As a rule,
therefore, every unit in cane culture was also a unit in sugar manufacture.
Exceptions were confined to the scattering instances where some small farm
lay alongside a plantation which had a mill of excess capacity available
for custom grinding on slack days.
The type of plantation organization in the sugar bowl was much like that
which has been previously described for Jamaica. Mules were used as draught
animals instead of oxen, however, on account of their greater strength
and speed, and all the seeding and most of the cultivation was done with
deep-running plows. Steam was used increasingly as years passed for driving
the mills, railways were laid on some of the greater estates for hauling
the cane, more suitable varieties of cane were introduced, guano was
imported soon after its discovery to make the rich fields yet more fertile,
and each new invention of improved mill apparatus was readily adopted for
the sake of reducing expenses. In consequence the acreage cultivated per
hand came to be several times greater than that which had prevailed in
Jamaica's heyday. But the brevity of the growing season kept the saccharine
content of the canes below that in the tropics, and together with the
mounting price of labor made prosperity depend in some degree upon
protective tariffs.
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