SIZE OF PLANTATIONS. 77 



supplies only capital and has no personal oversight of his property. 

 When business of any kind can be systematized and conducted on a 

 large scale the duplication of many expenses can be avoided and the 

 profits increased proportionally, but this is obviously not true to the 

 same extent for all industries. A sugar plantation, for example, must 

 have a factory with expensive machines, skilled workmen, and com- 

 petent management. The output can be doubled or much further 

 increased with relatively little additional expense; consequently the 

 consolidation of sugar estates and the abandonment of small planta- 

 tions has gone forward with great rapidity in the last decade. To 

 open a modern sugar estate large enough to be economically conducted 

 costs from $300,000 to $500,000 and many are still larger. The water 

 supply, tanks, machinery, and buildings required on a properly con- 

 ducted coffee plantation cost from $50,000 to $100,000 or more, or 

 enough to give large estates a decided advantage in economy of pro- 

 duction, though far less than in the case of sugar. Unless it be where 

 irrigation works are also required, it is not claimed with sugar that, in 

 the plantation proper, the very large estates are superior to those of 

 small size; and where the small grower can sell his cane at fair 

 prices at the factory he is not obliged to go out of business. Coffee, 

 also, is still produced extensively on small estates, and, if cooperative 

 " beneficios," or cleaning and curing establishments, existed, the berries 

 could be produced as profitably in proportion on 100-acre farms as on 

 estates of 5,000 acres. 



This digression may, perhaps, be pardoned if it helps to make plain 

 the fact that rubber companies owe their existence not to any obvious 

 advantage which they will enjoy in competition with the individual 

 planter, but to estimates of exceptional profits which have attracted 

 the nonresident investor. The manufacturing side of rubber cul- 

 ture, the labor of preparing the product for market, is relatively 

 smaller than with almost any other crop, and the need of centraliza- 

 tion is correspondingly less. It is to be expected that processes and 

 appliances for washing, separating, and coagulating the rubber will 

 be introduced, but there is little indication that these will be very 

 complicated or very expensive of installation. The profits of rubber 

 culture will depend primarily on the selection of proper locations, 

 economical methods of culture, effective management of field labor, 

 careful tapping, and watchfulness against thieves. All of these things 

 the individual planter can attend to as well or better than the large 

 concern. To coagulate, cure, ship, and market the rubber will also 

 be necessary, of course, but the outlay for these will be comparatively 

 small. If rubber culture is to be highly profitable for stock compa- 

 nies it will not be less so for the small landowner. Indeed, it would 

 be difficult to mention another crop which, from the cultural stand- 

 point, appears so preeminently adapted for the individual planter and 



