iv. Timehri. 



date machinery for cultivation and manufacture by co-operation, with 

 Government assistance, if necessary, among estates which have recently 

 been acquired by local investors. (3) The re-adjustment of the economy of 

 the large estates by means of labour-saving appliances in view of the 

 collapse of the old indenture system and the probable slow development of 

 any substituted colonization scheme. (4) The frank recognition by the 

 planters that cane-farming may henceforth contribute to the removal 

 of some of their labour difficulties if developed under a proper system of 

 reciprocal aid and supervision by plauters and farmers acting in a cordial 

 alliance. The comparative but encouraging success which has attended 

 the Farmers' Conference of this year is a hopeful sign of the prospects 

 of such an alliance. (5) The adoption by the Imperial Parliament of such 

 a policy of Imperial preference or restriction of unfair competition as will 

 reassure investors both here and in the United Kingdom. 



As regards the last mentioned question the final report of the 

 Committee on commercial and industrial policy just presented to 

 Parliament advocates countervailing duties against " dumping " and we 

 had the assurance of the Premier last year that the principle of Imperial 

 preference had been accepted by the Cabinet. 



To these many of us would subjoin a (6),viz., the association of the 

 people of the colony of every race, colour and class with the defence 

 of the colony, the West Indies and the Empire, by a scheme of universal 

 military training in the schools, followed on adolescence by service on the 

 Swiss or Norwegian system based upon selective draft. 



The Bauxite Industry. 

 The revival of our mining industry which the war had seriously 

 damaged has come in the last two years from an unexpected source. 

 Few people in the colony except mineralogists by profession had ever 

 heard of bauxite before that period. We now know that it is one of the 

 three hydrates of aluminium (or aluminum as the North Americans follow- 

 ing the discoverer Sir Humphry Davy prefer to call it) found either in 

 sedimentary deposits or where some igneous rock has become weathered 

 in situ. Its local geological history approximates to that of kaolin 

 which in this colony has an excess of silicon and iron. Our best known 

 deposits are at Akyma, 75 miles from the mouth of the Demerara River, 

 on the dividing line between the mountain country aud the sedimentary 

 deposits of the coast. Professor Harrison has expressed the opinion 

 that they are caused by the weathering of igneous rocks in situ. The 

 ore is supplied at present by a British registered Company entirely for the 

 manufacture of aluminium by a Company in the United States. Bauxite, 

 however, is also used for the production of alum aud other aluminium 

 salts, as a refractory for the manufacture of bauxite-brick for furnaces 

 as an abrasive for grindstones and for the making of aluminium 

 sulphate used for the quick setting of plaster. The present price of 

 bauxite averages So a ton and the ore produces aluminium to the extent of 



