European beet-sugar industry,
that has since attained enormous proportions, had its actual beginning in
the early years of the 19th Century. It was a result of the Napoleonic wars
of that period. When the wars were ended, and the blockades raised, the
industry was continued in France by the aid of premiums, differentials, and
practically prohibitory tariffs. The activities in other European countries
under similar conditions of governmental aid, came a little later. The
total world supply of sugar, including cane and beet, less than 1,500,000
tons, even as recently as 1850, seems small in comparison with the world's
requirement of about twelve times that quantity at the present time. The
output of beet sugar was then only about 200,000 tons, as compared with a
present production of approximately 8,000,000 tons. But sugar was then a
costly luxury while it is today a cheaply supplied household necessity. As
recently as 1870, the wholesale price of granulated sugar in New York
was thirteen and a half cents a pound, or about three times the present
average.
Cane sugar is produced in large or small quantities in some fifty
different countries and islands. In many, the output is only for domestic
consumption, or in quantity too small to warrant inclusion in the list of
sources of commercial supply. Sixteen countries are included in the list of
beet-sugar producers. Of these, all are in Europe with the exception of the
United States and Canada. Only two countries, the United States and
Spain, produce sugar from both beet and cane. British India leads in the
production of cane sugar, with Cuba a close second on the list, and Java
the third. In their total, these three countries supply about two-thirds
of the world's total output of cane sugar. Hawaii and Porto Rico, in that
order, stand next on the list of producers. Under normal conditions,
Germany leads in beet-sugar production, with Russia second, Austria-Hungary
third, France fourth, and the United States fifth, with Belgium, the
Netherlands, Italy, Sweden, and Denmark following. The island of Cuba is
the most important source of commercial cane sugar. Immediately before
the revolution of 1895, its output a little exceeded a million tons. The
derangement caused by that experience covered several years, and it was not
until 1903 that so large a crop was again made. Since that time, the output
has more than doubled. The increase is attributable to the large increase
in demand in the United States, and to the advantage given Cuban sugar in
this market by the reciprocity treaty of 1903. Practically all of Cuba's
export product is in the class commonly known as 96 degree centrifugals,
that is, raw sugar of 96 per cent, or thereabout, of sugar content. Under
normal conditions, nearly all of Cuba's shipments are to the United States.
The sugar industry was introduced in Cuba very soon after the permanent
settlement of the island, by Spaniards, in the early years of the 16th
Century, but it was not until two hundred and fifty years later that
Spain's restrictive and oppressive colonial policy made even its fair
extension possible. In 1760, two and a half centuries after the first
settlement, the sugar exports of the island were a little less than 4,400
tons. In 1790, they were a little more than 14,000 tons. Some relaxation of
the laws regulating production and exportation, made possible an increase
to 41,000 tons in 1802, and further relaxation made possible, in 1850, an
output somewhat unreliably reported as 223,000 tons. It reached 632,000
tons in 1890, and the stimulus of the "free sugar" schedule of the United
States brought it, in the next few years, to more than a million tons.
Production in recent years has averaged about 2,500,000 tons.
In forty years, only a little more than a single generation, the world's
supply of sugar has been multiplied by five, from a little more than three
million tons a year to nearly eighteen million tons. The total world output
in 1875 would not today supply the demand of the United States alone.
This increase in production has been made possible by improvements in the
methods and the machinery of manufacture. Until quite recently, primitive
methods were employed, much like those used in the production of maple
sugar on the farm, although on larger scale. More attention has been paid
to varieties of the plant and some, though no very great, change has been
made in field processes. In Cuba, the cane is planted in vast areas, in
thousands of acres. Some of the estates plant and cultivate their
own fields, and grind the cane in their own mills. Others, known as
"_colonos_," are planters only, the crop being sold to the mills commonly
called "_centrales_." In its general appearance, a field of sugar-cane
looks quite like a field of corn, but the method of cultivation is somewhat
different. The slow oxen are still commonly used for plowing and for
carts. This is not because of any lack of progressive spirit, but because
experience has shown that, under all conditions of the industry, the ox
makes the most satisfactory and economical motive power, notwithstanding
his lack of pace.
The Encyclopædia describes sugar-cane as "a member of the grass family,
known botanically as _Saccbarum officinarum_. It is a tall, perennial
grass-like plant, giving off numerous erect stems 6 to 12 feet or more in
height, from a thick solid jointed root-stalk." The ground is plowed
in rows in which, not seed, but a stalk of cane is lightly buried. The
rootlets and the new cane spring from the joints of the planted stalk which
is laid flat and lengthwise of the row. It takes from a year to a year
and a half for the stalk to mature sufficiently for cutting and grinding.
Several cuttings, and sometimes many, are made from a single planting.
There are tales of fields on which cane has grown for forty years without
re-planting. A few years ago, ten or fifteen years was not an unusual
period. The present tendency is toward more frequent planting, but not
annual, as offering a better chance for stronger cane with a larger sugar
content. The whole process of cultivation and field treatment is hard,
heavy work, most of it very hard work. Probably the hardest and heaviest is
the cutting. This is done with a long, heavy-bladed knife, the _machete_.
The stalk, from an inch to two inches in thickness, is chopped down near
the root, the heavy knife swung with cut after cut, under a burning sun.
Only the strongest can stand it, a wearying, back-breaking task. After
cutting, the stalk is trimmed and loaded on carts to be hauled, according
to distance, either directly to the mill or to the railway running thereto.
The large estates have their own railway systems running to all the fields
of the plantation. These are private lines operated only for economy
in cane transportation. Most of the crushing mills measure their daily
consumption of cane in thousands of tons. While every precaution is taken,
there are occasional fires. In planting, wide "fire lanes," or uncultivated
strips are left to prevent the spread of fire if it occurs.
Mill installations vary on the different plantations, but the general
principle of operation is the same on all. The first process is the
extraction of the juice that carries the sugar. It is probable that this
was originally done in hand mortars. Next came the passing of the cane
between wooden rollers turned by ox power, the rollers standing upright and
connected with a projecting shaft or beam to the outer end of which the
animal was attached, to plod around and around while the cane was fed
between the rollers. The present system is merely an expansion of that old
principle. At the mill, the stalks are dumped, by carload or by cartload,
into a channel through which they are mechanically conveyed to huge
rollers, placed horizontally, arranged in pairs or in sets of three, and
slowly turned by powerful engines. The larger mills have a series of these
rollers, two, three, or even four sets, the stalks passing from one to
another for the expression of every possible drop of the juice, up to the
point where the cost of juice extraction exceeds the value of the juice
obtained. The expressed juices are collected in troughs through which they
are run to the next operation. The crushed stalks, then known as _bagasse_,
are conveyed to the huge boilers where they are used as fuel for the
generation of the steam required in the various operations, from the
feeding and the turning of the rollers, to the device from which the final
product, the crystallized sugar, is poured into bags ready for shipment.
All this is a seasonal enterprise. The cane grows throughout the year, but
it begins to ripen in December. Then the mills start up and run until the
rains of the next May or June suspend further operations. It then becomes
impossible to haul the cane over the heavily mired roads from the muddy
fields. Usually, only a few mills begin their work in December, and early
June usually sees most of them shut down. The beginning of the rainy season
is not uniform, and there are mills in eastern Cuba that sometimes run into
July and even into August. But the general grinding season may be given as
of about five months duration, and busy months they are. The work goes on
night and day.
The next step is the treatment of the juices expressed by the rollers and
collected in the troughs that carry it onward. The operations are highly
technical, and different methods are employed in different mills. The first
operation is one of purification. The juice, as it comes from the rollers,
carries such materials as glucose, salts, organic acids, and other
impurities, that must be removed. For this, lime is the principal agent.
The details of it all would be as tedious here as they are complicated
in the mill. The percentages of the different impurities vary with the
variation of the soils in which the cane is grown. The next step, following
clarification, is evaporation, the boiling out of a large percentage of
the water carried in the juice. For this purpose, a vacuum system is used,
making possible a more rapid evaporation with a smaller expenditure of
fuel. These two operations, clarification and evaporation by the use of the
vacuum, are merely improved methods for doing, on a large scale, what was
formerly done by boiling in pans or kettles, on a small scale. That method
is still used in many parts of the world, and even in the United States, in
a small way. For special reasons, it is still used on some of the Louisiana
plantations; it is common in the farm production of sorghum molasses in the
South; and in the manufacture of maple sugar in the North. In those places,
the juices are boiled in open pans or kettles, the impurities skimmed off
as they rise, and the boiling, for evaporation, is continued until a
proper consistency is reached, for molasses in the case of sorghum and for
crystallization in the case of plantation and maple sugars. There is an old
story of an erratic New England trader, in Newburyport, who called himself
Lord Timothy Dexter. In one of his shipments to the West Indies, a hundred
and fifty years ago, this picturesque individual included a consignment of
"warming pans," shallow metal basins with a cover and a long wooden handle,
used for warming beds on cold winter nights. The basin was filled with
coals from the fireplace, and then moved about between the sheets to take
off the chill. He was not a little ridiculed by his acquaintances for
sending such merchandise where it could not possibly be needed, but it is
said that he made considerable money out of his enterprise. With the covers
removed, the long-handled, shallow basins proved admirably adapted for use
in skimming the sugar in the boiling-pans. But the old-fashioned method
would be impossible today.
The different operations are too complicated and too technical for more
than a reference to the purpose of the successive processes. Clarification
and evaporation having been completed, the next step is crystallization,
also a complicated operation. When this is done, there remains a dark brown
mass consisting of sugar crystals and molasses, and the next step is
the removal of all except a small percentage of the molasses. This
is accomplished by what are called the centrifugals, deep bowls with
perforated walls, whirled at two or three thousand revolutions a minute.
This expels the greater part of the molasses, and leaves a mass of
yellow-brown crystals, the coloring being due to the molasses remaining.
This is the raw sugar of commerce. Most of Cuba's raw product is classed
as "96 degree centrifugals," that is, the raw sugar, as it comes from the
centrifugal machines and is bagged for shipment, is of 96 degrees of sugar
purity. This is shipped to market, usually in full cargo lots. There it
goes to the refineries, where it is melted, clarified, evaporated, and
crystallized. This second clarification removes practically everything
except the pure crystallized sugar of the market and the table. It is then
an article of daily use in every household, and a subject of everlasting
debate in Congress.
XIII
_VARIOUS PRODUCTS AND INDUSTRIES_