"Important Invention," Civilian and Galveston Gazette, January 28, 1843
Summary: Quoted an article from a Baton Rouge paper about Mr. Leblanc's new sugar cane cutting machine. The editor and several observers said it worked beautifully and could do the work of 25 or 30 slaves. Predicted it would be hailed as the greatest invention for the South since the cotton gin.
During the course of a brief tour in West Baton Rouge this week, we called on V. Leblanc. Esq., who, we had been informed, was grepairing[sic] a machine of his own invention, for cutting sugar cane. Mr. L. cheerfully exhibited a rough specimen of his idea, in the shape of a wooden sled with steel sythes projecting from each runner, and requested our opinion of its feasibility. It had not yet been tried, and as experience ever affords the surest evidence in such matters, we requested him to "hitch on his horses and go out." No sooner said than done.--In a few minutes, the Cane Cutter was in the field and at work, laying down two rows of cane at once, as fast as a man could walk. It took the cane off close to the ground, evenly and clean, neither splitting the stump or disturbing the roots. After testing fully the efficiency of the design, we again left the field. Mr. Leblanc determined to carry out his original idea to the utmost perfection imaginable, and we amply satisfied of the practicability and great utility of the invention. As a labor saving machine, we feel confident this is the most important introduced into Louisiana, since the invention of the cotton-gin: It can be easily made to perform the work of twenty-five or thirty negroes in a day. Windrowing and matlassing after this, will be mere pastime, and an inconceivable amount of anxiety for the master and drudgery for the slaves, will be at an end, when the Cane Cutter shall have been generally introduced on sugar plantations.
Baton Rouge Gazette.
Source Copy Consulted: "Important Invention," Civilian and Galveston Gazette, January 28, 1843, p. 2