54 TROPICAL AGRICULTURE 



Louisiana, 293,000 tons; Mauritius, 271,000 tons; Queensland, 

 263,000 tons ; Philippine Islands, 235,000 tons ; Brazil, 228,000 

 tons; Formosa, 213,000 tons; Peru, 212,000 tons; Mexico, 

 143,000 tons; British Guiana, 114,000 tons; Fiji, 112,000 tons; 

 Dominican Republic, 87,000 tons; and lesser amounts in the 

 various other cane-producing countries. 



The methods of cultivation and manufacture of sugar vary 

 greatly in different countries. Sugar manufacture may be car- 

 ried on in central cooperative mills patronized by small planters 

 or in mills owned by corporations to which cane is furnished by 

 independent growers or in mills owned by companies which 

 raise all their cane on owned or leased land or by several other 

 systems of organization. The mill company contracts for buy- 

 ing cane vary greatly in different countries and with different 

 plantations in the same country. Where the plan of pay- 

 ing for cane on a cash basis is determined by the price of 

 sugar, the amount received by the homesteader or small cane 

 grower varies from 48 per cent, in Hawaii to 70 per cent, in 

 Porto Rico. Another method of paying for cane in Hawaii 

 consists in a flat rate price of about $4 per ton for the sugar 

 cane. This contract removes all possibility of the small grower 

 making a profit from his operations. Contracts for cane buy- 

 ing vary in other particulars from fairness to various degrees 

 of unfairness up to a practical condition of peonage. The com- 

 plaint which most small growers make about cane-buying con- 

 tracts, aside from the obvious fact that they cannot make a 

 profit according to the terms of contract, is that the contracts 

 are ordinarily stated in suqh involved legal phraseology as to 

 be practically unintelligible to the average man and always am- 

 biguous. For the most part, these contracts leave certain 

 points to be determined by the sugar mill company. 



Cane sugar is shipped from the producing countries either as 

 raw or refined sugar. Java does its own refining, while Cuba 

 and Hawaii ship nearly all their sugar in the raw condition 

 just as it comes from the centrifugals, 



