A visit to the docks of a sugar refinery during the time vessels from foreign ports are lying there is well worth while, although in these days of steam, the picturesque features are not so pronounced as they were before the passing of the sailing vessel. WASHING REMOVAL OF SUPERFICIAL IMPURITIES As a starting point in the refining process the melt house will be first considered. It is so called because it is there that the raw sugar enters the refining process by being melted or dissolved in water. The conveyor, upon which the bags were deposited in the warehouse, delivers them on a platform on the top floor of the building. As they come to this platform from the conveyor, workmen with keen-edged knives seize them and, with a deft, swift slash, cut the twine sewing at the top of the bag without injuring the burlap fabric. The bag is then pulled off the platform, mouth downward, so that the sugar falls out and passes through an iron grating into a large bin beneath. If the sugar should happen to be caked or lumpy, it is sent through crushers and broken up. [Illustration: CUT-IN STATION—SHOWING SUGAR FIRST ENTERING THE REFINING PROCESS] [Illustration: CENTRIFUGAL MACHINE—MOTOR DRIVEN] As a certain amount of sugar adheres to the inside of the bags, they are washed in large revolving machines and in this operation the sugar dissolves in the water (called sweet water), from which it is extracted later. They are then partially dried in centrifugal machines and hung on hooks on a traveling chain conveyor that passes through the upper part of the boiler house, where the waste heat thoroughly dries them. In returning, the conveyor passes through the bag room and, by means of an automatic device, the bags are dropped alongside the printing presses. Here the name of the refinery, the kind of sugar and the net weight they are to contain are printed upon them. These burlap bags are then lined with a white cotton bag, after which they are made into bundles and sent to the packing room to be filled with sugar. It will be seen, therefore, that the bags from Hawaii in which the raw sugar is received are put to good use. This, however, does not apply to those that come from Cuba or Java; they are too large to serve as containers for the refined product, and after being washed and dried are sold for what they will bring. The white cotton bags are made at the refinery, and a plant turning out one thousand tons of sugar each twenty-four hours will use twenty-five thousand yards of cotton sheeting per day if all the output is packed in one-hundred-pound bags.