224 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



policy in the tropics. The various countries of the tropics, 

 especially those under British and Dutch rule, have been 

 opened up by the continual formation of roads, a process 

 which is still being carried out with great vigour. 



Under native rule, apart from water carriage, there seems 

 to have been but little possibility of the transport of goods, 

 except by means of coolies or pack animals. The first step 

 toward modern transport facilities is the opening of roads, 

 along which wheeled vehicles can be driven. This cheapens 

 transport, and makes it possible to grow crops for extended 

 markets. This obvious policy has been so thoroughly carried 

 out that there are but few tropical countries where transport 

 is not sufficiently available for any progress likely to be 

 attained within a good many years. It is therefore un- 

 necessary here to go into the subject in much detail, beyond 

 again drawing attention to the fact that the future lines of 

 transport should now be marked out upon the map as reser- 

 vations, so that when roads come to be required they can 

 be constructed at far less cost than if the country is allowed 

 to become filled up and land has to be bought back for their 

 construction. 



Labour. — If anything larger in agriculture than the smallest 

 kind of peasant's garden, worked by his own labour and that 

 of his family, is attempted, hired labour is a necessity, unless 

 of course a village works upon co-operative lines and gives 

 a part of its land to the cultivation of crops for sale. But in 

 general hired labour will be a necessity in most places, if 

 there is to be any progress. Now so long as the population 

 remains sparse, so long will such labour be impossible to 

 obtain, unless in .very special cases ; this has led the 

 capitalist planters— for of course this cannot be done without 

 capital — in many otherwise suitable countries to bring in 

 labour from other and more densely peopled places, as, for 

 example, Ceylon and the Malay States from South India, the 

 larger West Indian islands from the smaller and more thickly 

 peopled ones, and Hawaii from Japan. India and Java, on 

 the other hand, do all their own work with their own in- 

 habitants, though in India at any rate these have to move 

 from one part of the country to another to get work. 



Now this importation of labour renders the population 

 artificially dense and if the labour could be induced to settle 



