The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1856-1888, 1870-10-15
Steam and the Labor
Question.

The way in which the European race will do
most towards the actual cultivation of tropical
countries will be when one mechanic will stand
in a covered engine car, and having a few valves
and levers within reach, will, with the assistance
of one or two native stokers and steersmen,
thoroughly plow his 100 acres of land in ten
hours, without fatigue or exhaustion to himself
or his assistants This sounds chimerical, but it
is almost within the power of machinery now at
work. We copy the following extract from the
Scientific American of May l4th last, describing
steam plows at work on the Magnolia Sugar
Estate in Louisiana, one of the largest in the
country
This new implement of agriculture consists of
two ten-ton portable engines, resembling the old
locomotive that many of our readers probably have
noticed at the lake end of the Pontchartrain depot.
Beneath each locomotive is a revolving steam drum,
on which passes the steel corrugated wire rope that
draws to and fro the cultivator, to which are attached
some ten steel tipped pillow blades. The cultivator is
an iron frame, with a seat at each end, and mounted
On two iron wheels. On top of the cultivator sits o
co!ored boy, who by means of a simple tiller directs
the progress of the pillow. The locomotive engines
are situated directly opposite to each other. about
two acres in distance. By means of the steam drum
and the rope the cultivator traverses the field back
and forward much faster than a man can walk, and
turning up the soil to a depth of eighteen to twenty
TWO INCHES III Il HIOTe eHcclual manner imam cOQlQ De
done by the old system a harrow some eight feet in
length is used over the same field, and is propelled
with great ease by the same motive power.
"Mr. Lawrence, the proprietor of the estate, has
four of these plows in operation, which easily turn
over twenty-four acres a day, at a cost, including
fuel and labor, of some three dollars per acre, which
is quite a saving over the method heretofore pursued.
There is no apparent intricate machinery about the
work the whole seems to work as smoothly as an
ordinary standing grist-mill the locomotive trails
over the road quite easily, propelled by steam. Mr..
Lawrence, last fall, took off a crop of over six hun
dred h~ogsheads of sugar, the entire blowing having
been performed by the steam apparatus. The pillow,
locomotive, ETC., were constructed by a firm in Leeds,
England, and cost, exclusive of freight, etc., some
FL, 500. The first one imported to this country is
now in New Jersey one subsequently was sent to
Illinois, which has lately been sent to this State, and
is now in operation at the Concession Plantation, in
the parish of Plaquemine, where it is said to give
great satisfaction"
In the same periodical Of August 18th last, we
find that
Mr.. Clarke, a member of one of the committees,
in a lecture on steam cultivation, delivered before
the Central Farmers Club, in December last, said
with reference to a trial of steam apparatus at the
recent show of the r. A Society
Now some persons may think it astounding to
talk about from fifty to seventy acres a day being
cultivated. l admit that it is very astounding but
L also assert that 1 saw the thing done-and there
are other persons also who saw it done. | may tell
you, too, that the apparatus was not in a perfect
state it was one of the earliest trials made of that
particular arrangement. | have not the slightest
doubt that the makers of steam plows are prepared,
though l have not their authority to say so, to do, in
answer to q challenge, an extent of land in a day
which would astonish every one present. l have not
the slightest doubt myself, that seventy acres-I
should not stare particularly if one hundred acres
could be cultivated, provided the work was tolerably
light
1t appears that on the Magnolia Sugar Estate
the estimated expense of steam blowing was
three dollars an acre, and that twenty-four acres
a day were more effectually done than it could
have been by the old system. We lately watched
on a plantation on Oahu four plows with FIVE
yoke of oxen each, and three men to each pIow
and team, breaking up some new land. 1t was
certainly a difficult and rough piece to break up,
but we do not think that the plows were actually
blowing more than one-third of the time; the
teams were either stuck fast, drawing the pIows
over the surface, turning round, or getting all
mixed up together, the other two-thirds and yet
all was being done that could be with the mate
rails by the men at work and the Portuguese
who superintended the blowing. We think there
are few plantations, where oxen are extensively
used, that would like to figure up what their
oxen cost them including deaths and losses of
animals. But it is after all not so much a eues-
tion as to whether the blowing on a sugar plan
tation costs three dollars or four dollars or six
dollars an acre, but. the important difficulty seems
to be that as a general rule the requisite quantity
of blowing cannot be done IN time at all. The
process is a tedious one with the means at the
of most of our plantations.
A good steam blowing apparatus on the scale
of that on the Magnolia estate, where the land
is favorable, would on the other hand pillow more
than necessary for any one plantation, 80 that
it would only be where several plantations lie
conveniently together, as on the weather side
of Maui for instance, that it would seem to be
worth while to introduce such a one, and amongst
four or five plantations, the expense would not