282 Timehri. 
past experience we have'no reason to believe that any other industry 
save sugar would use the new supply. Of course the planters, under the 
conditions of labour famine that prevail in the colony to-day, would 
indent very largely; and if new sources of supply are tapped, giving 
healthy immigrants, it is quite possible that the finished article they 
turned out will appeal to a larger public than does the trained and 
acclimatised coolie. In that case the planters will have a constant stream 
of the new-comers passing through their hands. 
In this way there will be a considerable increase on the numbers 
now introduced, but they will not be large enough, and it is to be hoped 
that other industries will be tempted to take immigrants by the fact that 
the labour is free. They are far more likely to do so if new sources 
of supply are tapped, giving us fine strong men of good physique, instead 
of the anemic physical wrecks we get from India nowadays. 
No Wiip Rush ANTICIPATED. 
Say immigrants from the West Coast of Africa were imported. 
Why should not the Demerara Railway try a few of them as porters ? 
Or certain of the Georgetown merchants join to get together a corps of 
them to be used for the same purpose ? Doubtless in the early days of 
the movement. to encourage as large a use of the new labour as possible, 
the Surgeon General would allow them to pay a fee and to send their 
sick to the Colonial Hospital, and the necessary periodical inspection of 
the newcomers could take place there also. Something of the sort will 
have to be done if the full benefits to be derived from free labour are to 
be realised. For although it used to be the fashion to speak of coolie 
immigration as a bounty to the planter, I fancy it will be found, even if 
labour other than Asiatic is introduced and is handed over to employers 
free of charge, that there will be no wild rush to secure this particular 
form of bounty on the part of employers outside the sugar industry. 
The gentlemen who run the other industries, probably knowing the 
bounty statement to be a fatuous lie, and that the planters who for years 
have taken the raw immigrant and in the great majority of cases turned 
him into a self-reliant, self-supporting colonist, were rendering a service 
to the colony in the civil sphere similar in kind to that which Sergeant 
What’s-His-Name of Kipling’s poem, who... .. “had a charm for 
making riflemen of mud,” rendered in the military, I may add that, 
like the sergeant “‘ we were not allowed to forward any claim.” 
THE SOURCE OF SUPPLY. 
Assuming that the principle, free labour for all industries, was 
accepted, obviously the first step to be taken to give effect to it would be 
to get an idea of the available supply of tropical labour. This should 
not be an onerous task, and it will certainly not be costly. All that is 
necessary is that the Government of Brit’sh Guiana should address letters of 
