Chapter 4 THE REFINERY

Vacation with its country sports came to an end only too quickly, and leaving the New Hampshire hills behind the Carlton family, together with Van Blake, set out for New York where the boys were to make a weekend visit before returning to Colversham.

"I wish while we're in New York we could go through your refinery, Dad," Bob remarked to his father.

Mr. Carlton glanced at him in surprise.

"What set you thinking of that, Bob?" he asked. "You never were interested in sugar making before."

"I know it, Father." Bob flushed guiltily. "I ought to have been. But since we have seen maple-sugar made Van and I thought it would be fun to see the process that white sugar has to go through before it is ready for the market."

"Van thought so, did he?" queried Mr. Carlton.

"Why, yes, he thought so. I believe, though, it was I who suggested it."

"Humph!" murmured Mr. Carlton. He mused a moment. "I suppose it would do no harm," he said at last, half to himself.

"Harm!"

"No, no! Of course not," interrupted Mr. Carlton hurriedly. "The process is an open secret anyway, except perhaps-Oh, I guess it would be all right."

Bob regarded his father with a puzzled stare.

"I will arrange for you and Van to go through the works right away," continued Mr. Carlton. "It simply will be necessary for me to telephone the superintendent and tell him you are coming so he will have some one on hand to explain things to you. This was your scheme, you say?"

"Yes, sir. Why?"

"Nothing, nothing," was Mr. Carlton's enigmatic reply.

He was as good as his word, for despite his peculiar reluctance in the matter he lost no time in perfecting the plan, and the next morning after the party reached New York he informed the boys that the motor-car would be at the door at nine o'clock to take them to the refinery.

Bob and Van, to whom New York was more or less of an old story, hailed this announcement with pleasure and promptly stowed themselves away in the big limousine which was to whirl them to Long Island where the works were located. All the way out Van was singularly silent, and appeared to be turning something over in his mind; once he started to speak, but checked himself abruptly.

Bob watched him uneasily.

"I believe you've lost your enthusiasm about sugar," said he at last, "and did not really want to come."

"What a notion! Of course I wanted to come."

"But you seem so glum, old man."

"Glum! Nonsense! I never was in better spirits in my life."

With a sudden shifting of the subject Van pointed to a stack of chimneys cleaving the sky and observed:

"I wonder if those belong to your father's plant?"

"I fancy they do," was Bob's quick answer. "Dad said we'd see a bunch of tall chimneys, and that the refinery was of yellow brick."

"Then this is the place," Van declared, drumming on the window glass with forced gaiety.

He did not, however, leap from the car with the spring of anticipation that Bob did, and noticing his spiritless step his friend once more remarked upon it.

"You seem bored to death to have to drag yourself through here, Van," said he. "What's the matter? You know if you do not want to come you don't have to."

"I do want to."

"But somehow you seem so-so-"

"So what?"

"Why, you seem to hang back as if you could hardly put one foot before the other," answered Bob. "Don't you feel well?"

"Prime! There's nothing the matter with me. What put that idea into your head?"

"Chiefly you yourself."

"Well, cut it out. I don't see what you're fussing about me for. I'm just as anxious to see how sugar is made as you are."

Still Bob was unconvinced. He could not have explained why, but he felt certain that Van's enthusiasm was feigned. For a second he paused undecidedly on the pavement before the door of the great factory; then shrugging his shoulders he entered, followed closely by his chum.

It was evident that they were expected, for a clerk rose from his desk and came forward to greet them.

"Mr. Hennessey, the superintendent, said I was to bring you to his office when you arrived," he said.

"Thank you."

"You are Mr. Carlton's son, aren't you?"

"Yes."

"I thought you must be. Mr. Hennessey himself is going to take you through the works."

The clerk led the way to the door of a private office, where he knocked.

"Mr. Carlton and his friend are here," he announced to the boy who opened the door. "Tell Mr. Hennessey right away."

The boys had not a moment to wait before a large man with a genial face and outstretched hand came forward.

"I'm glad to see you, Mr. Carlton," he said. "I'm Hennessey, the superintendent. Possibly you may have heard your father speak of me; I have been helping him make sugar for twenty years."

Bob smiled up into the eyes of the big man looking down at him.

"Indeed Dad has spoken of you, Mr. Hennessey," he said, returning the hearty hand-shake. "He depends on you a lot. He says he always feels sure that when you're on the job everything will be all right."

Mr. Hennessey flushed with pleasure.

"I merely try to run your father's place as if it were my own," was the modest rejoinder.

"That's just it-that's why Father feels he can go to the North Pole if he wants to and not worry while he's gone," nodded Bob. "I think it is mighty good of you to bother with my chum and me. Can't you send some one to take us through the refinery? There is not the slightest need for you to go with us yourself."

"Oh, I wouldn't think of turning you over to some one else. You see I am interested in your sugar education; I can't allow the boss's son to get a wrong start in the business," laughed Mr. Hennessey.

"I'm afraid I'm not starting in the business," protested Bob, shaking his head deprecatingly. "I'm only trying to learn a little something about Dad's job, so I can be a bit more intelligent about it."

"You're going to investigate the way your father earns his money, eh?" chuckled the superintendent. "Well, I'll tell you right now you need do no blushing for your father's business methods; he makes his fortune as cleanly and honestly as any man could make it."

"I'll take a chance on Dad," was the laconic response.

"You can do so with safety."

There was a pause and turning Bob introduced Van Blake.

Then after the two boys had been provided with duck coats so that none of the sticky liquid that sometimes dripped from the machinery should spot their clothing the three set out for the basement of the factory, where the incoming cargoes of sugar were unloaded. Here great bags or casks of raw sugar were being opened, and their contents emptied into wooden troughs preparatory to cleansing and refining.

Both lads regarded with surprise the material that was being tipped out into the bins.

"Why, it looks like nothing but coarse, muddy snow!" ejaculated Van. "Do you really mean to tell us that you can make that brown stuff white, Mr. Hennessey?"

"That's what we're here for," answered Mr. Hennessey, obviously enjoying his amazement. "All raw sugar comes to us this way. You see, it is about the color of maple or brown sugar, but it is not nearly so pure, for it has a great deal of dirt mixed with it when we first get it."

"Where does it come from?" inquired Bob.

"Largely from the plantations of Cuba and Porto Rico. Toward the end of the year we also get raw sugar from Java, and by the time this is refined and ready for the market the new crop from the West Indies comes along. In addition to this we get consignments from the Philippine Islands, the Hawaiian Islands, South America, Formosa, and Egypt. I suppose it is quite unnecessary to tell you young men anything of how the cane is grown; of course you know all that."

"I don't believe we do, except in a general way," Bob admitted honestly. "I am ashamed to be so green about a thing at which Dad has been working for years. I don't know why I never asked about it before. I guess I never was interested. I simply took it for granted."

"That's the way with most of us," was the superintendent's kindly answer. "We accept many things in the world without actually knowing much about them, and it is not until something brings our ignorance before us that we take the pains to focus our attention and learn about them. So do not be ashamed that you do not know about sugar raising; I didn't when I was your age. Suppose, then, I give you a little idea of what happens before this raw sugar can come to us."

"I wish you would," exclaimed both boys in a breath.

"Probably in your school geographies you have seen pictures of sugar-cane and know that it is a tall perennial not unlike our Indian corn in appearance; it has broad, flat leaves that sometimes measure as many as three feet in length, and often the stalk itself is twenty feet high. This stalk is jointed like a bamboo pole, the joints being about three inches apart near the roots and increasing in distance the higher one gets from the ground."

"How do they plant it?" Bob asked.

"It can be planted from seed, but this method takes much time and patience; the usual way is to plant it from cuttings, or slips. The first growth from these cuttings is called plant cane; after these are taken off the roots send out ratoons or shoots from which the crop of one or two years, and sometimes longer, is taken. If the soil is not rich and moist replanting is more frequently necessary and in places like Louisiana, where there is annual frost, planting must be done each year. When the cane is ripe it is cut and brought from the field to a central sugar mill, where heavy iron rollers crush from it all the juice. This liquid drips through into troughs from which it is carried to evaporators where the water portion of the sap is eliminated and the juice left; you would be surprised if you were to see this liquid. It looks like nothing so much as the soapy, bluish-gray dish-water that is left in the pan after the dishes have been washed."

"A tempting picture!" Van exclaimed.

"I know it. Sugar isn't very attractive during its process of preparation," agreed Mr. Hennessey. "The sweet liquid left after the water has been extracted is then poured into vacuum pans to be boiled until the crystals form in it, after which it is put into whirling machines, called centrifugal machines, that separate the dry sugar from the syrup with which it is mixed. This syrup is later boiled into molasses. The sugar is then dried and packed in these burlap sacks such as you see here, or in hogsheads, and shipped to refineries to be cleansed and whitened."

"Isn't any of the sugar refined in the places where it grows?" queried Bob.

"Practically none. Large refining plants are too expensive to be erected everywhere; it therefore seems better that they should be built in our large cities, where the shipping facilities are good not only for receiving sugar in its raw state but for distributing it after it has been refined and is ready for sale. Here, too, machinery can more easily be bought and the business handled with less difficulty."

"You spoke of a central sugar mill," began Bob.

"Yes. Each plantation does not have a mill of its own or, indeed, need one. Frequently a planter will raise too small a crop to pay him to operate a mill; so a mill is constructed in the center of a sugar district, and to this growers may carry their wares and be paid in bulk. It saves much trouble and expense. It also encourages small growers who could not afford to build mills and might in consequence abandon sugar raising. The leaves are all stripped off before the cane is shipped so that nothing but the stalks are sent. As the largest portion of sugar is in the part of the cane nearest the ground it is cut as close to the root as possible. After the juice has been crushed from the stalks by putting them several times through the rollers the cane, or begass, as it is called, is so dry that it can be used as fuel for running the mill machinery."

"How clever!"

"Clever and economical as well," agreed Mr. Hennessey. "Moreover, it does away with a waste product that otherwise would accumulate."

Bob nodded.

"Raw sugar has usually been shipped to the northern refineries by water, as that mode of transportation is cheaper; but during the Great War ships have been so scarce that in 1916 a large consignment of Hawaiian sugar was for the first time sent overland across the American continent by train; this of course made the freight rates higher, and if such a condition were to continue the price of sugar would of necessity have to be advanced."

"I never thought of such things affecting us," murmured Van.

"We live in a network of interdependence," Mr. Hennessey replied. "Scarcely anything can be done in any land that does not affect us. Commercial conditions react upon us all, for there is not one of us who is not indebted to the four corners of the globe for what he eats, wears, and uses. Therefore, you see, world prosperity and comfort can be at their height only when there is world peace under which all nations are friends, maintaining cordial trade relation with one another."

"What political party do you belong to, Mr. Hennessey?" asked Bob, glancing into the superintendent's earnest face.

"I do not know just what label you would put on me," the big man replied evasively. "But this I do know: first, last, and all the time I am for a universe where each country shall work for the good of the whole."

He spoke slowly and with impressiveness; then breaking off abruptly he led the way up a winding iron staircase and the boys, still pondering his words, followed him silently and thoughtfully.