BEET ROOT SUGAR.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XI, Issue 179, 20 July 1876, Page 2

BEET ROOT SUGAR.

To the Editor of the 'Evening Mail.' Sir.— l have just finished perusing the JParliamentary paper on tho subject of Beet Root Sugar. As I have had opportunities, s'ich as hate not fallen to the lot of most .New Zealand colonists of becoming personally acquainted with the cultivation of the suaarcane, and the manufacture of cane augar I beg, with your permission, to say a few worJa on the subject. I may premise that I resided for six vears in a lage sugar-producing island— Trio'lisd and for shorter spaces of time in Cuba and Vemzue'a.and that I have visited most of the Wett Indian island?, including Barbados. Grenada, St. Lucia, Guadeloupe, M irtinique ' Antigua, H. Thomas, and several others! All these produce sugar. In Trinidad, with which I am best ac- = quanted, wsges are at the rate of about; a shilling a day. In addition, the planter has to find melical attendance and hospital accommodation for the laborer when sick. On the other hand the laborers niuat work whether they like it or not; they cannot strike for higher wages, as they are indentured for five years. If they don't like to w.rk oa the estate, they are sent to gaol, and.

are made to work there But as a wri'er ia your columns has still —" Tlipy are not staves.'* Not at all. ""No compulsion—only" • yo'J must.'' is the rale. There is in Trinidad any qujnt:ty of virgin land with b'ack vegetable soil of any depth to be had at £1 an acre, Olomse^if any one wants to buy cleared land he qiusft pay a ma,h higher price, but I should^hmk about £10 an acre for tugir estates, with ordinary machinery and buildings included was the rule when first I went to Trinidad, and a purchaser wai not easy to get at that. Things are better now. Gooiorciuary land wi'l produce, with ordinary cultivation, three hogsheads of sugar per acre. Four and a ha'f Ivgsheida have been produce?. In Dernentni tfie Utter is more nearly tho rule than the former. A hogshead of sugar averages from Iffcwt to a ton. I find in the Parliamentary pip^r that an acre of land on an averaae jiroduc s beet root equivalent to a ton ot sugir. Tiiis i9 rather over the average if otuer returns are to be relied on. Iha extraction of sugar from beet root in • volves a most complicated and coetly process of clarifying and decolorizing with animal charcoal, and the use of much machinery. Sug3r (rora the cane can be made m a saucer pan or a kettle. I have made good sugar in a common faucer placed over a small pot of boiling watar. 'J he Negroes in tha country dhtricti mostly make tbeirown sugar in some such way: Tne canes are crushed by a most primitive lever made of wooi) ; the juice is boiled into suear by the good woman of the house. The fine white granulated sugar, we '. get from Mauritius is nude from cane juica evaporated in vaccu'n pans, and thea dried by being wheel.d round very rapidly so as to throw off tha molassas or uncrysta'.lizable suft-ir. ' To any body who has lived in the West Indie?, and knows how much more cheaply cane sugar might be produced by improve 1 machinery, the boundless fertility of the sugar-growing countries, and ths ewmous return for capital invested, it doea appear the height of absurdity to attempt to compete with them by means of beet rout. Does i>ir Juius Vogel know whit was the price of sugar in France when Napokoa I. commenced, the production of beet-root sugar ? It was five shillings a pound The duty on cane sugar in Prance and Belgium ia enormous, and acts as a high protective duty on beet root sugar, the conaequsr.ee of which i* th*t tha Fr;nth sugar-prolucing colonies tend a good deal of their su^ar to England. Even on the Continent, cane sugar is preferret to beet root sugar. In no English colony would it find a market even it sold a penny a pound cheaper. So profitable i9 the cultivation of sugar, that I have known, estates purotased the bad tioiea) for nine thousand pounds, returning for years p\st a net average profit of tweotysevea thousand pounds annually. This was un-'er tho personal supsrintendjnee of ihs owner. I think one hundrei per cent, per annum on any capital over ten thousand pounds might" be relied on with certainty, provided the owner was his own manager and attorney. Also provided he did not die of yell>w fever, or bilio a remittent, or pernicious or malign mt intermittent, or choleri, or dysentery. But thes^ are details with which I need net trouble your readers. lam not an extensive capitalist myself, but if I was, 1 certainly w.iild not go in for Beet Boot Sugar in New Ze-iland. I am, &c, R. H. Bakbweli,, M.D., Late Medical Officer of ilea th, &c, Trini.lad. P.S. —I forgot to mention typhoid fever among the list of tpidenrij diseases