286 



[May, 1910. 



tent of the land. In this way, there- 

 fore, local capitalism practically corre- 

 sponded to lending as done to day by the 

 money-lenders, seed-lenders, and others. 



With the " opening up " of the country 

 of Ceylon by roads, and by the intro- 

 duction of cheap labour from the over- 

 crowded districts of Madras, capitalist 

 agriculture, strictly so-called, became 

 possible. Local capitalists rarely took 

 any hand in the development which 

 went on, and the great coffee, cinchona, 

 tea, cacao, cardamom and rubber in- 

 dustries were successively opened by 

 European capitalists, until now a large 

 part of the island is in their hands, and 

 their industries provide a very large 

 part of the revenue which has enabled 

 the Government to do so much for the 

 island generally . 



The ideal state for the colony would 

 doubtless be that all these industries 

 should be in native hands, so that the 

 revenue brought in by them should not 



So abroad, but should enrich the colony, 

 iut as things are, it is too late for this 

 to be the case, and the white planter 

 has come, and apparently to stay. All 

 then that can be done is to encourage 

 the growth of a native capitalist industry 

 beside the European, and if this prove 

 sufficiently prosperous, the latter may 

 conceivably at some far distant period 

 be brought out by slow degrees. 



But unless something is done to help 

 the ordinary village agriculturist, he 

 must in general remain where he is, 

 and the only native capitalists to arise 

 will be those who are now in possession 

 of some money, or who come into pos- 

 session of it in some other way than by 

 agriculture. It is all but impossible tor 

 the villager to become possessed of any 

 serious amount of money under the pre- 

 sent system. Co-operation is urgently 

 called for, and after some years of 

 thorough trial, we may look to see a 

 fair number ot villagers freed from 

 the necessity of borrowing, and may 

 even hope to see a few of them rise in 

 time to the possession of considerable 

 money of their own, and the develop- 

 ment of capitalist industry. The great 

 thing is to get the villager clear of debt. 



Matters have so far progressed, with 

 the opening up of the country, that 

 the villager now wants to buy things 

 which cannot be produced within the 

 village, e.g., kerosene oil, or Manchester 

 goods. But to buy he must sell, and 

 is thus drawn into the world-wide 

 vortex of buying and selling. If he does 

 not improve, the quality of his produce 

 will become steadily poorer by com- 



Earison with that of other folk, and 

 e will get less for it. When once he 

 begins buying outside his village, the 

 villager must improve, or be letfc be- 

 hind, and consequently deteriorate. 



Now so long as he is uncombined, so 

 long is his security poor, and so long 

 must he pay high interest, so that, as 

 elsewhere explained, he cannot iu general 

 adopt improvements, which will not 

 usually return enough to pay interest 

 on his loan. 



But let him combine, and an entirely 

 different story may be told. He can 

 borrow money more cheaply, he can 

 buy manure, seed, or complex tools 

 more cheaply, he can sell more cheaply 

 and to greater profit, and in many 

 other ways he can get a better footing 

 on the ladder of progress. 



If the villagers be combined in matters 

 of money, supply of seed, manure, &C, 

 and sale of produce, each combination 

 becomes (in a short time at any /ate) 

 practically a capitalist on its own ac- 

 count, and is no longer helpless before 

 other capitalists or combinations of 

 capital. 



If once this fact could be realised in 

 Ceylon, and properly acted upon, we 

 should see the villager a great stage 

 forward upon the road of agricultural 

 progress. He would practically have 

 caught up with the leeway of recent 

 years. 



There is, of course, another way in 

 which he can get money without heavy 

 interest, but this means going to work 

 on capitalist estates, and very often 

 he has not the time available without 

 working much harder than previously — 

 a thing he does not pine for — or neg- 

 lecting his own cultivations. It is better 

 to help him to help himself in his own 

 agriculture, though also very desirable 

 that he should earn money by regular 

 paid labour. 



The Java system, under which the 

 villager gives a certain daily proportion 

 of his time to regular estate work, is 

 very good. 



In one way or another, the next step 

 for the Ceylon villager is to get as far 

 as possible out of debt, aud then one 

 may look for some agricultural progress, 

 but till that happens, such progress is 

 all but hopeless except to the capit- 

 alist, large or small. If the solution 

 adopted be that oi estate work, pro- 

 gress in agriculture proper will be small, 

 and local. 



J. c. w. 



