324 CUBA AND TORTO 11ICO 



descendants are reduced in circumstances, and present to 



the stranger the aspect of a rclincd but impoverished peo- 

 ple, bravely endeavoring to keep up appearances. The 

 negroes are orderly, well educated in the elementary 

 branches, and willing laborers at less than a shilling a day ; 

 but even these show poverty in their emaciated forms, their 

 depressed manner, and the lack of that luster of complex- 

 ion which always indicates the well-fed black. 



The economic condition of Antigua is indeed pitiful. 

 Of the total exports of the island ninety-six per cent, is 

 sugar, and between the years 1882 and 1896 the value of 

 the sugar exports decreased fully one half. In former 

 times it was one of the most productive of the sugar 

 islands, but has suffered from falling prices and the con- 

 stant strain upon the soil of over-cultivation. The scrawny 

 cane-fields require a greater outlay in fertilizers than they 

 can possibly return in profit; furthermore, the cane is sub- 

 ject to mildews and other parasitic fungi which sap its 

 vitality. Accompanying this struggle to maintain the 

 sugar industry there has been a falling off of wages of the 

 hosts of laborers who are dependent upon it. It did not 

 require the evidence taken before the late British" Sugar 

 Commission to show that poverty is increasing, houses 

 falling into disrepair, and that generally a state of depres- 

 sion exists, which must eventually cause still more suffer- 

 ing and discontent. So far as the culture of cane is 

 concerned, the people have availed themselves of every 

 method of modern agriculture. The government supports 

 a chemical laboratory where the needs of the soil are care- 

 fully studied, as well as the diseases of the cane, yet the 

 crop is constantly decreasing in quantity as well as depre- 

 ciating in value. Most of the sugar is still made by the 

 muscovado process, owing to the special fitness of the soil 

 for producing a cane- juice yielding a rich and valuable 

 quality of molasses. As in all places which depend on the 

 export of muscovado sugar, the great fall in molasses has 

 been another blow to the planters. 



