IIS-DIGO. 



459 



I can briefly say, tliat I have learaed that in the Central States of America, 

 deaths among indigo-laborers are not more frequent than in other branches of 

 tropical industry ; and I never heard or have read that the original growers 

 complaiued of the mortality attending the progress. The truth is, that this 

 statement is not founded on fact. There is nothing whatever in the manufac- 

 ture of indigo, either in the cultivation or the granulation, or even the macer- 

 ation and fermentation of the plant, which is directly or indirectly, per se, 

 injurious to human life. I have certainly never seen the indigo plant macerated 

 on a large scale ; but I have myself steeped much of it in water, and allowed 

 it even to rot, and found nothing in the mass diiiering in any marked degree 

 from decomposed vegetable matter. It seems to me that this idea of the manu- 

 facture of indigo being especially inimical to human life, is as unfounded as the 

 belief, even by Humboldt, up to a very recent period, that none of the Cercalia 

 would grow in tropical climates. In conversing with an old gentleman in 

 Jamaica, some twelve years since, who had tried the manufacture of indigo, and 

 with every prospect of success, but abandoned it, as he confessed, for the culti- 

 vation of the sugar cane, since it was then more profitable, he suggested the 

 solution, that as the manufacture was light work, probably aged and debilitated, 

 in place of youthful and vigorous slaves, were too frequently employed in the 

 process — hence the mortalicy. This may be cotrect to a certain extent ; but I 

 am also inclined to think that another cause ot mortality might be found in the 

 mode and manner in which the negro was led and clothed, and not because aged 

 persons were exclusivelv engaged in the manufacture. I believe 1 may state, 

 without fear of contradiction, that the real cause of the decline and consequent 

 abandonment of the indigo plant was the monstrous duty levied upon it by the 

 English government. Indeed, this has been already stated in the extract from 

 Bridges ; while the cause of the failure of the attempt to renew it, over and 

 above the reasons we have given, was the greater temptation to embark capital 

 in sugar plantations, — the West Indies enjoying a monopoly in this article, 

 while they had competitors in the Southern States of America in the other. I 

 have, therefore, no hesitation in saying, that, with a trifling capital, under 

 prudent management, indigo might be cultivated to a very great extent, and 

 with considerable profit, even now, in Jamaica. But the adventurer is not to 

 expect to count his gains, as the original growers did, by thousands ; he must 

 be content with hundreds, if not fifties ; for at the present day every branch of 

 industry is laden with difficulties, encumbered by taxation, and obstructed by 

 competition. There are two objections, however, which I have not removed, — 

 I allude to " the failure of the seasons and the ravages of the worm." Very 

 little need be said to combat those. Seasons are mutable, and the same heaven 

 that frowns this year on the labors of the husbandman, may smile the next ; 

 while a remedy for the "ravages of the worm" may be found in the mutation 

 of the soil, the destruction of the grub, or the rotation of crops, — accessories to 

 success which seem not to have entered into the vocabularies of the twenty 

 pseudo indigo-growers, "many of them men of knowledge, foresight and 

 property." 



Tile following passage from Bryan Edwards w ill corroborate much that I have 

 endeavored to enforce. It furnishes not only a solution which has been hinted at 

 before, of the enigma why indigo ceased to be cultivated in Jamaica, but also an 

 incentive to re-introduce the culture. He says (p. 444), " It is a remarkable and 

 well-known circumstance, after the cultivation of indigo was suj)pressed by an 

 exorbitant duty of near £20 the hundred- weight, Great Britain was compelled to 

 pay her rivals and enemies £200,000 annually for this commodity, so essential to 

 a great variety of her most important manufactures. At length, the duty being 

 repealed, and a bounty some time after substituted in its place, the States of 

 Georgia and South Carolina entered upon, and succeeding in the culture of this 

 valuable plant, supplied at a far cheaper rate than the French and Spaniards 

 (receiving too our manufactures in payment) not only the British consumption, 

 but also enabled Great Britain to export a surplus at an advanced price to 

 foreign markets." — It is therefore plain that the manufacture of indigo was 

 lost to J amaica, not from any difficulty in growing the plant, or from any loss of 

 life attending the process of manufacturing it, but from the ruinously heavy duty 

 of £20 the hundred-weight— and that now,, when no duty exists, it might be 

 again cultivated with great advantage. 



