THE COUNTRIES OF THE CARIBBEAN 



Bv William Joseph Showalter 



THE wonderful changes that will 

 be wrought on the countries of 

 the Caribbean region by the com- 

 pleted Panama Canal are beginning to be 

 evident through the plans these countries 

 are making to capitalize on the advantages 

 it brings to them. Everywhere there is 

 anticipation that the completion of the 

 canal is going to bring in a great stream 

 of capital for development purposes, and 

 that an era of unprecedented growth and 

 expansion will result. 



Such a desirable outcome will take 

 place in some of these countries, but not 

 in all of them ; for, until capital is made 

 safe in any country, it will not come in, 

 and there seems to be no prospect of such 

 an issue of affairs in many of the coun- 

 tries of this region. 



Xowhere else in the world has Nature 

 been more bountiful in her blessings of 

 natural resources than in the Caribbean 

 region. Everything that her treasure- 

 house holds has been bestowed with lav- 

 ish, and also with impartial, hand. Some 

 one has observed that if you tickle the 

 ground with a hoe it smiles back with a 

 yam, and certain it is that in any one of 

 these countries the ground of natural re- 

 sources may be tickled with the hoe of 

 foreign capital and it smiles back with 

 yams of wealth. 



These countries are nearly all favored 

 alike in natural wealth, but there is a vast 

 diff'erence in the development of that 

 wealth — a difference that may be attrib- 

 uted almost wholly to the character of 

 the governments in the respective coun- 

 tries. 



POVERTY AND MISRULE DWELL TOGETHER 



In some of these lands the milk and 

 honey of plenty flows in a bountiful 

 stream. Others are in wretched poverty, 

 where the masses never have enough to 

 keep the gaunt wolf of hunger from 

 gnawing at their vitals day and night and 

 year in and year out. In traveling 

 through these countries one is impressed 

 with the fact that prosperity abides with 



good rule and poverty dwells with mis- 

 rule. 



Starting out with the easily demon- 

 strated fact that there is very little differ- 

 ence between these countries in their nat- 

 ural resources, it is interesting to look 

 around and notice what a vast difference 

 there is in the use that is being made of 

 this natural wealth. One needs not go 

 out of the confines of Central America to 

 see this. It would require six Salvadors 

 to make one Honduras, and yet Salvador 

 has three times as much population and 

 three times as much foreign commerce 

 as Honduras. 



Costa Rica is less than half as big as 

 Nicaragua, and yet it has three times as 

 much foreign commerce as Nicaragua. 



And yet, when Salvador and Costa 

 Rica are compared with Porto Rico, they 

 in turn seem to be slow in their develop- 

 ment. Porto Rico is so small that seven 

 islands like it would be required to cover 

 an area equal to that of Costa Rica, yet 

 it has a foreign trade five times as great 

 as that of the Banana Empire. Porto 

 Rico is less than half as large as Sal- 

 vador, yet it has a foreign trade seven 

 times as great. 



WHY LITTLE PORTO RICO HAS PROGRESSED 



Little Porto Rico is so small that it 

 could be buried in a single Central Amer- 

 ican lake ; it would take 57 islands of 

 its size to equal Central America in area, 

 and yet Porto Rico produces more for- 

 eign trade than all Central America to- 

 gether from Tehuantepec to Colombia. 

 The reason ? I5ecause Porto Rico has 

 an ideal government. The trade of the 

 island has nearly quintupled since Uncle 

 Sam took possession there. The number 

 of children enrolled in school has in- 

 creased sixfold. The wages of the la- 

 boring class has multiplied threefold. 



We read of Porto Rico's present pros- 

 perity in every page of the record of its 

 expanding industry. It is seen in the 

 sugar fields, where four tons of sugar 

 are produced where one was a dozen 



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