May I, 1884.] 



THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 



7^ 



visitors who attended tlie trial with the hospitality 

 and courtesy for which they have earned a well- 

 merited reputation, not even second to that they 

 have established by their splendid success from the 

 purely commercial staudpoiot. — llome and (lolonkd 

 Mail. [We suppose an early specimen will be sent to 

 Messrs. John Walker & Co. for exhibition in Colombo. 

 —Ed.] 



THE SUGAR INDUSTRY IN QUEENSLAND. 



Under the title of ''The Sugar Industry in Queens- 

 land." Mr. Henry Line Roth, hon. Secretary of the 

 Mackay Planters' and Farmers' Association, has pub- 

 lished a pamphlet which possesses an interest as well 

 for Fijian as for Queensland readers. The writer 

 divides his subject under the following heads ; — The 

 origin of sugar growing in Queensland as a commercial 

 industry : the depression and its causes ; the scarcity of 

 labor, its causes, and the attempts of planters to obtain 

 supplies ; false remedies suggested ; and, the only 

 means to restore the industry. 



Under his first head Mr. Roth reviews the induce- 

 ments held out by the Government which led many 

 people to turn their thoughts to Queensland as a sugar 

 growing country. He claims as a natural consequence 

 the rapid progress which quickly made sugar growing 

 the third industry in the colony, and points to the fact 

 that it is the only one which has induced to .iny extent 

 a pprmaneufc s. ttlement on the land. Success encour- 

 aged further enterprize, and it is noticed that during 

 the late period of cheap monej', many investors from 

 the adjoihint! colonies, acting on the well grounded 

 belief that Queensland would not commit a breach of 

 faith, pledged as she is to the men who have given puch 

 pro'pfirity to the commnnitj', have taken up and pur- 

 chased lands and spent large sums of money in laying 

 them out as sugar estates. 



The subsequent depression is attributed to failing 

 .prices as the production in Queensland and Fiji, 

 approaches in quantity to the Australian consumption, 

 but more particularly to the difficulty of procuring an 

 adequate colored labor supply, without which the 

 industry cannot be made to pay. The causes of the 

 labor ditEculty are stated to be that in consequence of 

 trou'oles in the Pacific, the High Comm.ssion now 

 sitting, and French aggression iu the' New Hebrides, 

 owners of vessels are indisposed to continue them in 

 the traffic. Fufthermnre, the continued drain on the 

 islands caused by the increasing requirements of Queens- 

 land, Fiji, Sam a, and Honolulu is fast exhausting this 

 class of labor, and it is now rare for a labor vessel to 

 return to port with her full complement. This failure, 

 and the incompleteness of legislation for the introduc- 

 tion of Indian Coolies, led to a private introduction 

 of mixed blacks from Ceylon. This turned out to 

 be a mistake, as the men appeared to be mechanics, 

 servants, gaol-birds, and other scum junfit for af;n- 

 cultural labor. The attempt to introduce a low class 

 of mixed labor from Malta, through Mr. Commis- 

 sioner de Cesari, failed from an economic point of 

 vie-n. The experiment of obtaining Chinese from the 

 declining P,almer Goldfield was not more sncccssful 

 for the same reason, as waf;e3 ruled at twenty 

 shillings per week and rations. The same difficulty 

 has arisen in the case of laboi-ers imported direct 

 from Swatow, and the general conclusions is thus 

 set fourth :^" The result of this scarcity of colored 

 labor is well exemplihed to the cost and loss of the 

 colony. The crops for l.SS.S should be equal in value 

 to £1,000,000, yet this value will not he attained by 

 some £300,000 ai.d planters will have suffered a loss 

 chiefly because during last spring's favorable weather 

 they had not the hands to keep down the weeds. 

 Ins ead of getting one and a half tons of sugar to 

 the acre all round, , the return per acre will be 



about one ton or under, and one ton to tho ^«cre 

 does not pay." * 



Under the head of " false remedies suggested" the 

 writer deals with the propositions fii-st, to introduce 

 European laborers who by tbeir numbers are to re- 

 duce wages and take the black man's place. Thig 

 ho demonstrates to be impolitic iu conception, and 

 impracticable of accomplishment. Second ; the de- 

 struction of largo estates owned by absentees ; a pro- 

 position to which the writer objects as injudicious 

 and unreasonble. Third, the settlement of Bmnll 

 farmers on the land who shall grow their own cane ; 

 which it is pointed out, would only shift the burden 

 from the shoulder of the large planter to those of 

 the small farmer without removing the labor difficulty. 

 Thus having disposed of fallacious suggestions, Mr. 

 Roth comes to his " only means to restore the 

 industry," and devotes the rest of his pamphlet to 

 demonstrating this to be the initiation of a well re- 

 gulated system for the introduction of Indian agri- 

 cultural laborers. —Fiji Times. 



[The Fijian journalist then goes on to shew that 

 Fiji, with practically sugar alone to depend on, is 

 in equally bad case for labour. If the soil and 

 climate of Ceylon were suitable, no doubt, we have 

 advantages in regard to labour supply. We sfcall, 

 however, need a large force of laboui-ers for our tea. 

 —Ed.] 



Mr. Morbis' recent visit to St. Helena promises 

 to have important botanical results, and his report 

 upon the island will be awaited with as much in- 

 terest as has attended the public;>tion of his valuable 

 work on British Honduras ; but, apjirt from questions 

 of agricultural and botanical research, one interesting 

 discovery marie by Mr. Morris in another direction 

 has already been communicat-'d to us. The learned 

 Director of Public Gardens in Jamaica is necessarily 

 a geologist as well as a botanist, and. during bis visit 

 to St. Helena, he traced the existence of large (Juant- 

 ities of black oxide of manganese, or pyrosulite, 

 samples of which he brought away with him. These 

 have now been analysed by Professor Roscoe. F.E.Si, 

 of Owens College, Manchester, with the result that 

 one samxde of St. Helena manganese, soft, found in 

 clay beds, yielded .3.5'41 per cent of manganese di- 

 oxide ; while a second sample hard, found in clinker, 

 yielded as much as 63"19 per cent of manganese di- 

 oxide. As the value of manganese ore cntaining 70 

 per cent of manganese di-oxide is at the present time 

 about £3 lOs per ton, delivered at Liverpool or Gars- 

 ton, there is every pro ab I'ty that thi'< discavery 

 may be of much importance to the island of St. 

 Helena. Still more important, however, is tbe dis- 

 covery, from the fact that it brought into prominence 

 the almost forgotten fact that manganese ore is also 

 to be found in .Jamaica. Since an an.alysis of samples 

 of this manganese ore, made by Dr. Lewis Hoffmmn 

 for the Geological Survey of Jamaica, shows that it 

 yields as much as 88-89, or practically 90, per 

 cent of magnanese dioxide, or more than double 

 the percentage of the inferior s.ample from St. Helena 

 and nearly one-third more than that of the better 

 sample from the same locality, the owners of laud 

 yielding manganese ore have before them the opport- 

 unity of working their deposits on a commf-rcial 

 scale, and of enormously increasing the value of their 

 property. An experimental shipment of the ore ought 

 certainly to be maile, under practical guidance, in 

 order to test the question. The peroxide of man- 

 ganese is used by potters and glassmakers ,as well as 

 by bleachers, and is also available for disinfecting 

 purposes, throwing off a large anir.unt of oxygen when 

 xp osed to the air. — ColonicK and India. 



