Mr. Froude's Negrophobia. 103 
can learn that in Jamaica, at all events, Planters are 
keeping abreast with the times, in the process of manu- 
facture. On the other hand, the refusal to be taken 
over " Sugar-Mills/' is but an illustration of Mr. 
FROUDE'S want of savoir faire, if he really felt a sincere 
desire to study the condition of men and things in these 
Colonies. Had he visited a number of the plantations 
in the Islands he stopped at, he would have learned what 
men of African and of mixed Races are doing, 
better than he could " by drives about the town and 
" neighbourhood." He would have then realised the 
progress in skilled labour, and in the power of organiza- 
tion, made by members of those races. He would have 
found plantations, large and small, in the working and 
management of which not a single white man had part. 
And, if the faculty to endure hard times without disorder 
be a test of social advancement, our Tourist might have 
learned how well the labouring classes have borne the 
heavy reductions of wages, which the Bounty System 
has necessitated throughout the West Indian Colonies.* 
It was not, however, in such folks as these that our 
author was interested. His sympathies were with the 
English in the West Indies. After all, however, sugar 
* Machinery is cheaper, Freights are lower, and other things have 
tended towards economy, but the main reduction has been in wages. 
The following extradt from a paragraph in the European Mail of the 3rd 
of May 1888, speaks volumes :— " Needs must when the devil drives." 
Ten years ago, when the price of cane sugar was about double what it is 
now, the Colonial Company produced 17,111 hogsheads of sugar at a cost 
of 22I. 2s. per ton. Last year they produced 25,726 tons at a cost of 
10I. 14s. per ton ! True it is, as the deputy chairman, Mr. R. Gilles- 
pies, said, " Adversity sometimes teaches a useful lesson," and we are 
glad to find that lesson has not been lost on the directors. 
