It was seen almost at once by the large planter that the farmer, working in the field beside his employees, was more eager for success than when he worked as labourer or overseer for another. The control of the factories, under directorates of farmers, was found to be more satisfactory and more economical than when in the hands of planters or managers with old-fashioned ideas of organisation—with managers, sub-managers, and large administrative staffs. Five years after the first loan was granted by the Government, and barely three after the rollers were started in the first of the two pioneer mills, these facts had become manifest. It says much for the sense and courage of the planters that this revolution in established methods did not dismay them, and their wisdom was shown in setting to work energetically to put the new methods into practice in the conduct of their own business.
In 1891 the Colonial Sugar Refining Company set the example by cutting up one of its large estates into farms of moderate size. Ten years earlier that estate was a cattle station, employing a couple of white men and a few aboriginals. Before the first six months of 1891 had passed, it was the home of fifty or sixty settlers, a number trebled within the next few years.
The new departure largely overcame the labour difficulty; in addition to that, it went far to meet the low prices for sugar. Many of the factories still continued to make sugar for sale in the open market, and a considerable quantity found its way, profitably, to London.
In 1892 a special Commissioner of the London "Times" (Miss Flora Shaw, now Lady Lugard) travelled through the sugar districts, and noted the evolution which was taking place. She seemed to foresee the future more clearly than many of those actually engaged in the industry. "Even the sugar industry," she wrote, "appears as a whole to be half-unconscious of the results of the reorganisation through which it has passed, and lies, as it were, still asleep in the dawn of its own prosperity."
SISAL HEMP AND CANEFIELDS, SOUTH ISIS
CANEFIELDS, ISIS RAILWAY
SUGAR CANE AND MILL, HUXLEY, ISIS RAILWAY