FOOD AND LABOUR. 
By Rev. JAMES AIKEN, M.A. 
In the discussion regarding labour problems in the colony it is 
seldom that the relations between the price of food and the price of 
labour isreferred to. Yet that the relationship is a vital one there cannot 
be a doubt, and the direct effect of these factors on the cost of products 
intended for export make the question of cheap food one of the first with 
which the economist and statesman should deal. The effect of indirect 
taxation is, in this respect, very important as the taxation of foodstuffs at 
the port of entry tends to fix an artificially high price and it is easy to see, 
in the colony, the tendency to level the price of local products up to the 
price of foreign stuffs which have borne various charges of handling, 
freight and duty before reaching this market. 
To take one example of an imported foodstutt, Irish potatoes, which 
perhaps are venerally Continental or Bermudan, yield the farmer who 
grows them something like 48 to 72 ceats per cwt. while the wholesale 
price in the colony fluctuates round $3 per barrel or, say, $2.24 per 
ewt. That is to say, less than one-fourth oi the inarket price in the colony 
represents cost of production while 75 is a factitious addition, not due 
to the actual food value of the product, but to the circumstance that a 
body of consumers habituated to this food are compelled to use it under 
exotic conditions. 
Yet, when we turn to a comparison of the prices of local roots with 
this exotic product we bnd that, somehow or another, they have levelled 
themselves up to the exotic. hus sweet potatoes, eddoes and tannias 
range from $1.44 to $2.40 per bag, yams and cassava are generally around 
2 50 per barrel, prices which, as far as I have been able to ascertain the 
average weight of the bag and barrel, average $1.30 and $1.90 per ewt. 
respectively. 
Probably the food value of these roots is no greater than that of 
the imported potato and a fair price on cart, rail or boat would be 
respectively 40 to 60 cents for sweet potatoes and eddoes and 60 to 80 
cents for the other roots per ewt. 
The cereals grown in the colony are much in the same position. 
La Plata maize reaches the markets of the United Kingdom at 14s. per 
quarter of 2801b, after bearing charges of at least 20/ so that reducing it 
to the sack and barrel of British Guiana markets the grower must sell at 
about $1.72 per sack or $1.80 per barrel of the local standard. The 
price on our markets is generally about double this amount. 
