Report of Society's Meetings. 157 



his own way. But, outside the sugar industry there 

 was still a wide field for the Society. The climate and 

 soil of the colony were well known to suit cocoa, coffee, 

 cotton, rice, tobacco, provisions and fruits, and he need 

 not say that there was abundance of land for all such 

 cultivations. There appeared however to be a great 

 want of confidence in these things and they might well 

 ask to what this was due. On consideration it appeared 

 to be want of capital, want of labour and want of know- 

 ledge. There was no doubt that want of capital was an 

 important reason, but was there after all such a dearth 

 of capital in the colony? Recently there had been no 

 difficulty in disposing of the shares in a number of gold- 

 mining Companies, but let them advertise shares in a 

 sugar plantation or in a cocoa, rice, cotton or tobacco 

 estate and he feared no one would be willing to invest. 

 It was not therefore altogether the want of capital which 

 stood in the way. The second reason, want of labour, 

 seemed a more important one. The population of the 

 whole colony averaged about three to the mile and even 

 if only the area in cultivation was taken into account it 

 was still very small, Barbados was densely populated 

 and could well spare a good number of her people. If 

 agriculturists could really depend upon getting labour 

 at reasonable rates so as to perform their work at the 

 proper time, no doubt much greater confidence would be 

 felt. Now, their Society was specially charged to do all 

 in its power to promote agriculture and it appeared to 

 him that one way of doing this was to develop immigra- 

 tion. Personally he was quite satisfied that a perfe6lly 

 suitable lot of labourers might be obtained from the 

 West Indies, but they must bring whole families and not 



