December i, 1881.] THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 
539 
won at 
or P; 
iaii coffee 
s of other 
d sufficient 
countries, then there would he other < r 
reasons for giving it all support. But these purposes 
do not appear. The samples of the Brazilian product 
are to exhibited in a Brazilian city where no other 
eoffee is used, and to Brazilian brokers and exporters 
who already know all about it. And then, when the exposi- 
tion is dosed, llu- Brazilian people w ill go on drinking 
Brazilian coffee, and the Brazilian exporter will continue 
to export Brazilian coffee, just as before. On the other 
side of the water, the foreign consumer will read in the 
Times a four-line account of this exposition of coffee 
in Rio de Janeiro, and will continue sipping his fragrant 
Mocha without the slightest idea of what it is all about. 
Some neatly labelled samples will be sent abroad to be 
exhibited to' a curious world by Brazilian consuls, but 
help 
it, they 
pre 
-I \ M 
ths 
to reduce the consul's household expenses. Unsatisfact- 
ory and disappointing as these results will be, they are 
just what may logically be expected from this present 
crude and visionary scheme. In the main, the desire 
to attain some beneficial result for the entice producer 
from an exposition is praiseworthy in the highest 
degree, and if rightly located and conducted these bone- 
fits will surely follow. In our opinion there are but 
two bases upon which successful <■ ill'ee expositions can 
be held— both international, and both competitive. The 
one should be held in this city so that the Brazilian 
planter may see the foreign product, test it, and learn 
the methods of its cultivation and preparation for market. 
By this means he will learn just how his product 
compares with those of other countries, and just where 
he must improve his product in order to enhance its 
marketable properties. The other base is an inter- 
national exposition in some great commercial contre, as 
Loudon or Paris, where the consumer may see all 
these products, and test them. Both the producer and 
consumer must be educated, but that cannot be done 
by an exposition of Brazilian coflee in a Brazilian citv. 
A coffee-house for the free supply of the Brazilian 
beverage in London or Paris will do more to increase 
the sale of this product, than all the domestic exposi- 
tions that can be held. 
THE CHINESE QUESTION IN BRAZIL. 
[Sip Neir.f, 15th August 1881.) 
In a country where slavery exists, and all social and 
industrial life is impregnated through and through with 
the pernicious influences of that institution, the iutro- 
ducti"U of a semi-servile race cannot be otherwise than 
dangerous. Salvery is an institution winch not only 
work great injustice to the enslaved, but it also degrades 
and debases the enslaver. No people who have been 
I trained to the employment of slave labor have ever 
been able to easily take up the system of free labor, 
and to employ it with justice to the laborer and profit 
to themselves. The nearest approximation to such a 
■gtsformation was in the southern section of the United 
Mates, hut the result there was obtained under economic 
and political conditions which undoubtedly exist in no 
other part of the world. It is through these pernicious 
influence, of slavery that the free and slavo laborer 
ha\e never been able to work side by side. The free- 
man hi. a natural antipathy to companionship with 
tin slave, and the master does not know how to draw 
just distinctions between them. Fortius ivumiii, primarily, 
the Introduction of Chinese laborers at this time under 
Ua system of contracts, should not he permitted. 
With regard to the present s) -terns of agriculture and 
the relative value of the two systems known as the 
ijranil lavoura and pequena lavoura, then' is u vast 
field for research which the Brazilian agriculturist- 
should explore at once. It is clear that the country 
has made very little progress under the system now in 
operation, from which it can be logically deduced that 
there is something wrong with it. U no progress can 
be made under it — if in reality there has been an actual 
decline in certain localities and industries, is it not best 
that some Other system should be tried, even w ere there 
no proofs in existence as to its superiority ? Can there 
be any real progress in that unreasoning conservatism 
which clings to antiquated methods and systems, and 
refuses to give a place to anything new? Is tliis the 
enterprise and emulation which are to arouse the jealousy 
of Americans? 
The statements of our colleague regarding the system 
of firaiulc lavoura in the United States, are wholly 
mistaken. That system, as such, is miknown there. 
The nearest approach to it was in the Southern States 
during the existence of slavery, where large properties 
were held and cultivated by methods not greatly dis- 
similar to those employed here. The abolition of slavery, 
however, broke down that rotten, old system, and now 
it is not uncommon to find freedmen owning and tailing 
little plots of ground which once formed parts of the 
great estates upon which they labored as slaves. In 
the West — throughout the whole country in fact, the 
system employed is essentially that of small farming. 
Here and there are large estates which have been 
acquired through the industry and good management 
of a few individuals, but their proportion to the small 
farms is about as one to five hunched. To small farming 
is due the agricultural prosperity of the United States 
from which it may be inferred that it would result 
beneficially here, that unjust laws have kept back the 
stream of European emigration to Brazil through which 
this system of small fanning could best be established, 
and that the immediate policy of the country should be 
the employment of its present laboring element rather 
than its substitution, and consequent exclusion, by the 
introduction of Chinese under contract. Were we to 
discuss this question still further we should undertake 
to prove that the needs of agriculture do not lie in 
the acquisition of cheap, senile laborers, but rather in 
the acquisition of a higher grade of agriculturists, of 
better methods of cultivation, of the use of machinery, 
of raising the standard of intelligence among the laborers, 
of the breaking up of the great estates, of the abolition 
of export taxes, and the reduction of transportation 
charges, and of a general and radical change in the 
legislation of the country through which small fanning 
is discouraged and European emigration is driven away. 
The question is a broader and deeper one than this 
demand for labor would signify ; it involves changes in 
the whole industrial and fiscal legislation of the countrv. 
FRUIT-GROWING: DISBUDDING AND THINNING. 
(Australasian, 17th September 1881.) 
In the interests of the grower any excess of blossoms 
over the number required to produce the due amount 
of crop is undesirable. The effect of blooming is, to a 
certain extent, a tax upon the strength of the tree, and 
of bloom are produced, the powers of 
when 
the tree are oftentimes so severely tried as to prevent 
any appreciable crop being carried ; fruits are formed, 
but they are seedless, and thus, when the process <d 
stoning or pip-forming, as the ease may be, should take 
place, the imperfect embryo fruit falls off, leaving the 
grower too frequently without a crop. In ordinary sea- 
sons, when the blooms are not so excessively abundant, 
the process of reducing the crop to proper dimensions 
may without injury be left until it has well sot, so that 
the grower can see w hat he has to deal with. But when 
as in the present instance, the flowering n> likely to ex 
haust the tree and preclude its yielding a fair crop, an 
QXtensiye and severe pruning of the fruit spurs bhould 
