The Jamaicans made no serious effort to stem the tide of their ebbing fortunes. They talked a lot, petitioned a lot, and grumbled a lot, and then they failed. There is no doubt that a little energy and enterprise would have materially altered the commercial history of the island. To-day, even though the majority of the sugar estates of Jamaica waste over 30 per cent of sugar by their antiquated system of crushing, the planters still manage to make both ends meet and keep a balance on the profit side.
Sugar bounties, Free Trade, labour troubles, antiquated machinery and 30 per cent loss notwithstanding, sugar planters still manage to eke out an existence. If the new methods of manufacture that some of the more enterprising of the planters are now beginning to try had been introduced fifty years ago, the history of the island would not be one of failure and famine.
The problem representing the most serious difficulties to the Jamaican planter has been the labour question. When we remember that the island has a population of something like 700,000 coloured people and only about 15,000 whites—the whites representing capital and the coloured people the labour—we are at the beginning of the difficulty. First, how shall the island be governed? When all the blacks were slaves and the whites their masters, things worked smoothly enough; crimes were committed, hundreds of thousands of people were abased and downtrodden, but still the island of Jamaica was free from labour troubles. Then came the Liberation Act. The slaves were released, and the majority of them threw away their industry with their bondage, and sat in the sunshine thanking their gods all day long. No doubt the primary cause of the unsatisfactory condition of the labour market which prevailed for many years was the action of the planters themselves. Enraged at their loss of authority, for the most part they turned the full measure of their anger on the wretched freed slaves.
When the Act came into force, meetings were held by planters at which rates of wages were fixed,—needless to remark, on the lowest possible scale,—and masters who had been humane, even kind, to their slaves became overbearing and impossible employers. Enormous rents were charged for labourers’ cottages, heavy fines were levied, and frequently the poor negro found that he had no wage to draw for his week’s work. Naturally enough, the natives became impatient of labouring under such conditions, and many of them refused to work. The planters then resorted to forcible ejectment. The discontented worker was flung into the open road, destitute and helpless, to get his living when and how he could. This was the beginning of the alienation of the labourers from the estates. The negro found it easy to live on the produce of a patch of land, and it became increasingly difficult to persuade him to work on a plantation. Slavery was impossible—it could not last; and inconvenient as the abolition has been to Jamaica, its chief evils have happily already vanished. There is to-day little difficulty in obtaining plenty of labourers for the plantations, and if he is treated fairly the free negro makes at least as good a servant as he did in the days of slavery.
Because of the injudicious action of the planters at the time of the slave liberation, much money has been spent by Jamaica in assisting coolie immigration. It is difficult for one who has recently visited the West Indies to imagine that it was ever necessary for Jamaica to import coolie labourers. The negro to-day is willing to work for any man who will treat him decently and pay him fairly and regularly. But necessary it was a few years back, and in Jamaica are to be found to-day many East Indians who thrive in the island, and do much useful labour in a characteristically unostentatious manner.
The commercial salvation of Jamaica rests entirely with the people of Jamaica. The abolition of sugar bounties, even the institution by this country of a system of preferential tariffs founded on protection, would mean much less to Jamaica than would the landing of 2000 British colonists.
Jamaica wants men—men of the best type that Britain can send. The infusion of new blood in her industries would effect a far greater improvement in the industrial condition of the island than would the introduction of the most enlightened system of fiscal
