Considered from the point of view of agriculture, manufactures or commerce, Cane is King in Cuba. The sugar crop of 1918, amounting to 25,346,000 bags, or 3,620,857 tons, was sold for over $350,000,000; and the crop of 1919, consisting of 27,769,662 bags, equivalent to 3,967,094 tons, will probably realize the sum of $500,000,000. The significance of these facts may be strikingly appreciated by making a simple comparison. The Cuban sugar crop of 1919 is worth $200 for every man, woman and child on the island; while the corn crop of the United States, the most valuable crop of that country, worth $3,000,000,000, is equal to only $30 per capita of the population. The production and consumption of sugar throughout the world was practically doubled during the fifteen years preceding the world war. The total production for 1914 was 18,697,331 tons, of which 8,875,918 tons came from beets, and 9,821,413 tons from cane. As a consequence of the war, the world production for 1919 was only 16,354,580 tons, of which only 4,339,856 tons were obtained from beets, while 12,014,724 tons were obtained from cane. The crop of 1919 shows, therefore, a gross shortage of 2,342,751 tons compared with that of 1914, without taking into account the normal increase in consumption indicated by the experience of the fifteen years before the war; during which period the production of cane sugar in Cuba was actually trebled in volume, showing an average annual increase of approximately 125,000 tons. The production of sugar in Cuba in 1914 was 2,597,732 tons, and in 1919 it was 3,967,064 tons; showing an average annual increase of about 275,000 tons, or approximately seven per cent. These figures, taken with those of the fifteen preceding years, indicate that the development of the cane sugar business in Cuba during the past twenty years, or since the establishment of the Republic, has been of steady growth and healthy proportions. Natural conditions have greatly favored the growing of sugar cane in Cuba, and the demand for sugar throughout the world has increased so rapidly that it is not surprising that this industry has become paramount in the insular Republic. Begun on a small scale and in almost indescribably primitive fashion nearly four hundred years ago, as related in the first volume of the History of Cuba, it was not until near the end of the sixteenth century that the industry was established on a secure foundation. Even then it received little encouragement from the Spanish Government, and it was not until the close of the eighteenth and opening of the nineteenth century that it began to assume the proportions for which nature had afforded opportunity. With the emancipation of the island from peninsular rule, however, and the firm establishment of a government of Cuba by Cubans and for Cubans, the sugar industry has developed into proportionately one of the greatest in the world.