A GLIMPSE AT BARBADOS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2849, 21 October 1908, Page 82

A GLIMPSE AT BARBADOS.

■<r» HOW THE WHITES ARE BEING OUSTED,. By -a Resident. The other day a friend lent me some copies of the Otago Witness. They proved such interesting reading to me, being as I am an agriculturist, tha* I thought your readers would be pleased to" learn something of the state of affairs in Barbados. This island is about the same size as the Isle of Wight, as its total are,- does no* exceed 166 square miles, but whilst the Isle of Wight has a population of roughly 83,000, Barbardos boasts of 200,000, and it is asserted that actually ! there are even more than this number." I These figures perhaps fl^ill not convey i much to the general reader, but if they ' think for a moment they Jrill see that each square mile of land has to support over 1200 inhabitants. Every square foot I of land in Barbados that can be cultii vated is made use of, and of the 106,000 i acres 100,000 are said tc be under j tion. ' Barbadians are very proud of the fact that, unlike the other West Indian islands, they can boas*, of a Constitution, and .that therefore they are self-governing. Unfortunately for the white man, however, , £he coloured and black inhabitants are coming mort to the front every year, whilst the whites are decreasing in number. The . franchise, enables every man /owning land of a yearly rental value of not Jess ttian £5, or any man earning or ! possessing a yearly income of not less J than £50, to vote. With the excellent J schools that are provided, it is not astonishing to see the maiees taking a - more intelligent interest in local affaire, and their delegates are now entering the House of Assembly. — Absentee Owners. — Yet another cause of the white man's downfall is \he method of cultivation practised by the managers and attorneys in oliarge of the different estates owned by absentees. The bulk of the land is in the hands of absentee proprietors. It ie not an uncommon thing for an owner not to see his estate for 20 years and more; ►in fact, some of the proprietors have never set eyes on their property. I will explain the' manner in which their estates are worked. The unwritten law is to patronise,- the local merchants' stores as much as possible, not to spare anything ■which is procurable in town, and grow only the * crops for which- the greatest number of town supplies are necessary. Although it is very well known that an estate growing different crops in rotation, such as canes, colton, 'and sweet potatoes, etc., clears money for the owner, the managers, and attorneys of these places prefer to grow nothing but canes year after year, for the reason that this is the most expensive system of cultivation, for hogsheads-, puncheons, chemical manures ' to a. very large extent, and otii-er items j are required. The trifling consideration j as to what the owner's share is to be i out of it all is not taken into account ' 6o long as the manager, the attorney, and ' the merchant grow fat. It i 6 perhaps ' necessary to «tate .th«t, owing to the intermarriage that has been going on for ' generations, the Barbadian is related to tie -whole island. This intermarriage accounts for a good deal, and explains the large percentage of lunatics in the asylum, which has had to be enlarged on . two occasions to accommodate the : number of inmates. ' To get back to the question of cotton, culiivation and the aversion that managers of absentee proprietors' estates have for it,- it will be understood by the reader when h« learns that this aversion arises from the -fact that to cultivate sea-island , cotton daily personal attention is essential to obtain a remunerative yield. The insect pests unfortunately cause very great 1 damage to the cotton — the worm (cateri pillar) is the worst, — and unless the | manager keeps a constant watch the crop will not be a paying on«. It is useless , leaving the detection of the worm to the ; underlings, in the shape of superin- ' tendants, etc., as they" in order to I 6hirk work ac much as possible will certainly not report it. What the managers wish to continue cultivating is the 6ugar cane. The work is so automatic ihat the manager can sit on the verandah of the farmhouse, smoke his pipe, and give ! instructions, which are prompted to him iby the superintendents. A more ideal life for anybody it is difficult to imagine . The manager is paid a monthly 6alary of between 40dol t« 80dol (a dollar is worth 4a 2d here), according to the size of the estate. An estate containing 300 acres of land, of which 250 are arable, is considered very • large. H- is provided i with a horse, a groom to attend' to it, a I yard boy, cook, two or more milch cow 6, I a field of four or five acres (cultivated at the expense of the estaU iv vegetables, etc.), several barrels of sugar and molasses, etc. The value of all the&e perquisites can safely be calculated a«. fully equal to the palary. Of course, the manager has no taxes to pay, no bill for firewood or water ; his poultry are raised at the expense of the estate, and the cows aTe fed on pollard and oil meal, also on the same terms. Beyond his grocery bill the manager lias nothing very much to pay for. A manager of ii estate in Barbados is, practically speaking, a gentleman of leisure. He Ls continually giving or going to bridge parties, or dances, and what not. His children are sent to school, the mules on the estate being very freely made use of for this purpose. The manager is »to all^. intents and purposes the owner of the estate. He^take? all thecream, and the attorney gets the fckimmed milk. For the sake of saving a penny postage stamp, a manager will e-end one of the labourers paid by the estate half way across the island on foot to deliver

a letter. Should he require any furniture, the, lumber is purchased and a. 'i carpenter is paid, both out of the estate. ; It is practically impossible to detect these items in the accounts, as they appear as repairs to the boiling house or to carte, etc. In order to still further increase his salary, the manager resorts to a most ingenious sy-stem of giving young stock , (calves) in partnership to " the different hands on the estate. A weaned ox calf, , for instance, is purchased for £2, and is handed aver to, say, the watchman to , feed and rear. Bow does he do so? In the crop time, when the sugar cane is being reaped, the calf is openly penned , in the estate yard and fed upon "the green ' cane tops. The manager, ostrich-like, thinking that the matter is a dead secret, , because he alone is keeping it, proudly points to his cleverness in inducing the niggers to bring their stock to the estate yard, thus enabling him to make up manure for the fields. Out of crop time the watchman makes free use of all the grass growing on the estate, and if he keeps one animal on his own account the manager cannot say anything. Multiply j| this by 20, and you can get an idea of the way in which an estate .:an be pillaged. But unfortunately the matter does not end with the grass on the estate. When -this gives out the animals must be fed, -and the cane tops are cut off the growing crop. In the meantime the estate catfi!e — nowadays only a sufficient number are kept to reap the crop — are fed on food purchased from town ! Compressed hay imported from America, oil meal, Indian corn, etc., are freely made use of. When , the calf is old enough to be worked the manager suddenly discovers that some of , the estate cattle must b replaced, as from old age, disease, or any other excause they are no longer serviceable ; and this ox calf, now grown into a working animal, is purchased nominally from the watchman for anything from £10 to £12. After the original outlay of £2 has been deducted, the balance is divided between the manager and the watchman, and the game starts all over again. — Another Dodge — , is for the manager to purchase '60-called s "pen manure" from the niggers in the , vicinity. The cane trash is very openly i "taken" by the" niggers to their homes situated close to the estate, and there it ifi put into holes in the ground. Some isubbish is thrown over it, and it is kept perfectly wiet until it is Totten. It is then , taken to the managers, who purchase it from them, .tlie proceeds being divided , between the purchaser and the seller. The , sum. total of this shameful state of affairs ! is that the managers havte .10 control of the estate hands. Sugar in- bulk is openly taken out of the boiling house during tins reaping season without any notice ; being taken of it. The work is done by the labourers in the way they chooee, with the result that the estates that are being managed properly and honestly for the owners have great difficulty with the labour question ; and, moreover, suoh a class of thieves is being bre<l tkat it is I becoming more and more difficult to keep down preedial larceny. People out here who have Tioney to invest are not anxiou. about investing it under present condij tions in the purchase of land, and if ihey • do so it is only with the intention of rei selling it in small lots U the niggers at ; a good profit. U It will no doubt appear to the reader ' that Barbados is a nation >f managers, attorneys, and shopkeepers. This is the ' case. Barbados is dependent on her agri- , culture. There are no industries, beyond • the making of margarine, rum, and beer ' for consumption in the island. The attor- ( ney of an estate generally Hails from the ranks, and has been through all the stages of overseer and manager of an estate. He is the man who represents the owner, raises the money to cultivate the land, and attends to the purchase of town supplies. Although the attorney's salary is about half that of the manager, still with two or three estates on his hands, and the secret commissions he receives from the merchant, he is able >to cut a bigger dash than the manager. The merchants have combined to sell all commodities at a certain price, and though the attorneys could dispense altogether with the merchant by ordering supplies direct from the United States and the United Kingdom, it ' does not suit them to do so. One owner j in the island imports all the supplies he I requires in the shape of chemical manure, I hogsheads, puncheons, sugar-bags, etc^but he is the exception. — Raising Money. — Speaking about the method of raising money in Barbados, as it is unique, it deserves to be fully explained. It has been the custom in Barbados to purchase in estate by only paying about a quarter of i its value in cash, leaving the balance on j mortgage. In the days when estates of ( 200 acres of arable land were clearing as ' much as £2000, and even £3000, per annum, the price of land anged from £50 ' per acre upwards. Owners of land, instead of paying off the mortgages, preferred to spend the full amount of their ( incomes, and instead of living on their estates, went to England and elsewhere. Gradually sugar cultivation became less profitable, but instead of the owners returning to their estates to retrench, ..hey continued to live in the *ame way and at i the same rate. Where before owners were able to cany on the cultivation of the f estate on their own canital, they now found it neceseary to have rccouife to loans from the merchants on the security of the growing crops, with the inevitable result that when the crop vvat reaped the amount forthcoming with the ever-de-creasing price of sugar was insufficient to repay the merchant's loan. A very large number of states r-oneequently came under the control of the Comt of Chanf«ry. and receivers weie appointed, but the reyi.-tered debto weie so heavy that in 93 capefc out of a hundred the merchants lost their money. Some way out of this

state of affairs had to be found, and it took definite form in the creation of a Government Agricultural Bank. It is possible, therefore, to-day to borrow money from the bank on the security of the growing crops, but in the event of the proceeds not proving sufficient, then the balance that remains unpaid ranks as a first charge against the corpus of the estate, regardless of the existence of first mortgages and other lien 6. The mortgagees have the right of refusing to allow any e6tat< to borrow from the bank, but their refusal means that they have to place the estate in Chancery, with the consequence that before their liens take priority the cost of the Chancery suit and all expenditure necessary to continue the cultivation of the estate until its ultimate sale, which in some oases takes 20 years, have to be defrayed. The receivers do not err on the side of borrowing as much as they can .spend on, an estate, co that it is perhaps as well for the mortgagee to consent to the^money being borrowed from the bank, and hope for the best. The mortgagees generally hold mortgages to-day far in excess of the realisable value of the estate. Land has dropped in value very considerably, and it cannot be said to have yet reached the bottom. An estate with its buildings in good order, and with the machinery for making sugar, is not worth to-day more than £15 per acre, despite the fact that the standing buildings and machinery have cost as much as the value of the estate. Matters have reached suoh a pass that apparently the only possible ending wild be the eventual cutting up of the estates in small lots to be sold to the labouring classes. It is exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to raise any money to-day on a first mortgage, consequently there is no great desire on the part of the less monied classo invest in land. The labouring classes are able, thanks to the Panama Canal Works, to earn some money there and return to purchase land. They are anxious to do co, and they acre willing to pay even £65 an acre to obtain possession. Although there are fully 18.000 Barbadian negroes on the Panama Canal Works, they have not peen able tc save very much in the 6hape of money, but each negro that does succeed in doing so is an example* to the others, and in a year or two we shall see more of the labouring class in possession of land and of votes. — Rates of Wages. — The following are the wages paid in Barbados for house servants and labourers, who have to find themselves : — Cook, % 2d a week. Housemaid, As 2d a week. Nursery-maid, 4s 2d a week. Coachman, 5s to 7s a week? according to number >f horses. Yard boy, chopping wood, etc., 26 6d per week. Washerwoman, 4s 2d per week. Overseer on an estate, 10s to 12s the week. Superintendent, 5s to 6s the week. Driver for gang of children, As to 5s week. H-erclsmaii, 4& 2cl per ■vr'«et. Watchman, 4s 2d per week. Farm Labourer,' Is per day. Female ditto, 7d to 8d per day. Children of about 12 years of age, 6d per day. "* ** Nearly adl the work on a plantation is carried out by manual labour. There is very little ploughing done, the land being forked at a cost of 4s per acre. The cultivation, of an acre of land on an estate, including management and upkeep expenses, woi'ks out to— about £10 per annum. The wages an so low for the farm labourers that were it not for the exceedingly plentiful supply of fish and sweet potatoes, starvation would etare them in the face. As it is, the wooden cabins in which they live are very email, being about 12ft by 12ft in size, and at night they are used by fully eight to ten souls. In "the height of the flying fish season it is possible to purchase the fish at the rate of 20 to 30 for sd. The flying fish arc a little smaller than the Engilish mackerel, and provide a very excellent meal. Clothing is a secondary matter. The temperature is «o even throughout the year that a shirt and a pair of trousers are more than sufficient.