CH. II] SUGAR 55 



erected, which of course can contain the very latest and best 

 machinery. Such estates continue to show a good profit, 

 though the small West Indian concerns do not. There is 

 probably no industry in the tropics in which specialisation has 

 gone so far, and in which consequently large estates, and giant 

 factories, are so much required. The small maker of sugar can 

 only survive by being specially bolstered up, but the small 

 cultivator is of course all right, for he can devote his attention 

 to growing the cane in the best way, and sell it to the large 

 factory near by, as in fact is done on a fairly large scale in Java, 

 the Malay Peninsula, and elsewhere. 



What the writer saw in Cuba may very well illustrate the 

 general tendency in sugar cultivation. An American merchant 

 many years ago had a small sugar estate left to him in payment 

 of a debt. At first intending to sell it and be done with it, he, 

 on second thoughts, went down to look at it, and soon decided 

 that the expenditure of a little capital would perhaps give it 

 a chance. This was done, the estate paid its way ; presently 

 one of the owner's Cuban neighbours was so hardly pinched by 

 bad trade that he sold his estate to the American, who closed 

 the factory upon it, dealt with the cane at his own now enlarged 

 factory, and put the former owner, a careful man, upon the 

 place as cane-growing superintendent. This process went on, 

 and one by one the surrounding estates were sold to the grow- 

 ing American business, till now, after thirty years, its rich 

 proprietor owns about 15,000 acres of sugar-cane, and runs a 

 colossal factory dealing with the whole produce of this area. 

 I was informed that the same process was going on in four or 

 five districts of Cuba, and that the whole sugar industry of the 

 island was falling into the hands of a few wealthy Americans or 

 American companies. In some of the British West Indies, e.g. 

 in Montserrat, sugar has come to be a peasant cultivation, the 

 landowner providing the land and the sugar works, the peasant 

 cultivating and manufacturing the sugar, each party then taking 

 one-half of the net proceeds. Sugar is thus very cheaply pro- 

 duced, for the peasant does not set much value on his time, 

 and the landowner spends little, but the land tends to become 

 steadily impoverished. 



