216 
PROCEEDINGS OP THE VICTORIA INSTITUTE. 
near future. Cane cultivation is attractive to the peasantry, ml 
if many have retired from the estates recently, it is on account 
of the facility to get employment on the Roads and on the Pubis 
Works which have recently been executed. Unlike the pockets 
of planters, the Treasury has been full, and Government have 
always paid higher wages than private enterprize. Nevertheless, 
there has been a great attraction offered to laborers, especially 
to the negroes, in Cane farming, and the earnestness with which 
the majority have taken to the industry shews it to be a 
remunerative one, even when the cultivation of the planters is 
carried on at a loss. The principle of Cane farming brings about 
the division of labor, and is undoubtedly sound. Division of 
labor implies division of risks, and in a threatened industry 
requiring such considerable recurring outlay as sugar, this 
becomes effective relief. 
Our Factories are fitted out with all modern improvements, 
and can increase their output if work is carried on night and 
day as in the Beet Factories. Equipped as they are, they can 
adopt all new methods without difficulty, and maintain their 
present excellence. But no one will deny that our cultivation 
. not kept pace with our manufacture and that it can be 
improved. The reason for this is that the planters have failed 
to secure a sufficiency of labor to cultivate as they should. 
Estates have kept up a larger cultivation than they had labor to 
main am, with the result that disappointment has always cofltf 
With unfavourable seasons. It is not correct to say that there 
is p ent-y of labor available, if planters had the means to pay for 
u el - „ Guiana, the proportion of indentured labor is, I 
i , , ’ as ° ln Trinidad for the same extent of cultivation, 
a P^ eai to be four free laborers willing to work in the 
cln ohft eve, ' y ° ne here - Sure ‘y if at Demerara a planter 
his collea \ anc ®f , to . P a y f° U1 ' laborers when he requires then), 
advances to tr? ° aQ lik ™, for he has lrad those 
in the other t a 1 nsfoI ™., hl 1 s manufacturing plant as his neighbor 
duced i T i d,d , before him - T1 - quality of sugar pi* 
Guiana and M ,* 0 ~ da y ec l" al to that produced in British 
Se labor te w^, 8 , the . Sa “ e price ' If ™ bad the same avail- 
acre but nroh ihl U ' '" 6 ’“tonly the same return, of canes per 
advanta"es P 7 6X066(1 * as "ur soil has many natural 
said, and yet om-^India n sinc0 1870, it will 
however be borne in mind tha^the^ 0 ?- ^ doubled - I(i m 
of land in 1871 was 83 811 acres ® estimated cultivated acre 
In the first period not only th’e " "T 5 1896 ifc was 198 ’° 
y a re a ter majority of the ini 
