Title: The Cuba review
Identifier: cubarevie10muns (find matches)
Year: 1912 (1907-1931, 1900s)
Authors: Munson Steamship Line
Subjects:
Publisher: New York : Munson Steamship Line
Contributing Library: New York Botanical Garden, LuEsther T. Mertz Library
Digitizing Sponsor: The LuEsther T Mertz Library, the New York Botanical Garden

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THE CUBA REVIEW 29
THE SUGAR INDUSTRY
SUGAR CANE'S REQUIREMENTS
Sugar cane is of the grass family. Its stalks rise from 6 feet to 12 feet in height, and are about an inch and a half thick. It requires a rich soil. It calls for much shining down of a hot sun and heavy downpours of rain to bring it to maturity; it shivers to death in frost and it is a greedy drinker. Hence it is of the greatest consequence to the planter that the rainfall be heavy enough and come at the right time. After the rainy season it needs months of burning sun, followed by dry and cool weather. Then the juice becomes richer and richer in sugar, and the cane is ready to cut and grind. If the rainy season is too short or precipitation too light the cane is poor in weight and size and the sugar yield diminishes. If there is too prolonged a rainy season there will be great quantities of gummy juice and a much lower sugar yield. If the cane cutting be done too early or if it be too long delayed the quantity of sugar in the juice will be low. The cane cutting must be done within little over 100 days for the best results. To sum up then, in proportion as the climate is warm and damp, and fairly constant in keeping these conditions, so is cane growing likely to thrive in a particular country. Cuba and the West India Islands generally furnish large areas of cane-growing soil; Mexico, Hawaii, Java, Mauritius likewise meet the conditions. In the United States: Louisiana and latterly Texas, have cane areas, but their cane has not the great luxuriance or richness of tropical cane and requires an annual sowing, while in Cuba the same plants have produced richly for ten and even fifteen years. Little has really been done anywhere to improve the sugar cane. Experience and science have done much in dealing with the juice. Nature is so lavish with the cane that man has seemed to lack the incitement to better it, but the time is at hand when it will be specialized as fruit has been by the Burbanks and others. — Manuel Rionda, president Czarnikow-Rionda Co., in the Louisiana Planter.
The first section of the branch railroad line in Santa Clara Province of the Cuban Central which joins Cifuentes and La Esperanza cutting through the San Diego valley, and which now reaches San Diego de Valle from Cifuentes, has been thrown upon to the public service.
Text Appearing After Image:
Architecture in Cuba.— Residence of the administrator of the Nueva Luisa Central, Jovellanos.

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