380 Timehri. 
responsible for this great Reform movement,—Mr. W. H. Hinds, Editor— 
proprietor of the Echo, Mr. (now Dr.) D. T. Straghn of the Lideral, 
Captain E. T. White, and the late Mr. Jacob Conrad. Having come 
down to the period when lands were made somewhat accessible to the 
more thrifty individuals of the masses, let us see what was their ability 
then to go in for farming more generally. 
The sugar estates had fallen upon evil days and had passed through 
a very severe crisis in 1885, necessitating relief and greater assistance 
from their paternal Government. There were no funds available, and no 
disposition under the old regime to make labourers become farmers and 
colonists. The industrious East Indian was repatriated at the end of his 
term of indenture, and not induced to remain with his savings and 
become a peasent farmer. The able-bodied negroes, who hitherto got 
work in seasons on sugar estates, found even those limited markets for 
their labours being rapidly lessened by the cropping and abandonment 
of some sugar estates, and by the amalgamation, labour-saving appliances, 
and curtailed expenditure on others. Luckily for these, gold was 
discovered in the hinterland, and despite the dangers of travelling, the 
privations and hardships of reaching and working in the interior, the 
negroes, who could and should have previously been made farmers, 
willingly, and, with stout hearts, flocked thither, and, by their endurance 
and steady labour, made gold in very truth a subsidiary industry, giving 
direct revenue by the royalty levied on it to a Government that made no 
effort to render it the least assistance. The negroes now became direct 
contributors to the colony’s Exchequer, while through indirect 
taxation on the necessaries of life they continued to contribute the 
vreater portion of the revenues of the colony. Even at this point our 
rulers were too short-sighted to inaugurate a worth land policy, and 
inhabitants who made savings had no reasonable inducement to go in for 
farming. The Portuguese and Chinese immigrants found their chances 
in trading, the negroes who made savings had no option but to become 
professionals, being unable to hold their own in any other direction under 
the peculiar circumstances obtaining. The only fault attachable to the 
professionals has been their remissness in combination with the masses 
of their own race for the ameliorating of conditions on a bolder pro- 
gramme than that from 1891 up to the present time. And may not there 
he the excuse that men, who by dint of industry and, in many eases, 
herculean effort, have climbed the ladder between races, found it 
inconvenient to make personal losses and enemies for a general cause, 
however patriotic ? The State has not encouraged patriotism and _ self- 
sacrifice in this colony, either by emoluments of office or distribution of 
honours to public-spirited colonists who have served this colony well. 
The late Wm. Russell received no recognition from the Imperial Govern- 
ment for his great water schemes ; Mr. Benjamin Howell Jones has been 
the recipient of a long merited C.M.G. on the eve only of retirement 
from active life! What incentive is there to able men in our midst to 
devote themselves to general usefulness rather than be absorbed in a 
