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A Century of
Sugar Refining in
the United States
1816-1916
The
American
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Sugar Refining
Company
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A Century of
Sugar Refining in
the United States

1816-1916

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THE RHINELANDER SUGAR HOUSE
BUILT IN 1763
AND USED BY THE BRITISH AS A PRISON
DURING THE REVOLUTION
ГАРААРАРІАНТНАНГАН
The American
Sugar Refining Company

HE PAYMENT of the one hun-
S dredth dividend upon its stock
marks the close of the first
quar-
ter of a century of the history of
The American Sugar Refining Company.
Manufacture upon a large scale and the
continuous operation of its refineries have
enabled the Company to sell its product upon
a basis of profit smaller than that ordinarily
obtained in manufacturing enterprises. By
reason of the volume of its business this
profit, however, has been sufficient to have
paid a fair and regular return upon the in-
vestment of the stockholders.
Believing that the payment of this dividend
is an event of interest, we are noting it by
this brief account of the development of the
cane-sugar refining industry in the United
States during the last one hundred years,
prepared by Joseph E. Freeman, Esq., the
Secretary of the Company.
New York City
October 2, 1916
EARL D. BABST
President

THE AMERICAN SUGAR REFINING COMPANY
NEW ORLEANS
A Century of Sugar Refining
in the United States
1816–1916
HUNDRED years ago sugar in
any form was a a luxury and
granulated sugar was unknown.
While for many centuries lump
or loaf
sugar has been in use as a food, it
is only within the last century that granu-
lated sugar has become an article of uni-
versal consumption.

The improvements in operation in the
last one hundred years and the advance in
the art and science of refining have been such
that to-day the consumer can buy his sugar
at a price which is less than the cost in 1816
of turning the raw product into refined.
In Colonial days sugar was sold in the
loaf, lump or piece, and the purchaser had
to break it up for use in the household.
Notwithstanding that granulated sugar is a
modern article of diet, the making of white
Page Five
sugar in moulds was practised long before
the settlement of the American colonies.
And not many years after the arrival of the
Dutch on Manhattan Island a sugar refinery
was built on Liberty Street which for over
a century and a half was one of the leading
manufacturing establishments of the city.
That there was some sale of sugar and sugar-
candy in the early part of the eighteenth
century is clear from an advertisement which
appeared in the "New York Gazette" on
August 17, 1730:
“PUBLICK_NOTICE is hereby given that
NICHOLAS BAYARD of the City of New York,
has erected a Refining House for Refining all sorts
of Sugar and Sugar-Candy, and has procured from
Europe an experienced artist in that Mystery. At
which Refining House all Persons in City and Coun-
try may be supplyed by Whole-sale and Re-tale with
both double and single Refined Loaf-Sugar, as also
Powder and Shop-Sugars, and Sugar-Candy, at Rea-
sonable Rates."
At the time of the Revolution there were
several refineries in New York City and two
of them became famous as British prisons.
Page Six

THE AMERICAN SUGAR REFINING COMPANY
So
BROOKLYN
The one on Liberty Street was standing in
1833 and a chronicler of the times states:
"The manufactory is carried on in Liberty Street,
in the same building, which was known, during the
Revolutionary war, as 'The Old Sugar House,' and
which, while the British held possession of the city, was
used as a prison for captive Americans, many of whose
names are still legible rudely cut in the solid walls."
The Rhinelander Refinery, near the cor-
ner of Rose, Duane and William streets, was
also used as a jail, and was not demolished
until 1893.
Many prominent American families inter-
ested themselves in the sugar business, among
them the Livingstons, Bayards, Cuylers,
Roosevelts, and Van Cortlandts. All these,
by turning brown sugar into clean, white
loaves of table sugar, added to their fortunes
and helped to establish the refining industry
in the United States.
In the early part of the nineteenth cen-
tury the Havemeyers founded a refinery at
Vandam Street, in a little building 25 x 40
feet in size, with only four or five employees.
Page Seven
In this small refinery was laid the beginning
of a sugar business which, handed down from
generation to generation, expanded until at the
time of the organization of this Company it
owned the largest sugar refinery in the world.
Another firm that became prominent in the
refining business in the first half of the nine-
teenth century was that of R. L. & A. Stewart.
While the details of the industry were
not reported with the same exactitude that
they are to-day, it is certain that in 1816 the
total amount of sugar
refined in New York
City in a year did not exceed nine million
pounds. While this seems to be a large
quantity of sugar, the largest refinery of
The American Sugar Refining Company
can refine approximately that amount in
forty-eight hours.
The art of refining consists in converting
raw sugar into refined grades with a mini-
mum loss of sucrose content. To-day a loss
of six to seven pounds a hundred made in
refining raw sugar of average test is all that
is expected. In 1816 a refiner could only
Page Eight

CADSBY
THE AMERICAN SUGAR REFINING COMPANY
wwwwww
JERSEY CITY
obtain from one hundred pounds of raw
sugar about fifty pounds of refined, twenty-
five pounds of molasses, and twenty-five
pounds of so-called bastard sugar.
One hundred years ago all the refineries
on the island of Manhattan were back from
the water-front, and it was not until 1858,
when Frederick C. Havemeyer purchased a
tract of land in Brooklyn and moved his
business from Vandam Street, that the ne-
cessity of refining on the water-front became
apparent. This location for a refinery
sounded the death-knell of inland refining.
Following the example of the Havemeyers,
many others invested in water-front refineries
in Brooklyn and shortly established there the
greatest center of sugar refining in the world.
The largest of all these plants is that founded
in 1858 by Frederick C. Havemeyer, and
now famous as the Havemeyers & Elder
Refinery of this Company.
The course of the business elsewhere in
the United States is similar to that in New
York City.
In Boston, Philadelphia, Jer-
Page Nine
sey City, and New Orleans at first small
refineries were erected back from the water-
front. It later became apparent that a
location with sufficient wharfage and rail-
road traffic connections was essential. In the
early part of the last century, and before it
was found that a seaboard water-front was
necessary for the refining of
sugar economi-
cally, a small refinery was in operation as
far west as Cincinnati, Ohio. Of this
the Secretary of the Treasury the Hon.
Louis McLane, in a report published in 1833
on the "Fabrication and Refinement of
Sugar," said:
"It is thought that the consumption of loaf or
refined sugar will not, in the west, keep pace with
the progress of population, because of the cheapness
of coffee, which, to a considerable extent, is taking
the place of tea as well as of ardent spirits; and in
coffee, brown sugar is generally preferred. Still,
much refined sugar is used to qualify whiskey, which,
unhappily, continues to be extensively used in the
west by certain classes of persons."
The refining of sugar has, however, fol-
lowed the development in other lines of in-
Page Ten
dustry, and to-day considerable capital is re-
quired to erect and maintain an establishment
capable of turning out sugar in sufficient
quantities to be sold on the low margin of
profit prevailing in the business. The present
method of refining involves between twenty
and thirty steps, or processes, depending on
the grade or form of the refined product.
In the course of a century the invention
of the centrifugal machine, the vacuum pan,
the boneblack filter and the polariscope has
revolutionized the methods of refining sugar.
The fundamentals, however, remain as in
Colonial days. It was then necessary to
melt, clarify, filter, and crystallize by boil
ing the raw product. To-day the same steps
must be followed, but the methods employed
in putting through the various processes have
all been radically changed. Formerly the
melting was done in a large, open kettle or
copper boiler, the filtering accomplished by
straining through blankets, and the clarifying
by the use of bullock's blood, albumen, and
clay. A hundred years ago no centrifugal
Page Eleven

or granulating machine was in operation, and
sugar was run into moulds and baked in ovens
heated to the proper temperature. The in-
vention of the centrifugal machine and
modern granulator has made granulated
sugar possible. In the former, centrifugal
force throws the molasses free and leaves
the white granulated sugar. The combina-
tion granulator and drier, as the name
implies, dries the sugar and screens it.
Since 1816 a Frenchman, one Soleil, in-
vented the polariscope. This instrument, by
means of polarized light, makes possible an
exact determination of the sucrose contained
in any grade of raw sugar. By its use the
buyer of raw sugar is able to determine, to
a fraction of a degree, the value of his
purchase. The use of the boneblack filter
has done away with the old clarifying agents,
ox-blood, clay, and albumen. Boneblack, an
article universally used now, quickly and
thoroughly cleans raw sugar. Employing
it, together with the bag filters and filter
presses which take the place of the old-
Page Twelve

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RESERVE REFINERY
fashioned blankets, the modern refiner is able
to put upon the market an article free from
any impurities. For high-grade sugars, such
as the Domino brands, are to the hundredth
degree free from foreign matter. Purchased
in a neat, strong carton or a stout cotton
bag, weighed, packed, and sealed by inge-
nious automatic machinery, they reach the
consumer free from dirt, germs, or infection
of any kind.
In 1816 the tariff upon raw sugar im-
ported into the United States was three
cents a pound, upon loaf or refined sugar
twelve cents, and its price to the consumer
was about twenty cents per pound. The
tariff on most of the raw sugar now im-
ported is but a cent a pound, and the pro-
tection of 1816 to the refiner of nine cents
a pound has vanished entirely. To-day about
one-half of the sugar consumed in the United
States pays no duty.
Because of abnormal world conditions
sugar at the moment is selling on a higher
basis than has existed for many years, but
Page Thirteen
the price now prevailing in the United States
is less per pound than that obtaining in any
other nation in the world. Sugar is now an
indispensable food product for all classes, and
no other palatable article of food is furnished
the public containing the same amount of
energy per pound for a price equal to that
paid for sugar.
One of England's most
competent experts upon diet sums up the
opinion of the scientific world as to the great
food value of sugar in this way:
"There have been few more important additions
to our dietary, or which have done more to promote
the health of the rising generation, than our cheap
and abundant supply of pure sugar.
""
And an American authority, in pointing
out the value of sugar as a food for children,
recently repeated the statement of the Eng-
lish expert and said:
"The prejudice against this most valuable food
for children is little better than a superstition."
The total amount of sugar imported in
the entire year of 1816 would not run all
Page Fourteen

THE AMERICAN SUGAR REFINING COMPANY
BOSTON
*
the refineries in the United States forty-eight
hours. The amount received in customs
duties by the Government for that year is
now taken in at the port of New York in
the space of a week. Formerly sailing ves-
sels of small tonnage brought the raw sugar
in hogsheads and it was then transferred by
carts to the refineries away from the water-
front. Now ships of 10,000 tons burden
land at the docks of the Company and their
cargoes, with a minimum of rehandling, are
dumped into the melting pan. Several ves-
sels may dock at the same moment at many
of the refineries of the Company. The
Chalmette Refinery has a wharf which is
800 feet in length and 80 feet in width and
contains extensive warehouses. Railroads
bring their cars to the doors of the refineries
and take the sugar for direct shipment to
any part of the United States.
To-day only a large corporation is able
to compete successfully in the world's sugar
markets. Severely competitive conditions
prevail in the refining business and the
Page Fifteen
rivalry among the many competing refiners
is intense. Not only does it require a large
organization, but vast capital, resources, and
plants to draw the necessary raw products
from all quarters of the world sufficient to
make a year-round campaign. Employment
of capital in large amounts, construction of
extensive plants, and manufacture upon a
large scale have enabled the refiner to reduce
his cost of operation, improve the grade of
the product, and sell the same at a reduced
price.
One of the most important items in the
distribution of sugar has been the cost of the
barrel. The American Sugar Refining Com-
pany and its constituent company, The Frank-
lin Sugar Refining Company, in shipping
their products to the four quarters of the
globe require every year millions of barrels.
This one item has necessitated the acquisi-
tion through another constituent company
of standing timber on lands covering an area
of 625 square miles, or more than one-half
the size of Rhode Island. The estimated
Page Sixteen

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FILLING DOMINO GRANULATED SUGAR CARTONS BY MACHINERY



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THE FRANKLIN SUGAR REFINING COMPANY
VALARA
PHILADELPHIA
ACTIVE REFINERY
timber which may be cut from its holdings
amounts to half a billion feet. To insure a
constant source of supply on a low basis of
cost, this constituent company has five large
barrel factories and seven stave and heading
mills, the latter with six and one-half miles
of stave sheds. To bring the logs to the
mills it has had to construct and operate 130
miles of railroad. Built in the first instance
for this purpose, some of these roads have
developed into interstate commerce carriers
with standard freight and passenger equip-
ment. One road already forty-four miles
long, and to which extensions are constantly
being made, has become the main artery
between thriving industrial centers created
by it in a region formerly a swamp.
The barrel factories have an annual out-
put of over 7,000,000 barrels, requiring in
their manufacture 80,000,000 board feet of
timber which is produced in the stave and
heading mills of the Company. Prudence
has required reforestation on a large scale, and
since 1910 about one-half million of white
Page Seventeen
pine and spruce trees have been planted by
the Company in the open forests of the
Adirondacks.
Fine table sugars like Domino Cane Su-
gars are the result of two distinct processes.
The first is the manufacture of the raw
sugar — a
—a brown, moist sugar, containing
impurities—and the second is the refining
of this sugar into higher grades of varying
degrees of color and crystals.
A refining Company such as the American
buys the raw sugar in the open market, and
it is transported from its tropical home to the
wharves of the Company's refineries located
in Brooklyn, Jersey City, Boston, Philadelphia,
and Chalmette, just below New Orleans.
More than six hundred and fifty ships an-
nually dock at the different refineries of the
Company and discharge their cargoes total-
ling nearly 1,500,000 tons.
The yearly output of the Company in
sugar and syrup mounts up to nearly 80,000
car-loads. Placed end to end they would
make a train nearly 600 miles long, stretching
Page Eighteen


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BIKARBOUR
DOMINO TABLET SUGAR IN DRYING OVENS
from New York to Cleveland. And this is
only a little over one-third of the sugar con-
sumed in the United States. A train reach-
ing from Boston to Denver would be required
to move all the sugar so consumed.
The moving of the refined product is but
a portion of the freight business incident to
the operations of the sugar refineries in the
United States. The refining and cooperage
plants of The American Sugar Refining
Company alone require the use of approxi-
mately 55,000 freight cars each year for
their manufacturing purposes. This total
of 135,000 cars, necessary to conduct the
yearly business of the Company, forcibly in-
dicates the important relation which the sugar
industry bears to the railroad systems of the
country.
All the sugar
refineries a century ago were
of small capacity and manufactured but three
or four grades of sugar. In one hundred
years the advances in the methods of man-
ufacture and the consolidation of plants have
enabled the consumer, at a small cost, to
Page Nineteen
exercise a wide choice in the grade and
character of his sugar.
Plants have been constructed for the man-
ufacture solely of certain grades. At Jersey
City this Company has erected a modern five-
story steel-and-glass building for the produc
tion of the variety widely known as “Crystal
Domino Tablets." This building, built sim-
ply for the purpose of economically produc-
ing this form of sugar, is many times the
size of any refinery existing in Colonial days.
At prices for the refined product which
are less than the sum which was expended
by the refiner one hundred years ago to turn
the raw sugar into refined, this Company
offers for sale over one hundred varieties of
grades and packings. It puts upon the
market standard, coarse and fine granulated
sugars; tablet, cut-loaf and cube sugars; pow-
dered and confectioners' sugar, and fifteen
grades of soft sugars—all in various sizes and
packed in an attractive form in barrels, boxes,
bags, and cartons, making "The Most Com-
plete Line of Sugar in the World."
Page Twenty

SA
PACKING AND SEALING DOMINO TABLET SUGAR
COCOCC
From this assortment the consumer can
now choose that sugar best suited to his use.
He may have his powdered sugar in cartons
with wax paper lining, his tablet sugar in
large or small pieces, and, if he desires,
individually wrapped in paper to insure sani-
tary delivery—the last refinement in the art of
tablet sugar. Or if he favors the old brown
of his boyhood days, there are fifteen
grades of that from which he
sugar
may select.
Sugar for tea and coffee; sugar for fruits
and cereals; sugar for icings, ice-cream and
preserving; sugar for candy and chewing-
gum; sugar for chocolate and condensed
milk manufacturers; sugar for cracker and
biscuit makers; sugar adapted to an infinite
variety of uses, specially made and speedily
delivered-this is the achievement of a
Company owning many plants and capable
of turning each to the manufacture of that
form of product for which it is best adapted.
Manufacturing on a scale involving the
minimum of waste, employing extensive plants
and costly apparatus, and commanding the
Page Twenty-one
services of experts of the highest skill, The
American Sugar Refining Company has ren-
dered a real service to the consumers of the
United States in furnishing them a product
rich in food value and within reach of the
purse of the humblest laborer.
Page Twenty-two
THE DE VINNE PRESS
NEW YORK


......
CHEMICAL LIBRAR
TP
379
-us
AUTHOR Amer sugar refining Co. A 5/2
BOOK CARD
TITLE
·
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
3 9015 06515 6625
A: Century of sugar.
refiring in the U. S. 18+6 1916
SIGNATURE
ISS'D
RET D


> ANNAS
149a25/25
Column Dexter pud 14223280
Exp
Hennutter Mas
ene 1099 23
MA
603 Founta
Madinat (Ibrary
+
Medical Library
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