and is 96 percent pure sugar. This plant can produce, therefore, 960,000 lbs. of sugar every 24 hours, enough to sweeten the coffee, milk, or chocolate of everybody in the United States.
To keep this factory supplied with cane is a man's-sized job. Trains of cut cane are fed into the factory on schedule time. On the other hand, it is the duty of the factory superintendent to grind his cane as soon as it comes in and the big plant booms along in the bright Cuban moonlight just as hard as by day. At the Preston plant, two 25-ton electric cranes take a whole load of cane out of a car and weigh it while it is suspended in the air. From the hopper, the cane is carried by a tane conductor to a giant crusher where the stalks are submitted to a pressure of 250 tons. After this, it passes through the rolls of the mill which are smoother than those of the crusher and where it is submitted to 500 tons pressure. The cane after being crushed is called haggage and goes to the furnaces to make steam to operate the factory, where a total of 6,000 horsepower is generated.
The cane juice is then conveyed to the liming tanks which are a feature of the boiling house. The lime neutralizes the acid in the cane juice. The juice then goes through an elaborate course of purification and evaporation, through giant vats, crystalizers, juice heaters, defecators, vacuum pans, scum tanks, centrifugal and other appliances. 