Introduction xxiii. 



Then, again, I feel with the E.R.D.C. that consider- 

 able profits should undoubtedly accrue to the State from 

 the successful installation of large irrigation, drainage or 

 land reclamation schemes, as well as from "breaking" 

 new lands, as in Canada, and the establishment of home- 

 steads to be let out on a hire-purchase scheme to settlers 

 on terms that will attract newcomers, and still be able 

 to pay a fair rate of interest as well as contribute a 

 satisfactory sinking fund towards repaying the cost to 

 those who found the capital necessary in the first place 

 to establish these homesteads. 



This reminds me that in the Foreword that he con- 

 tributed in 191 2 to the first edition of our book '* Coconuts, 

 the Consols of the East " (see pp. v to vii of the Foreword, 

 which is also reproduced in the second edition as well), 

 Sir W. H. Lever (now Lord Leverhulme) tells us that: 

 " I see no reason myself why the various Governments 

 affected should not give financial encouragement to the 

 establishment of coconut estates by helping the planter ' 

 over the period which elapses before the plantation comes 

 into bearing. If this were done it would open up our 

 tropical possessions ^ in a way that we can scarcely realize. 

 It would increase the ties with the European countries 

 and find good wholesome food for their teeming millions. 



' That is, to finance and otherwise assist the small indivirlual producers 

 and settlers which the returned armies will soon be giving us by the 

 thousand, and who it is to the interest of the Empire to encourage to 

 go abroad in large numbers and plant up and develop the Empire 

 generally, in preference to forcing us to rely on the same ijuantity of 

 produce from one or two large company-owned properties. — H. H. S. 



- And so again help to develop the latent resources of the Empire 

 abroad as well as over here by placing on the land in the Tropics numerous 

 communities which would not only send us the vegetable oils, <Scc., that 

 we are in such need of, but which would, in the aggregate, be more 

 regular and larger buyers of the machinery, estate implements, household 

 supplies, &c., that we have to send them than would be the case if the 

 produce came from only a comparatively few large company-owned 

 estates.— H. H. S. 



