This persistent character of tropical enterprise to resist adaptation to changes is well illustrated by the fact that though the prices of nearly all grades of sugar have fallen 50 per cent. since 1882, the volume of sugar exported from the British West Indian colonies has shown very slight tendency to decrease.

Since 1895 the same tendency has prevailed. Though the proportion which these colonies contribute to the 3,000,000 tons of the total supply of cane-growing countries is yearly diminishing, the total production as shown by the export figures for the last four years has gained rather than lost. The following figures (in long tons) are from Willett and Gray's Statistical Sugar Trade Journal2-a recognized authority on the subject.

The importance of the sugar crop to West Indian interests is not to be measured by the ratio of its yield to the world's commercial supply. A comparison of the sugar exports with nonsugar exports shows this industry in its real significance to these colonies. The relative values are given for the year 1896.

1West India Royal Commission, pp. 4, 170. The prices are London prices for unrefined sugar.

'New York, Vol. 23, No. 1, p. 3, Jan. 3, 1899.

$14,555,000

75

Total, excluding Jamaica and gold
from British Guiana ...... . $19,725,000

The commercial importance of the sugar industry may be further indicated by the relative volume of its exports as compared with miscellaneous exports from the British West Indies for a series of years. In 1882, the sugar exports comprised 88.5 per cent. of the total exports, and the miscellaneous or nonsugar products only five-tenths of one per cent. Since that date the decline in the value of sugar products has slowly promoted the development of other industries in some of these islands. Trinidad, for example, now exports half sugar and half nonsugar products. Grenada, more successful than any other, has wholly abandoned sugar cultivation, except for home consumption. The place of sugar has been taken by cocoa, thus going from total abandonment of one industry to complete dependence upon another. In 1896, the ratio of sugar to non-sugar products in export valuation was 53 to 47 per cent., showing a considerable tendency to the substitution of variety in the forms of industry. Nevertheless, it is still true that any continuous improvement in the price of sugar stimulates recovery toward the former ratio with a surprising degree of readiness. The following graphic presentation shows how little sugar has lost in economic importance since 1886. It gives the volume of

'Report W. I. R. Com., p. 3.

West India exports, excluding those of Jamaica, which are about one-fifth sugar, and the gold of British Guiana. The diagram fairly represents the volume of the sugar interest in the total of export values during a series of years. It leaves no room for doubt that the paramount industry of the British West Indies is still the production of sugar, even though the prices of all sorts of sugar have fallen to just half of what they were at the beginning of the period from 1882 to 1896.

RELATIVE VALUE OF SUGAR AND NON-SUGAR EXPORTS, BRITISH WEST INDIES, 1882-1896.

The foundation of the tropical sugar industry has to be sought in the system of cane culture. Three systems are now in force in the British West Indies. The oldest of these carries on sugar-making on large estates, employing a large number of laborers. With the abolition of slavery the second system received its more important development. This system is that of small proprietors, and is most fully developed in Jamaica, where one in every ten persons is said to be an owner of land.2 Out of 52,608 holdings in the island in 1882, 43,707 were under ten acres each. On the small hold

'Adapted from Beeton's Foreign Sugar Bounties, p. 158. London, 1898. Report W. I. R. Commission, App. A, Sec. 432.

ings only raw sugar is made, while the large estates make crystallized sugar directly for consumption, by highly technical processes. The third system of culture is the metayer system, still in force in the smaller islands of Tobago and Montserrat, "The owner of the estates supplying the land on which the canes are grown, carts, stock, and the works and machinery necessary for making the sugar, while the metayer supplies the labor and conducts the agricultural operations of growing and carting the canes. The sugar made is divided into halves, one for the metayer and one for the estate owner. This system is regulated by an ordinance of the colony" (Tobago).1

The condition of the sugar industry in these three systems of cultivation is significantly different. Where the metayer system prevails the industry is rapidly perishing. The number of estates is decreasing and the fortunes of the community are declining. In spite of favorable conditions of labor and land there is no room for competent business management. Small mills are the rule in manufacturing sugar, and the loss of available sugar is great. The abolition of the metayer system with its practice of paying wages in kind and at long intervals, and the adoption of less wasteful methods of manufacture, can alone suffice to save the industry from extinction.

Next in point of importance is the large estate. In its older form as a somewhat self-sufficing community, it rested on slavery as its foundation. With the abolition first of the slave trade, and then of the institution of slavery, these estates were greatly diminished. In British Guiana2 the number fell from two hundred and thirty in 1829 to one hundred and eighty in 1849. Cotton and coffee culture were almost extinguished. The effect of the abolition of slavery on the sugar industry was, therefore, to concentrate capital and labor upon the most conveniently cultivated land and the least objectionable form of labor. Thus sugar production became the sole industry, almost without exception, for a period of fifty years (1834-1885). This is the case to-day in British Guiana-if we except gold-mining-in St. Vincent, Barbados, Antigua and St. Kitts, but diminishingly so in all the other British West Indies. The fifteen years of declin

1Ibid., App. A., Sec. 180.

'Ibid., App. A., Sec. 19.

ing prices since 1885 have gone far to introduce new crops into the agricultural industries especially in Jamaica, where sugar has fallen from 77 per cent. to 20 per cent. of the total exports.1 To the large estates we owe the more enlightened efforts to maintain the sugar industry as well as the effort to forestall the harmful consequences of the collapse of this industry by diversifying agricultural activities.

Yet it cannot be said that the large estate is destined to be the prevailing form of cultivation. As at present constituted it is uneconomical and often a hindrance to development. The sugar industry under its control elsewhere literally cumbers the ground, because it holds the land back from being devoted to other forms of cultivation. Of 42,000 acres in St. Vincent, only 8,000 are occupied beneficially. Of the total area in sugar estates in this island not more than 12 per cent. is actually under canes. In Tobago only 20 per cent. of the area classed as cultivated is actually thus utilized. Even in Trinidad, where sugar production is the dominant industry, not more than half of the area included in sugar estates is actually in canes.2 None the less, the large sugar estates now hold the key to the sugar situation in the British West Indies. At the present level of prices there are two alternative courses before them. The smaller estates, for want of sufficient capital to introduce the necessary mechanical improvements, must either be abandoned, or must be consolidated with other estates in groups large enough to command the advantages of a central factory with all requisite economies in production. There is no sane hope for the small estate which persistently indulges in the luxury of its own sugar mill, except for the very limited quantity of raw sugar required for local consumption, or to be sold as a by-product of the farm to the central factory. Its machinery is a thing of the past-or rather a thing for the industrial museum of the present. Its hope of remaining in the sugar industry rests upon its adjustment with some central system of manufacturing. Otherwise it is stated that even in Jamaica, where the larger estates are admirably equipped, fully 50 per cent. of the smaller estates will be abandoned within a few years at current prices for sugar.

'Ibid., App. A., Sec. 400.

Ibid., p. 100.