June i, 1883.] 



THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 



937 



THE CEYLON COFFEE-PLANTING INDUSTRY : 



Ceylon as an ' In'cubatoe " for Absentee 



Capitalists. 



Crop prospects are not cheering. Though the coffee 

 crop of 1S8384 will assuredly exceed that of the 

 season just past by probably a large amount, it will 

 fall very far short of what might reasonably have 

 been expected from the appearance of the "bearing 

 wood" ou which our hopes in December last were founded. 

 Owing probably to the very light crop of last year, 

 the wood tor tliis year's coffee crop matured very early. 

 Even so soon as the latter days of November tlie 

 eyes were swelled witli coming spike, and they con- 

 tinued to put fortli bud thi'oughout December and 

 January, but the persistent rains which then pre- 

 vailed, prevented tlie spilce from coming forward into 

 blossom. When, at last, fine, hot, sunny weather came, 

 the eyes on the best of the mature wood were already 

 nearly exhausted, and the blossoms whicli followed 

 were mainly formed on the younger wood since forced 

 out by the rain of the early blossoming season. We 

 sliall, no doubt, have a crop to pay expenses on all, 

 or nearly all, estates that have had fair cultivation, 

 but not such a crop as was wanted to lift the clouds 

 that liang over our enterprize. Long as these clouds 

 of debt and depression have been lowering over us, 

 they seem yet destined to darken our prospects. 



True, we are still sharing a common lot, Agri- 

 culture elsewhere, especially in our own country, suffers 

 equally from repeated and successive disappointments. 

 After eight years of deficient harvests in succession, 

 a ninth is now almost assured to our fellow-agi-i- 

 culturists in Britain. Still, though tlieir misfortunes 

 may be as great as ours, they are not so ruinously 

 felt. In times like these, the fatal peculiarity of 

 our local enterprize manifests itself in its fullest force. 

 The "accumulated profits," made during the time of 

 prosperity, which at home form a reserve fund of local 

 wealtli to enable the sufferer from present adversity 

 to benefit by past eai'nings, are utterly wanting in 

 Ceylon. We have no reserve fund of past profits to 

 fall back upon, no class of wealthy Europeans en- 

 riched by former times of prosperity living amongst 

 us and circulating the liquidated products of former 

 industry. 



Ceylon, in fact, is a sort of incubator, to which 

 capitalists send their eggs to be hatched, whence they 

 receive from time to time an abundant brood, and 

 leave us but the shells for our local portion. 

 Money has been sent here to fell our forests 

 and plant them with coffee, and it has been returned 

 in the shape of copious harvests to the home capita- 

 lists, leaving us in some cases, the bare hillsides from 

 whence those rich harvests were drawn. Had the profits 

 from our abundant coffee crops in the past been located 

 here, and invested in the country aud its soil, what a fund 

 of local wealth woukl now exist, what new iiidustries 

 nii^'ht liave l)een created, what manufactures niiglit 

 now have been flourishing, what numbers of wealthy 

 citizens of our own race might ha\e been living in 

 affluence, and wliat resources should we not have poss- 

 118 



essed to help us over the time of our adversity and 

 depression ! 



The total amount of coffee raised on tlie plant- 

 ations of Ceylon since 1849 is about Cwi. 18,100,000 

 and there were produced previously (exclud- 

 ing native coffee m both cases) about ... 1,000,000 



At the least, making a grand total of coffee of 19, 100,000 

 as the produce of imported capital. Including 

 interest, and all Items of local cost, we 

 may safely say that this coffee has been pro- 

 duced for 25 rupees per cwt. and has realized, 

 at the least, R35 net, on an average ; aud 

 it has therefore thus earned a net profit 

 of ... ... ... ..K191,000,000 



The coffee so produced has been yielded 

 •by plantations aggregating not more than 

 320,000 acres after including a due allow- 

 ance for lands abandoned ; and the aver- 

 age cost of the estates, including the pur- 

 chase of the land, has certainly not ex- 

 ceeded R300 per acre, involving a total 

 capital of .. ... .. H96,000,000 



There has therefore been a sum of at least R95,000,000 

 of liquidated pro/it returned to the capit- 

 alist, besides tlie refund of his priiicipa/, 

 and there remains still the existing plant 

 of say 250,000 acres of laud under cultiv- 

 ation by means of the said capital worth 

 surely Rl. 50 per acre ... ., R37,500,000 



thus showing a total profit at the very 



least of.. ... ... ...R 132, 500, 000 



In short, we have dispatched a brood of 95 mil- 

 lions, and have 374 millions still In the shell ! 



Hence comes it that, though we possess many of 

 the outward and visible signs of national wealth, 

 such as abundant revenues, great public works, railways, 

 roads, liarbours, tanks and irri.ation works, public 

 buikliugs (not omitting the Asylum !), yet there is not 

 a wealthy European in the ishiud. Though we liave 

 heaped up riclies elsewhere, we have made no local 

 piles and are absolutely without any reserve of liquid- 

 ated accumulations to meet the c ra of short crops and 

 of financial disaster which began in 1879. 



It must be remembered that in the al ovc remarks 

 on "Ceylon as an incubator for absentee capitalists," 

 we were dealing with the enterprize from tlie colonists' 

 point of view, and only took into account the 

 " l^lantation " coffee exported. The profits on the 

 six or seven millions of cwt. of "native" coffee 

 exported have all come to the Ceylonese people 

 concerned, aud moreover a large proportion of the 

 " R300 per acre" and " R25 ixr cwt." allowed for 

 expenditure on plantations and crop lias directly 

 gone into the hands of tlic people aud so far 

 benefited tlie island. But here again, a con- 

 siderable amount of what has been paid to Tamil 

 coolies — over tliirty millions' pounds sterling in about 

 40 years — apart from the rice, curry-stuffs and cotton 

 clotli purchased by them in Ceylon has gone in the shape 

 of tlicir profits to benefit Southern India. Here the 

 Imperial Goveiumeut give us no credit as a Colony, 

 nor has it been realized in England that, during tlie 

 Madras famine of Ib77-7S, well nigh 200,000 fugitives 

 found means of subsistence in Ceylon, over aud above 

 the usual labour supply of the planters. Indeed, in this 

 w.ay, Ceylon — mainly througli its colonists — contrib- 

 uted aliout as much to the aid of India as tlic total of the 

 " Mansion House Famine Fund " about whicli so much 

 was lieard at the time. But to turn more particular!} 

 to further disidvantages we labour under, it will befound 

 tliat it is not only the prutits of our European agricult- 

 ure of which the country fails to reap the benefit. 

 Her highest and best-paid otlicers cany away, on 



