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.