THE RESOURCES OP THE ISLAND 77 



ing employment to large commercial and transportation 

 interests. The sugar-plantations vary in extent from one 

 hundred to one thousand acres, and employ an average of 

 one man to two acres. 



These estates are models in every respeet, and possess 

 the most scientific and remit inventions for the cultivation 

 of the cane and extracl Lou of its juices and their conversion 

 into the crystal. The houses and quarters are neatly built, 

 and attention is paid to the esthetic and ornamental. On the 

 Concepcion estate, for instance, the quarters for the laborers 

 are built in the form of a quadrangle, with a fountain in 

 the center, at which bathing can be enjoyed ; and there is a 

 well-organized hospital for taking care of the sick. There 

 is a crir/tr where old women take care of the piccaninnies 

 of such mothers as work in the fields. A lovely garden is 

 also laid ou1 in a tasteful manner with orange-groves and 

 fragrant walks. The great centrals, or grinding plants, are 

 enormous establishments, which in the grinding season are 

 busy centers of industry. Some of the centrals have over 

 forty miles of private railway leading from the fields to 

 the mills. 



The superior systems of handling cane and extracting 

 the juice have made it possible to continue the profitable 

 cultivation of cane-sugar in Cuba, in face of the recent 

 competition of beet-sugar, which has so impoverished the 

 other islands of the West Indies. Furthermore, the Cuban 

 cane contains a larger percentage of sugar than that of any 

 other American country except Mexico. 



Cuba, in times of peace, produces about one million tons 

 of cane-sugar more than twice as much as Java, the next 

 largest cane-sugar country of the world, and more than five 

 times as much as any other cane-sugar country. Among 

 the beet-sugar countries it is surpassed only by Germany, 

 with one and one half million tons, and is equaled only by 

 one other, Austria. It must be regarded as a singular 

 state of affairs that, while in all the other West Indian 

 [slands, and, in fact, in nearly all cane-sugar countries, the 



