14 SUPPLEMENT. 



sugar-cane in Louisiana, we find that the large production of 

 f^ugar, conceded to her above, proves to be based on an excep- 

 tionally large crop, and gives by no means a correct idea of 

 her past contribution to our home product. The sugar cane 

 was first introduced into Louisiana in 1751 ; M. Dubreuil 

 established the first plantation in 1758 ; from 1828 to 1813, its 

 average produce per year has been about 82,000 hogsheads 

 (90,000,000 pounds) of sugar, besides five to six million gal- 

 lons of molasses; from 1841 to 1857, its annual produce 

 averages two hundred and forty-one thousand and eight hun- 

 dred hogslieads (each 1,100 lbs.), or 265 million pounds of 

 sugar, with about sixteen million gallons of molasses ; in 1854, 

 there were one thousand four hundred and eighty-one planta- 

 tions under cultivation, whilst in 1857, but one thousand two 

 hundred and ninety-nine plantations are reported. The last re- 

 port (1869) of the National Agricultural Department at Wash- 

 ington, D. C, states on the authority of M. Bouchereau, that 

 one acre yielded during the past year 1,350 pounds of sugar, 

 worth ten cents per pound, besides seventy gallons of molasses, 

 worth sixty cents per gallon ; and that improved lands fit for 

 sugar-cane cultivation might be bought for from $25 to $40 

 per acre. 



While tlie sugar-planters of Louisiana, a few years before the 

 late war, thus apparently struggled to hold their slowly gained 

 ground, we cannot help being struck by the prominent position 

 which the sugar-cane cultivation acquired during the same 

 period of time in the neighboring island of Cuba, which fur- 

 nished for exportation from eleven to twelve hundred millions 

 of pounds, about one-third of all the sugar that enters the 

 markets of the United States and Europe. Unfavorable legis- 

 lation with us is frequently cited as a cause of the results in 

 Louisiana. Unsettled conditions regarding leading principles 

 of political economy, no doubt, act most seriously on industrial 

 enterprises, which require time for their healthy development; 

 how much such influence may have interfered here, I do not 

 propose to discuss, but shall confine myself to the exposition of 

 a cause which has much to do with the jiast results of the 

 Louisiana sugar-cane cultivation. A close examination of the 

 statistics of the annual production of sugar in Louisiana, for 

 over forty years past, leaves scarcely a doubt about the fact, 



