Sugar, the leading export, is the principal product of the southern portion of the Republic. In contrast with the cultivation of cacao, coffee and tobacco, sugar planting requires a large outlay of capital. The fields must be carefully prepared, extensive ditching must be done in order to provide irrigation during the dry season; the fields must be cleaned repeatedly while the cane is growing; and when the cane eventually matures, after fourteen to eighteen months of growth, it must upon cutting be immediately transported to the mill, where expensive machinery grinds it and fabricates sugar from the cane juice. The large sugar plantations of the country are all owned by foreigners, principally Americans and Italians, but dependent upon them are many small plots, planted under contract with the central factory by small native owners or contractors. Before the establishment of the first of these plantations near Macoris in the early eighties, the apparatus for making sugar was as crude as that employed by the first colonists, consisting of small presses turned by oxen, and large caldrons to boil the cane. The other West India Islands are dotted with the ruins of old sugar mills erected in the beginning and middle of the last century, but those days were not favorable to investment in Santo Domingo and such buildings and ruins are absolutely wanting in this island. Most of the large plantations are located in the vicinity of San Pedro de Macoris, and to them the city owes its rapid development. These represent a value of millions of dollars, are equipped with plantation railroads and modern mills and extend over thousands of acres of the plains behind the city. The great Consuelo estate, the Santa Fe plantation, the Porvenir and the Puerto Rico estates are owned by American capital, and two others, the Quisqueya and Cristobal Colon plantations are owned by Americans and Cubans. The Angelina estate is an Italian investment, but its owners hold it in the name of the General Industrial Company, a corporation organized by them under the laws of New Jersey, apparently with a view to claiming American protection in case of disturbances. The principal owners of this estate as well as of other Italian sugar estates on the south coast are heirs of J.B. Vicini, who was a wealthy Italian merchant of Santo Domingo City. One of the largest sugar estates of the Republic is the Central Romana, which controls some 40,000 acres near the port of La Romana, and is owned by the South Porto Rico Sugar Company. Since the first crop in 1911 the cane has been shipped to the mill at Guanica, Porto Rico, for grinding, but a huge fifteen-roller mill, which will be the largest on the island, is now in course of erection at La Romana.