155 



Edible Products. 



Labour, during the picking season, commands high prices, and there is 

 always a shortage during that period. Even paying the higher prices that labour 

 commands during the busy season, the Brazilian growers can produce coffee at a 

 lower price and still make a profit, because their methods of picking and handling 

 the crop are cheaper than ours. The Sao Paulo method is also better adapted to 

 the needs of the small individual planter who can market his coffee to the large 

 planters and mill owners in the dried cherry, practically the only investment or 

 capital, other than his own labour, that is required, being the comparatively small 

 cost of a drying floor. 



This simplification of methods is responsible for the enormous over-develop- 

 ment of the coffee industry of Brazil. Hundreds of thousands of European immi- 

 grants, German, Italian and Portuguese, have poured into this salubrious, rich and 

 well-watered region. As large an area as has been already planted is still available 

 for the development of this industry in Sao Paulo alone. Extraordinary induce- 

 ments have been offered by this and other Brazilian States in the way of lands, 

 prepaid ocean-transportation, loans to settlers, and in some instances guarantees 

 of at least $400 wages per annum. Road and railroad development have kept pace 

 with the settlement of the land. 



The price of labour is approaching a parity in all civilized countries within 

 the tropics. A land or an industry which has an advantage over other lands and 

 industries, through the possession of cheaper labour, more fertile soils, more stable 

 government or legislative, and hence artificial protection, can be depended on to 

 rapidly bring itself up to the general average because of the universal desire to 

 take abnormal profits. Sooner or later aud, now-a-days, sooner, the endeavour to 

 get out of an industry all there is in it, consequent upon this phase of human nature, 

 will bring about over-production. Sometimes there is actual over-production of 

 crops resulting in readjustment of prices in the world's markets, and widespread 

 ruin in far distant lands. The synthetic over-production of indigo in Germany 

 became a famine factor in India. But modifications in indigo manufacture in 

 India have again placed the Indian ryot on a place of fair competition with 

 German synthetic manufacturers. 



Again, over-development takes the form of planting a larger area of land 

 than can possibly be cultivated by the visible supply of labourers. This was the 

 secondary cause of over-production of coffee in Brazil, and is somewhat of a factor- 

 in Hawaii to-day, affecting the cost of production of sugar. The world-wide 

 remedy for this latter phase is to substitute small landowners for the plantation 

 system of corporate ownership of land and the employment of labourers in masses. 

 This remedy is being applied to relieve the coffee situation in Brazil.— Hawaiian 

 Forester, January, 1906. 



THE COCONUT INDUSTRY OP TRINIDAD. 



The important place this industry holds in the resources of Trinidad cannot 

 be gauged directly by any official publication of trade statistics. Its products of 

 nuts and oil are largely consumed in many different ways locally, and the industry 

 being under no legislative restrictions, by which its products would be definitely 

 known, it is somewhat difficult to estimate its importance, 



The usual practice in planting coconuts here is to clear and burn the land, 

 which is then lined and staked, the stakes being 25 feet apart ; holes are dug at 

 each stake into which the seed-nut is placed and barely covered with earth. In 

 some cases the seed-nuts are imported nuts of known quality, and in others they 

 are selected from heaps on the plantation, but these are exceptional cases, and I 

 do not think it is too much to say that sufficient attention is not paid to the 

 selection of seed-nuts. 



