Miscellaneous, 



528 



[December, 1910. 



experiments. And it cannot be too 

 strongly insisted upon that all agricul- 

 tural progress depends upon experiment. 

 Some one must try, and succeed with, 

 any new method, new crop, new tool, 

 before it can be generally taken up. 



The position theu, in brief, is that 

 there must be money available, or no 

 progress except among the immigrant 

 European, American, or Chinese plant- 

 ers, who bring capital with them, and 

 the few natives who possess it. These 

 latter, however, are by no means in- 

 clined always to invest it in agricultural 

 pursuits; it often pays them better to 

 lend it to local cultivators at high inter- 

 est. And so long as progress is thus 

 limited in scope, so long is the country 

 in an unhealthy condition. 



If the small agriculturist is to take up 

 any thing which spells progress, he 

 must be provided with a certain amount 

 of capital, and how is this to be clone ? 

 This is one of the most pressing problems 

 that at the present time beset anyone 

 concerned with the government of a 

 tropical dependency. No serious im- 

 provement in crops or tools, in stock or 

 in methods can be undertaken without 

 the aid of some money. The transition 

 from the grow-what-you-want-aud-con- 

 sume-what-you-grow stage can only be 

 effected with the aid of some money, 

 though the amount be small, and so 

 long as this has co be borrowed at high 

 interest, so long will the agriculturist 

 remain where he is. 



What it comes to, then, in most count- 

 ries in the tropics, is that Government 

 must help, and how this is to be done 

 without pauperising the natives is a 

 very large problem. Obviously the 

 help must as far as possible, to put it in 

 a somewhat crude way, be in kind, and 

 not in money, though monetary help 

 may not be absolutely avoidable. 



To arrive at a clear understanding of 

 the problem it will be well to analyse the 

 position. The present simple methods of 

 grow-what-you-want-and-consume-what- 

 you-grow, which with a very slight 

 amount of sale of produce represent the 

 agriculture of the majority in the 

 tropics, require modification in the fol- 

 lowing direction, parallel to the move- 

 ment which has taken place in the more 

 progressive agriculture of the north. 



(1) The peasant must grow crops which 

 he can sell ; (2) he must sell these crops for 

 cash ; (3) he must therefore have a local 

 market ; (4) he must buy tools, clothing 

 and even perhaps food with the money 

 received. 



To deal with these in order, let us take 

 (1). There is no necessity here for the 



man to grow unfamiliar crops ; export 

 to distant countries should only come 

 after he has got accustomed to selling 

 locally for local use. So long as the use 

 of products is confined to the country in 

 which they are produced, there is a risk 

 attached to their cultivation. Over- 

 or under-production is much more likely 

 to occur, unless the local population is 

 very large, as, for example, in India or 

 in Java. It follows, therefore, incident- 

 ally, that a man should always grow most 

 of his own requirements of actual food, 

 aud depend on other people at first only 

 for the luxuries of food, his clothing, 

 drugs, and other things. So long as he 

 has to sell to any small local market, 

 unless there are middlemen buying at 

 that market for export, there must be 

 great liability to over or under pro- 

 duction, for the demand must be limited. 



To go on to (2), the peasant must sell 

 for cash. He cannot afford, until he has 

 become somewhat of a capitalist, to sell 

 to a far distant market, where he has 

 to wait a long time for the return. This 

 again is a strong reason for growing only 

 limited quantities of things which have 

 an immediate local use, at first, and 

 progressing to things for use at greater 

 distances only as middlemen come into 

 existence. 



(3) He must have a local market. This 

 involves the existence of means of trans- 

 port, which we have already considered. 

 Until there is some place where a man 

 can sell what he grows, that is of no 

 immediate use to himself, it is useless to 

 grow it. Local markets can be opened 

 in centres of traffic, or where there is a 

 population of fishermen or other workers 

 who do not grow for themselves. But 

 so long as the market is purely local, as 

 already explained, there must be great 

 fluctuations in price, and it is thus desir- 

 able to open to the peasants some wider 

 and more distant markets. Now so long 

 as they must themselves send their pio- 

 duce to these markets, it is obviously a 

 matter that cannot be pushed on, for 

 they cannot afford to wait a long time out 

 of their money, they do not understand 

 such matters as selling at a distance, and 

 they do not provide enough produce to 

 be worth while sending. Either co- 

 operation or the use of middlemen must 

 therefore come in; and we may deal 

 with the former first, as this his also 

 been a great mark of progress in the 

 north. 



It requires that a co-operative society 

 should be formed in the place, which 

 shall take over from the villagers their 

 produce, and sell it in a distant market. 

 Obviously, therefore, in most tropical 



