94 Timehri. 



very loth to say that they could cany out a large scheme of development 

 like the building of a railway to the far interior without an increase of 

 taxation, but he hoped that such increase would be only for a term of 

 years, and if he ever felt in the position of laying such a scheme before 

 the public he should point out t j them that the carrying out of any such 

 scheme would open up new avenues of employment and the prospect of 

 much more remunerative employment. And it would also open up the 

 prospect of having something real to offer to people in other countries 

 to induce them to come here. As he had stated he did not think that 

 the coast lands were sufficiently attractive to people who were not 

 accustomed to them, but he thought it might be a different matter if they 

 had communication with the savannahs in the interior. There they 

 would have lands similar to lands in other countries and he should say 

 that any capitalist who interested himself in their development would not 

 only be able to offer employment to people who could not find it on the 

 coast lands, but he would also be able to attract people from the outside, 

 to give only one instance — from Barbados. They knew how many 

 thousands of Barbadians were willing to leave their island to work if 

 only they could find remunerative employment, because they had gone in 

 their thousands to Panama. 



Hinterland Railway Problems. 



The question of this interior railway was a very difficult one. The 

 first thing an opponent would say was, having made your railway what 

 traffic are you going to get from it ? Well, he was afraid all they could 

 say to him at present was that they should hope that on its way to the 

 savannahs it would pass through lands from which timber might be taken. 

 They were fortunate in having here the best timber in the world and they 

 could add to that that the savannahs already supported a large herd of 

 cattle and were capable of supporting a very much larger number, if there 

 was any prospect of selling them when they were brought into existence, 

 and they could a Id that, in addition to the savannahs on this side, there 

 wrre savannahs on the Brazilian side and doubtless cattle from those 

 savannahs would be offered for sale, if there were means of getting them 

 down to our coast land*. He saw no reason either why. if these savan- 

 nahs were opened, they should not breed horses there, not for racing, 

 but he did not mean that that would not be a profitable development, 

 although he had no doubt — he saw a prominent member of the 

 racing club sitting quite close to him — if the savannahs were 

 opened, other owners than Mr. Flood would breed horses for 

 racing purpose, but he would rather see horses bred there for 

 ordinary commercial use and he should like to see sugar planters breed 

 their mules there instead of importing them from the Argentine and New 

 York. He was going up to the interior with the hope not to see the 

 nakedness of the land, but its fertility. What struck him in all the talk 

 that had been about development was that no one had faced the problem 

 of submitting a proper scheme. People talked vaguely about a railway 

 to the interior, but they wanted to settle, and it was not an easy matter 



