The Hawaiian star. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu]) 1893-1912, 1905-08-17
SUGAR GROWING
IN CUBA
Ccontlnued from page So

|
where the men make $50 or $40 month
in this way, and the plantation is one
of the best kept on the island.
Every one of these big sugar estates
| is a little community of its own. 1t
requires the labor of from ! 900 to g.
600 men or more. This means 1000 or
! 5000 families or a population all told
of about 10000 souls. These people
! live about the mill or scattered in little
settlements here and there over the
estate. Every plantation has one or
more stores, and as a rule, the work.
men are in de t to the stores. Advance
ments are common, and there is scarce
ly man who is not more or less be-
! hind.
In talking with Mr. II. Dumios, who
for years was at the head of the
United Fruit Company estate at Banes,
he told me of plantation store there
whose profits We're about S95, 900 per
year. In such stores the prices are as
! low as those i'm the neighboring towns,
! but the town stores require cash, while
at the company stores credit is freely
given. Indeed, this plantation store
| business is one of the important de-
| partments on the sugar mans ledger
1 know some men ! ere who have seve-
raj plantations who have big incomes
from their stores alone. There is one
old Spanierd in Clenfuegos who owns
a half dozen plantations. He is one
of the richest men on the island. He
buys his goods at wholesale i'm large
quantities and distributes them to
his various stores, where they are
sold at a large profit. These stores
have every variety of goods demanded
by the Gu an peasant-from face pow
der and ribbons to gaudy millinery, and
from ordinary foodstuffs to fancy sad
dies, machets, hardare, wines, and, in
| short, everything that you will find in
country tore of the United States.
SUGAR RAILROADS.
Most of the sugar estates bring their
cane from the fields to the factories
on railroads In passing through the
sugar countries one sees cars loaded
with cane standing at every depot. 1t
has been brought in from the smaller
plantations to be shipped over the
trunk line to the mills. The plantation
railroads bring the cane from the fields
to the mills, from fifteen to thirty
miles f such roads being often re-
quired for one plantation. The United
Fruit Company for instance, has
twenty-nine miles of such roads at
Banes, and the Tacajo estate, adjoin-
ing it, has twelve miles of track which
are connected with the lines of the
United Fruit Company. There are in
Cuba altogether more than eight
hundred miles of railroad track on the
sugar plantations alone, and this has
value of more than eleven million
dollars. The most of these roads are
equipped with rolling stock from the
United states They use Baldwin loco
motives largely and some of them buy
their steel tails of Krupp.
SO far the sugar estates have but
few electric railroads and Cuba has
no electric railroad system such as is
fast gridironing the United States.
This would seem to me one of the pos
sibilities of the future. Each big plan
tation, with its population of several
thousand, will eventually have it's rail-
way connection with its neighbors, and
the roads will carry sugar cane to the
mills as well as other freight and pas
sengers. Many of the sugar planters
are studying cheap railroad transport
tation. They are considering the use
of automobile engines made after the
present gasoline pattern operated with
alcohol as fuel. Indeed, it is a by-pro-
duct of the sugar mills, being made at
so little cost that it is sold i'm hundred
gallon casks at IL cents per gallon. 1t
has, it is said about 9S per cent of the
heat generating power Of commercial
gasoline, and it can be used with
little gasoline to start it. 1 under
stand that German engineers have been
making experiments with alcohol as
fuel, and that they are now using
alcohol engines for small electric light
plants I'm some Havana stores. At the
agricultural experiment station at San
tiago de Vigos the pumping and light
ing is done by means of alcohol and
there is an establishment i'm Havana
which has one hundred and sixty
electric lights run by alcohol motors.
HOW SUGAR IS GROWN.
1t vii surprise many of our
American farmers to know that much
of the sugar cane here Is raised with
out blowing. In the new plantations,
which are set out in the woods, no
plows can be used on account of the
logs and stumps. None is necessary, 4
however. After the wood has been
burned the land is perfectly clean. The
men then dig holes at intervals along
the rows and put in sections of sugar
cane a few inches long and cover them |
up, In a few days the cane begins |
TO sprout at the knots, and day or
so later the blades, which are much |
Ike those Of corn or grass, come |
through the ground A young cane !
field looks much like a corn field. The |
crop grows rapidly, and all that is |
necessary is to keep down the weeds. |
1t sprouts up in punches of several |
stalks to a bunch.
The cane Is ready for cutting in
eighteen months, after which it can be
cut every year 1t is cue close to the
ground, the tops trimmed and the