Harvesting begins at the end of November, and, weather permitting, the cane is allowed to remain standing in the fields until required for grinding. If, however, the Government Weather Bureau should predict cold, the cane is cut without delay, piled in the furrows and covered with dry cane leaves to prevent it from freezing. Cane stored in this manner keeps well so long as the weather remains cold, but as soon as warm weather comes it rapidly deteriorates. Labor in Louisiana is both scarce and costly, consequently agricultural machinery is used in the fields as far as possible. [Illustration: HAULING CANE IN THE FIELDS, LOUISIANA] [Illustration: HAULING CANE IN THE FIELDS, LOUISIANA] The steam engine was first employed in the crushing of cane in the year 1822. About this time, when slavery was such a tremendous factor in the South, sugar raising was marked by a tendency toward the large plantation method. From 1830 to 1840 the number of plantations in Louisiana decreased, but the number of slaves employed on them increased 40 per cent. Later, however, the plantations began to grow in number and by 1853 there were more than fifteen hundred of them, as against 668 thirteen years previous. In those days, each plantation had its own sugar mill, so that 1853 may be taken as close to the high-water mark for the number of mills in the South. With the outbreak of the Civil war, the industry was virtually wiped out of existence, and when its rehabilitation was begun, it was carried on along entirely different lines and the separation of the raising of sugar from the manufacture was gradually brought about. Year by year the small mills were abandoned and the crops of cane raised by the planters, large and small, were brought to the central factory to be worked up. Today, where large plantations still exist, it is the practice to rent subdivisions of land from twenty to fifty acres in size to tenants who grow cane for the central mill. In 1880 there were 1144 small sugar mills in Louisiana and their output of sugar was 121,886 tons. In 1911, 187 mills handled a crop of 5,930,000 tons of cane which gave 308,439 tons of sugar, and this would have been considerably exceeded had it not been for a disastrous freeze. In 1880, 273 factories used horse power, in 1900 only 5, in 1905 none at all. The advent of the vacuum pan and the consequent abolition of the open-kettle method marked another great advance in manufacturing development. In 1880 about 42 per cent of the sugar produced in Louisiana was turned out by factories equipped with vacuum pans. The government statistics for 1909 show a total of 316,829 tons of sugar boiled in vacuum pans and only 3,678 tons of open-kettle sugar.