72 
Modern Business Geography 
sand acres, — and the methods of cultivation and harvesting are rela- 
tively progressive. Gang plows are sometimes used to prepare the 
soil, and cultivators drawn by horses are used to keep down the 
weeds. 
Very soon after the cane cuttings are set out they give off sprouts. 
When the cane stalks reach a height of from six to twelve feet, 
men with long, heavy knives pass through the rows and strike down 
a ripe cane at each blow. The crop, which is of enormous weight, is 
carried to the mill by means of many miles of light movable rail- 
ways, made in short sections eight or ten feet long. As soon as one 
part of the plantation is harvested, the railway is quickly taken up 
and put down again elsewhere. 
At the mill the juice is crushed out of the cane by rollers, and is 
then heated in huge boilers which thicken the syrup and crystallize 
the sugar. When sugar is first crystallized, it is brown. In this 
form it is sent to American coast cities, — Boston, New York, 
Philadelphia, Baltimore. New Orleans, San Francisco, — where it 1s 
refined, partly to please our sense of taste, and partly to please our 
eyes by its whiteness. 
Sorghum cane. Sorghum is often called Chinese sugar cane be- 
cause it resembles sugar cane and has long been grown in China. We 
hear little about it in this country unless we happen to live in the 
sorghum-cane belt, shown in Figure 52. It is grown chiefly to satisfy 
local needs. Most of it is made into molasses, which is often eaten on 
corn mush or corn pone. Sorghum is hardier than sugar cane and 
requires only five and one half months without frost. It is not so 
profitable as sugar cane, but its molasses, or sugar, is more easily 
extracted than the sugar of sugar beets. 
* OUESTIONS. EXERCISES, AND PROBLEMS 
A. The kind of sugar best produced in various parts of the United States. 
1. From Figure 52, name the eight leading sugar-beet states of the United 
States. Tell in which of them the beets are raised by irrigation. 
What special advantages have these states? 
Why do some of the states bordering the Great Lakes raise sugar beets? 
Look at the earlier product maps in.this book and find what crop is more 
profitable than sugar beets in Ohio; in the Dakotas. 
Name from west to east the states that produce the American cane crop. 
Cane seems to grow best on the low flood plains and deltas of rivers, not 
far from the salt water. To what extent are these conditions found 
in the states that raise sugar cane? 
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