Miscellaneous. 432 



which represent the two extremes and an 

 intermediate. Opinion seems to be stea- 

 dily coming to favour the last mentioned. 



An ideal which long held sway, expeci- 

 ally in Europe and in North America i 

 among people who had no actual j 

 acquaintance with tropical conditions, j 

 was a kind of "old-fashioned socialist" i 

 ideal. It was in fact to check agri- 

 cultural progress at the early stage of i 

 grow-what-you-want-and-eonsuine-what 

 you-grow, and thus cause the growth of 

 a vast population of small cultivators, 

 each one growing or making whatever 

 he required, and among whom, there- 

 fo: e, there would be no exchange, export, 

 or trade, worth mentioning. , 



Now there is a good deal to be said 

 for such an ideal, for such a population 

 is safe from being in any way troubled 

 by events in the external world and is 

 only liable to injury by flood, hurricane, 

 and other attacks of nature. But their 

 safety only lasts so long as they keep 

 within the very narrow limits marked 

 out. The moment that they begin to 

 want anything that they cannot make 

 or grow themselves, they must sell some- 

 thing to pay for it, and come into the 

 world-wide vortex of competition which, 

 once entered, they must progress with 

 the rest of the world, or remain at a 

 very low stage. To set up such an ideal 

 is a deliberate holding back of the pro- 

 gress of evolution of the complex out of 

 the simple, which seems to be a law 

 governing all human and animal life, 

 and it is at least open to argument that 

 such a position cannot be maintained. 

 It has also the ethical objection to it 

 that a nation has no right to exclude 

 itself from the general progi'ess of man- 

 kind. It is liable to be upset by any 

 immigration of the European, the 

 American, or the Chinaman, and most 

 important of all, the directly con- 

 tradictory course of opening up the 

 countries of the tropics by the provision 

 of means of transport has already been 

 embarked upon beyond recall, and such 

 a course is not only absolutely un- 

 necessary for, but more or less fatal to, 

 such simplicity in agriculture. Further, 

 the white nations of the north have con- 

 quered the bulk of the tropics. They 

 want, and will have, products that can 

 as yet be produced only in the warmer 

 zones, such as tea, coffee, spices, cane- 

 sugar, cinchona, rubber, and many 

 others and they must, therefore, so 

 arrange agricultural matters that there 

 shall be an export of these. The attain- 

 ment of this first ideal would render this 

 impossible, and it is the feeling that 

 with the natives of the tropics at their 



! [November, 1910. 



present stage of agricultural develop- 

 ment it is practically impossible, that 

 has led to the more or less unconscious - 

 adoption of the second ideal, with which 

 we shall now deal. To maintain this 

 first ideal, immigration into the country 

 must be prevented, transport facilities, 

 means of getting capital, and education 

 must not be provided, laud must only 

 be sold in minute portions, and no local 

 sale of land must be allowed. 



Another ideal, never perhaps acknow- 

 ledged in so many words, is to open up 

 the country entirely under white 

 management, practically turning the 

 natives into hewers of wood and drawers 

 of water. Something approaching such a 

 state of affairs may be seen at this day 

 in some parts of many tropical conntries. 

 For instance, in the districts of Dimbula 

 and Dikoya in Ceylon, practically the 

 sole industry is tea, managed by Eur- 

 opeans, and the native population con- 

 sists of the coolies employed upon the 

 plantations, their overseers, the neces- 

 sary artisans and men engaged in trans- 

 port and other accessory industries. 

 To this there is also an ethical objection, 

 that however inefficient the natives of 

 a given country may be, it is not desir- 

 able to reduce them all to subsidiary 

 positions, nor to carry out of the country 

 the great bulk of the profits made -in 

 agricultural industries, as in such cir- 

 cumstances is almost necessarily the 

 case. And the attainment of this ideal 

 in most cases is rendered impossible by 

 the fact that there is too large a popul- 

 ation of native landowners, who will not 

 readily sell their land. Legislation has 

 also to a large extent been against such 

 an ideal, by making it difficult for the 

 foreign managers to obtain unchecked 

 control of large continuous areas of land. 



The third ideal, which we have set 

 forth in greater detail in a recent book, 

 is the one to which we think that 

 opinion is now tending. It is to have 

 the greatest possible diversification of 

 agriculture in the country, within the 

 limits imposed by the soil and the 

 climate. Not only should there be the 

 smallest peasant cultivators, growing 

 or making all that they require, but 

 there should also be the largest kind of 

 capitalist agriculturists, nnd there should 

 be every intermediate stage between 

 these two, bofn as regards race, and as 

 regards type of agriculture. Not only 

 so, but all these forms and races should 

 be well intermingled, so that the small 

 man may learn by object-lessons at his 

 own door, and the big man be provided 

 with labour within easy reach. 



