Strenuous efforts were made to secure an adequate labor supply. Chinese coolies, free negroes and Hindus were tried, but the cost was great and the number available was insufficient for the proper cultivation and upkeep of the plantations. This condition obtained in the British West Indies, Cuba, Louisiana, Peru, Brazil, the Guianas, Mauritius, Réunion and other places, and the cane growers had hard work to keep from going under during the adjustment period, when they were learning how to operate their plantations with a limited number of hands. Importation of labor, subdivision of cane lands into small tracts, to be rented or sold to farmers—many plans were tried—but naturally under such circumstances development was impossible, and beet sugar, which had been steadily increasing, finally outstripped cane in 1883-84, while in 1899-1900 cane only furnished 34.7 per cent of the world’s crop. In 1912-13 the cane tonnage exceeded that of beet by 211,082 tons of 2240 pounds. The great war in Europe has curtailed the production of beet sugar in that country to such an extent that of the world’s output for 1915-16 the proportion of cane to beet was roughly as two-thirds to one-third in favor of the former. The actual figures are: Cane 10,533,039 tons Beet 5,986,404 ” ---------------- Excess of cane over beet 4,546,635 tons The following table giving the world’s production of cane and beet from 1852 to 1916 will be of interest, but it should be borne in mind that this comparison between beet and cane is not a fair one, because the figures are incomplete as far as cane is concerned. In some instances in former years, only the quantity exported from a country was included in the world’s statistics and the amount consumed at home was left out of the calculations. This is particularly noticeable in the case of India, whose production of over two million tons of sugar annually was omitted from the older estimates as it all went into domestic consumption—while the beet figures were invariably given in full. The world’s crop figures as furnished by Willett & Gray for the period from 1852 to 1916 include British India’s production for the last eleven years only: BEET-ROOT YEAR SUGAR CANE SUGAR TOTAL PER CENT TONS TONS TONS CANE SUGAR