ever, right counsels prevailed, and perhaps the fever has abated. As for Eritrea, little enthusiasm is expressed regarding it; since the shock of 1896 the colony has come under discussion from time to time, and if it is not restricted to narrower boundaries or quite abandoned, it is largely because of national pride. In 1897 an attempt was made to take up again the organization of the colony, the stimulation of industry, etc., but the colony has never fully recovered; it is accepted as an inevitable burden which some would gladly exchange for a share in the nearer and more congenial Tripoli.1 Whether the colony is in the future even to pay for itself, remains to be seen; it is hoped rather than expected.

If Italy were intent upon the essence of colonization rather than the name, her field of action would not be far to seek; she has a series of natural colonies in America, surrounding the lower course of La Plata River, which evince a vigor of growth and a prosperity that ought to have been the pride of the mother country while she was squandering resources on the sand-dunes of the Red Sea coast. The essence of the mutual sympathy of two countries lies, not in political union, but in those racial affiliations of blood, language, religion, customs and manners, the mutual possession of which renders intercourse between groups of men easy and enjoyable. After the Revolution, the American Republic turned, not to France, but to England with her favors of trade and intercourse. So the La Plata colonies, with no serious encouragement, and with memories not the most pleasant of the native land and its extortions, have nevertheless benefited Italy commercially to an infinitely higher degree than did Eritrea at its best. As an illustration of the normal growth of national offspring, the development of these perhaps happily neglected settlements deserves a paragraph of comparison with the above described "colony for a purpose."

First and most important, the Italians have succeeded there, and that without aid, as nowhere else in the world. They were

'Rassegna Politica in Nuova Antologia during 1897; little interest in Eritrea has been exhibited since that year; Brunialti, l. c., 516 ff; Traversi, L'Etiopia d'oggi e l'Eritrea, Nuova Antologia, May 16, 1897; (Gen.) Domenico Primerano, Che cosa fare dell'Eritrea? Nuova Antologia, Oct. 16, 1897; Adolfo Rossi, 1. c. Luigi Capucci, 1. c.

the first to own inns, cafés, boats, etc., and have kept industrially in advance of a people inferior to themselves in culture. Italians founded and operate the banks, and in Buenos Ayres they own 62 per cent. of the businesses. The Italian language is spreading and Spanish is spoken only in public administration; probably one-fourth (4,000,000) of the population of Argentina have Italian blood in their veins. The current of emigration to these regions is growing ever stronger and in its wake are following advantages to Italian trade and industry; in 1889 the importation from Italy to the Argentine Republic represented 5 per cent. of the total; in 1894, 9 per cent. In late years of crisis (1889-94) Italian trade suffered less than that of any other nation. And it is seen that the Italian emigrants do not lose their native good qualities in the new country, but transmit them, along with Italian ideas and tastes, to a people who need them and are able and often willing to profit by them.1

It is toward this La Plata region that some of Italy's more responsible advisers have long been attempting to direct her attention, not with a view to the extension of imperial power-for sufficient barriers exist, fortunately for the colonies, to restrain any such interference-but in the hope of developing, without expense or bloodshed, close commercial and industrial relations and a national sympathy which may some day assist in assuring existence to that which is Italian. The Italians, like other Latin peoples, feel a sense of weakness before the tremendous energy and expansion of the Anglo-Saxon race. To the end of establishing these desired relations, a more strict supervision of emigration and a more developed consular service are advocated; the ideal is that the South American colonies shall stand to Italy as the United States to England. At present, and neglecting the crying necessity of the internal reorganization of Italy, this idea seems by far the most practical and realizable of Italian colonial projects.

Yale University.

1 Brunialti, 1. c., ch. x.

ALBERT G. KELLER.

THE SUGAR SITUATION IN THE BRITISH WEST

FOR

INDIES.

OR fully two hundred years the British West Indies have played a prominent if not the principal role in the development of the sugar industry of the world. At the present time these possessions yield about a twelfth of the cane-sugar available for the world-market. But the United Kingdom has for some time ceased to be the main customer for this principal product of her colonies. Only about 27 per cent. now goes to the mother country; the rest has to be disposed of on the American side of the Atlantic, because the beet-sugar countries have the open markets of western Europe substantially under their own control. The South and Central American countries are practically in a position to produce more than they need for domestic consumption, and the North American countries, hitherto the best markets for the sugar products of the British West Indies, are tending to become more and more self-sufficing. Mexico has exported sugar for the last four years at least; the United States is developing a beet-sugar industry with an astonishing degree of energy; and even Canada's beet-sugar yield is beginning to figure in the annual statements of the world's production.

By this time the reading public has become aware of the fact that the British West Indies are economically in a critical position. The key to this situation lies in the condition of the sugar industry. "Dealing broadly with the whole question," says the West India Royal Commission in its report on the subject, "we may say at once that looking to the low prices now prevailing and to the probabilities as to the future of prices .. the sugar-cane industry of the West Indies is threatened with such reduction in the immediate future as may not in some of the colonies differ very greatly from extinction, and must seriously affect all of them, with the single exception of Grenada, which no longer produces sugar for export. If such reduction or extinction of the industry occurs, and if its place cannot be adequately filled by the substitution of other industries, the consequences are likely to be of a

very serious character."1 Whatever these consequences may be, the fact is that these colonies have been forced into a position of commercial isolation by dependence upon a single industry in which they are no longer able to compete with the rest of the world. Such is the general condition which the British West Indies are facing to-day.

That the present crisis is acute no one acquainted with the facts will deny. The question at issue is one of policy for the future. Is the sugar industry of these colonies worth trying to save, or is it doomed to disappear at the hands of its continental rival-the beet-sugar industry? If its doom is sealed, whether by business superiority of its rival or by export bounties, then what alternative policy is it wisest to follow in order to save these colonies from erasure from the economic map of the empire? For, orphaned from the mother country and isolated from the American markets, their future, until very recently, seemed pitiably wanting in promise.

The more important economic factors involved are summarized in the following table of landed and labor interests of the twelve islands or colonies, which shows the proportionate importance of the land and labor employed in the production of sugar, and gives the total of capital invested in sugar-producing properties, in most cases as late as 1896.

1

1 Report of the West India Royal Commission, p. 3 (1897). The greater part of the statistical data used in this article has been obtained from an analysis of this excellent document. See also Sir David Barbour's more recently published Report on Finances of Jamaica, and the Parliamentary Blue Book of Correspondence on Resources of Jamaica, London, 1899.

2 Not including St. Lucia.

Not including Antiqua.

Not including St. Kitts-Nevis.

The four most important aspects of this question are the commercial, the agricultural, the industrial, and the political. In the last quarter of a century the industrial feature of sugar production has become the determining one. This has given a new aspect to the political issues involved. From these standpoints we shall proceed to analyze the conditions of sugar production in this portion of the tropics.

An almost exclusive devotion of economic resources to sugar production, unaccompanied by any marked progress in manufacturing economies, was profitable enough until about fifteen or twenty years ago. It was the old theory that each country could excel in that kind of enterprise in which natural resources gave it the advantage over its rivals. But, as mechanical improvements and the development of by-products gradually overcame this advantage, the tropical sugar industry, in which such improvements were not made, has suddenly found itself almost wholly at the mercy of trade regulations of the outside world. And worst of all, this single-minded policy gradually renders a country or an industry impotent to readjust itself to a new order of affairs.

This is particularly the case with the British West Indies. It is a peculiarity of tropical enterprise that it tends to run to a single and a simple form of industry as long as possible. In temperate latitudes economic prosperity depends upon internal improvement of industrial efficiency. The result is that the lines between the end of one industrial régime and the beginning of another can be more clearly marked in the tropics than in temperate countries. It is this that makes this group of a dozen British colonies so highly instructive to the student of economic changes in modern industry. Like the cotton States of the South, so with the sugar islands in question: a single line of products and their cognate by-products have held the field so long and so exclusively as to render the labor forces and the managing ability practically incapable of adapting themselves to anything else for a generation to come. The production of sugar, rum, molasses, and spirits, it is officially reported, attained such dimensions as to dwarf, and, at one time, to almost extinguish, every competing industry.