Egypt 110,000 Mauritius 215,528 Réunion 40,000 Natal 100,000 Mozambique 50,000 TOTAL IN AFRICA 515,528 EUROPE Spain 6,359 TOTAL CANE SUGAR 10,571,079 BEET SUGAR Europe 5,190,387 United States 779,756 Canada 17,641 TOTAL BEET SUGAR 5,987,784 GRAND TOTAL CANE AND BEET SUGAR 16,558,863 From the time when the soldiers of Alexander of Macedon found sugar cane in India, over three hundred years before the Christian era, knowledge of sugar and its cultivation has accompanied great political movements. In the sweep of the Saracen conquest from Persia to Egypt and on through northern Africa into Spain, sugar followed the footsteps of the invading armies. The Crusaders brought it with them when they returned home from Palestine. Daring Portuguese adventurers carried it to the Madeiras, the Azores, the Cape Verde and other islands of the east Atlantic ocean when they captured and colonized them in the fifteenth century. The New world received sugar cane at the hands of Christopher Columbus, who planted it in Santo Domingo in 1493. Shortly after Pizarro’s first landing it was brought to Peru by the Spanish conquerors. Cortés himself introduced it in Mexico, erecting the first mill there in 1520; and when, during the struggle between Great Britain and France, sugar was excluded from Europe by the blockading British fleet, it was Napoleon Bonaparte who called beet-sugar manufacture into being. Before the outbreak of the great war in 1914, the world’s crops of sugar were pretty evenly divided between cane and beet, with a preponderance in favor of the former. How this titanic conflict has affected the European production is clearly seen by the returns for 1915-16. During that season the world’s output was 16,558,863 long tons, made up of 10,571,079 tons of cane and 5,987,784 tons of beet, and Europe was short 2,392,828 tons as compared with the previous year. The conclusion is inevitable that after the war shall be brought to an end a period of poverty and distress will ensue and restriction of sugar consumption in Europe will be one of the results of this condition. Apart from countries where sugar production is fostered by protecting tariffs, it seems certain that future development and progress will take place in lands where favorable climate, rich soil and adequate, cheap labor are found together. The natural economic law will cause the industry to thrive best where such conditions obtain in the fullest degree, and to fall off correspondingly as they diminish. FOOTNOTES