LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. REPORT OF CHEMIST: Plates from I to IV. Varieties of Sugar-Cane Plate V. Sugar Machinery of the Department of Agriculture. Diagram showing development of Sucrose and Glucose in Sorghum.. Pago. 38 38 51 102 Plate I Lang of experimental heifer, showing hepatization 420 420 420 420 Chart illustrating microscopic investigations. MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS: Contagious Pleuro-pneumonia or Lung Plague of Cattle: Plate I. Section of diseased lung (after Law) Plate II Section of healthy lung (after Gadsden). 454 454 454 472 EINDERPEST: Plate I. Skin of adder on sixth or seventh day, showing, in addition to the usual erup. tion, patches of redness on the teats 484 Plate II. Skin of udder, showing eruption in more advanced stage of the plague 484 Plate III. Lips and gums, showing an aphthous condition 484 Plate IV. Roof of month, showing excoriations Plate V. Tongue and throat, showing thickening of epithelium, with excoriation and con. 484 484 Plate VI. Surface of lungs, showing interlobular-emphysema, extending in some places 484 Plate VII. Portion of fourth stomach of cow, about eighth day of cattle-plague, showing 484 Plate VIII. Rectum and anus, showing deep congestion 484 REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF AGRICULTURE, FOR THE YEAR 1879. SIR: I have the honor to transmit this my third annnal preliminary report of the agricultural condition of the country and of the work in hand and accomplished by the department during the past year. At this time I recall with satisfaction the encouragement you gave when I assumed the duties of Commissioner to the proposed attempt to stimulate the manufacture of sugar from any and every source, so that the production within the boundaries of our own country should at least equal the home consumption. Reporting progress as the result of the efforts of this department in this direction, it is not too much to say that the success attending the manufacture of cane-sugar from sorghum and maize will mark the year 1879 as an important epoch in the agricultural progress of our people. With the knowledge that during the past summer and fall sugar of good quality has been profitably made from Texas to Northern Minnesota from the "Minnesota early amber" cane (the seed of which was widely distributed by the department;) that sirups weighing 12 pounds to the gallon, at least one-half of which was crystallizable cane-sugar, was made and can be again made in nearly every State in the Union. by farmers with ordinary and inexpensive machinery at a cost of 163 cents per gallon, and with the knowledge that by means of larger and better appointed mills, that need not cost to exceed $10,000, sugar and sirup have been made the past season from sorghum by the carload, which commanded the highest market price; it is not too much to assert, that, as a result of the work of this department, which has constantly before it the duty of accomplishing all that may be done to increase or multiply those products of the soil which constitute the wealth and sustain the manufactures and commerce of the country, a new industry has been fairly established, the importance and significance of which it is difficult to realize. With this and a knowledge of the work of the division of chemistry during the past season (a short statement of which will form part of this report), I am warranted in asserting that it has been finally and practically proved that one of the most important, expensive, and indispensable requisites of modern life can be profitably grown where heretofore it was supposed not possible to produce it; that it can be manufactured in quantities sufficient to meet any demand likely to occur, at a remunerative rate even if the price should fall one-third below what it now is, and that the smallest farmer as well as the largest planter can profitably engage in its production; and this in no limited area of country, but in whatever place maize can be grown successfully; for there sorghum of some variety will grow, and it will flourish and mature its juice and seed in much of our soil in which maize is by no means a certain crop. Several attempts to make sugar from beets in Illinois, Wisconsin, and California having been abandoned as unprofitable, and all attempts to make a merchantable sugar from sorghum having failed up to 1877, it became a settled opinion that only from tropical cane and the sugar maple could sugar be profitably made in the United States. The maple groves found scattered along a narrow strip of our northern border were and are fast disappearing, and the amount of sugar, at any time not very large, was in the census of 1870 reported at 28,443,645 pounds, and the molasses at 921,057 gallons. It is now less, and is an inconsiderable factor in the problem. The manufacture of sugar from the tropical cane was confined to a narrow belt of country bordering the Gulf of Mexico, which produces an amount of sugar averaging for twenty years past 1,600 pounds per acre. The total production of this strip last year was about 250,000,000 pounds, while our importation from abroad was 1,741,650,000 pounds of sugar, beside molasses, melado, and other forms of sucrose, and being about 300,000,000 pounds increase over the importation of 1877-78 (fiscal year). The Department of Agriculture has done what was possible to encourage the production of sugar from the tropical cane as well as from beets and other plants, and there has been a large increase in area and in production of sugar from this source during the past two years; but the increased demand has far outstripped the increased production. The consumption of sugar per capita of our people is about 40 pounds per annum at present, and with cheap, pure, healthful home-grown sugars the consumption per capita would increase to 60 or 80 pounds. Fifty millions of people would consume at 60 pounds each, which it is said the English people consume, annually 3,000,000,000 pounds of sugar, worth at 6 cents $180,000,000, or at 10 cents, which is the price at which the Crystal Lake sorghum sugars of Weidner & Co. were sold this year, $300,000,000. In reflecting upon this sugar problem, some two years since, it appeared to me that many years must pass before we could hope for a full supply of sugar from tropical canes grown on our own soil. The broken levees of the Mississippi River must be rebuilt, and the ruined plantations restored; the demoralized labor system of the South reconstructed and the disheartened land-owners encouraged; the mechanical must be, in part, divorced from the agricultural interest, and a co-operation of labor and capital must be established with confidence restored, before any very great and permanent increased production of sugar could be looked for from the cultivation of tropical cane. Then again the plant itself belonged to a tropical country, and refused to ripen its seed in Louisiana, never even maturing the whole extent of stalk grown. All these considerations combined to make a discouraging outlook for the home production of sugar from tropical cane within a period of time which would afford any relief to the then depressed condition of our industries. It was with much gratification, therefore, that I first saw a specimen of well granulated sugar made from sorghum, and exhibited at the Minnesota State Fair. After a thorough examination of the attempts to produce sugar from sorghum in this country, and also after a chemical examination in the laboratory of the juice of this particular plant, it became apparent that this was a probable source of the immediate production of this much-desired article. The first stalks of sorghum ever grown in this country, so far as I am informed, were planted by the Curator of the Botanical Gardens. This seed was obtained from Paris, as was also the seed which the Agricul tural Department first distributed in the year 1856. A more effective distribution, however, was made by the enterprising editor and proprietor of the American Agriculturist, Mr. Orange Judd, who sent out 25,000 packages of seed to the subscribers of his paper. In 1857 Mr. Leonard Wray came from England and brought with him sixteen varieties of African imphee or sorghum, which were planted in South Carolina and Georgia. Sorghum was thus introduced and was largely grown in almost every State in the Union. During the war of the rebellion it was particularly valuable to the people of the Southern States, and was the only adequate means of obtaining their "sweetening." Isolated attempts were made in Ohio and elsewhere to granulate the juice of the varieties then in cultivation, but without such success or profit as would warrant a continuation of the efforts. In no instance did the result seem to be satisfactory, and the raising of sorghum was nearly abandoned in Ohio, and in other States was only cultivated for the sirup. When the discovery was made that the juice of the "Early Amber" cane seemed to be more pure than of others, and would, with careful attention, deposit a large amount of its sucrose in granular form, the department determined to make so far as possible a thorough examination of the different varieties of sorghum and test their relative merits and value as sugar-producing plants. This inquiry has been patiently and carefully followed from the season of 1877 to 1879, and the results have been eminently satisfactory, as will appear in remarks upon the work of the Chemical Division. It is sufficient to say in this place that the value of the work done during the past year by this division can not be overestimated. Mention had been made, and it had been recorded and mostly forgotten, that sugar was obtainable from corn, pumpkins, melons, and other vegetables, but no thorough, careful, persistent experiment seems ever to have been made (if we except that of Mr. F. L. Stewart, who was found among the mountains of Pennsylvania at work for some years in this direction under discouraging circumstances), having in view the determination of the commercial value of these and other plants, until this task was assigned to the Chemical Division of this department in 1878. In a letter from Abigail Adams to her husband, John Adams, September 24, 1777, she says: An instance may be seen in the progress which is made in grinding cornstalks and boiling the liquor into molasses. Scarcely a town or parish within forty miles of us but what has several mills at work; and had the experiment been made a month sooner, many thousand barrels would have been made. No less than 80 have been made in the small town of Manchester. It answers very well to distill, and may be boiled down to sugar. There are two mills fitting up in this parish. They have three rollers-one with cogs and two smooth. The stalks are stripped of the leaves and tops, so that it is no robbery upon the cattle, and the juice ground out. 'Tis said four barrels of juice will make one of molasses, but in this people differ widely. They have a method of refining it so that it looks as well as the best imported molasses. The following is an extract from the work of David Lee Childs on the culture of the beet and manufacture of beet-sugar: Other plants usually grown in our soil are capable of furnishing sugar, and some of them may be found worth cultivating for that and accessory products. We have tried Indian-corn stalks and the pumpkin, and have obtained from them good sugar and molasses. Perhaps these crops may alternate advantageously with the beet. If the manufacture of sugar from the stalks of Indian corn can be reconciled, as we believe it may, with the maturity or near maturity of the ears, this source of saccharine may supersede the beet-root. The seeds of the pumpkin yield a fine sweet oil, but we have no means of judging what quantity of this product can be obtained from a given extent of land. If it should turn out satisfactorily in this respect, the pumpkin may one day overshadow the sugar-cane. Here was the opportunity and it was at that time the duty of the government to assume the risk of failure and the expense and care of such scientific analyses and experimental trial as would have exhausted all resources before giving up even the hope of securing success in the profitable production of sugar, and thus retaining at home the millions of money that have since gone out to sustain and enrich other nations. The work that should have been done then has been undertaken now, with such imperfect means as were furnished; and notwithstanding the ridicule of the thoughtless, and the fears of hopeful friends, it has been steadily pushed forward to a satisfactory conclusion. Many persons are preparing to imitate the example of F. A. Weidner & Co., of Chicago, and erect mills the coming season with vacuum pans, and centrifugal driers in which the work will be done by steam and of capacity sufficient to make a ton of sugar each day of twenty-four hours' work. Mills of this capacity will be needed in every county where sorghum is grown, and will not only be employed in the harvest season in milling the stalks of sorghum and corn direct from the field, but will also after harvest and during the winter take the product of the small open-pan mills (sirups weighing 8 to 12 pounds) and rework that in the vacuum pan and centrifugal, making sugar and sirup for the market. |