THE COMMERCIAL VALUE OF THE COCONUT 11 



large sums can be made or saved, and estates 

 which have yielded mediocre results brought to 

 produce substantial profits. 



From the Imperial standpoint, too, the coconut 

 industry is of the highest importance. It requires 

 no stretch of imagination to see that if it is largely 

 controlled by British capital, as it doubtless will 

 be, it will provide profitable occupation for innu- 

 merable young Britishers who qualify for positions 

 on plantations in Malabar, Ceylon, the West Indies, 

 Papua, and elsewhere in the Colonies. A proposal 

 has already been mooted by Professor Wyndham 

 Dunstan, of the Imperial Institute, for the founda- 

 tion of an Agricultural College, say, in Ceylon, for 

 the training of young tropical planters. Should 

 this idea materialise, it will go far towards equip- 

 ping those young men for the work of securing to 

 the Empire the same preponderance in coconut 

 planting that has been achieved in other tropical 

 industries. 



Another important point to remember is that an 

 exhaustive study of the prevailing conditions shows 

 that the coconut industry has scarcely emerged 

 from its inceptive stages. Furthermore, when the 

 development that is imminent has become an 

 accomplished fact, it will be generally recognised 

 that coconut cultivation is an industry less liable 

 to competition, violent fluctuation, or sudden 

 slumps than almost any other form of industrial 



