JAMAICA 209 



The circumstances of sugar-raising in Jamaica are of a 

 special character, and cannot be exactly compared with 

 those existing in the other British colonies, which are 

 solely dependent upon this product, and are suffering 

 financial ruin, owing to the competition of the beet-root. 

 The cultivation of sugar-cane, instead of being the sole 

 agricultural industry, as m many of the other West Indies, 

 constitutes only nineteen per cent, thereof. The majority 

 of the Jamaican sugar-estates are small, the average having 

 only one hundred and seventy-eight acres, and they are 

 for the most part widely dispersed, so that plants for 

 grinding cannot be conveniently established. The cost of 

 management is therefore increased. The product is 

 largely manufactured into rum, the annual output of 

 which is a little over two million gallons. The quality of 

 the cane is fair. Borer and fungoid diseases have not 

 seriously affected it, as in the Lesser Antilles. Before 

 slavery was abolished, Jamaica was one of the largest 

 sugar-producing islands. In 1805 it exported one hundred 

 and fifty-one thousand hogsheads of sugar and five million 

 gallons of rum ; but the planters seemed utterly incapable 

 of adapting themselves to the new conditions of labor after 

 the freeing of the blacks, and many of the former cane- 

 fields are now turned into ruinate. The decay of the sugar 

 industry, however, has been accompanied by a progressive 

 increase in the cultivation of more diversified products 

 and the acquirement of small estates by the black inhabi- 

 tants. A department of gardens and plantations, under 

 capable and experienced men, has carried on experiments 

 which, while supporting the old, have encouraged the estab- 

 lishment of many new and promising agricultural indus- 

 tries. Furthermore, the government has been fortunately 

 administered during thai period by progressive and able 

 governors, who have constantly adopted a policy whereby 

 it was possible to extend the railways and improve com- 

 munication by parochial roads and the encouragement of 

 rapid steamship lines to the CJnited States, and now the 

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