Notes on the Society's Work in 1897-1918. xli. 



through mutual co-operation, consultation, comparison of results, and 

 discussion. The remarkable secretiveness of the planters in British 

 Guiana, more especially those of the counties of Essequibo and Demerara 

 has been, I fear, responsible for some, at any rate, of the stagnation which 

 characterises the local sugar-industry. In the sister county of Berbice 

 this secretiveness has not been so much in evidence and when I used to 

 visit planters in that county I found that the managers of the successful 

 plantations — Port Mourant, Albion, Rose Hall, and Blairmont — were not 

 averse to mutual discussion and to working together with a view to in- 

 creasing the efficiency of their work and thus to the benefit of their em- 

 ployers. I trust that this will there continue and will extend to the other 

 counties. 



Why the planters of this colony have not adopted the mutual 

 factory control system in use in other cane-sugar producing countries 

 is a mystery to me. „ 



Of course there have been other and possibly far more serious 

 causes than lack of co-operation which have been detrimental to the 

 progress of the sugar-industry here. In 1897 our sugar-factories on the 

 whole were perhaps as well or even better fitted than the general run of 

 similar factories in other progressive cane-sugar producing countries, but 

 since that year many of our factories perforce have been more or less 

 neglected, have deteriorated in efficiency, and have fallen in their equip- 

 ment, some of them hopelessly, behind the times. The great majority of 

 the men in charge of the sugar-plantations in 1897 were far-sighted men 

 of marked initiative power. But unfortuuately the disappointing nature 

 of the report of the Boyal Commission as regards the abolition of the 

 sugar bounties with the fact that there was no chance open to our sugar- 

 industry of competition on • terms of equality with German bounty-fed 

 beet-root sugar caused the majority of the proprietors of sugar estates 

 to adopt a policy of reduction of expenditure — they had to foil w the 

 unwise and undesirable course of attempting to make money only by 

 saving money, whilst trying to live on the bare interest of their ever- 

 decreasing capital. They have not been in a position to give practical 

 effect to lessening the costs of production by improvements in equipment 

 and in agricultural methods, and hence the sugar-industry has suffered 

 greatly. 



Area in the British Guiana Suitable foe Sugab-Cane 

 Cultivation. 



In 1914 the various agricidtural associations and authorities in the 

 sugar-cane producing colonies were asked to prepare statements as to 

 what room there is in the respective colonies for the extension of the 

 sugar-industry. The following are extracts from reports which were 

 prepared in the Department under my charge and which extracts it may 

 be desirable to place on record in the pages of the Journal of the Royal 

 Agricultural and Commercial Society of British Guiaua : — 



