Page:Tales in Political Economy by Millicent Garrett Fawcett.djvu/18

 said would prevent all the disasters which the chief had predicted as sure to follow the abandonment of the palm plantations.

Captain Adam set to work to get this plan into shape: the main feature of it was not to abandon the plantations suddenly, but gradually to transfer the labour they now absorbed to more profitable occupations. In two years he calculated that the whole 400 people now employed in the palm plantations might be growing spices and coffee enough to form a valuable export trade, and that at no time during the process of transition should any of the labourers be out of employment. They were to be removed from the palm plantations in companies of fifty at once; an eighth of the entire population was at the same time to be permitted the privilege of having windows; and in return for this favour the non-oil growers were to provide the ex-oil growers with necessary food and clothing till the first crops of coffee and spices could be sold, when the ex-oil growers would be quite independent of the help of their neighbours. Captain Adam was