Food and Labour. 289 
With other crops the average cost of cultivation of the whole estate 
comes to $72 per acre, employing 7 labourers and 4 draught animals 
to the 100 acres at a cost for man labour of $18.00 per acre per annum. 
And for dranght animals of $15.60 
[have been unable to obtain figures for the systematic cultivation 
of roots and corn in the colony but some basis of comparison may 
be found in the figures for caue cultivation Apparently including 
manures $20 to $24 is the average cost per acre for a crop, in ordioary 
seasons, of 20 tons per acre. ‘I'o this would require to be added a 
percentage for capital charges, etc., which probably add 50 to 607 thus 
bringing the canes to the mills at something hke $30 to $40 per acre. 
This is of course, under indenture conditions or at least where 
prices are controlled by indentured labour, and the cost of cultiva- 
tions outside of sugar estates cannot easily be kept down to such 
a mark. The probability is that nearer $50 per acre would be 
a minimum cost on average Jand, and to be profitable this would require 
a crop of about three tons of sweet potatoes or two tons of cassava at the 
prices which have ruled for the last year or two. Much larger yields 
than this are secured ev n with the very insufficient cultivation usually 
applied, but here again the possibilities of returns are not ascertainable 
with accuracy. Jn Barbados, however, 12,0001b. of sweet potatoes and 
6,000lb. of yams per acre is considered a good crop. 
When, however, we come to consider the possibilities for the small 
man we can see that given any reasonably cheap means cf getting his 
produce to market, there is no reason for extraordinary high prices 
and that a given quantity of labour expended on his own land _ is 
likely to bring him an immensely greater return than the same amount 
of labour at current rates of wages. We may safely guess that the same 
amount of labour as is applied to an acre of canes would produce a crop 
of at least three tons of sweet potatoes. The difference of reward to the 
labourer is the difference between $24 and $78, less such charges as 
are incidental to marketing his crop. So long as such an enormous 
disparity exists and landis so cheaply obtainable as in the coleny, so long 
there will be an irresistible tendency to take the abundant opportunities 
of easy and well paying occupation i preference to any man’s hire. 
On the other hand, the worker for hire, in the towns at least, feels 
acutely the effects of high prices, and complaints from domestic servants, 
male and female, that their wages are insufficient to maintain them and a 
constant tendency to increase in the scale of pay will be a natural conse- 
quence of conditions eminently desirable from the agriculturist’s point of 
view but equally undesirable from the point of view of the wage-earner. 
I have already said that the factor of cost of iiving is likely to come 
more and more into prominence here in questions of production of 
commodities for competition in the world’s markets such as sugar and 
rice. One has only to compare conditions of production in the United 
