Name/Title
StereographEntry/Object ID
2023.055.3.0376Description
A black and white stereograph. Image is of a multitude of wooden barrels on the ground waiting to be laoded onto nearby steamships. Above the image "36" is printed, below the image "V23243 - The Sweetest Spot on Earth -- Sugar Levee Beside the Mississippi, New Orleans, La." is printed, to the left of the image "Keystone View Company Copyrighted, Underwood & Underwood Manufacturers MADE IN U.S.A. Publishers" is printed, to the right of the image "Meadville, Pa., New York, N. Y., Portland, Oregon, London, Eng., Sydeny, Aus." is printed. On the reverse the following is printed:
V23243
SUGAR LEVEE BESIDE THE MISSISSIPPI, NEW ORLEANS, LA.
Lat. 30 (Degrees) N.; Long. 90 (Degrees) W.
We Americans of the United States eat 4,691,926,400 pounds of sugar yearly, so the census reports show - something over 60 pounds apiece. This levee is one of the hief distributing points for our supply. For miles up and down the Mississippi here, on both sides of the great river, the levees are alive with freight boats, - coast vessels ad ocean streamers, - loading up.
When Columbus made his second American voyage in 1493 he carried sugar canes from the Canary Islands to San Domingo, and the plants grew so well there that later experiments introduced them into Cuba and Mexico; it was, however, not until 1791 that sugar cane was raised here in Louisiana. The very first successful sugar plantation in the United States was a little over two hundred years ago on land now covered by the city of New Orleans. The rich alluvial soil spread out by the river over lower Louisiana is admirably fitted for sugar planting.
The sugar cane raised here averages from 10 to 12 per cent sugar, an enormous increase over the proportion of sugar in the original wild cane of centuries ago. The grinding of the canes in the mills extracts from 75 to 95 per cent of the sugar they contain; the extracted juices are chemically treated to neutralize the free vegetable acids associated with the suage, and then the clarfied juice is evaporated and crystallized, producing sugar of various grades and residucal molasses. The complete refining of crystallized sugar is a supplementary process centralized in a few large establishments.
See encyclopedia articles of Sugar for interesting details regarding the successive stages of procudtion in this enormous industry.
Copyright by The Keystone View CompanyCollection
Photograph Collection