But
two varieties of sorghum now remain, known as the Chinese and African
types. Of all the other sugar plants, none except the maple tree
(besides the sugar cane and the beet) seem to have yielded sugar to
pay the cost of manufacture. The maple tree has yielded a total of
41,000,000 pounds in 1877. But as an industry by itself, it appears to
be unprofitable, and maple sugar must be, and generally is, sold at a
higher price per pound than cane sugar; moreover, it has not the
qualities that are required in a general sweetner for culinary
purposes.
The variety of sugar plant called amber cane is not very clearly
defined, but it may be taken, from the description of the juice as to
crystallizing qualities, as no better sugar producer than sorghum. It,
with sorghum, is classed as a sub-variety of sugar cane, which will
yield sirup and fodder, but will not crystallize under several months'
time, and even then in but small percentage.
On the whole it appears, as before stated, that the sugar beet is the
only practicable source of sugar for the Northern States, which, as
experimentally shown, can be raised at a profit of forty six dollars
per acre, against twenty dollars per acre, the profit of sugar making
from cane in Louisiana. Upon this showing several beet sugar factories
have been started in the United States and in Canada, and their
products are said to be satisfactory, and have been sold at a profit
in competition with imported beet sugar.
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