Old Land: Puerto Rico 



So it is that the forces that molded the earth have likewise molded humanity. Physiographic 

 variations of the land have everywhere varied the lives of the inhabitants. And man who 

 must follow the earth wheresoever it may lead, must bend to the earth's limitations. 



J. H. Bradley, Autobiography of Earth, 1935. 



PUERTO RICO is an island lying between the Atlantic Ocean and the 

 Caribbean Sea some 1,100 miles southeast of the tip end of Florida. It is 

 a small island — 110 miles long and 35 miles wide. By steamer one can reach 

 Puerto Rico in 4 days from either New York or New Orleans. It is only 7 

 hours from Miami, Fla., by plane. Whether going by plane or steamer, one 

 enters the island at San Juan, a city of 140,000. 



At the close of the fifteenth century when Columbus landed on this 

 island he found a few thousand Indians of the Borinquen race. Today there 

 are 1,800,000 persons occupying a land only two-thirds the size of Connecti- 

 cut. The island is one of the most densely populated agrarian lands on earth. 

 Agriculture is the first concern of three-fourths of the people. If the present 

 rapid increase in population continues, there will be one inhabitant for 

 every acre by 1945. Then there will be left to provide sustenance less than 

 half an acre of arable soil for each person. 1 



Since the first consignment of sugar left the island for Spain in 1533, the 



land has suffered. The "jibaros," or subsistence farmers, were early forced 



1 There are 16 acres for each person in the United States, 5 of which can be cultivated. 



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