CHAPTER XXXVIII 



THE FUTURE OF THE WEST INDIES 



Vicissitudes which have been survived. Depression of the sugar indus- 

 try. The bane of alien land-tenure. Bad effect of political distribu- 

 tion. Prospective relations with the United States. 



I HAVE endeavored to give a picture of the present 

 condition of the West Indies, with sufficient notes on 

 their history to convey an idea of their past and present ; 

 but now not only to the few representatives of the Cau- 

 casian race upon these islands, but to the civilized world, 

 the question is, What of the future 1 



These beautiful islands have stood the shocks of earth- 

 quake, the devastation of floods, and even some of them 

 the greater catastrophe of volcanic outbreaks, and yet 

 recovered. Five times have they been prostrated by 

 events of human agency, not counting the extermination 

 of the aborigines. During the first three centuries of 

 their settlement, civilization flourished in the face of the 

 most rapacious piracy and freebooting the world has 

 ever known. Then came European wars at the close of 

 the last century, when France, Spain, and England vied 

 with one another in despoiling them. An era of revolu- 

 tions followed, when the people rose or threatened to 

 rise against European domination. Next the emancipa- 

 tion of slavery upset the labor system, and caused as 

 much impoverishment as the other causes. Finally, in 

 1885, came the great fall in the price of sugar and the 

 ruin of their chief industries. In all but Cuba, sugar 



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