“Second. White and brown sugar, manufactured and purified in forms. Some estates use vacuum pans for these sugars.
“Third. Muscovado sugars manufactured directly from the cane juice.
“The best sugars of these three classes were exported in boxes, and the inferior in hogsheads.
“Fourth. Raw sugar, made in vacuum pans and crystallised immediately in centrifugal turbines, there being two varieties of this class of sugar, that extracted directly from the juice and the one extracted from the molasses resulting in the purification of the first product.
“In the year 1857 there was a universal crisis and after that time planters considered that the first class mentioned was the most profitable, and machinery was improved at great expense for the purpose of manufacturing this grade of sugar. A plantation with this machinery could be improved only at great cost, and it would have been impossible to do so to any advantage had it not been for the reduced cost of labour owing to slavery, carried on at the time.
“In the meanwhile, the beetroot-sugar industry was progressing both in its agriculture and manufacture. No one in Cuba foresaw the terrible revolution that this industry was to suffer in consequence. It first became apparent in the crisis in 1884, which may be considered the most important event in the history of the sugar industry. This crisis, which came in a most sudden and unexpected manner, caused the reduction in the price of sugar which, though a benefit to the poorer classes of the world, was the ruin of Cuba, as at the same time slavery was abolished without any compensation whatever, direct or indirect, at the time when the losses of a sanguinary civil war were being overcome.
“It may be stated that absolutely no one could foresee, either in the present or in the past generation, the revolution that since 1884 has shaken the industry; though the French colonists, fearing the competition from the start, solicited the protection of their Government.
“The French colonists feared this competition so much that fifty years ago they solicited from the French Chamber of Deputies a law prohibiting the cultivation of beetroot in French territories, offering to indemnify those who had commenced it. Experience has proved how just their fears were at that early date; but the French Government did not grant their petition, because it was adverse to favouring monopolies, and besides, because Germany, having no colonies, could promote that industry without fear of the rivalry which has proved of material benefit to all Europe, including France itself.
“In the course of human events, time alone will cause considerable changes; just as before 1884 all planters firmly believed that greater profit was obtainable by the manufacture of white sugars than lower grades. They then realised that the unexpected improvements in the manufacturing and refining processes in Europe indicated the necessity of changing their system. Those countries which had, up to that time, imported fine grades of sugar from Cuba have been able since then not only to manufacture better sugar at lower cost for their own consumption, but also to export immense quantities of this article both raw and refined to the principal markets of the world. The production is to-day considerably greater than that of Cuba.
“The change is so marked that there are no longer any estates in Cuba where the white sugar is manufactured which was so desirable from 1856 to 1884.