“The supply of labor and rates of wages in the future are now most serious questions to the sugar producer in Cuba, and present the greatest obstacle to reduction of cost. For supplies of cane the manufacturer must depend either upon his own resources, or upon large planters. Factories to be operated at a profit must be kept running day and night, and cane, owing to its nature, must be ground immediately it is cut. The grinding season in Cuba [Illustration: GRINDING SUGAR-CANE.] is limited to about one hundred and twenty working days, and small farmers, while they can generally find a market for their cane, cannot be depended on for a constant regular supply. Had Cuba the power to dictate her own prices, she could maintain sufficient margin to overcome local difficulties, but that power has long since passed and future profits must be dependent upon her economies. The price of cane to her planters is dependent upon the price at which her manufacturers can sell their sugar, and this price in turn is dependent upon the price at which other sugar-producing countries, especially Germany, the great factor in the world’s sugar trade, can place her goods, duty paid, in New York. If Cuba in the future should have to compete to any extent, in the United States, with free sugar from other countries, while a duty was exacted from Cuban sugar, her case would seem to be hopeless.” So great is Cuba’s reliance upon her sugar industry that a rise or falling off in it means depression or elation in every part of the Island. In 1906, the United States paid to Cuba $72,650,000 for 1,092,180 tons of sugar, and the prices ranged from 3-1/2 cents to 5-1/4 cents per pound. The result was general prosperity and contentment. Since then the prices have risen and fallen through frequent changes and a wide range, and they are once more high enough to make the planter and manufacturer happy. But the average price and profit for any series of recent years have not been such as to encourage investment in the industry, and those engaged in it are only too conscious of the fact that their prosperity rests upon a very unstable basis. There are those who look for relief of Cuba’s difficulties in the cessation of the European bounties, and a complete solution of them in annexation to the United States, but either contingency is a slender dependence. CHAPTER X CUBA’S TOBACCO INDUSTRY Cuba’s tobacco has a great advantage over her sugar in the facts that it can always command a good price and is beyond the reach of competition in the matter of quality. Every likely soil and climate in the world has been tried in the effort to produce a leaf similar to that grown in the fields of the celebrated Vuelta Abajo. Even though seeds from the best Cuban plants have been used, the results have never approached the object sought. What is commonly known as “Havana” tobacco stands alone without a rival or any satisfactory substitute.