36 TROPICAL AGRICULTURE 



had no such idea of the value of land as is possessed by the 

 white race. Most of these lands were held by them in common 

 and if an individual wished to move to another locality he 

 readily found in his new place of abode suitable land for 

 his simple wants. It was in no instance, therefore, a difficult 

 matter to persuade the natives to sell their land for a very 

 small mess of pottage, or to force them to sell by economic 

 pressure. The white race assuredly cannot point with pride 

 to the methods which it has used in gaining land in the Tropics. 

 At the present time there are extremely few, if any, locali- 

 ties in the Tropics in which the individual settler from tem- 

 perate climates can establish himself without the possession of 

 considerable capital. Such a settler must at least have enough 

 to tide him over the first two or three years. It should be re- 

 membered that most tropical crops require three years or more 

 of growth before they begin to bring in returns. The cost of 

 clearing land and preparing it for cultivation is greater in tropi- 

 cal countries than in cold climates and the expense of living 

 may be correspondingly high. The labor which one will be 

 forced to employ in carrying on large agricultural operations 

 is cheap in price but not very effective. In large plantations 

 the usual system of managing labor is the gang method in 

 which a group of laborers are worked together under a field 

 boss. Various devices have been used in different tropical 

 countries to improve the effectiveness of labor and especially to 

 attach the laborer more permanently to the land. For this 

 purpose cheap shacks are built for the laborers, these shacks 

 being arranged in groups so as to constitute labor camps 

 located conveniently to the fields in which the laborer will be 

 required to work. The laborer is usually furnished free fuel 

 and medical attendance. In many cases a so-called homestead- 

 ing system has been adopted by which the laborer is given from 

 one to six acres of land as a small farm upon which he may 

 raise fruit products. For the most part, however, these small 

 homesteads have not been designed as real homesteads but 



