The latter buildings are in some cases forty or fifty in number, and each
of them will accommodate ten or twelve persons.... The planters here derive
immense profits from the cultivation of their estates.[15] The yearly
income from them is from twenty thousand to thirty thousand dollars."
[Footnote 15: Estwick Evans, _A Pedestrious Tour ... through the Western
States and Territories_ (Concord, N.H., 1817), p. 219, reprinted in R.G.
Thwaites ed., _Early Western Travels_, VIII, 325, 326.]
Gross proceeds running into the tens of thousands of dollars were indeed
fairly common then and afterward among Louisiana sugar planters, for the
conditions of their industry conduced strongly to a largeness of plantation
scale. Had railroad facilities been abundant a multitude of small
cultivators might have shipped their cane to central mills for manufacture,
but as things were the weight and the perishableness of the cane made
milling within the reach of easy cartage imperative. It was inexpedient
even for two or more adjacent estates to establish a joint mill, for the
imminence of frost in the harvest season would make wrangles over the
questions of precedence in the grinding almost inevitable.
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