Preface to the Fourth Edition 



THE statistics have been brought up to date, and so 

 have the brief accounts of the various producing coun- 

 tries. The technical progress of the industry has 

 consisted chiefly in the increased size of the factories 

 and machinery. Improvements in the construction and 

 use of the machinery continue to be evolved as time 

 goes on, but do not develop anything sufficiently new 

 to call for special notice in this elementary treatise. 

 The only strikingly new feature is the extension of the 

 system of producing white sugar direct from the cane 

 juice and the perfecting of its methods. By white 

 sugar is here meant fine, dry grocery sugar of the 

 highest quality and whiteness, which will keep for 

 any length of time without deteriorating. No cane 

 sugar factory can produce such sugar without per- 

 fection in the arrangement of the necessary machinery, 

 great skill and care on the part of the managers 

 and workmen, and the carrying out of the process 

 by methods recognized as most successful. This 

 was comparatively easy in the case of the beetroot 

 sugar industry; with cane juice greater care and skill are 

 absolutely essential. It remains to be seen how far 

 tropical management and labour will succeed in this 

 new undertaking. 



Several new books of very high class have appeared 

 since the first edition of this little handbook. " The 

 World's Cane Sugar Industry : Past and Present," by 

 Dr. H. C. Prinsen Geerligs, published by Norman Rodger, 

 2 St. Dunstan's Hill, E.C., should be read by every one 



