May i, 1882.] 
THE TROPICAL 
AGRICULTURIST. 
023 
authorities. These policemen were used for nothing 
hut to keep watch over the jail. It would take two 
days to get some two hundred soldiers from the capital. 
The slave does not know how easily the thing could be 
done, else he would free bimselt. Slaves are locked 
up at night, and the eye of the overseer is over them 
all day ; so they have no way of knowing anything. 
The Brazilian Government do not calculate on such an 
event as a negro insurrection, and are not prepared for 
it. The slaves would succeed with no other weapon 
than their own hands. There is a very small organized 
army to bring against them. The police force is so 
small mid inefficient that the beginning of a disturbance, 
however email, could not be stopped. 
A slave rebellion will not happen, unloss inllucnoes 
from outside the plantations were brought to hear 
on the minds of the slaves. That is not a likely event 
for some time. It is but natural to expect that those 
born of slave mothers since 1871 will try to free 
their relations and old friends, but, as they have to 
be slaves under their mothers' masters until they are 
twenty-one — the first of these— (and only those born in 
1871 can be liberated in 1892) it is very probable 
that some measure will be brought forward before that 
time to have these kept under police inspection for 
some years after being set free. 
The Emancipation Society, which was formed a year 
ago, and so ably supported by Senr. Joaquim Nabuco 
could have done a good deal in the way of disseminat- 
ing anti-Blavory opinions. Although Nabuco and the 
othtr ablo men who started the Society have courage 
enough to carry through what they intend, there is 
a great want of moral support from among the public 
men in Brazil. Tno influential people of the nation 
seem to disregard it. Nearly every Brazilian who can 
afford it has slaves ; if he has not, his relations and 
friends have. The question of property is an important 
one. The leader of the movement visited Europe last 
year. He was entertained by those of anti-slavery 
opinions in all the countries that he visited, and the 
Britiih and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society in London 
gave a breakfast in his honour. But ou his return to 
Brazil he was looked on as a traitor, and accused of 
the worst of all treason, that of asking the aid of 
foreigners to further revolutionary movements. Not 
long after his return cime the general election under 
the new law, and neither Senr. Nabuco nor any of lus 
anti-slavery followers were elected. Either in despair 
of doing auyihing to forward abolition while residing 
iu Brazil, or thinking that he could aid the cause more 
by remaining out of it. he went to practice his 
profession of lawyer in Lo idon. I leave your readers 
to form their own opinion on the slavery question 
from the facts I bave set before them. 
1 shall no doubt be asked : " But is there nothing 
else that can interfere to check the heavy exports of 
coffee from Rio and Santos"? 
Possibly the low price of Brazilian coffee may have 
some effect in withdrawing labour|from the cultivation of 
it. The low price of cotton, and the largo export duty 
put a stop to the cultivation of it, and the planter sought 
another agricultural product and gave his attoution 
to coffee. The same may be said of sugar planting. 
Improved machinery and a better mode of cultivation 
have beeu applied to sugar cano since with success. 
Both cotton and sugar are yearly plantings and har- 
vestings. Coffee, on the other hand, is a p ant of Kvo 
yenrs' growth, and has a capital equal to live years' 
expense of cultivation lying on it, and it cannot well 
bo thrown out of cultivation like co'tou or sugar* 
cano without groat loss of capital. Even with low 
prices planters will continue to eiiltivate ih-ir coffee 
fields with expecta' ions of a rise <u price* of coffee. 
A Brnz LilD coffee planter free from indebtedness 
can easily wait. The expenditure on his estate ia 
roprosontod by food aud clothiug for hit slaves. The 
food— Indian corn, beans, rice, mandioca, and pork- 
he produces every year, whatever the price of coffee 
may be. He can grow some cotton and rig up the 
old spinning-wheels and the looms which have been 
concealed in a corner of the coffee store for the last 
few years while coffee was selling high, and make 
clothes for the negro men and women. 
The planter, who has his estate and slaves mortgaged, 
will not be able to bear up at present prices of Brazil- 
ian coff.-e. Interest must be paid aud that is not under 
12 per cent, per annum. That charge can only be p.iid 
by coffee, and coffee has to bear transport to the sea-port, 
and municipal taxes and church taxes taking up ou all 
about '20 per cent of its selling price. Before it is ship 
ped it has to be further taxed 13i per cent on value. 
I do not know of anything to take the place of coffee. 
Cotton is produced cheaper in the United States than it 
can be in Brazil. Sugarcane will not grow well in many 
of the ceffee lands; and, supposing it did, the capital 
required for the erection of maohim-ry and buildings 
necessary would not be forthcoming. Coffee is the 
entire support of the Brazilian Government ; as the duty 
on it is ad valorem, the low prices affect the revenue. 
Wo have been accustomed to look at the labour ques- 
tion only, as influencing the future of Brazil. This, it will, 
in time, do, but unless some other settlement of the 
slave question than that of 1871 is come to, we cannot 
expect it will not do so for some years. 
We have to seek for other causes and the only one 
at present is the low price of Brazilian coffee. 
This will tend to embarrass the Ceylon planter 
also, but not to the same extent. Ceylon seems to have 
a market of its own, which Brazilian coffee cannot well 
supply, aud Ceylon coffee has not fallen in the pro- 
portion that Brazilian coffee has. 
A. SCOTT-BLACKLAW. 
No. VI. 
Dollar, 1st February 18S2. 
Gentlemen, — I intended to have finished these papers 
without saying more, but, as I have mentioned the low 
price of coffee as one of the reasons likely to diminish the 
exports from Brazil, your readers will expect that I 
should give them some idea of what is the lowest 
selling- price at which Brazilian coffee will give no 
profit to the grower. 
This leads us to consider the amount of capital in- 
vested in and the cost of labour employed on a coffee 
estate iu Brazil. The labour has been ptonounced a 
failure. It never can exist alongside slave labour. At 
3s a day for labourers, your readers at once will pro- 
nounce free labour impracticable. In any case, it is 
by slave labour that Brazil's large crops are picked, 
aud we must confine our calculations to it. The 
average size of a Brazilian coffee plantation is 200,000 
coffee trees; these planted at lb' palmas (11J feet) apart 
give 333 tiees to the acre. Coffee land represents 
about a third of the estate, two-thirds would be 
pasture land, and low-jungle for growing corn, beans, 
rice, mandioca, &c. The whole estate may bo about 
2,000 acres, 600 acres being planted with coffee. 
Many planters count on a slave for every 5,000 
tree9. This is too much, however ; most of those of 
my acquaintance calculate ou 3,000 trees to the fixed 
hand, aud, if the crop is large, it will not bo all 
picked without extra assistauce. We will, howover, 
take this as a basis to go on. 
For 200,000 coffee trees there will bo SO slaves re 
quirod, thus : — 
Hor field work at 3.000 trees 
per hand ... ... Go slaves 
Hoase-aervanta, cattloincn, horse- 
keepers aud «ick ... 15 ,, SO slaves. 
The average crop from such an estate is 10,000 arrobas- 
