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National Geographic : 1920 Jul
Contents
CUBA-THE SUGAR MILL OF THE ANTILLES CUBA'S SUGAR INDUSTRY As stated in the beginning of this arti cle, sugar is king in Cuba. Even in nor mal years it is the principal source of wealth. But with the restraints of "price fixing" regulations removed, 1920 is des tined to outdo any other year in the his tory of the industry. Sugar-cane is grown by three classes of planters in Cuba. Perhaps the major part of the crop is grown by share farm ers, or "colonos," as they are called. The owners of the sugar-mills furnish them with a given number of acres of land to plant and give them an agreed share of the sugar they produce. The next class is composed of the land owning farmers, who grow their own cane and have it ground on shares, after the fashion of the rural grist-mill. The remainder of the cane is grown by the owners of the mills themselves. At some centrals the "administration" cane, as that grown under "central" management is known, amounts to only 4 per cent of the total; at others it amounts to 90 per cent. THE PROFITS OF THE PLANTERS Even the share farmer, at pre-war prices, made money. According to "Cuba Before the World," the official handbook of the Republic at the Panama-Pacific Exposition, when sugar was selling at 2.62 cents a pound, his share of the sugar brought him, on the basis of twelve sacks to the acre, a return of from $46 to $51 per acre. The return of the planter own ing his land was from $56 to $61 per acre. When one remembers that the sell ing price of sugar is from four to six times as high in 1920 as it was then, the size of the per-acre income today is ap parent. How much net profit the cane-grower reaps at 1920 prices is hard to estimate, but that it is large will appear when the methods of cane-growing are stated. To begin with, after the first crop the planter does not have to bother with seed-time for about ten years. The soil is so deep and so fertile that one planting produces ten harvests. Neither does cultivation bother him after the first season, for the blades stripped from one crop form a mulch that keeps the weeds from com peting with the next one. Think of the profits that the American farmer would make out of corn if he could get ten crops from one planting, and did not have to plow nine of them at all to keep down the weeds! THE WORLD'S CHEAPEST MOTIVE POWER Another item in the low cost of produc ing sugar is the cheapness of the motive power. The cane is hauled in ox-carts. The oxen live from six to ten months a year on the blades stripped from the harvested stalks, and the remainder of the year on succulent guinea-grass. Think how prosperous would be the American farmer if he could have animal motive power requiring not a pound of grain to feed it! A great deal of the cane land produces much more sugar to the acre than the modest twelve bags that formed the basis of the calculations cited from "Cuba Be fore the World." According to figures furnished the writer by the Cuban De partment of Agriculture, much land pro duces 22 bags to the acre. This, at 15 cents a pound, brings a gross return of more than $I,ooo an acre. These conditions have brought about an unprecedented boom in sugar lands. One sugar estate, which was bought some three years ago for $3,000,000, sold last January for $9,500,000. Another, which was valued at about $6,000,000 a few years ago, changed hands at $15,0oo,ooo. Numerous new "centrals" are being built and others projected, all being capi talized on the basis of this year's earn ings. Thousands of American capitalists are investing in these flourishing enter prises. That the famine scale of prices of this year will not continue is the opinion of those who are in a position to know. Just as soon as the European sugar beet comes back into cultivation, price levels are bound to fall. Many warnings have been sounded about the singularity of the source of Cuba's fortune. Economic safety is op posed to having too many of one's eggs in a single basket. But Cuba believes in making hay while the sun shines, though that hay be sugar and that sun the su crose hunger of the world. How her receipts from sugar have ex panded is shown by the fact that the 1915
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