"In the year 1857 there was a universal crisis and after that time planters considered that the first class mentioned was the most profitable, and machinery was improved at great expense for the purpose of manufacturing this grade of sugar. A plantation with this machinery could be improved only at great cost, and it would have been impossible to do so to any advantage had it not been for the reduced cost of labour owing to slavery, carried on at the time. "In the meanwhile, the beetroot-sugar industry was progressing both in its agriculture and manufacture. No one in Cuba foresaw the terrible revolution that this industry was to suffer in consequence. It first became apparent in the crisis in 1884, which may be considered the most important event in the history of the sugar industry. This crisis, which came in a most sudden and unexpected manner, caused the reduction in the price of sugar which, though a benefit to the poorer classes of the world, was the ruin of Cuba, as at the same time slavery was abolished without any compensation whatever, direct or indirect, at the time when the losses of a sanguinary civil war were being overcome. "It may be stated that absolutely no one could foresee, either in the present or in the past generation, the revolution that since 1884 has shaken the industry; though the French colonists, fearing the competition from the start, solicited the protection of their Government. "The French colonists feared this competition so much that fifty years ago they solicited from the French Chamber of Deputies a law prohibiting the cultivation of beetroot in French territories, offering to indemnify those who had commenced it. Experience has proved how just their fears were at that early date; but the French Government did not grant their petition, because it was adverse to favouring monopolies, and besides, because Germany, having no colonies, could promote that industry without fear of the rivalry which has proved of material benefit to all Europe, including France itself.