Heavy two wheeled carts, drawn by from four to eight oxen, are still generally used to convey the cane from the fields to the mills or railroad stations. Plowing, also, is done largely with oxen, although these are being replaced on the more modern and up to date estates by traction engines hauling gang plows, and by motor driven trucks for the transportation of the cane. One of the latter, which was first used in 1918, is provided with several light steel demountable bodies, that are dropped at convenient places through the cane fields, where they are loaded and then drawn up again upon the frame of the truck by the power of the motor. The load of cane is then carried to the mill or loading station, and the empty body brought back to the field for reloading. Meanwhile other bodies have been loaded with cane, and the operation is repeated. Other experiments are being made with trucks of the ordinary type, mounted upon low wheels carrying so called caterpillar belts, so that they may be used in wet weather and on soft ground. These contrivances have not, however, eliminated the ox cart, which still hauls from the fields over ninety per cent of the cane produced in Cuba. Labor plays an important part in the cost of producing sugar in Cuba and largely determines the profits of the industry. In 1914 the cost of producing a pound of sugar, in most of the well located and otherwise favorably conditioned mills in Cuba, was estimated at about two cents; and in some of the exceptionally favored mills even this figure left a margin of profit. But with the rapid rise in wages following the outbreak of the European War, and the consequent increase of expense of cultivating, cutting and handling cane, the cost of making sugar has become increasingly difficult to determine, as the wage rate may vary, both from day to day, and also in the different sections of the island, where labor may be scarce or plentiful. The urgent demand for sugar brought about by the European War caused many fields to be planted with cane the soils of which were not suited for the purpose. Mills were also erected at several places in districts not favored by nature for sugar production. Later, when the selling price of sugar was fixed by the Sugar Commission appointed for that purpose, these less fortunately situated mills, compelled as they were to pay practically double the usual amounts for labor, found little if any profit remaining at the end of the year’s operations. Those mills favored by fertile lands and good locations yielded and continue to yield excellent returns upon the capital invested, in spite of the increased cost of labor.