i 884 -] Juice of the Cane and of the Beet-root. 521 
increased to such an extent, both on refined sugar (loaf) and 
biown moist sugar, that it has become unremunerative not 
alone for our refiners at home to manufacture loaf sugar, 
but it is likewise unremunerative for our colonial sugar 
manufacturers to sell their unrefined moist sugar in the 
English market. 
Fiance is now suffering almost as much as England, 
owing to the large bounties the Governments of Germany, 
Austria, and Holland are giving their manufacturers : it is 
thought by those well conversant with the subject that, if 
these excessive bounties continue, France will have to meet 
the competition by returning again to the excessive bounty 
system. 
. I therefore repeat that I am of opinion that this industry 
is not a felicitous example of the benefits a nation ought to 
derive by affording its industrial community the means of 
obtaining a sound scientific and technical education. For 
whilst the continental sugar manufacturer can by the bounty 
system place his sugar on the English market below cost 
price, he sells at home his sugar at nearly, if not quite, 
double the price he supplies it at to the English consumers. 
After we have inquired to some extent into the effects of 
the bounty system on the Colonial Sugar Industry, I will 
subsequently propose a scheme which, if adopted in our 
sugar-producing colonies, would enable the manufacturer to 
contend far more successfully with the continental ones ; 
and it might thus be the means of destroying the bounty 
system. 
Mr. Neville Lubbock, one of the witnesses examined be- 
fore the Committee, estimated the total value of the estates 
in the West Indies at £12,700,000, irrespective of town 
property dependent on sugar interests. The value of the 
estates in the Mauritius he calculated at £6,000,000, and in 
India at £1,000,000. If to these sums is added the value 
of the town property, and the property not sugar estates, 
but which is dependent for its value on the sugar industry' 
it would raise, he considered, the amount of capital involved 
in this industry in the British possessions to fully £30,000,000. 
The number of people employed in the industry he estimated 
at 250,000, and the amount of wages annually paid them at 
£6,000,000. 
In 1879 it was asserted that the prices obtainable for raw 
cane sugar did not pay for the cost of cultivation, except on 
estates very favourably situated : this year, 1884, matters 
are still worse, for although in Barbadoes there is a good 
crop, 18s. per cwt. (the present price) would not nearly pay 
VOL. VI. (THIRD SERIES). 3M 
