Imperial Sugar Company

Variant names

Biographical notes:

The Imperial Sugar Company is the most important corporation belonging to Sugarland Industries, which is also composed of the Sugarland Manufacturing Company, Sealy Mattress Company, and Imperial Mercantile Company.

Appropriately, the headquarters of Sugarland Industries is Sugar Land, Texas. For most this century, Sugar Land has been a company town. "Every industrial, business and public activity," wrote an enthusiastic visitor, "is controlled by the Sugarland Industries for its livelihood."

This collection was acquired from the Texas Gulf Coast Historical Association depository at the University of Houston. Most of the material in it is either financial or legal in nature, and falls between the years of 1905 and 1940. It illustrates the national and international operations of many Texas corporations. The Imperial Sugar Company, for instance, is the largest single importer in the entire state of Texas. Raw cane sugar from around the world is freighted to company owned wharves in Galveston and Houston aboard a fleet of company owned ships, where it is transferred by the trainload to Sugar Land for refinement. By 1971, Imperial's plant production exceeded 3 million pounds of refined sugar daily--enough, by itself, to satisfy the sugar consumption of Texas and surrounding states. Since it began production early in this century under the direction of Galveston businessman I. H. Kempner, the Imperial Sugar Company has marketed over 30 billion pounds of refined cane sugar. It is the only sugar company in Texas, one of the only two west of the Mississippi river, and one of the most profitable in the nation.

From the guide to the Imperial Sugar Company Collection RG D 9., 1904 to 1955, 1916 to 1928, (Houston Metropolitan Research Center, Houston Public Library)