Page:Scidmore--Java the garden of the east.djvu/118

98 satisfaction in England that its statesmen had handed back the island, that might have proved only an embarrassment and intolerable expense instead of a profit to the British crown. The King of Holland had established and guaranteed the Netherlands Trading Company, which acted as the commission agent of the government in Europe, importing in its own ships exclusively, selling all the produce in Europe, and conducting a general business in the colony. The partial failure of this company, which obliged the king to meet the guaranteed interest, brought about a new order of things destined to increase the colonial trade and crown revenues.

As private enterprise could not make the Java trade what it had been, Governor Van den Bosch, who originated the "culture system" as a means of relieving the distressed finances, was sent out from Holland in 1830, with power to grant cash credits and make ten-year contracts with private individuals who would assist in developing the sugar industry. Sufficient advances were made to these colonists to enable them to erect sugar-mills and to maintain themselves until, by the sales of their products, they were able to repay the capital and own their mills. The government agreed that the natives of each community or district should grow sufficient sugar-cane on their lands to supply the mills' capacity, and deliver it at the mills at fixed rates. The natives were obliged to plant one fifth of the village lands in sugar-cane, and each man to give one day's labor in seven to tending the crop. The village head man was paid for the community three and a half florins for each picul of