Maple sugar was made by the early settlers as an article of food, the West Indian cane sugar being costly and difficult to transport inland. The commonest kind of “muscovado,” however, was preferred to maple sugar, if it could be obtained. With the increased supply of cane sugar there is little doubt that maple sugar would have almost ceased to be a commodity on the market but for its peculiar flavor, which, while objectionable for general purposes, created a special demand. Thus, while the cheaper and unflavored cane product has almost displaced maple sugar as an article of food, the demand for maple syrup and sugar as luxuries and flavoring materials not only keeps the industry alive, but calls for a continually increasing supply. It would naturally be supposed that this growth in demand would have been followed by a corresponding increase in production. Such, however, is not the case; while the demand for maple sugar and syrup is continually increasing, the production has been more or less stationary for twenty years. The explanation lies in the fact that, at the very lowest estimate, seven-eighths of the product sold today is a spurious article, which is only in part maple sugar, or is manufactured entirely from foreign materials. When maple sugar began to come into general demand, the market fell naturally into the hands of the wholesale dealers. The farmers were unorganized, and, as a rule, out of touch with the consumers. Consequently the sugar, made in the early spring, when the farmer was most in need of ready money, was generally either sold to the country store at a low price, or exchanged for cane sugar, pound for pound, irrespective of general market conditions. It was then bought again by the “mixers” and used to flavor a body of glucose or cane sugar six or ten times as great, making a product which was marketed as “pure maple sugar.” The mixers preferred to buy a dark, inferior sugar, because it would go further in the mixture. If the season was bad they bought less, but at almost the same price, and increased the proportion of the adulterant. Thus a shortage in the maple sugar crop has no effect whatever on the general supply. It is also true that while the trade in maple sugar has been steadily growing, the production from the trees has remained stationary. The mixer controls the situation, with the effect of lowering the profits of the farmer, preventing a compensatory increase in price when the crop is short, and retarding progress in the industry by the demand for a low-grade tub sugar. [Illustration: MAPLE SUGAR CAMP IN ONE OF THE LARGEST GROVES IN NORTHERN VERMONT. (Continuation of this picture on opposite page.)]