The West Indies and the Spanish Main

by Anthony Trollope

And now a word as to the million hogsheads of sugar and as to the necessary Coolies. Guiana has some reason to be proud, seeing that at present it beats all the neighbouring British colonies in the quantity of sugar produced. I believe that it also beats them all as to the quantity of rum, though Jamaica still stands first as to the quality. In round numbers the sugar exported from Guiana may be stated at seventy thousand hogsheads.

Barbados exports about fifty thousand, Trinidad and Jamaica under forty thousand. No other British West Indian colony gives fifteen thousand; but Guadaloupe and Martinique, two French islands, produce, one over fifty thousand and the other nearly seventy thousand hogsheads. In order to make this measurement intelligible, I may explain that a hogshead is generally said to contain a ton weight of sugar, but that, when reaching the market, it very rarely does come up to that weight. I do not give this information as statistically correct, but as being sufficiently so to guide the ideas of a man only ordinarily anxious to be acquainted in an ordinary manner with what is going on in the West Indies. I would not, therefore, recommend any Member of Parliament to quote the above figures in the House.

Some twelve years ago the whole produce of sugar in the West Indies, including Guiana and excluding the Spanish islands, was 275,000 hogsheads. The amount which I have above recapitulated, in which the smaller islands have been altogether omitted, exceeds 310,000. It may therefore be taken as a fact that, on the whole, the evil days have come to their worst, and that the tables are turned. It must however be admitted that the above figures tell more for French than for English prosperity.

In these countries sugar and labour are almost synonymous; at any rate, they are convertible substances. In none of the colonies named, except Barbados, is the amount of sugar produced limited by any other law than the amount of labour to be obtained, and in none of them, with that one exception, can any prosperity be hoped for, excepting by means of immigrating labour. What I mean to state is this: that the extent of native work which can be obtained by the planters and land-owners at terms which would enable them to grow their produce and bring it to the market does not in any of these colonies suffice for success. It can be worth no man's while to lay out his capital in Jamaica, in Trinidad, or in Guiana, unless he has reasonable hope that labouring men will be brought into those countries. The great West Indian question is now this: Is there reasonable ground for such hope?

The Anti-Slavery Society tells us that we ought to have no such hope—that it is simply hoping for a return of slavery; that black or coloured labourers brought from other lands to the West Indies cannot be regarded as free men; that labourers so brought will surely be ill-used; and that the native negro labourer requires protection. As to that question of the return to slavery I have already said what few words I have to offer. In one sense, no dependent man working for wages can be free. He must abide by the terms of his contract. But in the usually accepted sense of the word freedom, the Coolie or Chinaman immigrating to the West Indies is free.

As to the charge of ill usage, it appears to me that these men could not be treated with more tenderness, unless they were put separately, each under his own glass case, with a piece of velvet on which to lie. In England we know of no such treatment for field labourers. On their arrival in Demerara they are distributed among the planters by the Governor, to each planter according to his application, his means of providing for them, and his willingness and ability to pay the cost of the immigration by yearly instalments. They are sent to no estate till a government officer shall have reported that there are houses for them to occupy. There must be a hospital for them on the estate, and a regular doctor with a sufficient salary. The rate of their wages is stipulated, and their hours of work. Though the contract is for five years, they can leave the estate at the end of the first three, transferring their services to any other master, and at the end of the five years they are entitled to a free passage home.

If there be no hardship in all this to the immigrating Coolie, it may, perhaps, be thought that there is hardship to the planter who receives him. He is placed very much at the mercy of the Governor, who, having the power of giving or refusing Coolies, becomes despotic. And then, when this stranger from Hindostan has been taught something of his work, he can himself select another master, so that one planter may bribe away the labourers of another. This, however, is checked to a certain degree by a regulation which requires the bribing interloper to pay a portion of the expense of immigration.

As to the native negro requiring protection—protection, that is, against competitive labour—the idea is too absurd to require any argument to refute it. As it at present is, the competition having been established, and being now in existence to a certain small extent, these happy negro gentlemen will not work on an average more than three days a week, nor for above six hours a day. I saw a gang of ten or twelve negro girls in a cane-piece, lying idle on the ground, waiting to commence their week's labour. It was Tuesday morning. On the Monday they had of course not come near the field. On the morning of my visit they were lying with their hoes beside them, meditating whether or no they would measure out their work. The planter was with me, and they instantly attacked him. "No, massa; we no workey; money no nuff," said one. "Four bits no pay! no pay at all!" said another. "Five bits, massa, and we gin morrow 'arly." It is hardly necessary to say that the gentleman refused to bargain with them. "They'll measure their work to-morrow," said he; "on Thursday they will begin, and on Friday they will finish for the week." "But will they not look elsewhere for other work?" I asked. "Of course they will," he said; "occupy a whole day in looking for it; but others cannot pay better than I do, and the end will be as I tell you." Poor young ladies! It will certainly be cruel to subject them to the evil of competition in their labour.

In Guiana the bull has been taken by the horns, as in Jamaica it unfortunately has not; and the first main difficulties of immigration have, I think, been overcome. For some years past, both from India and from China, labourers have been brought in freely, and during the last twelve months the number has been very considerable. The women also are coming now as well as the men, and they have learned to husband their means and put money together.

Such an affair as this—the regular exodus, that is, of a people to another land—has always progressed with great rapidity when it has been once established. The difficulty is to make a beginning. It is natural enough that men should hesitate to trust themselves to a future of which they know nothing; and as natural that they should hasten to do so when they have heard of the good things which Providence has in store for them. It required that some few should come out and prosper, and return with signs of prosperity. This has now been done, and as regards Guiana it will not, I imagine, be long before negro labour is, if not displaced, made, at any rate, of secondary consequence in the colony. As far as the workmen are concerned, the million hogsheads will, I think, become a possibility, though not perhaps in the days of my energetic hopeful friend.