2 pounds]
Sugar, the leading export, is the principal product of the southern
portion of the Republic. In contrast with the cultivation of cacao,
coffee and tobacco, sugar planting requires a large outlay of capital.
The fields must be carefully prepared, extensive ditching must be done
in order to provide irrigation during the dry season; the fields must
be cleaned repeatedly while the cane is growing; and when the cane
eventually matures, after fourteen to eighteen months of growth,
it must upon cutting be immediately transported to the mill,
where expensive machinery grinds it and fabricates sugar from
the cane juice. The large sugar plantations of the country
are all owned by foreigners, principally Americans and Italians,
but dependent upon them are many small plots, planted under
contract with the central factory by small native owners or
contractors. Before the establishment of the first of these
plantations near Macoris in the early eighties, the apparatus for
making sugar was as crude as that employed by the first colonists,
consisting of small presses turned by oxen, and large caldrons to boil
the cane.
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