Page:Problems of Empire.djvu/149

 Extract from a Speech at Christchurch, November, 1898.

present evils in the West Indies are not solely due to the late hurricane, but to causes of deeper root. Owing to the competition of bounty-fed Continental sugar, the islands have been declining in prosperity for some time. The Royal Commission reported last year that the sugar industry was threatened by such reduction in the immediate future 'as may not in some of the Colonies differ from extinction.' The result has been that whereas formerly three-fourths of the exports were the products of the sugar-cane, there is now want of employment, reduction in the rate of wages and in the standard of living, and consequent inability to meet expenditure. Many of our West Indian possessions, as, for instance, British Guiana, St. Vincent, Barbadoes, and Dominica—the conditions of which are described in the Report—are entirely dependent on the sugar industry, and the price of sugar has fallen to less than half of what it was in 1882.

The remedies proposed by the Royal Commission are peasant proprietorship and the encouragement of minor industries, better communication, and the increase of the fruit trade, besides grants of money to the various islands. Whilst there may be some 131