It used to be the practice for a grower of canes to have as a matter of course a plant for making sugar,--and probably rum. It seemed to be the necessity of the business of cane-growing that the planter should also be a manufacturer,--as though a grower of hemp was bound to make ropes or a grower of wheat to make bread. Thus it came to pass that it required a man with considerable capital to grow canes, and the small farmer was shut out from the occupation. In Cuba and Demerara and Barbados the cane grower is, I think, still almost always a manufacturer. In Queensland I found farmers growing canes which they sold to manufacturers who made the sugar. This plan is now being largely adopted in Natal and central mills are being established by companies who can of course command better machinery than individuals with small capitals. But even in this arrangement there is much difficulty,--the mill owners finding it sometimes impossible to get cane as they want it, and the cane growers being equally hard set to obtain the miller’s services just as their canes are fit for crushing. It becomes necessary that special agreements shall be made beforehand as to periods and quantities, which special agreements it is not always easy to keep. The payment for the service done is generally made in kind, the miller retaining a portion of the sugar produced, half or two thirds, as he or the grower may have performed the very onerous work of carrying the canes from the ground to the mill. The latter operation is another great difficulty in the way of central mills. When the sugar grower had his own machinery in the centre of his own cane fields he was able to take care that a minimum amount of carriage should be required;--but with large central manufactories the growing cane is necessarily thrown back to a distance from the mill and a heavy cost for carriage is added. The amount of cane to make a ton of sugar is so bulky that a distance is easily reached beyond which the plants cannot be carried without a cost which would make any profit impossible.