Trade and the Flag 39 



sively to one article and if the market for that commodity is dis- 

 turbed or lost the whole colony is thrown into demoralization. A 

 familiar example is the distress of the West Indies incident to 

 the competition of beet sugar with cane sugar. The West In- 

 dian planters had counted upon the price of sugar always remain- 

 ing high, and business economies were not practised. When the 

 price of sugar fell, they were not in a position to meet the new 

 situation brought about by the bounties to beet-root sugar on the 

 continent of Europe. The planters mortgaged their estates, yet 

 did not introduce new machinery or other economies, but merely 

 waited for a change of luck to improve the situation. 130 Again, 

 for more than a half century the prosperity of Ceylon has been 

 dependent upon the development of two leading products — coffee 

 and tea. From 1837 to 1867 attention was directed almost wholly 

 to the cultivation of coffee. The profits from the industry were 

 almost fabulous in amount. The year of greatest export was 

 1874-1875, when almost one million hundredweight of coffee was 

 shipped from Ceylon. But a sudden and severe decline in the 

 industry set in owing to a parasitic growth on the leaf of the 

 coffee plant. In ten years the coffee fields were desolated. In 

 1 886-1 887 only 150,000 hundredweight was sent to the London 

 market. Between the withered rows of shrubs tea was planted 

 and the new industry developed rapidly. 137 but the prosperity of 

 Ceylon still rests upon one product. To cite another example, 

 the exports of British North Borneo are quite typical. The list 

 is quite an extensive one — tobacco, timber, cutch, gutta-percha, 

 sago, rattans, india-rubber, birds'-nests, camphor, trepang, salt 

 fish, damar, hempseed, pearls, mixed shell and copra. But the 

 only things to be regarded of any considerable commercial value 

 are tobacco and timber. The rest are merely jungle produce, and 

 they are chiefly absorbed by the Chinese who depend upon the 

 Dyaks to secure the rattans, birds'-nests and so forth for them. 

 It is not a trade that admits of any great expansion without pro- 

 ducing a scarcity of the articles in question. 138 In South America 



139 Bigelow, Children of the Nations, 188. 



137 Greswell, British Colonisation, 232-235. 



138 Colquhoun, Mastery of the Pacific, 280-281. 



215 



