The rise of the coffee-growing industry in Southern Brazil, in the rich State of San Paolo, has in it the element of an economic romance.
The condition was the result of Nature's geological work here. It was discovered about the year 1885 that Nature had disposed large areas of what came to be called "red earth"—a certain diabasic soil of rich decomposed lavas—in this part of Brazil, and that the coffee-shrub flourished wonderfully upon them. A coffee-planting "fever" was the result. Rich and poor flocked in to take up these lands and plant the berry; other forms of agriculture were despised; all hunted for the red-earth deposits, built their homes, set out rows of young shrubs. The forests receded, cut down by the axe of the new settlers. Towns sprang to being as if by magic, where people were drawn from the four quarters of the globe, from every nation. Fazendas rapidly spread, railways were multiplied, coffee occupied all minds. They thought it the one thing on earth. Coffee was their art, literature, religion.
Thus the great and to-day rich and handsome city of San Paolo grew up, into which coffee pours, to have its final outlet for the market beyond the sea, at Santos—once a dreadful and fever-stricken port, whose very name was anathema to the traveller, now a fine and fairly healthy seaport of vast importance.
A VIEW IN SAO PAULO.
Vol. II. To face p. 140.
The life and circumstances of the immigrants or "colonists," as they are termed, in these coffee-growing districts of Brazil is one of peculiar interest for the student of race matters and human geography, of great value in the science of colonization. Here is an account by a careful observer:
"Each fazenda constitutes a little isolated world, which is all but self-sufficient, and from which the colonists rarely issue; the life is laborious. The coffee is planted in long regular lines in the red soil, abundantly watered by the rains, on which a constant struggle must be maintained against the invasion of the noxious weeds. The weeding of the plantation is really the chief labour of the colonist. It is repeated six times a year. Directly after the harvest, if you ride on horseback along the lines of shrubs, which begin, as early as September, to show signs of their brilliant flowering season, you will find the colonists, men and women, leaning on their hoes, while the sun, already hot, is drying behind them the heaps of weeds they have uprooted.
"Each family is given as many trees as it can look after; the number varies with the size of the family. Large families will tend as many as eight or ten thousand trees; while a single worker cannot manage much more than two thousand.
"Like the vine, coffee requires a large number of labourers in proportion to the area under cultivation; it supports a relatively dense population. The two thousand trees which one colonist will receive will not cover, as a matter of fact, more than five to seven acres; yet the coffee supports other labourers who work on the fazenda, in addition to the labourers proper, or colonists. Pruning, for instance, which so far is not universally practised, is never done by the colonists, but by gangs of practised workmen, who travel about the State and hire themselves for the task. The colonist is only a labourer; if he were allowed to prune the shrubs he would kill them. Heaven knows, the pruners to whom the task is confided ill-treat the trees sufficiently already! They use pruning-hook and axe with a brutality that makes one shudder.
"When the coffee ripens, towards the end of June, the picking of the crop commences. Sometimes, in a good year, the crop is not all picked until November. The great advantage enjoyed by San Paolo, to which it owes its rank as a coffee-producing country, is that the whole crop arrives at maturity almost at the same moment. The crop may thus be harvested in its entirety at one picking; the harvester may pick all the berries upon each tree at once, instead of selecting the ripe berries, and making two or three harvests, as is necessary in Costa Rica or Guatemala. This entails a great reduction in the cost of production and of labour. San Paolo owes this advantage to the climate, which is not quite tropical, and to the sequence of well-defined seasons and their effect upon the vegetation.
"At the time of picking the colonists are gathered into gangs. They confine themselves to loading the berries on carts, which other labourers drive to the fazenda; there the coffee is soaked, husked, dried and selected, and then dispatched to Santos, the great export market. All these operations the colonists perform under the supervision of the manager of the fazenda. A bell announces the hour for going to work; another the hour of rest; another the end of the day; the labourers have no illusions of independence. In the morning the gangs scatter through the plantation; in the evening they gradually collect on the paths of the fazenda, and go home in family groups, tired after the day's work, saving of words, saluting one another by gestures. On Sunday work is interrupted; games are arranged; parties are made up to play mora, or Italian card games, with denari and bastoni. Women hold interminable palavers. Sometimes, on an indifferent nag, borrowed at second or third hand from a neighbour, the colonist will ride as far as the nearest town, to see his relations, exercise his tongue, and pit himself against such hazards of fortune as the world outside the fazenda may offer.
"What are the annual earnings of the agricultural worker? The conditions vary in different localities, but we may estimate that the colonist receives about 60 or 80 milreis—£4 to £5 7s. at the present rate of exchange—per 1,000 stems of coffee. This is a certain resource; a sort of fixed minimum wage. To this we must add the price of several days' labour at about 2 milreis, or 2s. 8d. A still more irregular element in the profits of a colonist's family is the amount it receives for the harvest. By consulting the books of several fazendas I was able to realize the extent of this irregularity. Sometimes the wage paid for the harvest is insignificant, while sometimes it is greater by itself than all the other sources of income put together. It is calculated at so much per measure of berries given in by the colonist. When the branches are heavily laden, not only is the total quantity greater, but the labour is performed more rapidly, and each day is more productive. Years of good harvest are for the colonist, as for the planter, years of plenty. With this important element essentially variable, how can we estimate the annual earnings of the colonist?
"His expenses, again, cannot be estimated with any exactitude. An economic family will reduce them to practically nothing, if it has the good fortune to escape all sickness, and so dispense with the doctor, the chemist and the priest.
"What really enables the colonists to make both ends meet is the crops they have the right to raise on their own account, sometimes on allotments reserved for the purpose set apart from the coffee, and sometimes between the rows of the coffee-trees. They often think more of the clauses in their contract which relate to these crops than to those which determine their wages in currency. A planter told me that he had learned that a party of colonists intended to leave him after the harvest. We met some of them on the road, and I questioned them. 'Is it true that you are engaged to work on Senhor B——'s fazenda for the coming year?'—'Yes.'—'What reason have you for changing your fazenda? Will you be better paid there? Don't you get over £6 a thousand trees here?'—'Yes.'—'How much do they offer you over there?'—'Only £4.'—'Then why do you go?'—'Because there we can plant our maize among the coffee.'
"The culture of coffee is thus combined with that of alimentary crops. Almost all the world over the important industrial crops have to make room in the neighbourhood for food crops. Every agricultural country is forced to produce, at any rate to some extent, its own food, and to live upon itself if it wishes to live at all. In Brazil the dispersion of food crops is extreme, on account of the difficulties of transport; it is hardly less in San Paolo, in spite of the development of the railway system. Each fazenda is a little food-producing centre, the chief crops being maize, manioc and black beans, of which the national dish, the feijoade, is made.
"It even happens at times that the colonists produce more maize than they consume. They can then sell a few sacks at the nearest market, and add the price to their other resources. In this way crops which are in theory destined solely for their nourishment take on a different aspect from their point of view, yielding them, a revenue which is not always to be despised.
"The colonists make their purchases in the nearest town, or, more often, if the fazenda is of any importance, there is a shop or store—what the Brazilians call a negocio—in the neighbourhood of the colonists' houses. Its inventory would defy enumeration; it sells at the same time cotton prints and cooking-salt, agricultural implements and petroleum. An examination of the stock will show one just what the little economic unit called a fazenda really is. Although the colonists are to-day almost always free to make their purchases where they please, the trade of shopkeeper on a fazenda is still extremely profitable. He enjoys a virtual monopoly; the fazendeiro sees that no competitor sets up shop in the neighbourhood. The shop is the planter's property; he lets it, and usually at a high rent, which represents not only the value of the premises, but also the commercial privilege which goes with it. It is a sort of indirect commercial tariff levied by the planter on the colonists; a sign of the ever so slightly feudal quality of the organization of property in San Paolo. The custom that used to obtain, of the planter himself keeping shop for the profit, or rather at the expense of his colonists, has generally disappeared.
"One of the most serious of the planter's anxieties is the maintenance of the internal discipline of the fazenda. This is a task demanding ability and energy. One must not be too ready to accuse the planters of governing as absolute sovereigns. I myself have never observed any abuse of power on their part, nor have I seen unjustifiable fines imposed. The fazendeiro has a double task to perform. He employs his authority not only to ensure regularity in the work accomplished, but also to maintain peace and order among the heterogeneous population over which he rules. He plays the part of a policeman. The public police service cannot ensure the respect of civil law, of the person or of property. How could the police intervene on the plantation, which is neither village nor commune, but a private estate? It falls to the planter to see that the rights of all are protected. Many colonists have a preference for plantations on which the discipline is severe; they are sure of finding justice then. The severity of the planter is not always to the detriment of the colonist.
"Individually the colonists are often turbulent and sometimes violent; collectively they have hitherto shown a remarkable docility. On some fazendas, however, there have been labour troubles, and actual strikes; but they have always been abortive. The strikes have not lasted, and have never spread. One of the means by which the planters maintain their authority and prevent the colonists from becoming conscious of their strength is the prohibition of all societies or associations. They have had little trouble in making this prohibition respected. Among an uneducated group of labourers, of various tongues and nationalities, the spirit of combination does not exist. We have seen the development of working-men's societies, of socialistic tendencies, in the cities of San Paolo, but nowhere in the country. An incoherent immigrant population, but lightly attached to the land, is not a favourable soil for the growth of a party with a socialistic platform. One must not look for agricultural trade unions in San Paolo. The contract between the planter and his labourers is never a collective but always an individual contract.
"Accounts are settled every two months. It often happens, even to-day, that the colonist is in the planter's debt. The planter has kept up the custom of making advances, and every family newly established in the country is, as a general rule, in debt. But the advances are always small, the colonist possessing so little in the way of securities; he has few animals and next to nothing in the way of furniture. His indebtedness towards the planter is not enough, as it used to be, to tie him down to the plantation; that many of them continue to leave by stealth is due to their desire to save their few personal possessions, which the planter might seize to cover his advances. At the last payment of the year all the colonists are free; their contract comes to an end after the harvest. Proletarians, whom nothing binds to the soil on which they have dwelt for a year, they do not resume their contracts if they have heard of more advantageous conditions elsewhere, or if their adventurous temperament urges them to try their luck farther on.
"The end of the harvest sees a general migration of the agricultural labourers. The colonists are true nomads. All the planters live in constant dread of seeing their hands leave them in September. Even the most generous fazendeiros experience the same difficulty. According to the Director of Colonization, 40 per cent. to 60 per cent. of the colonists leave their fazendas annually. It is difficult to confirm this statement; but at least it is no exaggeration to say that a third of the families employed on the plantations leave their places from year to year. Towards September one meets them on the roads, most often travelling afoot; the man carrying a few household goods and the woman a newly born child, like the city labourers at the end of the season. One can imagine what a serious annoyance this instability of labour must be to the coffee-planter. Long before the harvest the planter is planning to fill up the gaps that will appear in the colony directly after the harvest. He secretly sends out hired recruiting agents to the neighbouring fazendas or to the nearest town; he employs for this purpose some of the shrewder colonists, to whom he pays a commission for every family engaged. Finally, at the end of his resources, if he no longer has any hope of finding workmen in the neighbourhood who are experienced in plantation work, he decides to apply to the colonization agent in San Paolo, and resigns himself to the employment of an untrained staff, whom he will have to spend several months in training.
"The instability of agricultural labour is the most striking characteristic of rural life in the State of San Paolo. It is a result of the unusual and even artificial nature of the hasty development of coffee-planting."[29]
The colonists on the coffee-plantations are, in the main, Italians, of whom there may be perhaps three-quarters of a million in San Paolo.
The settlers or immigrants in Brazil, however, are not all of the San Paolo type, and in other parts of the Republic the condition of their life differs altogether from those of the coffee-plantation labourers. In Paraná, Rio Grande and elsewhere, very diverse pictures of colonial life may be painted, more independent in their colours, with less of the "rural proletariat." There are rural democracies of small holders in some instances, and a wide variety of products are cultivated, or small industries pursued.