59 o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



and reorganize this industry on a most gigantic scale as a condi- 

 tion of continued existence. Thus, for example, although the 

 business of cane-sugar production was commenced more than 

 three hundred years ago on the island of Cuba, the grinding of 

 the cane by animal or " wind " power, and the boiling and granu- 

 lating by ancient, slow, and wasteful methods, were everywhere 

 kept up until within a very recent period, as they still are by small 

 planters in every tropical country. But at the present time, upon 

 the great plantations of Cuba and some other countries, the cane 

 is conveyed from the fields by a system of railroads to manufactur- 

 ing centers, which are really huge factories, with all the charac- 

 teristics of factory life about them, and with the former home or 

 rural idea connected with this industry completely eliminated. 

 In these factories, where the first cost of the machinery plant 

 often represents as large a sum as $200,000 to $250,000, with an 

 equally large annual outlay for labor and other expenses, all 

 grades of sugar from the " crude " to the " partially refined " are 

 manufactured at a cost that once would not have been deemed 

 possible. In Dakota and Manitoba the employment on single 

 wheat estates of a hundred reapers and an aggregate of three hun- 

 dred laborers for a season has been regarded as something un- 

 precedented in agricultural industry ; but on one sugar estate in 

 Cuba — " El Balboa" — from fifteen hundred to two thousand hands, 

 invariably negroes, are employed, who work under severe disci- 

 pline, in watches or relays, during the grinding season, by day 

 and night, the same as in the large iron-mills and furnaces of the 

 United States and Europe. At the same time there are few village 

 communities where a like number of people experience the same 

 care and surveillance. The male workers occupy quarters walled 

 and barricaded from the women, and the women from the men. 

 There are in every village an infirmary, a lying-in hospital, a phy- 

 sician, an apothecary, a chapel, and priest. At night and morning 

 mass is said in chapel, and the crowds are always large. There 

 is of a Sunday less restraint, though ceaseless espionage is never 

 remitted. On these days and in parts of holidays there are rude 

 mirth, ruder music, and much dancing. This picture is given 

 somewhat in detail, because it illustrates how all-pervading and 

 tremendous are the forces that are modifying society everywhere, 

 in civilized, partially civilized, and even barbarous countries, con- 

 jointly with the new conditions of production and consumption. 



The English Society for Promoting the Growth of Industrial Villages has been 

 formed to counteract the tendency of workingmen to huddle themselves in the 

 slums of cities, and to encourage suburban settlements. Its report cites, in illus- 

 tration of the practical working of this thought, the example of a manufacturing 

 firm in London, which has placed many of its hands in the country, and sends out 

 material to them to be returned manufactured, paying them full wages. 



