is squeezed out of the roots to the time when
it reposes in the crystallizing vats laden with
brilliant particles of sugar, is made to flow
backwards and forwards, up stairs and down
stairs, through pipes connected with the boilers
and the engine; so that the workmen at their
respective stations have nothing to do but to
turn a few cocks, to receive their material,
and to send it about its business as soon as
they have done what they want to do with it.

The existence of the beet-root sugar,
manufactured in France, is the result of the peculiar
policy of Napoleon I., which is a matter of
history, and which we have no time to discuss
now. The production of native sugar owes
its development to the provisions of the
decree of 1812, which fostered it by granting
numerous immunities. It may be remarked,
however, that as a vast amount of capital has
been sunk in the trade, on the strength of
that decree, any sudden alteration of the
sugar duties, without compensation, would
be an act of great injustice towards the manufacturers
who have so invested their property.
They would be fairly entitled to a recompense,
were such a change likely to happen—which
it is not. Immense pains and ingenuity have
been bestowed in France on the manufacture
of beet-root sugar; but, after all, it still
remains very up-hill work. The French
themselves confess that if the rich produce of
the cane were treated by an equally skilful
process, it would yield immediately sugar as
beautiful and as pure as the whitest refined
sugar from beet. But in spite of all the
science which has been at work, it cannot be
denied that the manufacture of native sugar
is still very far from having arrived at perfection.
A great difficulty is that the process
fails if it is not completed with the utmost
rapidity. A slight fermentation of the pulp
or the juice would ruin all. Consequently
the factory goes on full gallop, night and day,
weekday and Sunday, without the least cessation,
from the time the first beet-root is
brought to the building to the hour when the
very last one has yielded its quota of sugar.
At Coquille, the season runs from September
to the beginning of March, To show the
proportion of human and machine labour
employed, this fifteen-horse steam-engine finds
work for a hundred men, women, and boys,
who are divided into two relays of fifty each,
and whose day's- work, therefore, is twelve
hours, exclusive of the two half-hours allowed
for breakfast and dinner. The men earn
from five-and-twenty to thirty sous a day;
the women, fifteen. But higher wages than
these are paid at Lille and other busy towns
of the Department du Nord. There is nothing
at all unhealthy in the trade, and no more
danger than is incurred by other people who
have to do with steam and fire.

The first step in making beet-root sugar
is to clean the roots. This is sometimes
effected by scraping them with a knife, but
mostly by washing them in a large hollow
wooden cylinder turning on an axis. Towards
the end of the season, it is better to look
them over one by one, by hand, and to cut
out every decayed speck and spot. To leave
any such, would cause fermentation of a nature
the most destructive to the process. Two
systems of extracting the juice are employed,
neither of them, at present, thoroughly
satisfactory, each having its own peculiar
inconveniences. One mode is, to subject the roots,
in the state either of pulp or thin slices, to a
methodical washing with hot or cold fluid. The
plan of washing (which comprises maceration)
does not succeed so well, but is necessarily
the only one that can be employed upon
dried beet-roots. The oldest and most general
method, and that employed at Coquille, is to
reduce the roots to pulp, and then subject
them to strong pressure. In short, the two
acts of rasping and of squeezing, present us
with the raw beet-root juice.

The juice of the beet-root, as it grows,
is contained in a multitude of minute cells
which, united together, form a compact substance,
or cellular tissue. In this state, even
a very powerful pressure would extract only
a small portion of the fluid. It is highly
important, therefore, not to apply the pressure
till all the cells, or at least a great number of
them, have been ruptured. The juice, then,
will run out of itself, and easily obey the
squeezing process. Hence the necessity for
rasping or grinding the roots.

We will first go into the very outer apartment
of the right-hand wing of the factory.
It is a large barn-like room, with wide open
doors, through which the people are carting
in beet, and depositing it in heaps upon the
floor. On one side, a large wooden trough,
filled with water, has one end joining an
opening in the partition wall. In the trough,
three-quarters under water, are a couple of
cylinders which are made of strong wooden
splines, and are kept turning and turning everlastingly
by the ever handy steam-engine. Note
too, that the axes (or axises?) on which they
turn, are not horizontal, but slope considerably
towards the aperture in the wall, so that the
roots are naturally shaken that way. Four
or five farm lads amuse themselves by throwing
beet-roots—one by one, or two by two—
into the trough, so that they shall tumble into
the water just at the mouth of the cylinder.
It is very good fun -- nearly as good as catch-
ball. Many an English boy, not knowing
what to do with his Christmas holidays, would
be delighted to come here for an hour every
day, and toss beet-roots into that rumbling
splashing entrance-hole. There is a short
ladder leading up to the trough, so you may
mount and peep in. But 'tis very muddy
and sticky; take care you don't slip. The
lads are polite enough to suspend their game
for a moment, supposing that you don't care
to be snowballed with beet-root. Bumble and
splutter go the revolving cylinders. This first
part of the process is not hard to understand.