with the ship. But the work went on. There is not space here to tell of the several vessels whose names, through the engagement of the craft in these enterprises, became as familiar to newspaper readers as are the names of ocean liners today. A few months later, the United States Government sent its ships and its men to help those who, for three hard years, had struggled for national independence. XII _THE STORY OF SUGAR_ Chemically, sugar is a compound belonging to the group of carbohydrates, or organic compounds of carbon with oxygen and hydrogen. The group includes sugars, starches, gums, and celluloses. Sugar is a product of the vegetable kingdom, of plants, trees, root crops, etc. It is found in and is producible from many growths. As a laboratory process, it is obtainable from many sources, but, commercially, it is derived from only two, the sugar cane and the beet root. This statement, however, has a certain limitation in that it omits such products as maple sugar, malt sugar, milk sugar, and others having commercial or chemical uses on a limited scale. But it is only with the crystallized sucrose, the familiar sugar of the market and the household, that we are dealing here. The output of the other sugars is measurable in hundreds or even thousands of pounds, but the output of the sugar of commerce is measured in millions of tons. Long experience proves that the desired substance is most readily, most abundantly, and most cheaply, obtained from the juices of the plant commonly known as sugar cane, and from the vegetable known as the sugar beet.