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administration of forms of government, the maintenance of a police force and even, if necessary, of an army (which, however, is in some degree under control of the home Government). These charters, and the governments established under them are, under modern methods, administered under the constant supervision of officials appointed by the home Government and located in the governed territory, and their assent to all the important acts of the governing company is necessary, including sales or leases of lands, the raising of revenue, taxation levied upon the occupants of the soil, etc. The details of this method of governing a country, and incidentally of the control or disposition of the land, are discussed under the head of "Chartered companies" and need not be repeated here.

OWNERSHIP OR LEASE OF LARGE ESTATES.

The system of control of large estates by individuals or corporations is in part a relic of slavery days, when large plantations, worked by groups of slaves, were possible; while in other cases they are still considered a necessity by reason of the fact that certain agricultural products can only be turned into marketable condition by the use of costly machinery, and that when such machinery and the accompanying plant are installed the control of a sufficient area of land to supply the natural product to be thus manufactured is a business necessity. Under these two systems, the one following the other, great estates have been established in many of the colonies, especially those in which sugar production forms the chief agricultural industry. In the West Indies and adjacent territory, where sugar cane was originally the most profitable crop, large estates were created, the cane being grown by slave labor, and considerable sums invested in the machinery of manufacture. After slavery ceased to exist, the owners of the estates found it difficult to obtain negro labor for continuing the production of the sugar cane, and in a number of cases, as has been described under the head of "Indentured labor," coolies from India, and in a few cases labor from other sources, were brought in under contract and put upon these plantations or estates and the production of cane for the manufacture of sugar continued. With the development of the present methods of sugar production, the use of extensive machinery and large plants requires a certainty of cane production, prompt handling, and a large producing area in the immediate vicinity of the plant to insure success, and for this work it is held that the control of large estates by lease or ownership and the employment, under such terms as will insure continuous labor, of a large force to operate the estates, especially during the critical period of cane ripening and grinding, is an absolute necessity. This view has led in the Dutch East Indies, since the abolition of the forced labor system, to large leases of land by the Government to great sugar manufacturing companies, and under the agrarian law of 1870 large tracts which were formerly waste lands have been leased to these companies on hereditary holdings for a seventy-five year term. In 1898 nearly 1,000,000 acres were thus ceded to 752 individuals and companies.

INDIVIDUAL OWNERSHIP.

The system which is being now generally commended, aside from that operative in the two great territories where govermental control of the land has continued for generations, India and Netherlands, is that of the subdivision of the land into comparatively small holdings, while in the densely populated tropical colonies the tendency is in favor of decidedly small holdings. This has been already discussed under the head of "Diversification of industries," where it is shown that especially in the densely populated colonies of the British West Indies careful inquiry has established, and experiments substantiated, the theory of small individual ownership of land, coupled with a diversification of industries. The application of this plan in a somewhat modified form to less densely populated sections, coupling it with the central factory system (under a plan by which the individual owners will grow cane or other agricultural products for the factory), is also recommended and in some degree being developed in certain colonial and tropical sections. In general terms it may be said that individual ownership prevails in a large proportion of the colonies where population and development are in an advanced state, and that the disposition is to apply it in conjunction with the central factories necessary for the successful production of the great staples. "The most prosperous of the colonial workingmen," says Sir Charles Dilke in his Problems of Greater Britain, “are landholders in towns or suburbs, shareholders in companies owning factories and mines, and in fact capitalists and proprietors with the same feeling against the nationalization of the land as is found among landowners in the United States. Although the most extreme land reformers of Europe either care nothing for free transfer of land, or dislike it, the whole of the (British) colonies have adopted and maintained, with every sign of popular assent, an easy system of the transfer of real estate, and support it as steadily as they do universal education, manhood suffrage, and the other planks of the old colonial liberal programme now mostly carried into law. * * * The land systems of British North America are modeled upon the American freehold homestead plan. In Cape Colony there is a curious land system of Dutch origin, the greater portion of the land being held of the Crown on a quitrent tenure, and a good deal more held as leasehold, while a few of the large estates are upon a freehold tenure. Under an act of 1887 land is disposed of at public auction with payment by the purchaser of one-fifth of the price within a year, and mortgage of four-fifths at 4 per cent in favor of the government. The State is in Cape Colony, a large landowner and quitrents form a considerable item in the public revenue. In Natal the old Dutch farmers were allowed farms of from 2,000 to 6,000 acres, at an annual rental of a little over half a farthing an acre, redeemable at fifteen years' purchase. But from 1848 a homestead system was adopted, and since 1880 lands have been sold in freehold in lots of not over 2,000 acres, payable in twenty annual installments without interest. In the Australian colonies, when lands were let out to pastoral tenants at low rents it was only as a temporary arrangement, and within the colonies the agricultural land has passed gradually to free selectors of the working class. All the colonies except the Cape, and for a time New Zealand, have shown alacrity in getting rid of the freehold of their land for cash, though all of them have tried their hand at legislation intended to secure a preference to the poor man. In each of the colonies a small body of men, with distinguished leaders, have advocated the nationalization of the land; in none of them have their views found general favor, probably for the reason that too large a proportion of the population are interested as landowners in leaving matters as they are."

LANGUAGE IN THE COLONIES.

Little effort is made by the experienced colonizing countries to introduce their own language or customs among the natives of the colonized country, except in the few colonies which proved suitable for permanent habitation of the people of the mother country. In the English colonies, classed as "habitation colonies," in which a large part of the population is composed of the natives of the mother

country or their descendants, the language is of course English, except in a certain section of Canada occupied by French, who have persistently maintained their own language and customs, and in some parts of South Africa, formerly controlled and settled by the Dutch, where the Dutch language is retained. In the British West Indies the use of the English language became general through the intercourse of the governing class with the negro population during slave days, and thus Euglish became the generally accepted language in those islands, while a similar condition prevails in the French West Indian colonies, where the language of the governing country is generally spoken.

NATIVE LANGUAGE RETAINED IN THE TROPICS.

In the great tropical communities, however, where large masses of people with a native language are governed by European nations, no effort is made to introduce the language of the governing country, except among the few with whom the officers from the home country necessarily come in contact, and through whom they distribute their instruction and government to the natives. Thus in India all natives desiring to enter the service of the Government and to serve in such capacity as will bring them in constant touch with the English officials there located, are required to learn the English language, and this they do with facility and great success; but, aside from this, the adoption of the English language is not urged upon the natives, though it is taught in the schools of the higher grades, and even in certain schools of the lower grades,' to those who desire such instruction. In the Netherlands the adoption of the language of the mother country by the natives is distinctly discouraged. Officials sent from the Netherlands to the colonies are required to perfect themselves in the language of the natives, in part in the training schools and the college maintained in the Netherlands for their instruction, and afterwards in actual intercourse with the natives, and writers upon conditions in Java state that the disposition to discourage the introduction of the language of the governing country in the colony is carried to such an extent that officials, even if addressed by a native in the Dutch language, reply in the native tongue.

THE FRENCH, SPANISH, AND PORTUGUESE METHODS..

In the colonies governed by France the method followed is somewhat different, the use of the French language among the natives being encouraged wherever practicable, and the effect of this is seen in the fact that French continues to be the general language of the people in their older colonies and even in certain islands and communities which were formerly colonies of France, but are now otherwise governed. This is also true of the methods adopted by the Spanish and Portuguese colonizers-their language having outlived their control in the vast sections of South, Central, and North America, and the East and West Indies, formerly controlled by them. This fact, that the French Government is more inclined to give its language to the colonies than is the case with the other colonizing countries, and that the Spanish and Portuguese not only give their language to the countries which they govern, but in such indelible form that it has been maintained long after their control of the territory has disappeared, is apparently due, in part, at least, to two circumstances: First, that the French and Spanish made greater efforts in their official and personal relations to assimilate the natives to their own customs and methods; and second, the active work of the missionaries and machinery of the Church of Rome, which, in conjunction with and aided by the home Governments, permeated the native communities, introducing and establishing the language and more or less of the customs of the governing people.

VIEWS OF DISTINGUISHED STUDENTS AND ECONOMISTS.

On this subject of the introduction of the language of the governing country into the colonies or noncontiguous communities governed, Sir George Cornewall Lewis says: "If it be inexpedient for a government to change suddenly the laws of a dependency, it is still more inexpedient for the government to attempt to make a sudden change in its language. The acquisition of a new language is a slow and laborious process; and it implies an amount of diligence, leisure, and intelligence which can not be expected of an entire community of adults. The great mass of mankind never acquire a language by study; they only know the language which they imperceptibly imbibe during infancy and childhood. It is no more possible for a government, by the expression of its will and by offering rewards or threatening punishments, to change suddenly the language of its subjects than to add a cubit to their stature or to give them a sixth sense. A government may publish its laws and other acts in a foreign language, but it can not cause the people to understand them; it may prohibit advocates from pleading in their native tongue, but it can not enable them, however much they may desire it, to plead in ́an acquired language; it may declare that contracts and testaments made in the language of the country are invalid, but it can not enable parties to contracts or testators to comprehend the meaning of instruments drawn in a foreign tongue. Many examples might be given of the mischievous effects which have been produced by an attempt to force the language of a government upon the people. Thus, when Joseph II attempted to treat Hungary as a dependency, to incorporate it with Austria, and to reform its laws by his own authority, the people for a time submitted, unwillingly, to his useful though too hastily introduced reforms; but when he ordered St. Stephen's crown to be carried to Vienna and issued an edict making German the language of government throughout Hungary the people arose in insurrection against him. In like manner, the measures of the King of Holland for introducing the use of the Dutch language into Belgium in the place of the French language, which was spoken by the educated classes, created a general discontent throughout Belgium, and contributed materially to produce a Belgian revolution and the consequent separation of Belgium from Holland. Even if a dominant country should succeed in diffusing its own language among the people of a dependency, it might fail in creating the attachment to its government which was the end sought by the introduction of its language. And if by a forcible or overhasty introduction of its language it engendered discontent in the dependency, it would produce an effect the very opposite of that intended; since, instead of attaching the people of the dependency to itself, it would strengthen their aversion to its supremacy. It is obvious that the best mode of incorporating a body of people with the rest of the empire is to render them contented and happy, and that any measures which renders them discontented is likely to prevent that incorporation. * * * The self-partiality which leads the dominant country to introduce its own language into a dependency, without due regard to the circumstances of the latter, sometimes brings evils upon the dependency itself by causing the appointment of people of the dominant country to offices in the dependency to the exclusion of natives from them, without sufficient reason for the preference. Inasmuch as the natives of a dependency do not aspire to offices in the dominant country, they reasonably expect to be appointed to those in their own little community. Not

only, therefore, are their feelings wounded by their exclusion from these offices, but this injury to their feelings is aggravated by the incompetency of the natives of the dominant country who are appointed to them."

A later view of this question is that of Mr. C. P. Lucas, who, in his introduction to the reprint of Mr. Lewis's work from which the above quotation is made, says: "Nowadays, it can hardly be said that Great Britain introduces or is likely to introduce into her colonial possessions her laws, language, and religion without due regard to the position and interests of the dependency. The French laws and language and the Roman Catholic religion are in no way tabooed in Lower Canada, for instance, or in Mauritius. The Roman Dutch law is still the basis of the legal system in the old Dutch colonies, the Cape Colony, and British Guiana." To this statement may be added that the Dutch language introduced in South Africa by the settlers from the Netherlands, when the Cape of Good Hope was a Netherlands colony, is still retained among the people of Dutch descent with such tenacity that the British Government has found it advisable to permit its use in the schools and in the legislative body in which discussions are maintained in both the English and Dutch languages, and records of these discussions are kept in both languages.

QUESTION IV.

HOW ARE HABITS OF INDUSTRY AND THRIFT INCULCATED AMONG THE NATIVES AND THE NECESSARY LABOR SUPPLY OBTAINED FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF INDUSTRIES WHICH SHALL RENDER THE COLONY SELFSUPPORTING AND ITS PEOPLE PROSPEROUS?

The question of the labor supply, especially in undeveloped territories, has been widely discussed by those interested in the management of colonies. This is especially true with reference to tropical territory, to which the immigration of citizens of the home country is usually small, and in which continuous and heavy labor can not be successfully performed by natives of the temperate zone. The opening of roads, the construction of railways and canals, the development of mines, the creation of great establishments for the handling and utilization of the products of agriculture, especially sugar and tobacco, have required large supplies of labor in the tropical territories controlled by governments of the temperate zone. In some of these territories great difficulty has been experienced in obtaining a satisfactory supply of such labor from the native population of the territory. The fact that conditions of soil and climate and ease of production in the Tropics enable the natives to produce sufficient for their daily requirements with very little labor adds to the difficulty of cultivating among them habits of industry and persistent labor necessary for the successful conduct of great enterprises similar to those which have brought success, prosperity, and great development to the countries of the temperate zone.

While it is not assumed in this discussion that these conditions prevail in the territory over which the United States now exercises control to such an extent that they can not be remedied by the application of conditions which produce industry among the native people of other communities, the difficulties which have arisen in this line in other communities similarly located seem to render it proper that the experience of other nations and peoples in this, as in all matters pertaining to colonization, be here presented.

Prior to the middle of the nineteenth century this problem was met with forced labor, slavery. Great industries were developed in the Tropics, especially in the West Indies, where sugar production flourished. Great plantations were established, largely owned by nonresidents and directed by their representatives in the islands, and the labor performed by slaves imported from Africa or their descendants. In the East Indies the use of absolute slave labor was not so extensive, the density of population in India and its readiness to accept employment furnishing a ready supply of labor. In Java a system of forced labor adopted by the Dutch, by which the entire population was required to give a certain number of days in each year to public works, while the land was cultivated under a rigid system established by that Government, furnished a temporary solution of the labor question in that island. With the abolition of slavery, which public opinion demanded in the middle of the century, and the abolition of forced labor in Java, which public sentiment also demanded a few years later, and the development of other tropical territories, new complications arose, and various experiments have been made and various solutions of the labor problem proposed and discussed.

SIX METHODS OF OBTAINING A LABOR SUPPLY IN COLONIES.

Six distinct propositions for the development of the necessary labor supply in the Tropics have been offered: (a) Forced labor by the native population or imported slaves; (b) the importation of labor under contract; (c) convict labor from the mother country; (d) the sale of lands at a comparatively high price and the application of the proceeds to the payment of sufficiently high wages to induce immigration of labor; (e) the development of communication and transportation routes, by which industry in the colony may become profitable and therefore acceptable to the natives; and (ƒ) the diversification of industries by which individual enterprises will be encouraged.

FORCED LABOR.

Under this head would naturally be included, first, slavery, which now happily has disappeared and which need not be discussed except as to the conditions which immediately followed its termination in the tropical colonies where it had furnished the chief labor supply; second, the use of convict labor in the colonies; and, third, the method under which the Dutch created a great system of roads and internal communications in Java, and, coincident with this development, a great agricultural prosperity, much of which has continued since the abolition of the forced-labor system.

SLAVERY.

The emancipation act, which became a law in England on August 28, 1833, provided that on August 1, 1834, all slaves in the British colonies should become apprenticed laborers, and that they should be absolutely free in 1840. Subsequently the date of complete emancipation was fixed for August 1, 1838. England paid £20,000,000 as compensation to the slave owners. The number of slaves who received their freedom on August 1, 1838, was 639,000. "Despite the confident predictions of the antislavery party," says Ireland, "emancipation had a most disastrous effect on the West Indian colonies. Numbers of estates fell out of cultivation; plantations became a drug on the market; the cotton and coffee industries were, for the time being, destroyed. Looking back on the situation, it is readily perceived that no other result could have been looked for. It was slavery that had made the existence of the plantations possible; it was the yearly supply of slaves that kept them going. * After being condemned for years to hard daily toil, it was surely unreasonable to expect

*

*

that negroes would not take advantage of their freedom to lead that life of leisure of which each of them had dreamed-and only dreamed.

* So desperate did the condition of the West Indian colonies become that the House of Commons appointed a select committee to inquire into the state of the West Indian colonies in reference to the existing relations between employers and laborers. The report of this committee makes an analysis of the causes of the West Indian distress, and also foreshadows the policy by means of which alone extreme disaster could be averted, and which was, in fact, adopted by several of the colonies."

The report of the British West Indian commission above referred to, presented in 1842, may be summarized as follows: First, that the emancipation act was productive of the most favorable and gratifying results regarding the character and condition of the negro population; second, that the negro had shown an increased desire for instruction and a growing disposition to assume the obligations of marriage and the responsibilities of domestic life, improved morals, a rapid advance in civilization, and an increased sense of the value of property and independent station; third, that simultaneous with this had come a great diminution in the staple productions of the West Indies, injurious and in some cases ruinous to the proprietors of estates; fourth, that this had resulted, in some of the larger colonies, in the abandonment of estates; fifth, that the principal cause of this diminished production was the difficulty of obtaining steady and continuous labor, and the high rates of remuneration required for broken and indifferent labor; sixth, that this diminution of the labor supply was due to the fact that the laborers had betaken themselves to other and more profitable occupations, and were able to live in comfort by only laboring for the planters three or four days in the week and from five to seven hours a day; seventh, that this was largely due to the fact that the negroes had been able to obtain land upon easy terms for their own occupation; eighth, that a very small area of land provides sufficient to yield ample food supply, and in many cases a considerable revenue independent of wages received from plantations; ninth, that this cheapness of land was due to the excess of fertile lands beyond the requirements of the existing population. The report closed by recommending the promotion of immigration of a fresh laboring population, subject to such regulations as would insure the full rights and comforts of the immigrants as freemen, and be conducted under the authority, inspection, and control of responsible public officers. The experiment of the importation of indentured labor, recommended in the above report, will be discussed in another section of this study, but the above summarization of the report itself, which resulted from a study of the conditions which followed the abolition of forced labor, is here presented in its proper sequence, especially with the purpose of calling attention to this statement made more than half a century ago regarding the disposition of native negro labor to divide itself into individual industries and establish homes upon small holdings, and by doing so contribute to the diversification of industries which has been already referred to as a possible solution of the labor question in the Tropics, especially the West Indies, with their proximity to great markets for products of a diversified character.

CONVICT LABOR.

Another form of forced labor which has been adopted in a few cases, especially in the earlier history of colonization, was that supplied by transportation of convicts. Australia, as is well known, was originally a convict colony. The Russian Government for a time utilized portions of Siberia in this manner, and the French island of New Caledonia in the Pacific and French Guiana in South America are still the destination of certain classes of convicts from France. New Caledonia, in 1898, consisted of 7,477 convicts undergoing sentence, 2,515 liberated convicts, 1,714 soldiers, 1,762 officials, and 585 colonists. It is needless to say that convict labor or penal service in the colony for other than crimes there committed is no longer considered advisable or advantageous, and has been practically abandoned, except in small islands which can virtually be given up to this purpose and not considered in the life of the ordinary colony. "In 1845, and again in 1849," says Dilke, "the inhabitants of Melbourne prevented by force the landing of British convicts, and much more violent language was used of that resistance by the English press than has recently been applied to the equally illegal prevention of the landing of Chinese. In the second of the two years named the legislature of New South Wales passed a law which imposed on all persons who might have been transported to or convicted in any British colony in the Southern Hemisphere, and who might arrive in New South Wales, the necessity of notifying the magistrates of all changes of residence on their part, and, if summoned by a justice of the peace, of accounting for their means of support in each case under a penalty of two years' imprisonment with hard labor. This act was disallowed by the home Government. The Australian League, which was started at Melbourne in 1851, was intended, among other objects, to support with money those who might suffer from being prominent in the cause of 'antitransportation' (of convicts). Victoria, in 1852, passed a 'Convicts' prevention act,' which prevented ex-convicts who had received the Queen's pardon, or who were absolutely free, having completed their sentences, or who held tickets of leave, which gave them a legal right to go where they chose in Australia, from landing in Victoria."

Merivale, in his course of lectures on colonization before the University of Oxford in 1839, 1840, and 1811, commenting upon the convict-labor experiment in Australia, said: "The penal colonies under the British Government are now four in number-New South Wales, Tasmania, Bermuda, and Norfolk Island. In Bermuda there are about 900 convicts only, working in gangs in the Government dockyards. Norfolk Island is used as a place of temporary punishment. The two Australian colonies (New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land) contain at this time (1840) more than 40,000 convicts, and of these it appears that about 26,000 are assigned or made over to settlers as servants to perform compulsory labor; the remainder are worked in the service of the Government in road gangs, chain gangs, or in the penal settlements. From 1787 to 1836, 75,250 convicts had been transported to New South Wales, and 27,757 to Van Diemen's Land. The average of late years has been about 3,500 to the former colony and 2,000 to the latter. It becomes important to trace the effect produced on these colonies by the continued influx of convict labor, and the probable results of its discontinuance. In the first place, the effect of the extensive introduction of convicts on the progress of the population must be considered. The great disproportion between the sexes, which is unavoidable under such circumstances, necessarily prevents it from making a rapid advance. Accordingly the increase of number in Australia has been very slow. But a population which grows in this manner-by adult immigration-must for some time be favorably constituted with respect to the productiveness of labor; there must be a smaller number of unproductive persons. But convicts in a healthy country like Australia soon grow old, and it may be doubted, therefore, whether, after a certain period, such a population is really more effective than one which grows by natural movement. The labor of convicts is probably the dearest of all labor; that is, it costs more to some portion or other of society. The master himself obtains it cheaper than the services of the free laborer, but this is only because the State has already expended a much greater sum then the difference on the maintenance and restraint of the convict; and, when obtained, it is not in the long run equally efficient or valuable. In our colonies the convicts are divided into two classes-those employed on public works and those assigned as servants to individuals. From the first of these classes it is probable that as much labor is obtained, for an equal expense, as would be procured from hired laborers at that high rate of wages which prevails in young communities. But with reference to the other class, that of assigned servants, the case is very No. 4- -20

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