The Donaldsonville chief. [volume] (Donaldsonville, La.) 1871-current, 1913-02-08

ton Of labor saving machinery along
every line. The investments, how
ever, thus made over twenty-five
| years ago, will hold good today and
the Importance of the industry to
the state today is even greater than
! it was a generation ago. The En-
glish government has repeatedly gone
into a war for commercial causes
where the amount involved was far
less than what the loss would be
to our state and the federal Union
by the destruction of this great SUI
gar industry, an industry now pro-
ducing crops to the extent Of some
thirty-fiVe millions of dollars and re-
sulting in full seventy million dol
lars per annum of interstate trade.
1T is now proposed to organize a
great corporation with a capital of
fifty million dollars to take over as
many as practicable Of the large SUI
gar factories of the state, with all
their accessories, and then to con-
duct the industry along the lines
that may be found the most economi-
cal and the most effective from an in
dustrial point Of view. By such an
organization an immense amount of
present waste could be avoided and
the hundreds Of millions invested in
the industry could be made to pay
reasonable dividends per annum by
virtue Of the savings thus effected.
s4These are the bases of this great
movement, and the capitalists who
are now engaged in it have been en-
couraged by the results accomplished
in the rice industry, where crops
were annually harvested and an
nually slaughtered in a competitive
market in the harvest season be-
cause of the imperative need of
funds.
This rice movement began in the
western part of the state with that
intelligent northern contingent of
great prairies of western Louisi-
ana, reaching from Lafayette to Lake
Charles, and have built up, where a
generation ago no rice was produced,
a great new rice industry that has
made Louisiana the chief rice produc-
ing section of the United States.
TT is manifest that the sugar in
dustry is a strictly legitimate one.
We have the soil, the climate, the |
rainfall and the sunshine, and can
make as much sugar with given
amount of human effort as can be
made in the tropics.
'sWe are Wedged in, however, by
these difficulties that this proposed
is now intended to re-
move, and to remove along strictly
equitable grounds, based upon a care
full investigation Of the values of the.
coming into the great COM
bination or into this great corpora
ton.
What the final result Of this move
ment will be it is thus far impossi-
BILE to say, but the character of the
men engaged In it is such as to
insure final success il their present
IDEAS are thoroughly well carried out.
.@ Already certain suggestions have
been made which would Indicate the
complete separation of the agricul-
.ural part of the industry from the
manufacturing part, the planters and
zane growers generally to retain
heir own lands and utilize their own
immediate resources in the produc-
ion of cane crops and such other
,rops as are correlated herewith
This would become quite a serious
phase of the pending organization,
IS when cultivators operate on a
arge scale they must necessarily pro-
,ure financial aid, which we pre-
ume this new corporation would
propose to furnish, and on the other
land the large Land owners, no longer
iirectly in charge Of their own i'm
Mediate sugar factories, would be dis
'osed to sell more or less of their
properties to the actual eu.tivators and
hus realize the lateut value of the
and which has not been consider
d hitherto.
There is scarcely an acre of ara
lie alluvial land in Louisiana having /
oW an assessed value of less than | 4
ne hundred dollars, but what is in
worth more than the land y
4 south California that brings five
undred dollars per acre without i'm
rovements, and water rights cost
1g equal to one hundred additional.
outhern California has grown rich 4
n these lands and intense culture 4
'ould produce the same results in 4
.ouisiana. The whole matter is !
ather inchoate thus far, but we 4
resume will progress to some more I
efinite determination within a short J
me- 3
dvises Farmers to Raise Live Stock. 1