The Waikato Times AND THAMES VALLEY GAZETTE.

Waikato Times, Volume XXIII, Issue 1918, 21 October 1884, Page 2

The Waikato Times AND THAMES VALLEY GAZETTE.

luju.il and exact justice to a'l men, 01 whatsoever st.itc or persuasion, religious or political. Hero sh ill the Press the People's ripht maintain, Unaurd by influence .md tmbnbed by g.nn.

TV BSD A 7, OCT. 2J t 1881

What the colony most needs at the present time is an influx of population and capital to work up the numerous natural i-esources it possesses, but which, to our national loss, lie neglected and undeveloped To open up fresh territory, to construct new railways may give a temporary fillip lo settlement and circulate money in the expenditure, but no more. We shall soon find oui'holvcs again in the same position as now. Increased settlement means increased production, without al the same time furnishing a correspondingly extended market. It is over production that the New Zealand settler has to contend with, lie could readily enlarge his producing power, but to what purpose 1 He already grows more grain, cattle, and other produce than he can find a profitable market for. We have long passed that early stage of settlement in a new country, the aim of which is to establish itself in the production of the first necessai-ics of life. With us if we are to progress, not retrograde, manufacture and agriculture must henceforth go forward with equal step. We must cease to be merely hewers of wood and drawers of water for the home manufacturer, content to grow the raw material and to receive it back again at an enormously advanced price in the shape of manufactured goods which we should learn to manufacture ourselves, and so give employment to our surplus labour rather than to the mechanics of Europe and America. If we had expended more capital and labour in developing industries of various kinds, and less in the reclamation of the soil, we should all have been in a more healthy and prosperous condition today. Much loss and disappointment would ha\e been saved. It is i'or this reason we hail with satisfaction the efforts of Mr W. A. Graham and others to f establish beet root sugar manufacture in the colony. The industry, as we have shown in a previous article, is of enormous dimensions; the market is practically unlimited, and the agriculturist and the manufacturer would share between them the large benefits to be derived from the creation of such a trade. To the settler would fall even the lion's share of tho advantages. There would be created an unlimited demand for sugar-beets for the supply of the mills, which would always ensure a large price and a handy market. In the sugar-beet countries of Europe the price given for beet-roots by the factories in 1881 was 12 marks, or, to speak roughly, as many shillings per ton, but at the present tin.c the farmers demand and receive 17 marks per ton, which well might be when the factories are declaring dividends on their profits at the rate of from 2i per cent, to 32 per cent, per annum. As Mr Graham says in the pamphlet before up, it is necessary to place these factories in the centre of some settled district such as Waikato, because even if the company start with an estate of 3000 acres of their own they will have to rely on the neighbouring farmers to grow a large proportion of the roots required for the factory. Nor is tho sugar trade of the world — we have shown that the consumption in this colony alone is equal to some.£Boo,ooo per annum — to be affected by anything 1 we can produce in Few Zealand. '1 ha success of the pioneer sugar factory, wherever it may be located, will be the initiation of a now and golden era amongst us. The first throb of the engine in a Waikato sugar factory will be the assurance of future wealth and prosperity t> the entire district. These factories would become dotted about, here and there, on our Waikato rivers and creeks, every six oi 1 eight miles apart, and instead of a sparsely - populated and partly cultivated country such as we now see around us, we should sec well cultivated farms, thriving townships, and numerous other industries springing into prosperous being. And Waikato more than most other parts of the colony may look to be the chief contre of the sugar industry, for the reason stated by Mr Graham, tho absence of salt from its soil and atmosphere. It is a recognised fact that Migar-beet cannot bo grown for sugar purposes in soil containing any large percentage of salt, or where it is subjected to tho salt-bearing atmosphere of the coast. From the latter, lying in a large basin among the ranges, it is protected on both sides, west and east, and as rogauls soil, the process of filtiation and deposit winch, lias built up the solid lands of the middle Waikato basin from the silt debris washed down by the fresh water overflow of Lako Taupo and tho Waikato river, has left it denuded entirely of chlorido of sodium or common salt, one per cent, of which in the beetroots is destructive of five per eont. of sugar. This will make sugar-beet a specialtj', in any cas>o, of the inland portions of the colony, and for the reasons above stated a specialty par excellence of middle Waikato. Nature has given to Waikato in this a magnificent dowry, and we shall be sorely to blame if we neglect to fully utilise so grand an opportunity. Nor lot us fear either the mis-statemeDts of those who would have us believo that sugar made from beet is inferior to the product of the cane. To quote the pamphlot of Mr Graham, " Grant, in his Beetroot Sugar, remarks that the cost of producing from the beet a pure white sugar, entirely free from, unpleasant smell or taste, is but a trifle more than is

required to produce a lower grade. In Germany refined loaf sugar is produced directly from tlio In ot. In Franco, the brown is first produced and then refined. Within the last two years, howovor, sugar hns bron produced of such purity and whiteness that it has boon sold directly for consumption without refining." Orookos in his work, Manufacture of Bootroot, says :—": — " Crystallised beetroot sugar is perfectly identical in composition with cane sugar, and is undistinguishable from it by the sight, the taste, or by chemical tests." As rpgards the labour difficulty, Mr Graham sees no obstable. The rate of wages paid in the sugar-boet factories in Germany at the present t.me, we may state in passing, is three marks, or three shillings per day for a man's labour. " Our details of cost of cultivation and delivering the produce of one acre of sugar-beet to the factory within the prescribed limits," says Mr Graham, " is, including rent, £6 12s. In America, according to Grant, the actual cost of the same is £5 10s lOd, exclusive of rent. In Belgium we find the cost of the same is £6, and rent £4, or £10 per acre, and in France £7 to £7 1 2s per acre, including rent." "What Mr Graham looks at as the chief difficulty is that settlers and capitalists alike have their capital locked up in their farms and business, and that the latter are so sufficiently occupied with other branches of commerce, and the ready turn-over trade of manufactured goods that they do not care to withdraw their capital from their business to put it into an industry which they consider the farmers should look out for as more in their line, and with the details of which they themselves are practically unacquainted. Mr Graham therefore looks for the assistance of the legislature to enable a company to be floated, which shall import the necpssary machinery and skilled labour to start the first factory o-oing in New Zealand. We need no more. That done, the industry will be fairly planted in our midst, to incrca.se anJ flourish till it has repaid a thousandfold the venture of the Government, and the individual enterprise of our settlers and traders.