Our Peasant Population—Their Past Condition 
and Future Prospects: 
ed 
By Seaforth M. Bellairs, 
aE} 1 would burden a short paper like this too much 
) colony, nor is it necessary, as I imagine that 
the amount of money that finds its way into the pockets 
of our ‘Peasant Population’ from timber, charcoal, coffee, 
&c., &c., is very much the same now as it was in the 
early eighties. 
In the present article I shall endeavour to show the effeét 
on the pockets of our Peasantry, caused by the economy 
necessarily praétised in the produétion of our staple ex- 
port, sugar, with its ‘ offal,’ to use the convenient but not 
very pleasant word, and also to try and see what, we may 
hope, will supply the blank caused by such economy. 
In order to show the difference in the incomes of the 
. peasantry, let us compare the wages paid across the pay 
tables of the sugar estates some few years ago with what 
are paid at the present time. Let us take the five years, 
1881 to 1885. On looking up the books of an East Coast 
estate I find that the crops of those five years was 4,880 
hhds., and that the total amount paid in wages was 
$218,217.11 or $44.72 per hhd. The total exports of the 
Colony for the same period were 616,028 hhds. or an 
average of 123,205 hhds. per year. Therefore if we 
take the low figure of $40, as the amount per hhd. 
paid in wages, and that | think is low, for the estate 
whose figures I have quoted was conduéted on careful 
with statistics to go into all the exports of this — 
a ie eS TE oe TE ee ate eg i oe OO 
