FILLING, WEIGHING AND SEWING SACKS
TRAIN-LOAD OF RAW SUGAR LEAVING MILL
From the end of the revolving drum the sugar is drawn off into sacks holding about one hundred and twenty-five pounds each. These sacks are sewed by machinery and put into railroad cars to be hauled to the docks at the shipping port, where the cars are switched under huge hoisting cranes or alongside speedy conveyors which carry the sugar into large seagoing steamers especially built for the trade. Some of these ships have a cargo capacity of two hundred and twenty thousand sacks, and they transport the sugar to the buyers on the mainland in San Francisco, New York or Philadelphia, as the planter directs.
The liquor thrown off by the centrifugals is not lost; it is taken back to the pans and reboiled. After this has been done several times and most of the sugar extracted, the purity is so low and the sugar content so small that it does not pay commercially to reboil further, and the residue is sold as molasses. It contains about thirty-five per cent of sugar and from twelve to fourteen per cent of invert sugar, or glucose, as it is generally called.
Some of the waste molasses is mixed with fodder and tender cane tops and fed to cattle and plantation stock, the sugar content proving of great value as a fattening agent and energy builder. Part of the molasses is sprayed on the bagasse as it leaves the crushers and serves, first, as a fuel under the boilers, and, second, as a fertilizing agent in the form of ashes after it has been burned. During the past few years much of it has been shipped in tank steamers to the mainland, where it is used for the manufacture of spirits and vinegar, and also as the principal ingredient in prepared stock foods which are much in demand today.
Every bag of sugar shipped from the plantation is marked to indicate the plantation from which it came. The net weight of the sugar in each bag is recorded, a sample of the sugar taken and its sucrose content ascertained, for it is on the basis of weight and sucrose content that raw sugar is bought and sold.
From the beginning to the end of the process of manufacture, chemists are vigilantly alert sampling, testing, analyzing and supervising the operations. Records are made of all analyses, temperatures, purities, densities, extractions, etc., and the results tabulated for future reference.
The average cost in Hawaii of preparing the fields, planting, irrigating, fertilizing, cultivating and cutting the cane, manufacturing the sugar and delivering it in the New York market, is about $56.00 per ton of two thousand pounds.