"His dependency causes him to look for protection, for direction and for ideas from the planter, from the municipality, and from the Insular Government. He considers himself a ward of his employer and of those placed in authority over him. He does not care to accept any responsibility for the simple reason that he has always been made to feel that he is not a responsible person. Therefore, how can we blame him when we find him without shoes, knowing that by wearing them he will protect himself against a dangerous infirmity; without bacon and corn, without household furniture, with but one room for his entire family.
"It is a specious excuse, nothing more nor less, which avers that the jíbaro is born the way he is and cannot be changed at this late day, that we must await a new generation, etc. On that principle we could expect very little from the antituberculosis crusades in New York. The truth is that to change the jíbaro, we must convince him that he will be bettered by the change, and he is sharp enough to change then, but the gist of all is that these changes must be begun by the men to whom the jíbaro has always looked for light, and this means good hard work and much perseverance, tact, and genuine personal interest. From our acquaintance with the men to whom this burden will fall we should say that they are not only sufficiently good business men to realize the benefit they would get out of a healthy laboring class, but that the innate patriotism of the Porto Rican agriculturist and the deeper underlying sympathy for his jíbaro will some day bring about reforms that they alone can make possible.
"Agricultural laborers, in spite of the small wages they receive, are nearly if not quite as expensive as those in the United States, for with 50 per cent less of efficiency from disease and wasteful methods of work, the difference in wage is of small advantage. Weyl states:
'The small equity which the planter holds in the estate which he cultivates does not permit him to pay any higher wages, and the poverty of the planter prevents him from making the outlay necessary for the proper cultivation of his land.'
"Few coffee planters have anywhere near a reasonable amount of their land under cultivation for the reason that with the poor help and methods now existent they are unable to extend their plant. The regular labor, employed all the year round, the peons—who form a relatively small percentage of the entire number available for work—are paid for a full day's work, and their degree of anemia is such as to prevent their doing but about 50 per cent of what they are paid for doing. Our estimate of the relative efficiency of labor was made from what the planter himself told us and by a simple experiment which we tried upon about 500 adult workers in different parts of the interior. We questioned each one as to the amount of coffee he could pick in a day and found that from two to three almudes was the utmost the majority could do, and that one almud was too much for many. Some stated that after picking a sack full in a remote part of the plantation they were unable to get it in to the mill without a mule, on account of the fact that their limbs refused to bear them up. When these people were working at light work, and at a time when the more they picked, the greater the profit to themselves, is it reasonable to suppose that when working for a wage without this incentive this 50 or 60 per cent labor would be any more efficient? This reduction in laboring capacity demonstrates what a heavy toll is paid by both employer and employee to uncinariasis in Porto Rico.
"As to absentee landlords, Weyl says:
'Many of the absentee owners of Porto Rican properties and many of their agents in Porto Rico consider the island and its population as equally fit for the crassest exploitation, and are as contemptuous of the people as they are enthusiastic about the island. The current use by many Americans of an opprobrious epithet for Porto Ricans bespeaks an attitude which takes no account of the human phase of the problem, but considers the population as composed merely of so many laborers willing to work for such and such a price.'
"Thus the poor laborer, his earning capacity cut down by his disease, with employment which is at best very irregular, with his sick wife and children for whom he has to buy 'iron tonics' that cost all that he can rake and scrape together, without money for clothes, much less for shoes, with a palm-bark hut not too well protected against the damp cold of the grove in which he lives, with not a scrap of furniture save, perhaps, a hammock, and, worst of all, with a miserable diet lacking in proteids and fats, lives from day to day, saving nothing, knowing nothing of the world beyond his plantation, working mechanically simply because he is not the drone he has been too frequently painted outside of Porto Rico, but without any object save to keep on living as generations have done before him. It has been our experience that when he is asked 'Why have you sought our dispensary?' the answer has almost invariably been, 'Because I can no longer work.' The jíbaro, nevertheless, has ever been the lever which has raised the bank account of Porto Rico, and with an average of 40 per cent of hemoglobin and two and a half millions of red corpuscles per cubic millimeter he has labored from sun to sun in the coffee plantation of the mountains, in the sugar estate of the coast land, and in the tobacco field of the foothills, in addition to his personal coöperation in other industries and commercial enterprises. He is a sick man and deserves our highest respect, and merits our most careful attention as a vital element in the economic life of the island. The American people should take seriously into account his future, which is at present anything but promising."
OVERPOPULATION
When we say that a country is overpopulated we speak in relative terms, inasmuch as the overpopulation of a country does not depend upon the density of the population alone, but also upon the ability of that country to produce a sufficient amount of foodstuffs to maintain its population. Thus a country which has a relatively small population and a still smaller ability to produce foodstuffs would be more overpopulated than a country of similar size with a larger population and a still greater production of foodstuffs.