The Diffusion Process. 69 
chinery, even in long established and well understood 
systems. Moreover in the face of the success of M. 
ROBERT'S, and M. JOUIN'S machines, it is impossible 
to maintain that the difficulty is insurmountable. We 
can readily understand that an estate's proprietor having 
staked his crop on the success of a new plant and lost 
half of it, will derive very little comfort from the assur- 
ance that the other half was taken off in a correct and 
economical manner, and will very properly from his 
point of view consider the process a failure. That how- 
ever is no failure of diffusion, it is a failure on the part 
of the designer to proportion machinery to the work it 
has to perform. Look at the improvements in wood cut- 
ting that have been made of late years ; I do not think 
men like Mr. Fay, the wood-working machine maker, 
would think much of cutting up our canes. 
To show that other causes besides new mechanical 
difficulties may contribute to failure, I will mention that 
one attempt in Louisiana failed through the adoption 
in a country where labour is dear, of arrange- 
ments which had succeeded in a country where la- 
bour is cheaper. The machinery was the same as that 
employed at Aska, where a labourer's pay is the aston- 
ishing sum of 5 cents a day: in Louisiana it is a dollar 
a day and two dollars a night. At Aska everything is 
done by hand, as labour-saving machinery would be out 
of place; no wonder the buildings pay-list in Louisiana 
reached alarming proportions. 
Now all this question of labour in the buildings is 
solved for us : the modern battery employs the minimum 
of manual labour. The only question is, have the 
engineers of British Guiana, a body of men of whom I 
