The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1856-1888, 1870-11-12

The Profits of sugar Planting on
the Hawaiian Islands.
1t is q notorious fact that by far the larger
number of sugar plantations on these islands,
calculating from the first commencement of each,
have sunk money instead of making a profit, and
in many instances they have sunk very large
sums. Yet Notwithstanding, it is also a fact
that every one of our most practical common
sense planters can, giving them so much good
sugar land and the necessary labor, sit down and
figure that, having such land and labor, and put
ting on it such machinery and work as thew may
prescribe-the result, barring extraordinary acct
dents, must be a handsome profit in three, four
or five years. Further. no other practical COM
mon sense planter can show where such figures
are wrong. We go still further and say, that
such figures carefully made by an experienced
man are usually right. How has it come to pass
then that the calculations of at least three out of
four of those men who first started plantations
have so signally failed?
We have before us a list of all the plantations
on the group; we are personally acquainted with
the history of some of them, and more or less
acquainted with the history of all of them. We
have endeayored to analyze the causes of failure
in each instance, as far as we can ascertain them,
and the result Of our Investigations into the
causes of twenty palpable failures, by which, we
mean, plantations which have sunk from fifty per
cent. to five hundred per cent. more money than
they are now worth, lead us to the conclusion
that all fne troubles, various and complicated as
they have been, may be succinctly classified to
our advantage /; and, at the risk of appearing
presumptuous, we believe and assert that the
sub-elasses may all be ranged under one grand
head. We are, on a retrospective view of the
causes of these great failures, forced to exclaim
with Bulwer, "SurVey our faults, our errors,
our yices-fearful, and fertile feld-trace them
to their causes, all those causes resolve themselves
into One-Ignorance.'' We have the less hest
tation in making this apparently presumptuous
assertion, because we are prepared, at the same
time, to acknowledge that to none of our
n%eighbors is this term more applicable than TO
ourselves. We have been implicated in more
than one of the twenty failures in sugar planting
alluded to, and Of which failures the ultimate
cause was, we believe, ignorance. 1t is said that
one failure teaches more than several successes.
Having then made several failures we should be
tolerably well instructed.
But let us go a little more into detail, and we
DShC'O Suo mOoS vi OdI pldutcIS III lDey Will
carefully follow us and reflect upon their own ex-
perience will arrive at the same conclusion that
we have done.
A bad location, Indifferent soil, a dry climate,
and no means of irrigating are mistakes SO obvi-
GUS that very few have been guilty of them. We
think the larger number of our plantations have
been well located still there are a few which
have not, and no subsequent management, per-
haps, could have made them a success. This
cause then may account for a certain portion of
our twenty failures. But let us take the case of
plantations well located and sure of giving good
crops when properly cultivated. 1t has been the
easiest thing in the world to have a fine piece of
land, keep it wei cultivated, have the cane grow
well, have machinery to take it of, and be ruined.
Before auming was discoyed in the Hilo district, we
have seen a plantation somewhat in this position.
1t was when the cane was brought to the mill in OK
carts the season was rainy, the roads became
simply impossible; the cane was there, it could
not be brought to the mill, and rotted on the
ground. That season may have ruined this
plantation-added at least to other errors. But
in those days no one knew any better-in other
words, we were ignorant. Perhaps one of the
most fertile causes of failure, however, on plan
tatiOns well located, has been the want of sufi-
cient means, expended at the right time. A man
puts in a large area of cane, but being cramped
for money, he is unable to spend the necessary
labor on it. lie might just as well have thrown
the money he spent into the sea. To cultivate
cane and not to bring it to proper maturity is to
do worse than nothing-the money is ~irretriev-
ably sunk-he might have known it. Or, he
may have knew this much, and at any risk he
keeps up his cultivation, and gets a fine crop
ready to take of-but he has not had means to
put up efficient machinery, or he is late with it.
He thinks if he can get the crop, he will manage
to take it off somehow-sad mistake. His labor
is lost, and much of his money spent in ~cultivat-
ing irretrieyably sunk. We hear a good deal
about high interest, and we see a great many
wise saws about the danger of interest and of
borrowing money-but when a man once goes in
to plant cane and to get of a crop of sugar to
pay, he has got to make up his mind to see
everything put through right from first to last, or
he may as well come TO a dead stop. He may just
as well make a railway and have locomotives and
carriages all complete, and leave a nail out, as
hesitate to have what is required to carry on .he
work properly on a sugar plantation. The oper-
atoms require the wisest discretion and expert
euce to have all the parts work to each other.
There are SO many different links which require
to be in perfect order, and in proportion to each
other, that if you miss one little link, your chain
is gone, and your ship is adrift. 1t may seem
trite to call attention to this fact which is so
well known, but how often have we seen the
daily yield of sugar all through a grinding season
reduced most seriously, from the lack of a few
more carts or oxen to bring cane to the mill or,
for the want Of a little more water to the water
wheel or, for want of a better proportional
wheel, or from too small power in the boiler or the