654 
THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. [April 2, 1888. 
The price of sugar during the first half of the 
season was for Central Factory firsts £15 per ton 
in Eio. Within the last two months it has risen 
to £21 pi ; r ton in Rio and Santos. The price of 
rum, which was quoted at £3 at beginning of the 
pposon. remains about the same (a pipe about 110 
gallons), I do not think it possible for beetroot 
sugar to compete long with these low figures as to 
cost of production. The question will depend on 
whether from 5s to 8s per ton of cane can pay 
the grower. Experience shows that it can in the 
low lands of the province of Rio. No doubt, with 
the emancipation effected, producers, instead of 
being large farmers, will be small. The large farms 
will be divided out to free negroes and to European 
colonists, and the land-owner receive a percentage 
from the produce ; cane growing will suit these 
people admirably, for corn and beans can be 
grown between the rows of cane, while the latter is 
young, and while the small grower is treating what 
will bring him money, he will also at same time be look- 
ing after what will bring his family and domestic 
animals food. The question will now be asked, 
" What has led to the failure of so many Sugar 
Factory Companies?" Now this is a question I 
do not care to enter into ; but you see by the 
above that it is neither the high price; of cane nor 
the low price of sugar, I cannot leave this sub- 
ject without mentioning the repeal of the export 
duty on sugar. There used to be a general export 
duty of 7 per cent, a provincial of 4 per cent, a 
municipal of 1 per cent. In all some 12 per cent or 
say about an eighth of the produce of the sugar 
planter went towards the imperial, the provincial, 
and municipal Governments, for which he received 
very little return. The protectors of his family and 
property were represented by a few policemen in 
some town 50 or 60 miles off. The roads or tracks 
through swamps and forests had to be made and 
kept in such order as to allow a mule to pass at his 
own expense, very few rivers were bridged, and he, 
in the rainy season, was often a prisoner for months. 
Indeed for the privilege of giving away the eighth 
part of his produce (not the eighth part of his 
profits) he got next to nothing. Within the last 
few years the Government guarantee on railways 
has certainly done him a great deal of good, and 
the way these have been extended in such a short 
time into very remote districts deserves our 
admiration. 
The Government having withdrawn the guaran- 
tee of interest from sugar factories, and having 
sternly refused to grant any more conces- 
sions for these, the sugar-cane growers felt the 
tax very much, and it began to be made a poli- 
tical question, and political questions in these parts 
agitate this new country more than an older one. 
In the financial measure carried by the Chancellor 
of the Exchequer this year, the imperial export 
duty of 7 per cent on sugar was abolished. This 
came into effect as soon as it passed the signature 
of the Princess Regent, about the middle of October. 
The provincial duty is also being taken off, al- 
though the measure or rather the Provincial Budget 
is still undergoing discussion. The municipal tax 
will no doubt follow. As a consequence of the 
repeal of the export duty which extends over all 
the Empire, the price of sugar in the Rio market 
has risen about 50 per cent, and it is not expected 
that the price will come down very soon. The 
Province of Rio de Janeiro supplies only three- 
quarters of the consumption of the city of Rio: 
the rest came from the northern ports of Pernam- 
buco, Bahia, Maceio, &c. These northern ports 
are finding a better market for their refining sugars 
in the United States and in Europe. Consequently 
the supply to Rio being less, the price has risen. 
The political atmosphere has been rather cloudy 
for the last six weeks, and there is little chance 
of its clearing until this Emancipation question 
get settled one way or another. Parties are now 
divided, one holding that the last word has been 
spoken of the law of 1885 which rc.luces the value 
of the slave every year, uutil in thirteen yeais 
he is of no value, that is, he ceases to be counted 
as property. On this side are ai rayed the Gov- 
ernment and all officialdom from the postmaster 
of the smallest village up to the Prime Minister, 
including in it as well all municipal authorities. 
On the other those who are for ending slavery in 
three years. This party has amongst them those 
who wish to pay wages to the slaves during those 
three years, and also those who wish free and 
unconditional emancipation at once. Not having 
the Government on their side, they have a factor 
which is gaining in strength every day, and begin- 
ning to assert its right to be heard in unmistakable 
language, — the slaves themselves. Not long ago a 
large body of them left their estates in the province 
of S. Paulo, and commenced a steady and orderly 
march to the town of Santos, at least 100 miles 
from where they started. They paid for their food 
as they went along and molested nobody, but a 
body of policemen who attacked them (and these 
they only disarmed and sent them adrift) and a 
few cavalry soldiers, who were sent against them, 
they killed one of the latter after he had killed 
one of the slaves, and with a steady front kept 
the others at bay. They got into the forest near 
Santos, and although there were some eighteen 
runaway slaves who gave themselves up to the 
police from the same forest, as they had no food, 
it was found they were not of the orderly band. 
These, no doubt, got absorbed in some way about 
Santos, and are no doubt doing honest work for 
wages. The people of Santos, although they live 
on the rich fazendeiro, have not the same fellow- 
feeling with him towards the agents, by whom he 
has made his riches. These and similar pro- 
ceedings are on the increase. The same thing, I 
am told, is done almost every day in S. Paulo, and 
the public authorities are unwilling or rather unable 
to prevent them. From the bitterness which has 
sprung up between these two parties arise other 
disorders. The towns in the interior are often 
the scenes of disturbances between the abolition 
aud the pro-slavery party. Notably amongst these 
is the town of Campos in the province of Rio and 
the sugar capital of the south. The other day 
an abolition newspaper editor posted up a notice 
on the door of his office, which the police did 
not like, but which had no relation to slavery at 
all. A few policemen, thinking the matter persona}, 
proceeded at night to rub the objectional paper off, 
but received some shots from the windows above 
where the newspaper was being printed. There were 
no lives lost, but the police returned in a body with 
orders from the superior authority to search the 
newspaper office ; they found nobody in it, but 
they threw types, presses, and furniture into the 
street below. 
Only a week after this in the same town the 
local member of the Provincial Assembly, who is 
an abolitionist, wanted to address his constituents 
in the theatre : this was forbidden, and he went 
with his audience to his own house, and spoke 
from the balcony. The cavalry, however, appeared 
and charged the crowd ; later in the day the streets 
got crowded, aud the authorities tried to disperse 
them in the same manner, but were defeated ; the 
police and soldiers fired, however, in' their retreat, 
and killed some and wounded a great many. 
Official despatches followed on both sides, and 
the Rio newspapers quoting these despatches and 
