CHAPTER VI 



CAPITALIST OR ESTATE AGRICULTURE 



THERE can be but little doubt that, just as in the countries 

 of the colder zones, the continual improvement of agricultural 

 methods, the opening up of roads, railways, and other means of 

 communication, and similar progress, favour the large as against 

 the small cultivator of land, and that the latter will have to 

 take to cooperation, sooner or later, to survive in the compe- 

 tition, or become a labourer on the large estate. Even in the 

 oldest agricultural enterprises of the tropics, as for example 

 rice cultivation, the land is tending steadily to fall into the 

 hands of large proprietors, and on it the small men work upon 

 a system of shares. The most conspicuous form of capitalist 

 agricultural work in the tropics is, however, what is usually 

 known as the " planting industry," which is well represented in 

 Ceylon, India, Java, Sumatra, the Malay States, Hawaii, the 

 West Indies, South America, British West Africa, French and 

 Belgian Africa, and elsewhere, by a considerable number of 

 plantations of tea, coffee, cacao, rubber, sugar, coconuts, tobacco, 

 fruits, cinchona, cotton, and other products. These plantations 

 are perhaps most often, nowadays, owned by companies with 

 head-quarters in the colder countries, and the estates are in 

 charge of superintendents or planters resident upon them. 

 A very considerable number of Englishmen are now engaged in 

 this line of work, Ceylon alone, for instance, containing nearly 

 2000 of them. There are many Dutchmen in Java, etc., 

 Americans in the Philippines and West Indies and Mexico, 

 Belgians in East Africa, the Cameroons, Samoa, etc., French- 

 men in Indo- China and Africa, and so on, while in the eastern 

 countries, Brazil, etc., large numbers of the natives of the 



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