12mo, die cut to mimic a two-pound box of sugar. McCahan’s Sunny Cane Sugar: A story of how sugar cane is cultivated and how it is converted into Sunny Cane Sugar. . ..

[Philadelphia:: The Company, ,.. Illustrated with 8 halftones; 88 pp. 12mo, die cut to mimic a two-pound box of sugar. Sixth Printing. OCLC lists a 9th edition (1937) with the same number of pages and recipes (Virginia Tech) and a 1933 printing with 111 recipes and 62 pp. (University of Michigan).William James McCahan (1832–1918) was born in Ballintoy, county Antrim, Northern Ireland. He was the youngest of seven children of John and Peggy (Taggart) McCaughan—it is thought that he changed the spelling of his name on emigrating to the United States in 1851.After (truncated) trying several different business ventures including carpentry and a funeral home, McCahan decided on the retail grocery business, This proved successful and he decided to control the manufacture of sugar from the point of the already harvested cane to the refined product. The four steps in the development of table sugar are 1) growth and harvesting; 2) pressing the cane to get liquid sugar (molasses); 3) processing the molasses into low grade sugar, and (4) refining the sugar. McCahan would be entering the process at step 3, but he went into partnership with a Cuban grower who provided all his cane. Before this innovative move different firms would perform each different step. McCahan became a very rich man and a pillar of Philadelphia society. After his death the business was sold to the Cuban family who provided the cane and finally was bought out by another company in the late 1930s (Inventory #: 4004)