There are many other meritorious cane growing and sugar producing enterprises in Cuba, that are deserving of consideration; but which cannot be satisfactorily described within the space here available for the purpose. It must suffice to add that of the total sugar produced in Cuba during the season of 1918 and 1919, amounting to 27,747,704 bags, 13,587,733 bags or 49.04 per cent were produced by sixty-five properties owned or controlled by American interests, and 14,159,971 bags or 50.96 per cent were produced by one hundred and thirty-one properties owned or controlled by Cuban and European interests. It may not be amiss also to call attention to the fact that the sugar crop of Cuba, for the season of 1918-19 amounted to nearly one-fourth of the total sugar production of the world. If allowance is made for the normal average increase in consumption of sugar, as indicated by experience during the fifteen years just before the European War, the world’s production of sugar for the year 1919 should have been 21,813,551 tons, while in fact it amounted to only 16,354,580 tons. This shows that the actual net shortage in the world’s production of sugar amounted to 5,458,971 tons instead of the 2,342,751 tons commonly mentioned, the latter figures representing only the difference in production between the years 1914 and 1919. This indicates that there are no grounds for apprehension on the part of anyone contemplating investing in desirable property in Cuba, as to the world’s production overtaking the world’s consumption of sugar for a number of years to come. The economic position of Cuba as the premier sugar-producing country of the world may therefore be confidently regarded as secure. CHAPTER XVI TOBACCO This strangely hypnotic leaf of the night-shade family seems to have originated in the Western Hemisphere, and that variety familiar to commerce, known as the Nicotina Tabacum, was in popular use among the aborigines of the West Indies, Mexico and the greater part at least of the North American continent, probably for thousands of years before the written history of man began. Christopher Columbus and his followers noted the fact that the Indians of Cuba wrapped the clippings from peculiar aromatic dark brown leaves in little squares of corn husks, which they rolled and smoked with apparent pleasure. It did not take long for the Spanish conquerors to fall into the habit of the kindly natives who received them and who almost immediately offered them cigars in token of welcome to the Island of Cuba.