24 Timehri. 
nor are the environments and the whole circumstances of life in America— 
its wealth, its great potentialities and its teeming population—even given a 
thought. British Guiana with barely 300,000 inhabitants, more or less 
parsimonious, one-third of which cultivates sugar and are penurious withal, 
according to Mr. Hewick,—what will the remainder do with a Tuskegee ? 
Every man here is working his hardest to keep the wolf from the door, only 
a few succeed in keeping the wolf slightly farther off than the rest. Where is 
the opening for, let us say, 500 Tuskegee graduates ? And let it not be for- 
gotten that Tuskegee educates its araduates beyond the sixth standard, at 
which stage, says Mr. Hewick, the black youths “kick against working in 
that state of life to which God has called them ! ” 
In my opinion there is great failure on Mr. Hewick’s part to appreciate or 
grasp the true social and economic conditions of the colony as it affects the 
black people. They are working out their own salvation in a way undiscerned 
by him. It is unfortunate that the black man is not by nature a trader or 
a Biases, for nearly all the people whose possession of a little money 
ensures them local conspicuousness, made it by virtue of their commercial 
instincts. The black man is always the buyer and the European (including, 
of course, the Portuguese), the Chinese and East Indians are always the sellers. 
The black man, itis true, sells his labour, but, owing to the cheap labour intro- 
duced from India, this commodity is also exceedingly cheap. It is only by 
working in the colony’s forests that the black man can earn a living wage, 
and there, in hundreds, they spend the greater part of every year where there 
is no imported coolie labourer. The process is slowly but surely resulting in 
greater competency and moderate but increased means amongst them. No 
Tuskegee can alter the prospect or accelerate the momentum. When the 
hinterland is opened up and facilities of transport effected, the full value of the 
services of the black people to the country will begin to be realised. It is 
to this hinterland that the eyes of all are presently turning, and in which 
the larger hope of the colony’s future is bound up. Not in the agricultural 
development of the strip of coast-land, not in Tuskegees, but it isin broaden- 
ing the basis of operations, and the introduction of easy means of bringing 
out the forest productsto the shipping ports, that the greatest success of those 
who depend solely upon their thews and sinews, must ultimately be achieved. 
But the proposed Tuskegee should be established in the hinterland, it 
is suggested. Those who know the difficulties of travelling in the interior, 
and the expense of it all, must ‘‘ smile broadly at the idea enunciated *—t0 
quote Mr. Hewick. Why, the products of the proposed farm would be 
either unsaleable or unprofitable, if sold, what time they reached the markets. 
A passing reference must be made, in concluding this part of my subject, 
to Mr. Hewick’s thinly-veiled imputation against the character and antece- 
dents of the coloured professional men of the colony. Most books, wrote 
Grant Allen, are written for sale—and fiction writers especially are allowed great 
latitude of imagination in consequence ; this is not applicable to a serious 
writer in ‘‘ Timehri.” Professional men of colour here have no cause to be 
ashamed of their origin or antecedents, humble in point of wealth though the 
