HUDSON, Wis., February 10, 1881.

Mr. O. P. Dow, President Southern Wisconsin Cane Growers' and Manufacturers' Association:

DEAR SIR-I regret very much my inability, owing to a press of business, to accept of your invitation to meet with your convention on the 17th and 18th insts.

I know you will have a very interesting meeting, and I shall await with great interest the printed report of the proceedings.

The result of my past season's work was very satisfactory indeed, the quantity of sugar not being quite as large as I had wished, but, I think, of a better quality. I will send you a small sample by mail.

I would urge upon all cane growers and manufacturers the importance of two things:

1st. The most careful and thorough cultivation of the crop.

2d. The most perfect and effectual methods of defication and clarification of the juice.

By the first we can produce an excellent and paying crop, and by the second we are enabled to obtain from this crop sugar and syrup of a quality not surpassed by any country.

Wishing you an interesting and instructive meeting, I am most truly yours, etc., JOHN M. NASH.

The following letter, read by S. Hanson, Esq., on manufacture of cane syrups and sugar, will be read with interest:

Mr. President· The manufacture of sugar and syrup of an excellent quality from the sorghum cane is no longer doubtful, and a general interest is being awakened in the subject throughout many of the northern states. The adulterations of much of the sweets that are consumed among us, and the enormous sums yearly paid to inspectors, have aroused many to the importance of producing our own sweets. It is a stubborn fact that the people of the United States (taking the year 1870 as a guide) consume yearly two billion pounds of sugar, and of this amount one billion seven hundred and forty-three million five hundred and sixty thousand pounds, besides thirty-eight million gallons of molasses, were imported, valued at $75,000,000, and duty added, $114,516,745. This is very much like importing our wheat, corn and vegetables, when we can grow them ourselves; but there are those who will accept of nothing short of an imported article. If they can get an imported French

kid boot, if it wears not half as long as the American kid, never mind, it was imported. Many of our grocerymen will turn up the nose at the name of sorghum syrup, but will sell an article at eighty cents per gallon not worth near as much as the sorghum syrup sold at fifty cents per gallon, and I know whereof I affirm, for I have a sample of it with me.

Said a countryman to one of our principal grocerymen a few days since, "Have you any sorghum syrup for sale?" and with his righteous abhorrence of the article he said, "No! I don't keep such stuff."

I am glad the people are waking up to the manufacture and use of unadulterated sweets for consumption in the family. Minnesota, I fear, is going ahead of Wisconsin in the enterprise, and Illinois and Kansas are wonderfully aroused to the subject. In 1879 there was planted to sorghum in Kansas twenty-three thousand six hundred and sixty-five acres, valued at $1,224,557; in 1880 there was planted thirty two thousand nine hundred and forty-five acres, valued at $1,893,279. They have found that corn can be grown where the seasons are too dry for wheat and are turning their attention to this branch of industry.

The Hon. John Bennywith, residing near Larnid, finding his prospect for a crop of wheat in 1830 was failing, plowed up six hundred acres of land late in the season and planted it to sorghum, and immediately commenced the erection of works for converting its products into sugar and syrup. He visited a number of similar works in the northern part of Illinois, and owing to his inexperience and unavoidable delays, he did not get his works in operation until nearly the close of the season, but enough sweet was made to call it a

success.

His works cost him $15,000, and it is reported that he turned out fifty thousand pounds of sugar and several hundred barrels of syrup, both sugar and syrup finding a ready sale.

He is jubilant over his success and thinks it is bound to be a great industry. Dr. Wilhelm, of Faribault, Minnesota, has also been very successful. His works cost $10,000, and he turns out a sugar that will grade and sell by the side of New Orleans yellow No. 2, and in any market, and wherever it has been tested by experts, all have become convinced there is as much crystallized sugar in the same quantity of northern cane juice as there is in the south

ern cane.

What we want now are experts skilled in the science of extracting the glucose from the juice and extracting the crystallized sugar from the syrup when sufficiently concentrated, and buildings and machinery for doing it. We likewise need strong machinery for expressing the juice from the cane. Professor Scoville of the Illinois Industrial University has made a number of tests of the analysis of the Early Amber and other varieties, and he says the best results yet attained not more than forty per cent. of the sweet the analysis of the stalk shows there is in the cane has been saved; yet to say with forty per cent. saved, there is a good business in it, and with eighty per cent. saved there is millions in it for the people. Some manufacturers say it will not do to crush the cane too close, it will get the pomice in the juice.

Experts say the best part for crystallizing is that which is hardest to be expressed.

France when she first began to manufacture sugar from the beet, for a length of time, only forty per cent. of which the analysis showed then was in it was obtained, but with greater experience and improved machinery they now succeed in saving eighty per cent., and pays annually immense sums into the treasury in excise duties.

Much loss undoubtedly is by feeble machinery, and some passing off with the steam in manufacturing, and some in deficating the juice, but fifty or sixty per cent. is an unreasonable loss, and if truly so, a remedy must be applied.

The manufacture of sorghum among us has attained to a degree that can be but little bettered until works are erected, and men that are skilled as chemists and experts in the science of refining engaged in running them; then I doubt not there would be ten acres of cane planted where there is one at the present time. Cane could then be grown and sold at three dollars per ton, or a semisyrup made and sold to the refiners.

In conventions in Minnesota they have decided there is a difference between a crop of cane and corn, of a number or dollars to the acre, in favor of cane.

If this is the case, farmers most certainly will turn their attention to a crop the most remunerative, whenever and wherever they can find a market for it.

Individuals in Whitewater have said to me, "Why do you not

get up a stock company for a refinery? I will put in a thousand dollars, A. one thousand, B. one thousand, and we would soon raise ten or fifteen thousand dollars, and you take charge of it and run it."

I probably would succeed as well as a boy five years old in running an engine and a train of cars from Milwaukee to St. Paul.

Find me the man that is scientifically trained in the business and can successfully run a a refinery, then it will do to talk about it.

Men of capital are starting out and are bound to win; some have already found out the secret; but we must not expect them to inform others in a branch that has cost them thousands of dollars.

I had anticipated that our legislature would make an appropriation to aid in training experts in the business for the benefit of the .state, but fear we shall fail, as there are men in that body that will fight it to the bitter end; "put down appropriations," is their motto, and about as consistent as our democratic congress-spend $10,000 worth of time to head off an appropriation of $5,000 for a benevolent purpose; but if left to our present resources we will do the best we can until Providence smiles more propitiously upon us.

PROCEEDINGS AND RECORD OF THE FIRST ANNUAL
SHEARING OF SHEEP,

Under the Auspices of the Central Wisconsin Sheep Breeders' and Wool
Growers' Association.

The first annual shearing festival of this society was held on the grounds of the Ripon Agricultural Association, April 30 and May 1, 1880.

This association was organized March 23, 1880, at Ripon by the election of the following officers:

President - H. W. Woolcott, Ripon.

Vice President - C. D. McConnell, Berlin.

Secretary R. D. Torrey, Oshkosh.

Treasurer- Uriah Wood, Brandon.

The exhibition of blooded sheep was highly creditable. The weather had been up to the time cold and unpropitious, deterring many prominent breeders from entering in competition. But as it was, with many unfavorable circumstances, there were fifty-six entries, and nearly five hundred people present.