THE ROMANCE OF QUEENSLAND SUGAR
The marvel 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 two matters 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 have yet 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 the _white 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 large planter,
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. Not _all_ white 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 for severing 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 first of 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, where the 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 of other
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.