It was not sufficient for these early planters to take up land and plant their crops; they had to erect mills, where the cane could be converted into sugar, and this required capital. The cost of labour, provisions, and supplies was enormous. Communication along the coast was such that goods were taken North in small sailing vessels, and the pioneers were quite accustomed to travelling in a small steamer which anchored under the lee of a convenient island during the darkness of the night. Those who see the condition of the industry which has evolved from these first efforts must, in justice to the pioneers, recall the difficulties and risks which were faced by them. Forty years ago the industry was an infant struggling with its teething troubles, still liable to premature death. In 1871 there were only 9,581 acres under sugar-cane in the whole of Queensland, and the production of sugar was only 3,762 tons, not equal to half the output of one of our large modern factories. The industry was then chiefly confined to the South, but it soon made its way northwards, and expanded so rapidly that, in 1881, the area under cane had increased to 28,026 acres, and there were no less than 103 mills in operation. The industry then entered upon the first of its great reverses. Owing to the enormous increase in the output of beet sugar in Europe, prices fell rapidly. The first of the larger class of factories, conducted on modern lines, with improved appliances, came into existence, and small mills, unable to compete successfully, began to close. Labour supplies from the South Sea Islands became more expensive, and a class of white men, originally labourers who had saved money, took up selections as sugar farms, and sought to dispose of their crops of cane to the planter-proprietors of existing mills. The latter, alarmed by the passage of legislation decreeing an end to the employment of coloured labour, planted larger areas with the object of taking off as much cane as possible before they were deprived of the services of the Polynesian labourers then under contract. The immediate result was that the small farmers were unable to sell their crops at reasonable rates; and to help them the Government of the day, whose avowed policy it was to have the industry carried on by white labour, decided to advance money to groups of these farmers to enable them to erect co-operative factories for the treatment of their cane. As an experiment, two such factories were built in the Mackay district, where the need was most clamant; and thus was laid the foundation of the central mill system, which has given such an impetus to the growth of the industry, conducted on the basis of white labour. Tentative though the experiment was, and though for many years not a complete financial success from the point of view of the mills, the erection of these mills at least showed that the interests of the farmer and the factory were mutually interdependent.