The interests of the factory (_ingenio_) and the farmers (_caneros_) are not indissolubly connected. Their respective parts in the final product of the sugar industry are not invariable. The increase in the number of factories means an increase in the number of cane-buyers, and so tends to raise the price. During the years antecedent to 1895 the refineries improved their machinery, and their productive capacity increased faster than the cultivated acreage. The price of the cane then rose to about twenty piastres a ton. As this figure is far above the net cost, the refineries endeavoured to profit themselves by the advantages that accrued to the _caneros_, and they bought land for cultivation. It is to this period that the big concerns of Cruz Alta belong. Afterwards the production of cane increased, and nearly met the demands of the refineries, so that their competition relaxed. They ceased to buy land, and the price of cane was lowered. The refineries now deal with cane which they grow themselves, with paid workers of their own; with cane that they buy at a reduced price from tenants (_colonos_), who grow it on their own estates; and with cane sold them by _caneros_ who own their own fields. The range of the country absorbed by each refinery is often very extensive. The Sugar Congress of 1894 estimated that half the cane-harvest was transported by rail, and that freight from one canton to another in the sugar district brought the railways more than a third of what they got for conveying sugar from Tucuman to the coast. Each railway company tries to keep along its own line the cane it carries to the refineries, so that the transport of the sugar when it is made will fall to itself. Thus the cane-market is divided into two separate compartments, with very little exchange between them. The first comprises the zone that depends on the Central Argentine and the State Railway; the second is the zone of the Central Cordoba and the old local line bought by the Central Cordoba. Certain parts, such as Cruz Alta and the district round the town, have too many works in proportion to their production of cane, and they are centres of import. The price of the cane is always higher here than in the agricultural districts. Each works has its customers. At the stations it instals weighing machines for receiving and weighing the cane. It is only the more important _caneros_ who have the privilege of selling by the truck-load, or selling to distant works. The small growers are compelled to deal with the local refinery. They sell it their canes direct, or, sometimes, through agents and dealers. In the days when the works were competing for cane it became the custom to sign the purchase-contracts as early as possible; sometimes at the beginning of October, as soon as the harvest of the year is over. In order to make sure of the loyalty of the _canero_ the manufacturers advance money to him, in proportion to their difficulty in getting cane.