144 AGRICULTURE IN THE TROPICS [PT. Ill 



owner works on it as tenant or even as coolie, or drifts away into 

 the town or into the less settled parts of the country. 



To live a strenuous life for the sake of gain or social ad- 

 vancement is foreign to the habits of mind and body of the 

 village farmer. Let him but make sufficient for his wants, to 

 bring up his children, and to pay the interest or renewals on his 

 debts, and he is generally content. He does not aim at creating 

 trade ; his caste, unalterable by riches or poverty, is commonly 

 high, he likes to take his ease and pleasure with his family and 

 friends. Further, he has not the capital nor the land necessary 

 for such a speculative occupation as growing crops upon which 

 he cannot actually live, but which he has to sell in a market 

 whose fluctuation is beyond his knowledge or control, and in 

 which therefore he is largely at the mercy of the middlemen 

 or combinations of middlemen who buy his crops. Not that 

 he is averse to making money, but he cannot afford to risk even 

 a small sum, most often, probably, has not the sum to risk. This 

 is the true explanation of much of his obstinate conservatism 

 a conservatism by the side of which that of the small European 

 or American farmer is change and progress of the swiftest. 



It is hard to see upon what grounds the "socialist" position, 

 described above, can be justified, or logically defended, though 

 at the same time it is that to which nearly all tropical countries 

 would come were it not for the presence in them of Europeans 

 or Chinese. Leaving out of consideration the fact that there 

 is usually some capitalist enterprise among all but the most 

 backward races, the white powers are in actual possession of 

 most tropical countries, and must so settle their agricultural 

 conditions that there shall be an export from them of those 

 products which are unattainable in the colder climates. The 

 present native of most tropical countries having come there 

 by ousting someone else, there is no ground on which to object 

 to an invasion of the more efficient races who will produce such 

 a trade, if the natives do not. 



Furthermore, for such a simple ideal, it is very great waste 

 to provide the tropical countries with roads and railways, as 

 is rapidly being done, for they are almost fatal to, and quite 

 unnecessary for, such agriculture. 



