CHAPTER XTHE ROMANCE OF QUEENSLAND SUGAR
Themarvel of Queensland grows upon one the more the country is studied. I have spoken about its vast territory, its small population, and its almost infinite possibilities in many directions of development. There remains one thing further to note—viz., the possibilities of Queensland as a sugar-producing country. Already this mere handful of population has developed the sugar industry in a remarkable way. Last year, for example, there were nearly 131,000 acres of land under cultivation for sugar cane alone, and from this nearly 171,000 tons of sugar (not cane) were produced. The industry has already called into existence a monthly journal entirely devoted to sugar interests. Turning over its pages we see what strides have been made. Therein are named all kinds of machinery for dealing with the product, from the moment when the farmer drives his plough into the ground, until the moment when the cubes of white sugar issue from the final cylinder of the refinery. Machines are now made for crushing the cane at the rate of 830 tons per day.
It is not, however, to technical details of this kind that I invite attention, but rather to one or twomatters in connection with the industry which will be interesting—i.e. the romance of growing and the romance of refining the sugar.
Queensland, of all the Australian States, is capable of producing the most sugar. The climate is tropical, the area is enormous. Hundreds of square miles of land are awaiting cultivation. The door for genuine workers is more widely open than ever before,and open to the white man. But let it be understood that the pure white man who enters this tropical territory will not long remain white. He may retain all the instincts belonging to the white races, but his skin will be tanned, darkened, and in course of time perhaps blackened, under the powerful rays of the Northern sun. The white man, however, is entreated to come. The policy of the Commonwealth, to preserve a “white Australia,” whether mistaken or not, is the policy that is in force. Black labour in the sugar plantations is a thing of the past. The Kanakas, formerly imported from the South Sea Islands, have all been returned to their native homes. Not a coloured man is permitted to work in Queensland. The Government supports the white man in a practical manner by giving a bounty on all sugar produced by pure white labour. This bounty, since 1905, amounts to £3 per ton of sugar—i.e. the finished product. The grower is further supported by a protective duty of £6 per ton on all foreign-grown sugar. But what about the consumer—the poor consumer? Ah! there’s the rub. Protection secures excellent results to certain people, but I haveyet to learn that the consumer is “protected” by so much as a farthing. The truth is that protection is most partial in its working. The few benefit by it; the many suffer. The price of living is rapidly increasing in the Commonwealth despite “Protection.” Australia pays an excessive price for sugar. Why? Because the consumer is not protected against the “ring,” which can fix any price it chooses for the sale of a commodity, knowing full well that the protective tariff effectually kills all competition. This, however, is a digression. I was saying that the door is open in Queensland for thewhite man, who, as a worker, has an unparalleled opportunity of piling up a modest little fortune. And for this reason the day of the great plantation has passed, and the day of the small holding has arrived. Formerly the situation was—the large capitalist, the large plantation, a handful of white men and a colony of “niggers.” That meant a colossal fortune for the few and practical slavery for the many. But to-day the Government has inaugurated a “Government Central Mill” system, and this has meant the rapid breaking up of large estates and the establishment of a number of small holdings. Nearly 6,000 persons are now engaged in growing sugar-cane, and a race of independent white planters has been settled on their own holdings. To quote the official notice, “There never was a time in the history of Queensland when any person desirous of becoming a sugar-cane farmer could find easier conditions or greater facilities for success. The Government, the largeplanter, and the big sugar mill owner are all ready to assist him to a start.” A labourer—i.e. a cane cutter—can earn as much as 15s. a day, and if he be a thrifty man he can save sufficient in a few years to commence cane-growing on his own account. There is a great industry, then, awaiting development in Queensland, and the natural people to undertake it are our own kinsmen in the Old Land. It has been established that white men can work in the North. Notallwhite men, however. I think I know a type of Englishman who would die of exhaustion were he transported to the hot climate of Queensland. With the development of the industry would come the question of markets. If Australia grows as it should, a market would be found at home—a market at hand. But there would also be a surplus for exportation. At present export markets are found in New Zealand, the Cape, and Canada. The United Kingdom is entirely barred. Englishmen, now accustomed to cheap sugar, would never pay the price which Australians would be compelled to ask for it.
I had no idea how the sugar-cane grew until I saw it in Queensland. Nor, for that matter, did I know how pineapples grew. Like many others, I conceived the pineapple as growing upon trees. It was quite a shock to find it growing after the manner of cabbages. Who would ever dream that these tall, knotted bamboo sticks contained the sweet substance which, when ground down and refined, appeared as sugar? Men, lightly clad, enter the plantations armed with a kind of bowie-knife—their weapon forsevering the thick, heavy stalks of sugar-cane. The canes, deftly cut, fall upon the ground, whence they are transported to specially built trucks, and thus conveyed to one of the central mills to be crushed into pulp and converted into raw sugar. From the mill the raw material is sent in bags to the refinery, from which it issues as an edible article. By the courtesy of the manager of the Brisbane Sugar Refinery Company, we were allowed to follow the entire process of preparing the sugar for the market. In a huge storeroom there were piled some thousands of sacks of raw sugar, recently arrived from the mill. These white sacks arose, tier upon tier, like huge cliffs. But before the material is handled by the workers it is analysed and tested by the chemist. In a well-furnished laboratory there reposed all manner of chemicals, and weights and measures, and test-tubes. All the raw material entering the refinery is carefully examined and classified. For there are no fewer than twenty different kinds of sugar which pass under the chemist’s observation. Chemistry has revolutionised the sugar industry. Waste is reduced to the minimum. The loss in working amounts to only two per cent. What was formerly thrown away has now become an important article of commerce. By-products have been created. The unwritten motto in the laboratory is, “Gather up the fragments which remain, that nothing may be lost.” It was the chemist himself—this magician who can work miracles—who was kind enough to explain the whole system of working to us. The sugar is firstof all weighed, and, said the foreman, with a pardonable touch of pride, “the mill accepts our weights.” The community is too simple, too small, too dependent to have yet developed the fine art of robbery and lying. Weighed, it is then emptied down a grating, as if it were sand rather than sugar. By ever-ascending machinery the raw sugar is then carried up a flue to an overhead copper, into which it is poured. The sacks, instead of being shaken, are put through a machine which extracts from them the last farthing’s-worth of sweetness. The pouring of the raw sugar into the coppers is attended by a fine dust-storm, the particles of dust being sugar. It is a world of sweetness into which we have entered; the very atmosphere is impregnated with sugar. The odour is that of Demerara, the perfume of the forbidden cupboard of our youthful days. And to the perfumed atmosphere is added the hum of whirling machinery. It is sugar set to music. From the copper the mass passes into a hopper, where it is mixed with syrup. Thence it is poured into centrifugal machines whose violent revolutions separate liquid from solid, and leave behind in the pans a purer grain. Partially refined, the changing mass is discharged by means of shoots into melting-vats below. Water is now added, and a strange liquor, anything but like sugar, is formed. The metamorphosis proceeds, mocking and bewildering as metamorphoses generally are. Half-drowned in liquor, the inebriated sugar is pumped up into adjusting pans, from which it goes on to the filters, wherethe separation of mechanical impurities from the sugar in solution takes place. At the very summit of the refinery the filters repose. These great vessels are filled with bone charcoal which has been subjected to the terrific temperature of 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Under this frightful heat all organic matter has been entirely destroyed. Through this mass of charcoal the liquid sugar passes—a depth of twenty feet—and when it emerges at the bottom the liquor is purified. But it is not yet sugar. The pure liquor which runs into the tanks consists of 60 per cent. sugar and 40 per cent. water. Now the task is to evaporate the water and leave behind the pure sugar. To accomplish this, the whole mixture is poured into a vacuum pan, in which the water is condensed. The evaporation over, a granular mass is left behind. This mass then falls into other tanks, where it is continually stirred by mechanical levers to prevent it becoming spoiled. Then, again, the centrifugal machine is requisitioned, and the sugar is finally dried. There remains but one stage more—the roasting—and then through an opening in the last cylinder the white sugar falls upon the board.
It is all so simple, yet so complicated. And it is immensely fascinating. The human hand does not touch the product from beginning to end of the refining process. Machinery—as nearly intelligent as machinery can ever be—accomplishes the whole. And then my comrade points a moral. He contrasts this scientific and humane work with those old clumsy and brutal methods which prevailed on plantations ofother times. Then the laws of sanitation were unknown, or disregarded. Human feet did what steel does to-day. Dirty hands touched what even clean hands to-day never touch. And then there was the whip, the oath, the kick, and often the thin stream of red blood running down the face or the neck of the negro. The world has changed, thank God! Things are not wholly going to the devil. There is a history of ever-broadening humanity concealed in the story of the romance of sugar.