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THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST, [November i, 1887, 
The Slave Question and Immigeation. 
The number of registered slaves in Brazil in 1883 
was 1,346,648 ; in 1884, 1,240,846, and in 1885, 1,133,228. 
Now the number must be considerably under a million, 
or more than one-third less than the number three 
years ago. 
Thus it will be seen that slavery in Brazil can only 
last a very few years more, and the abolitionists will 
certainly not rest until the whole of the empire is 
liberated from this curse to the country. And even 
now there are many large districts and municipalities 
that joyfully boast of having freed the last slave within 
their buundaries. 
I have often heard in Brazil — an opinion expressed 
by English residents— that the final extinction of sla- 
very will be the death blow to the profitable cultiv- 
ation of coffee, an article that at present constitutes 
the main strength and wealth of the country. It is 
believed that the freed negroes and their descendants 
will not work, and that it will be impossible to obtain 
free labourers in sufficient numbers and at such wages 
as will ensure a profit to the planter. This idea was, of 
course, derived from knowing the disastrous results 
that ensued in Jamaica after the sudden emancipation 
of the slaves there, and before any time had been 
allowed to substitute another system of labour. To 
say that such results will or will not eventually occur 
in Brazil is only to make a hypothetical assertion, and 
a supposition that it will do so, I am not disposed 
to endorse for the following reasons : — 
1st. My experience on the coast and in the interior 
has proved to me that the free black man (the blacker 
he is the better) is by a long way a far more valuable 
citizen of Brazil than the ordinary white-brown 
matuto (peasant). In the interior, whenever I came 
across some rare example of thrift and industry, in 
nine cases out of ten it was the work of a family of 
negroes. The best muleteer I ever had was a negro ; 
the best navvies I have ever employed on works were 
negroes; the most industrious farmers I have met with 
were negroes, and the most intelligent mechanic 
I have ever employed in Brazil was also a negro. 
2nd. On many of the great coffee estates the planters 
are wisely training their blacks to habits of industry, 
by limiting their hours of work, and paying them 
wages for extra work, providing them with comfortable 
quarters, well lighted, clean, and commodious and by 
giving each family a plot of ground where, by working 
in their off time, they can acquire money, and even 
free themselves if they so desire. The result will be 
that when the time for a general emancipation occurs, 
these blacks will naturally prefer to follow the com- 
fortable lives they have become habituated to — a life 
that many and many of our poor farm labourers would 
envy. Unfortunately these wise planters are few in 
number, and in the generality of plantations I am 
afraid the lot of the poor black is a very hard one. 
3rd. In north Brazil, where the emancipation move- 
ment has made greater progress than in Rio de Janeiro 
and Minas Geraes, it is now a matter of fact that 
labour is cheaper and more plentiful than it was say 
ten years ago, and where large sugar planters have 
informed me that they now prefer their free to their 
former slave labour. 
4th. One more reason I will quote, and that is the 
most important, for it is a demonstration of a success- 
ful effort to entirely substitute slaves by another system. 
In 1885 an important coffee planter and a member 
of the House of Deputies, explained to his attentive 
auditors in the House how he thought he had solved 
this problem. After selling some of his slaves and 
freeing others he contracted with a number of families 
some Portuguese, some Brazilian, to squat on his estate. 
He provided house, ground, plants, — some bearing, 
some developing, — advanced provisions, superintended 
general operations and the disposal of the crops. 
The labourers, on their part, cultivated the soil, col- 
lected the crops and worked in the mill house when 
required. The net proceeds were divided equally 
between the two parties, and each was satisfied and 
contented. It is practically a co-operative association 
of capital and labour, where it is to the labourer's 
advantage to exert himself to the utmost, 
Having thus briefly sketched a few reasons for not 
endorsing the pessimist's views of the disastrous con- 
sequences to Brazil of the extinction of slavery (I could 
easily quote other reasons, but time will not permit) 
I will now say a few words on immigration. 
Amidst such varieties of soil and climate as the vast 
territory of Brazil offers, it is perfectly admissible 
that many natural conditions must necessarily exist 
that are favourable to the requirements of the emigrant 
from the crowded old world. Such conditions do exist, 
but without better communications and an alteration 
of certain social difficulties, immigration on any large 
scale in Brazil must result in failure — that is, immi- 
gration of poor labourers unaccompanied by capital. 
They might certainly substitute the million of slaves 
and work with the planters on co-opera i i v,- principles. 
But this is not what I especially allude to in speak- 
ing of immigration. I refer more particularly to a 
means of populating the vast undeveloped areas even 
of the coast districts, and then of the great interior — 
verily a world in itself. 
The Government of Brazil has long since recognised 
the necessity for a great progress of the country in a 
spontaneous influx of immigrants, and during the past 
twenty years the State has not oaly granted conces- 
sions of large tracts of lands and other favours, but 
has also actually expended about 4,000,0002. sterling in 
promoting the acquisition of settlers, unfortunately 
not only with very sterile results, but also in many 
cases with most disastrous failures that brought ruin 
and misery upon numerous poor misguided people. 
The past non-success of immigration in Brazil can 
be traced to a variety of causes, amongst which the 
not by any means least unpoitaut is the physical con- 
figuration of the country, a circumstance that has 
rendered the development of communications with the 
distant interior both difficult and costly. In the Argen- 
tine Republic this great obstacle does not exist, for 
there we find an immense and practically flat area, 
threaded by thousands of miles of great navigable 
rivers, all converging to a common outlet at Buenos 
Ayres. These great advantages are of immense import- 
ance in the settlement of a new country, for the most 
outlying borderland has thus a means of obtaining a 
road to a market for produce, and great lengths of 
railways can be laid down at a relatively inexpensive 
outlay. 
In Brazil, excepting the Amazons Valley and in 
Maranhao, there practically exist the reverse of these 
advantages. In these two exceptions large flat areas 
and riverine systems are found somewhat similar to 
Argentine Republic, but although the soil and the rich 
vegetation is all that can be desired, the climate, without 
being absolutely a deterrent to white labour, is 
certainly far less amenable than that of the Southern 
Republic. In the other parts of the Brazilian 
coast, say from Cape Frio to the Province of Santa 
Oatharina, the seaboard contains some of the great- 
est elevations of the country, and although the 
beautiful climate and many fertile tracts of these 
highlands and of the tablelands of Minas Geraes, Sao 
Paulo, Parana and Rio Grande do Sul are so well 
adapted to a white settler, the physical configur- 
ation of the country has hitherto caused the ex- 
tension of Railways to be a slow and costly progress. 
The coast regions of this section of Brazil are the 
sea face of the great Brazilian tableland, the 
approach to which is generally rugged and mountainous. 
The summit is a series of great undulations or earth 
waves, and the land and rivers drain towards the in- 
terior and find an outlet in the River Plate. Over 
these vast regions the only communications were for- 
merly merely rough bridle paths andit can be easily com- 
prehended what a gigantic mistake it was to induce 
a crowd of poor impecunious immigrants to go so 
far inland where they were left helpless to feed on 
the grass like cattle, whilst their crops had t'meto 
grow, even if they had spirit and energy sufficient 
to plant, and yet if they had been able to raise any 
crops, their value would have been consumed in a 
long and weary march to a market. 
But every year these physical difficulties are dis- 
appearing with the spread of railways that at vari- 
