THE FUTURE OF THE WEST INDIES 401 



cultivation is now paralyzed. In some of the Lesser 

 Antilles it is still carried on without profit, giving the 

 plantation hands a mere subsistence and tightening the 

 coil of debt around the planters; in others, such as Do- 

 minim and St. Thomas, the planters have given up the 

 struggle, and -the once productive cane-fields arc going 

 back to jungle. Unless something is done to alleviate 

 their agricultural conditions, many of these islands will 

 revert to primeval forests inhabited solely by negroes. It 

 indeed seems a pity that countries blessed with the richest 

 conceivable soils, possessing an abundance of laborers 

 who are willing and anxious to work for prices averaging 

 fifteen cents a day, should be decaying at the close of the 

 nineteenth century, when the demand for agricultural 

 products is greater than ever before in the world's history. 



It is true that the beet-root has appeared as a com- 

 petitor with the cane as a source of sugar; but the world 

 would consume at fair prices all the sugar that these 

 islands could produce, were it not for the embargoes of 

 trade and artificial political conditions produced by gov- 

 ernmental greed. Germany alone, notwithstanding her 

 enormous production of beet-roots, could consume the 

 West Indian sugar-product, were it not for the fact that 

 by its bounties and tariffs it makes this article too dear 

 for its own people to use. 



The English islands are in a more depressed economic 

 condition than the others. The government has sacri- 

 ficed her West Indian colonies for a principle. Had she 

 put a protective tariff on non-British sugars, these islands 

 would be at least well-to-do. But her statesmen have 

 tailed to see why the millions of sugar-consumers should 

 be taxed for the tVw West Indian planters, even though 

 the Germans were enriched by British free trade, and the 

 islands 1 prosperity destroyed. 



Another great fane of the English islands is the fact 

 that the lands are largely held by alien owners, who 

 acquired them in days when the large plantations Were 



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