Government grants to enable them to erect co-operative factories; further, a Government bounty was imposed as a compensation for the withdrawal of coloured labour; this was subsequently abolished. The Central Mill System by which groups of farmers control the factories continues. The canes are crushed and the sugar sent to the refiners. The work of manufacture is carried out under scientific supervision, and state sugar experimental stations test the various species of cane, and determine which are most productive, and most immune from disease. Thus the Queensland Sugar Industry is specially interesting, because it has solved the problem of carrying on a tropical manufacture with white labour.
The Moreton Central Sugar Mill, which we visited, is close to the main line of railway, but light railways run in all directions through the district to bring the canes up on trucks to the mill. Masses of dark red cane were lying about round the mill, and coming in on little trucks. The raw cane tastes faintly sour. The sugar mill itself was filled with the all-pervading sickly, thick, sweet smell of the raw sugar, and streaming with moisture. The temperature is very high. We climbed under and over moving machinery, were asphyxiated with steam, nauseated with
