In the 19th century, the pineapple industry was by far the Bahamas' most significant crop; it began shortly after the abolition of slavery and peaked between 1885 and 1895; it thereafter precipitously declined. As the pineapple industry intensified, the most productive lands were consolidated into the hands of an "absentee merchant-landlord class" dominants by partnerships and limited companies, and the Bahamas had a monoculture in which pineapples were grown to the exclusion of other crops. This economic structure, along with the 18-month delay between the planting and harvesting of pineapples, and the risks of shipment and spoilage, put pressure on sharecroppers. The Bahamas pineapple industry declined for several reasons, including the American acquisition of Hawaii and the 1897 McKinley Tariff, soil exhaustion and plant disease on Abaco and northern Eleuthera, and overproduction. Pineapple canning factories operated in Nassau from 1876, and later expanded to Eleuthera; together, in 1900, they processed up to 75,000 cases of canned pineapples each season.