Then, for a space, the Jamaican whites breathed freely, but not for long. In 1760 the slaves rose, [[271]]burning, butchering, and pillaging with their usual savagery, and five years later the Maroons once more burst out, leaving a wide trail of blood, of smoking fields, and of blackened ruins behind them, until a second treaty was made and half a thousand of the blacks were exiled to Sierra Leone. But even after this the islanders were seldom left in peace. In 1838 slavery was abolished, and yet in 1865 the negroes rose and slaughtered the whites and burned their homes at Montego Bay, brigandage was rampant in the hills, and altogether the wonder is that Jamaica has survived at all.
Just as Jamaica’s old-time prosperity was founded upon the Brethren of the Main, so the island’s present prosperity depends almost wholly upon the modern prototype of the pirates—a gigantic trust. In place of high-pooped, low-bowed ships with grinning guns along their sides Jamaica’s harbors now shelter the spotless white hulls of the fruit-boats. While the telling arguments of shot and shell and the pistol and cutlass have given way to the all-powerful dollar and the peaceful if no less persuasive methods of modern business to compel others to come to terms, yet the Fruit Company is scarcely less domineering in its line than were Morgan and his associates in theirs. [[272]]
Not that the Fruit Company has not done much for Jamaica and the other lands where it has holdings. The worst enemy of the great organization, the most rabid anti-trust fanatic, cannot deny that the company has improved land, made for livable conditions, instituted sanitary reforms, circulated money, given employment to thousands, established hospitals, built railways, erected palatial hotels, maintained a steamship service, and done countless other admirable things. But one and all have been done with an eye to personal gain and not for the good of the world or of the countries where it controls politics, finances, policies, and the very existence of the inhabitants. Like every trust, it is utterly selfish, and in Jamaica it has a strangle hold, controlling business and people, body and soul. With the octopus-like grip of this colossus on the lands about the Caribbean, there can be no successful competition, no open market, no independent profitable enterprise where fruit, and especially bananas, are concerned.
Let any one who doubts this attempt to establish an industry where the trust holds sway, and see how long it will be ere he feels the effects of the political influence, the control of labor, the monopoly of shipping which the owners of the White Fleet hold in their hands.
Sr. Hen. Morgan
JAMAICA
A road in the hills
[[273]]