SUGAR REFINERIES 75 



the water-supply from the control of a few privileged 

 big capitalists. Public works, undertaken by the pro- 

 vincial authorities, brought the water within the reach 

 of every farmer. Since 1897 the number of water- 

 concessions has risen from 230 to nearly 2,000. 



The interests of the factory (ingenio) and the farmers 

 (caneros) are not indissolubly connected. Their re- 

 spective parts in the final product of the sugar industry 

 are not invariable. The increase in the number of 

 factories means an increase in the number of cane- 

 buyers, and so tends to raise the price. During the 

 years antecedent to 1895 the refineries improved their 

 machinery, and their productive capacity increased 

 faster than the cultivated acreage. The price of the 

 cane then rose to about twenty piastres a ton. As this 

 figure is far above the net cost, the refineries endeavoured 

 to profit themselves by the advantages that accrued 

 to the caneros, and they bought land for cultivation. 

 It is to this period that the big concerns of Cruz Alta 

 belong. Afterwards the production of cane increased, 

 and nearly met the demands of the refineries, so that 

 their competition relaxed. They ceased to buy land, 

 and the price of cane was lowered. 



The refineries now deal with cane which they grow 

 themselves, with paid workers of their own ; with 

 cane that they buy at a reduced price from tenants 

 (colonos), who grow it on their own estates ; and with 

 cane sold them by caneros who own their own fields. 

 The range of the country absorbed by each refinery 

 is often very extensive. The Sugar Congress of 1894 

 estimated that half the cane-harvest was transported 

 by rail, and that freight from one canton to another 

 in the sugar district brought the railways more than 

 a third of what they got for conveying sugar from 

 Tucuman to the coast. Each railway company tries 

 to keep along its own line the cane it carries to the 

 refineries, so that the transport of the sugar when it 

 is made will fall to itself. Thus the cane-market is 



