CLEANING CACAO BEANS (SEE, ALSO, COLOR PLATE II)

After the beans have been removed from the pods they are put to ferment for a few days and are then sunned and cleaned. Cacao beans are covered with a slimy substance aptly termed "muck," and this is removed in the manner shown in the picture. Children shuffle back and forth through the beans, the muck coming off on their feet.

Rodney Memorial, erected to the memory of the stout sea warrior who laid the foundations of British naval prowess that later took command of the seas at Trafalgar; the Court House, and the old King's House, which was founded in 1534, awaken memories of the stirring era in which the old capital was more than the official seat of a colony-of the day when it was the center of British dominion in the New World.

GOVERNMENT

One does not drive around the environs of Kingston very long without noticing that most of the inhabitants are negroes. Even then he is hardly prepared for the statement that of the 860,000 inhabitants of the island only 15,000 are white people.

Both statistically and socially the negroes are subdivided into blacks and "colored," the former being of pure negro blood and the latter having an admixture of white blood.

Of the nonwhites 160,000 are of mixed blood and 660,000 are of native African descent. The former hold the minor white-collar jobs in the island because most of them have a better education and appearance than their ebon brethren.

Yet, for all the disproportion of nonwhites, the white population governs. The British have very cleverly solved the situation which once threatened to overturn things in the island. They let the blacks and colored people have a certain representation in the Legislative Council, but rest the final control in the hands of the whites so thoroughly that British rule is never menaced.

Sugar cane is really a staple food for workers in all countries where it grows. Having fruits, cane, rice, corn, and an abundance of fish, the natives of Jamaica do not need much meat.

LOADING SUGAR CANE TO BE TRANSPORTED TO THE "CENTRAL"

Photograph by Jacob Gayer

Modern methods for handling huge crops are employed on the large plantations, even though the cost of human labor is not high. This is generally true throughout British colonies.

A PROSPECTIVE SUGAR KING NEAR BUFF BAY
Many little patches of cane are worked by the natives for home consumption.

In 1865, after a negro outbreak at Morant Bay, it was decided by the British that thereafter there should be no legislative assembly, but that the powers of government should be reposed in the English sovereign.

Thereunder is a Governor, a Privy Council, and a Legislative Council. The Privy Council, as well as the Governor, is appointed by the King of England. The Legislative Council is made up of the Governor as President, five er officio members, ten appointed members, and fourteen elected members. Thus the white majority in the council, coupled with the veto power of the Governor, insures that, even if all of the fourteen elected members were blacks, the whites would still be in control of the island administrative affairs.

By this arrangement the negroes can always have the fun of the political game without harm befalling the island thereby.

Slavery was abolished by the British

Government in 1834, as those who sometimes sit in judgment of that empire should remember, and the slaveholders recompensed for the loss of their serfs.

The immediate results of this voluntary manumission in Jamaica were no better than those of war-enforced emancipation in our own South, however; for, little knowing how to use their new-found freedom, the erstwhile slaves settled down to such irresponsible idleness that agriculture, the one big industry of the island, was almost paralyzed.

Most of the bigger planters, foreseeing the deluge of idleness that would follow, sold their lands at a sacrifice and, taking their wealth with them, returned to England for good.

The poorer planters were not able to follow suit, and the ensuing years saw them struggling along with idle people all around, but labor unattainable.

To remedy these difficulties, the gov

A boatload of logwood on the Black River near Lacovia (see, also, Color Plate VIII).

ernment undertook the importation of coolie labor from the East Indies and, with these coolies as a nucleus, began the rehabilitation of agriculture. Many of the East Indians are still there, and surely their lot is greatly improved when compared with that of their fellows in their own overcrowded land (see pp. 10 and 11).

As the years passed, the freed negroes began to discover that, even in so rich a modern Eden as is Jamaica, some work is required if one is to eat regularly; and the urge of hunger, among other things, brought them back into the cane fields, sugar mills, and rum stills.

However, the necessities are so few in the eyes of the rural Jamaican negro, and the dolce far niente appeal so persuasive, that he is able to exist with comparatively little exertion.

So, on the island in general and in the rural sea-level districts in particular, the urge of existence does not call for steady labor the year round.

House rent demands no place, generally speaking, in the rural-dwelling Jamaican

black's budget. He can build his own home of heavy grass and thatch it with banana leaves, or he can make it of mud and thatch, with cobbled floor. The more prosperous among the natives build wood houses out of old packing cases, scraps of cast-off corrugated roofing, flattened kerosene-can tin, and the like. Tropical vines soon hide the patchwork, for Dame Nature is a great healer of scars.

Nor is clothing a pressing problem with the rural blacks. The children may run naked during the tender years. The womenfolk dress in cotton gowns, which they wear as long as there is a piece left, barring Sundays, when they appear neatly and becomingly attired, and those occasions when they go into the city to market. The men wear long cotton drawers or the remains of trousering, shady shirts, and battered, frayed straw hats; but, in good sooth, who cares?

Now and then in passing along the roads one has a flash of a turbaned figure of the East, or his shy womankind in head scarf, with silver ornaments on arm and