STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 171 



could not compete with the intelligence of Northern people. 

 They knew that if sugar could be made by a farmer of Minne- 

 sota without expensive machinery, without the centrifugal and 

 the vacuum pan, that we could make it cheaper than they 

 could. I tell you that sugar can be made for less than a cent a 

 pound, paying all expenses, under favorable circumstances. 

 Their sugar at the Rio Grande works does not cost them a cent 

 a pound to-day. They have reduced the expenses and placed 

 them elsewhere so the sugar don't cost them a cent a pound. 



Capt. Blakeley. Have you seen the Rio Grande works since 

 they have adopted diffusion there? 



Gen. Le Due. l^o, but I have kept up with that. The ques- 

 tion comes up to me as it has with Prof. Porter, which is this: 

 Is not this treaty with Mexico going to be prejudicial to our 

 interests in making sugar in this whole country! The professor 

 was not in when I was telling about the kind of people they have 

 down there. The people with their present degree of intelligence 

 down there will never be able to compete with us of the United 

 States. It is not because they have so fine a soil that they may 

 be enabled to excel, for that is only one item in the account. 

 Their land for sugar-making is limited. The greater portion of 

 the area of their country is not subject to the rainfall which is 

 necessary to the growth of a crop of sugar; their sugar cane must 

 go ten, twelve, or fourteen months before it is cut. The rainfall 

 there depends largely upon the travel of the sun to the north, 

 with an atmosphere that brings moisture. Instead of the tropical 

 rains there is drought for six months and then practically rain 

 for six months. That affords a very small area in which to grow 

 sugar. You cannot make sugar there in a dry season without 

 irrigation. As the world grows older the increase in the amount 

 of sugar is larger than the increase of population. That is because 

 sugar takes the place of other kinds of food; it takes the place of 

 meat in a large degree. The population of Mexico will need the 

 increase in the sugar for the next ten or twenty years. In the 

 next ten or twenty years, if the people of this State will put them- 

 selves to work as they ought to, and if this State will encourage 

 this industry as it ought to do, there is no question or doubt that 

 you people will be enabled to raise your own sugar as you may 

 your own grain. It may even be one of your large exports. I 

 say this in all earnestness. I say think of it and study it, and do 

 80 with the purpose of making your money out of it. I should 

 like to see this crop cultivated as a leading industry of the State 



