AND Figs. 649-658.
The making of sugar from the sap of one or two species of maple trees constitutes a peculiarly American industry. It is commonly associated with the "customs" of New England and other northern states.
Like every other farming industry, maple-sngar making has changed greatly within a generation. The practices of the first half of the last century were in some respects hardly in advance of those which the Indians employed. To be sure hot stones were no longer dropped into the sap, nor was it concentrated by successive freezings ; but the rude bark vessels, the huge potash kettles, the unsightly slashes on the tree trunks were still used and the product was dark, strong and tangy. There was little or no attempt to grade the sugar or improve its quality, and cleanliness, in the modern accepta tion of the term as applied to sugar-making, wa; unknown. This was not a very serious matter in those days, as maple-sugar did not then enter into commerce. It was a home-made, home-consumed commodity, and the cane-sugar of the tropics was rarely seen in the farm pantry in the maple re gions. about fifty years ago, however, the status of the product began to change, in part owing to the lowered price of the cane- and beet sugar. The maple became less of a necessity and more of a luxury; less was eaten at home and more sold on the market. There is more incentive to improve a money crop than one which the family uses, and hence the industry developed rapidly. Processes were made more economical and labor saving and the products more toothsome and cleaner. But, oddly enough, while quality was en hanced to the last degree, no larg•r crops were harvested. The situation was and is an anomalous one. The consuming population of 1907 is thrice that of 1S50, its purchasing power much greater and its per capita expenditure for food larger than ever before. The demand for maple products is many times the supply ; a good grade brings re munerative prices, the work is done at a time when other farm work is not pressing, the crop is peren nial, the draft on the soil slight, the material used of little value, the cost of apparatus once obtained but slight ; and yet the supply is short.
The reasons for a diminishing supply in the face of an increased demand are two. One is avoidable, the other unavoidable. They are adulteration and the weather. Prior to the passage of the pure food law it was aptly and probably truly said that there was ten times as much maple-syrup made in Chicago as in Vermont. The Chicago brand is made of glucose or cane-sugar, perhaps flavored with a little of the lowest grade and strongest tasting maple and perhaps not. The weather, however, is an all-controlling and uncontrollable factor, in that it may favor a long-continued flow or cause only brief and irregular runs. A day may make or mar the success of a crop. If the right sort of weather comes at just such a time, provided the wrong kind of weather has not preceded it, an average crop or better may be gathered. But, if seasonal conditions do not favor, the product may be but a half or a fourth of a crop ; and nothing can be done to remedy this condition.
Nature of the maple grove. (Fig. 649.) There are several sorts of maples known to bot anists, but only two are of importance as sugar producers,—the sugar or rock maple (Acer satchel rinum, Fig. 452) and the red maple (Acer rubrum), the former being the more common one in the East.
[Unfortunately, the specific name saccharinum has been revived recently by some botanists for the silver maple (A. dasycarpum) which is not a prom inent sugar-producing species, thus restoring, to no purpose, a confusion of the earlier botanists.] The sugar maple is a stately forest tree, at home on the cool uplands and rocky hillsides of western New England, the Adirondack region in eastern New York, the Western Reserve of Ohio and along the Appalachian region as far south as the Caro linas. In all these regions it is a commercial tree, either as a source of sugar, of timber, or of both. The red or swamp maple grows along stream bor ders and on the lower lands, particularly if not well drained, and is more common west than east.