LAND OF TO-MORROW

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 16534, 29 December 1927, Page 2

LAND OF TO-MORROW

f- POTENTIALITIES OF BRAZIL. huge rubber-growing PROJECT. Tradition has it that the Spanish, are more or Jess afflicted with the habit of postponing until to-morrow what tbew could very well do to-day. Manana! It is all summed up in the word which- means to-morrow later on, or some other time, or never as the speaker determines. Bur the Spaniard has not this habit on his owa. It is well developed in the modern Brazilian, who finds case and comfort by saying “Manila” (the equivalent to the Spanish “manana ) when anything bothersome intrudes on his perspective. Cabot, the Portuguese explorer, who chanced' upon the Brazilian littoral about the .year 1500, said it was a eountrv with a great future before it. Mr. W. J. Renfree, formerly of Dunedin, and for 25 years a resident, of Rio do Janeiro, agrees with Cabot — Brazil's! future is still before it. Had sUch a country chanced to fall into the hands of British or Germanic peoples it would now be another United States, having an area just as great and land every hit as productive as that progressive country. IMPOVERISHED LANDS.

But. says Mr. Renfree, what do we find? The! land for 300 miles round Rio and along the coast, exhausted a generation ago, by continuous coffee growing and lack of anything in the nature of a fertilising agent. Coffee is still Brazil’s staple product. With tlie aid of imported Italian labor coffee’valued at anything between £9)000,000 and £15,000,000 is raised m Sao Paulo district, and of that nearly 50 per cent, goes to the United States —the greatest coffee-drinking country i in the worlde 'So the export trade of ' Brazil centres in Santos, the port of the Sao Paulo province. Rio is the political centre'only, beautiful is perspective with a magnificent harbor, ■but with a public spirit that is sumf med up in the word “Manha.” Of course, at the back of it there is some agricultural activity, but it has never been conducted on scientific lines as in the Argentine, and the quality of the meat cannot compare with that .of the more southern republic.. Yet here is a vast fertile country II days from New Yotß, and a forthight from England, only waiting, for capital and intelligently directed labor to become the granary of the world, for Brazil boasts every kind of land and all climates from its sub-tropical seaboard to the soaring heights of the Andes, Yet, despite the obvious inactivity and neglect of opportunity the Brazilian people do not find it difficult to grub along—in its genial climate little is needed to keep the wolf from the door —as for the rest, “Manha!” A MIXED POPULATION.

Mr. Renfree states that Rio has a population of a million and a half, and one that is growing steadily. Of that population about 40 per cent, are blacks, of African origin, for, like the United States, Brazil was no stranger to slave trading. The negroes now have full political rights, and as they havo freely intermarried with the Portuguese, every color under the sun gleams in the skins of its people; but, . curiously enough, the white blood is proving the stronger, and those interested in the subject believe that the time will come when the white blood will predominate over the African infusion. As for the real natives (Indians) they are rarely seen in the haunts of civilisation. Away back in the dense forests of the' lordly Amazon they may be met, but the Brazilian knows them not. BRAZILIAN POLITICS.

Brazil has never been remote from active political warfare. Some 900 lives were lost in the last revolution of 1924, but the Government was strong' enough to suppress it, and since then something approaching stability lias been reached without further recourse to arms. True, like most other countries, Brazil’s money has deteriorated in value. The paper milreis that was worth Is 4d before the war is now worth 6d only. An attempt to stabilise it at that value throughout the world has been made by the Federal Government, so far without success, owing presumably to doubting minds of Lombard and Wall Streets.

The Rio tramway and electric lighting systems lire controlled by a Canadian company employing much English and French capital, and the Leopolclina Railway Co. (with which Mr. Renfree was associated for 15 years, has a capital of £15,000,000 1o work its fanlike system out of Rio to the Menas, Espirito, Santo, and Rio provinces. There is also a State-owned railway that runs south-west to coffee-growing Sao Paulo.

GIGANTIC RUBBER-GROWING PROPOSAL.

Mr. Renfrce referred to the "proposal of Mr. Henry Ford to spend £6,000,000 in rubber-growing in. the valley of the Amazon. A start, 'has already been made with the project that is to put the United States on the rubber map. Mr. Renfreo conceives that Mr. Ford must have .secured very solid guarantees from the Government, for in the past alien enterprise has been checked by the crustom of allowing an industry to become established and then taxing it, out of existence. It is that sense of insecurity, together with the ingrained indolence of its people, that lias prevented! Brazil from entering the list of firstclass nations.