The profitableness of
making sugar from sorghum depends largely on utilizing all waste
products. The scums and sediments make manure hardly inferior to guano.
Bagasse, or crushed cane, can be turned into manure by being thrown into
hog-pens, as at Rio Grande, N.J., or it will make a fair quality of
printing paper. It is not economical to burn it. If the manufacture of
sorghum-sugar is proved to be profitable, it will result in supplying to
a large extent our demand for sugar, but as sorghum makes a great deal
more molasses in proportion to sugar than sugar-cane does, the Professor
concludes that when there is enough sugar there will be a great deal
more molasses than can be disposed of.
Prof. Wiley has made experimentally some fair samples of rum and alcohol
from sorghum molasses. Under favorable circumstances one gallon of
molasses weighing eleven pounds would give 2.75 pounds absolute alcohol,
3.03 pounds of 90 per cent, and 5.5 whisky or rum. Thus each gallon of
molasses would give nearly half a gallon of commercial alcohol and two
thirds of a gallon of whisky or rum. As it has been abundantly proved,
he says, that sugar can be made from sorghum, the Government should make
no further experiments in this direction.
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