127 



tion on a large scale might prove of great advantage on some soils^, and 

 yet result in pecuniary loss on others. All these problems, however, 

 lie more within the province of the agriculturist than of the chemist. 

 I am inclined to believe that the ISTegros planter has been rather un- 

 deservedly maligned in the past as regards his industry and capability. 

 Considering the hardships he has had to contend with, the yield of 

 cane he gets from his land is by no means as bad as might have been 

 expected, and the increase in his available capital brought about by 

 the present high price of sugar should alone greatly improve the con- 

 dition of cane culture in the Island. However, as long as each individual 

 planter is compelled to devote half his attention to the details of the 

 manufacture of sugar, thereby neglecting his fields, the industry as 

 a whole can never attain its maximum development. 



IX MANUFACTURE. 



This brings up the question of modernizing our methods of sugar 

 making. It is a fact, undisputed by even the most ignorant on the 

 subject, that three or more powerful mills in series will extract more 

 juice from a given amount of cane than will the ordinary three-roller 

 single mill, and that the sugar from this juice may be secured in a 

 purer form and with less loss by the aid of vacuum pans and centri- 

 fugals than by open-pan boiling and crystallizing with a spade. Un- 

 fortunately, the necessary adjuncts to modem sugar fabrication are 

 rather expensive articles, and not adapted to the use of small estates — 

 even if they were, they would hardly yield happy results in the hands 

 of the native sugar ''maestro" — since to secure the most economical returns 

 a modem mill should have a daily capacity of not much less than 500 

 tons of cane and should be kept driven at its full capacity without 

 interruption during a grinding season of about one hundred days, 

 which would necessitate a certain supply of 50,000 tons of cane. This 

 amount would correspond to a total output per year under the present 

 system of about 5,000 tons or 80,000 piculs of raw sugar, or about 

 three times that of the largest estate on the island. 



CENTRAL FACTORIES. 



A sufficient quantity of cane to operate even a small-sized modern 

 mill could only be supplied by combining the crops of a number of 

 haciendas in the same immediate neighborhood so as to grind at one 

 centrally located place, and since at the present day it is hardly possible 

 to find in one district a group of planters possessed of sufficient capital 

 and at the same time of sufficient confidence in one another harmoniously 

 to operate a cooperative central factory, this would in all probability 

 have to be erected and managed by outside capital. Now, the average 

 sugar planter is a singularly practical individual, and probably would 

 not be satisfied with the purely scientific pleasure of knowing that 



