Evening capital news., January 06, 1918, Page 3, Image 15

About Evening capital news. (Boise, Idaho) 1901-1927

Image provided by: Idaho State Historical Society

                
SUGAR AS WAR ASSET
Mobilizing a Mighty Industry That May Affect Our Fight With
the Germans. Sugar as a Soldier's Necessity—Napoleon
Bonaparte and the Big Beet Sugar Industry. Queen Eliza
beth's Sweer Tooth—Beet Versus Cane—Inside a Beet
Sugar Factory. The Sugar Famine in Europe and How Wc
Can Help It—High Prices of Sugar and How they Will Be
Controlled by the Food Administration.
B§38§H
The value of sugar to the soldier in the
field is well known to the Germans. Long
before the war began they made experi
ments which showed that the men could do
more work and stand more hardship if they
had a liberal allowance of sugar. On the
long marches it was found that it appeased
hunger and mitigated thirst, and that while
the men without sugar dropped on the way,
none of those supplied with it were over
come by exhaustion. The sugar users
were found to have a better pulse rate and
their breathing was less affected by ,over
exertion.
It was on the basis of these experiments
that the German surgeons recommended
that the sugar ration for the army be in
creased, and that it be given the men in
their coffee and in preserves or honey or
in sweetened food. At the beginning of
the war the Germans tried to reduce the
size of their sugar crop in order to use more
of the ground for potatoes and cereals. The
result was a shortage of sugar, which af
fected the army. The second year they
planted more beets and they have now re
sumed the old sugar rations.
Indeed, the beet sugar industry was
started owing to the sugar needs of an
army. It was when Napoleon Bonaparte
was at war with England and the ports'
of France were so blockaded that there
was no sugar for the French soldiers. Some
years previous to that a scientist named
Margraf had discovered that beets con
tained sugar, and later on a pupil of his
named Achard established the first beet
sugar factory. He announced the success
of his experiments to the Scientific Insti
tute of France in 179*.), and a little later Na
poleon triedtto sweeten his army with beets.
At any rate he offered a prize of 100,000
francs, or $20,000. to anv one who would
make a success of extracting sugar from
beets, and the result was a number of factor
ies. During the next decade the Germans
began to experiment along the same lines,
and their government offered bounties of
so much per pound on all beet sugar made
in their country. These movements formed
the foundation of the beet sugar industry of
Europ'e, which when this war began was
yielding almost one-half of the sugar supply
[HE sugar industry has gone
m Maunder the control of the gov
JJ2 ernment > an ^ t ^ le a d"
^ ^ministration urges that each
of us cut down the amount
of sugar he is using in his tea and coffee
and in candies and cake, so that we may
have a greater supply to send to our allies
in Europe. There is a sugar famine in
France, England and Italy, and the ration
now given to the French soldiers in the
trenches is not more than a small lump per
day. Many of the people of France have
no sugar at all, and Mr. Hoover has prom
ised to ship them 100,000 tons as soon as
the stuff can be sent over the ocean. The
amount the English are using now aver
ages only about one ounce every 24 hours
and the Italians have a still shorter supply.
It is strange to think of sugar as a war
asset, but it has been found'to be a vital
necessity to the men in the trenches, and to
the soldiers engaged in all sorts of labor.
It is one of the most easily digested of
foods and the rapidity with which it goes
into the system enables it to ward off fat
igue. This is one of the reasons why sugar
is so much relished by children and by men
doing muscular work. The farmers eat a
great deal of sweets and the same is true
of all those who work hard in the open
air. Not long ago studies in the winter
camps of the Maine woods showed that
the lumbermen eat enormous quantities of
cakes, molasses and sugar, and that 10 per
cent of their energy comes from that diet.
Sugar is also valuable to keep out the cold
of the trenches. It is a great heat pro
ducer and is always taken as a part of the
outfit of polar expeditions. It is used also
by mountain climbers and especially the
guides of the Swiss Alps.
...
of the world. The amount then made was
enough to gi\e 10 pounds to every man,
woman and child upon earJi. The sugar
beet can be raised in a large part of the
temperate zone, and it is a question of
whether, after the war is ended, the be«
sugar product will not surpass the cane
as
S We Must Divide
iU.Mf
Bited State*
The Daily Sugar Allowance Per Capita of Uncle Sam and Two of His Partners.
sugar product. At present the land in the
two crops is about equal. The world over,
there is now something like 6.000,000 acres
devoted to cane every year and about 6,000,
000 acres devoted to the sugar beet. The
total area in sugar is thus about 12,000,000
acres, so little that if all the plantations
could be joined together they would not
cover a space more than half the size of
either Ohio or Kentucky.
It is now 170 years since Margraf discov
ered sugar in beets, and beet sugar as an in
dustry is only about 100 years old. Cane
sugar is said to have been known to the Chi
nese something like 2000 years ago. The
plant was taken from China to India and
from there lumps of sugar were carried to
Greece, where it bore the name of Indian
salt. It was also called "honey front reeds,"
and said to be white and brittle like gum.
Some claim that sugar originated in In
dia, and the Hindoos have a legend that
one of their saints created sugar cane and
made sugar in order that he might use it as
a heavenly food for a prince who wanted to
have the delights of paradise while still upon
earth.
Later sugar was confounded with manna,
some supposing it to have been the mirac
ulous food of the children of Israel upon
their march across Sinai, and in the middle
ages the crusaders brought back some from
Palestine which probably had come there
from Africa, where it was known for a long
time before it arrived in Europe. In 1260
A. D. sugar was sold in London for 77 cents
a pound, and in 1598 a German traveler, in
speaking of Queen Elizabeth of England,
then 65 years of age, said: "Her nose is a
little hooked, her lips narrow and her teeth
black, a defect the English seem subject to
from their great use of sugar."
Sugar came to this continent with Colum
bus. He is said to have planted it in Santo
Domingo in 1493. A little later it was in
troduced into C uba, and after negro slavery
was inaugurated there the industry rapidly
grew. In the seventeenth century, whqn
the island had only 50,000 people it had 100
sugar plantations. Today Cuba produces
more sugar than any other part of the world.
Its crop last year was about 6.000,000,000
pounds, in comparison with India a little
more than 5,000,000,000 and Java about 2,
500,000,000. During that year Europe pro
duced 10,000,000,000 pounds of beet sugar,
the product coming mainly from Germany,
Austria and Russia, with smaller amounts
from Belgium and France. All of these
countries formerly exported sugar to Eng
land, and this supply has, of course, been cut
off.
As to cane sugar it is raised in scattering
patches throughout the tropical world. I
have seen the cane growing in Porto Rico,
Cuba and others of the West India islands.
Some of the finest sugar lands of the world
are the volcanic soil of Hawaii and Java, and
we have millions of acres in the Philippines
that might be used for the crop. British
India has at times led the world in cane su
gar production, and the crop of Java is so
great that it has now a surplus of 1,600,
000,000 pounds for export.
It is tied up
there because the merchant vessels belong
ing to the Dutch which usually bring the
sugar to the United States and Europe have
been kept in New York owing to our
fusai to give them cargoes 6f grain to carry
across the ocean to Europe.
Among the other cane sugar countries are
Australia, Fiji and'some scattering
of the Pacific and Indian oceans belonging
to England. The cane grows well in Brazil
and Argentina, and I have seen it twice as
high as my head in the irrigated valleys of
Peru. There are also irrigated sugar plan
tations on the banks of the Nile near Cairo.
In fact, the cane grows here and there in the
tropics all over the world, and if it were not
for the submarines and other dangers to
shipping Europe would have her normal sup
pi}' and to spare.
A short time ago I published a letter
fiom Louisiana, showing how our cane
sugar area is confined to Louisiana and
Texas. The sugar lands there are com
paratively limited, and we shall not be able
to grow enough cane sugar for our needs,
outside of our colonial possessions. It is
different with the Philippines, Hawaii and
Porto Rico mid the new islands we have re
cently bought from Denmark. They all
have good sugar soil, and the Philippines
could feed a large part of our people.
As to our beet-sugar area, it is so great
that we could grow enough beets to supply
every pound of sugar we use and still have
a surplus to sell to other parts of the world.
1 lie s»gar beet can be grown anywhere
from Maine to California an cl from the
great lakes to the Ohio river. It needs
cool nights and moderately warm days, and
it thrives best along the isothermal line of
70 degrees. 1 have seen it in Utah and Cal
ifornia, where are some of the largest beet
sugar fields of the world.
The sugar beets look much like those in
your garden, and they are cultivated in about
the same why. 1 he seed is sown in rows
about eight inches apart, and when the
plants come up they are thinned, so that
they stand six or eight inches apart in the
row. In Utah {lie seed is drilled in, and
there are drills that plant several rows at
a time. The beets are hoed and kept free
from weeds. It takes about five months for
them to mature, after which they arc dug up
much like potatoes and taken to the sugar
factory.
'Plie beets are not large. They weigh
from a pound to a pound and a half each,
and the smallest beet has the sweetest juice
and makes the best sugar. The beets pro
duce more or less sugar according to the
percentage of sugar contents in them. This
varies in different localities. In the region
I visited it took six or eight beets to make
one pound of sugar.
I was interested in the beet sugar facto
ries. They have.modern machinery based
upon cost efficiency methods, so that a min
imum of human labor is used. The beets
are taken in upon belts and carried to the
top of the factory, being washed on the way.
They are cut into little pieces bv knives
which slice them into bits the width and
thickness of a slate pencil. They look like
the threads of mashed potatoes when
squeezed through a colander. I picked up
some of these threads and tasted them.
They are sweet, but they have also the bit
ter taste of raw beef.
After cutting the threads go into great
iron tanks containing diffusion batteries sq
arranged that they move through from one
tank to the other. The machinery is so
constructed that, a4 the beets go through, a
part of the sugar in them goes out into the
tanks, which are filled with warm water,
and at the end of the process all of the sugar
has gone into the water. At the start the
water is as clear as crystal, but when it
flows forth, containing the sugar, it is as
black as ink, and it has to be purified be
fore being boiled down to get out the sugar.
1 his is done by various processes, which
make the sugar water as clear as pure alco
hol. The water is now passed through
tanks filled with steam pipes, the liquid
growing thicker and thicker until it turns to
a sirup and then to a mixture of sugar and
molasses.
1 his mixture is refined in about the same
way as cane sugar, and at the end it be
comes the sweet, white stuff we use on our
tables. It is now just like cane sugar. Pure
sugar is the same everywhere, and no pure
sugars ar# sweeter than others. The great
quantities of jams and jellies which were
formerly exported from France and England
were sweetened with sugar that came from
the beet.
And now let us see what we can do to
help the sugar famine in Europe. The food
administration will do all in its power, but
it depends upon what you and me, and the
99,999,998 other people of the United States
as to whether we can ship a goodly supply
of sugar to the soldiers and our allies this
winter. It depends upon how much candy
we eat and how we gorge ourselves with
cakes,.pies, puddings and other deserts. It
defends upon whether we each use on<? or
two lumps or no sugar at all in our coffee
and tea, for all these make up a large part of
our sugar consumption, which today is the
greatest of the whole world.
Do you know how much sugar we eat
every year? Our average consumption,
taking every man, woman and child in the
United States into account, is 90 pounds, or
almost two pounds per week. During the
10 years preceding the war our consump
tion was only 70 or 80 pounds. We then
ate on the average only 7.000,000,000 pounds
per year, which was an increase over the
consumption of the preceding decade of
about 43 per cent. It is not very long since
we were each eating only 60 pounds per
year, and if we should cut down our rations
to the same amount we formerly used we
would have plenty of sugar for any one of
our allies. As it is now the French people
have been living.on 21 pounds per vear and
the English and Italians have not more than
that. We are now eating about 20 pounds
each in excess of our average consumption
during the last 10 years, and 30 pounds
more than during the 10 years before that.
Nine« pounds of sugar for each one of
us and 21 pounds for each Englishman,
Frenchman and Italian! How would you
like to sit down at a partnership dinner with
three other people and have one of them
grab three-fourths of the sugar. That is
just what we have been doing in the year of
our Lord 1917.
If we could reduce our consumption one
half we should still each have more than
twice as much as is used by our allies, and
the saving would be 4,500,000,000 pounds.
STARS OF DIAMOND NOW SHINE AS TARS OF NAVY
■ J'H'Â
M:
m
'Mil
IE
Left to right! Miko MoNilly, Chiok Shorton, Dol Qainor, Machinist Kally and Ernia Shdra.
Quite a sum total of baaebaU talent la on view on the cannon above, straddled as It la by soma of tbs
brightest stars of our national diversion. With the excepUon of Machinist Kelly, a new pal of the boys, thaw
are all members of the Boston Red Sox who have enlisted in the navy »mt are prepared to bat over
Xpu might sax, if It will help sink the Oarman fleet and the baissai
If we could reduce it one-fourth we should
still have three times as much as either the
English, kreuch or Italians, and there would
be 1,500,000,000 pounds saved for shipment
to Europe. I o do that we should each have
to save about one ounce of sugar a day, or
seven ounces per week the year through.
1 ake the single item of candy which you
send to your sweetheart in boxes ranging
from one to five pounds. If all the sugar
we use in making confectionery could be
sent to Italy it would double that country's
supply. In I'M/ we spent for candy twice
as much as is needed to buy Belgium its
food supply for one year. The amount of
sugar we use in making confectionery is in
the neighborhood of 809,000,000 pounds per
annum, and this sold at the low rate oF25
cents per pound equals $200,000,000. In
fact, we are now spending two-thirds as
much for our candy.as we are spending for
butter, and one-third as much as for our
wheat flour. If the women and children
could cut their candy consumption in half,
we should have hundreds of millions of
pounds more sugar for export, and at the
same time a much large* sum to give to
such charities as the Red Cross and the Y.
M. C. A. war fund.
Moreover, candy is the most expensive
form in which sugar is sold. Candy costs
all the way from 15 cents to a dollar a pound
according to the varieties, to who makes it
and where it is bought. The price of sugat
as regulated by the food administration is
practically restricted to 9 or 10 cents a
pound, and the candy in which the same
sugar contents are sold at one dollar must
be, one would think, 75 cents pure profit.
Another extravagant place to buy sugat
is in some of the New York city hotels.
One of the largest has on its menu this item:
Sugar, two lumps, 5 cents; powdered sugar,
a portion, 10 cents.
1 do not know the c-xact size of the portion
of powdered sugar allowed, but 1 venture to
sav it is not more than one or two table
spoonfuls. 'I'he amount,indicated by lumps
is better defined. They are cubes of white
sweetness or the dominoes which are a bit
larger. In order to see just how much this
hotel gets for its sugar, I have weighed out
a pound on my postoffice scales. By actual
count it contained 62 dominoes or lumps,
which, at t 1* rate of 5 cents for two, equals
$1.55 per pound.
It may lie that the hotel charges this high
price to restrict the consumption, but I
doubt it. In the height of the roasting ear
season I have paid there as much as 25 cents
for one ear of corn. Now it takes 600 large
ears to make u barrel of field corn, which
even at the present high prices cost but lit
tle more than one cent per ear. At the rate
of 25 cents per ear, that hotel gets $150 r.
barrel for its corn, and, if so, why not this
price for sugar ?
F R A N K G. CARPENTER.