Preface

Summary

At a time when, through the co-operation of numerous factors, a new epoch of prosperity for the cane sugar industry has begun, the opportunity seems to have arrived to bring together in a coherent survey the past, the present, and the probable future of the cane sugar industry in the different countries of production.

The various causes which have contributed to animating with new vitality an industry, which by many writers was already considered to be dying out, are still fresh in the mind of the reader. One may mention here only the most conspicuous of these, viz., the Brussels Convention, the conquest of Formosa by the Japanese, the tariff privileges granted by the United States to the former Spanish colonies, and, last but not least, the great advance of science in the province of sugar cane cultivation and cane sugar manufacture–all of which has occurred during the last twenty years.

I, personally, felt inclined to tackle this important subject, the more so because, first of all, I myself have been an eyewitness of the decline, and then the revival, of the cane sugar industry; and, further, because, as well through my own observations as through regular correspondence with authorities on the subject in well-nigh every cane sugar producing country, I am able to draw on the most reliable information concerning that industry in every part of the world where it is found.