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CENTRAL MILLS. 



son. Now, assuming that there are 600,000 acres of good 

 sugar land in Jamaica, and to every 3,000 acres one cen- 

 tral mill was erected, two hundred mills would accommo- 

 date 120,000 five-acre tenants just as completely as they 

 would accommodate 200 three-thousand acre tenants. 



But the fact is, one mill properly conducted might 

 accommodate a much larger area. Ehn, the largest sugar 

 estate in the Parish of St. Elizabeth, embracing 4,650 acres, 

 uses but one. When we consider that these mills do not 

 run nights, that steam is not usually got up before nine in 

 the morning, and the fires as usually go down before five 

 in the afternoon, it becomes very apparent that they do not 

 execute more than half the work they might, if properly 

 pressed and attended. When we farther consider that 

 proper facilities of internal communication, would enable 

 planters to deliver their cane at a central mill from twenty- 

 five to thirty miles distant, on the day it was cut, is any 

 room left for a doubt that fifty sugar mills of suitable 

 dimensions and faithfully conducted, would manufacture 

 the largest sugar crop ever raised in Jamaica, just as well 

 as eight or ten hundred now do, and probably much 

 better ? 



What is to prevent the planters selling their land, and 

 with the proceeds enlarging their mills indefinitely ? If 

 more sugar or coffee can be produced by small proprietors 

 upon the same surface, it would seem to be the dictate of 



