The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-03-22

Frederlckstoed, St. Croix, D, w. l
 Feb, 15, 1902 | Wandering over this beautiful island
 you see everywhere abandoned build
 ings and estates going rapidly to de-
 cay. The one industry has been sugar
 cane culture, and since that has de-
 clined people do not know how to en-
 gage in anything else, even had they
 the means and energy to branch out in
 new lines Plantations that formerly yielded a profit of many thousands or
 dollars dc not now pay running eX- penses-so say their oWners-beCause of
 the unreliable character of free negro labor and the crushing competition or
 the subsidized heet-root sugar of Ger
 many, Besides all this, probably not | least among the causes of the present 1 poverty of St Croix are the absentee 1 system of ownership, lack of thrift m
 management, and eXtraVagant modes
 of living. A good many other of the 1 West India islands are committing the l same disastrous mistake-that of ne- | glecting al other products for the cul- l tivation of sugar cane When drought
 
 I when the market becomes over-stocked , by somebody who can raise 1t cheaper,
 the planters are in dire distress, hay ing nothing to fall back upon With view to making things easier for the people of St. CroiX the Danish gov
 ernment, af CIV years ago, constructed great central factoty with a system of pipes to bring the cane juice thereto from the various plantations. But in- stead of helping matters, King Chris tians attempted improvement gave rise to no end of dissatisfaction and several negro insurrections. There are many of these Central Factories" in
 different parts of the West Indies, mo- tably in Martinique, which at one time had thirteen of them They are con ducted much as are cheese~factories ln the United States, fed by milk from the neighboring farms; but in St. CroiX the planters complain that they were forced to join the factory com pany--being in debt to the government, owing to a. series of bad years-though many of them had their own mills and expensive machinery and could make larger profits, if any at all, by manu- featuring the sugar themselves. The company pays to each planter the value of five and one-half pounds of sugar for one hundred pounds of cane The planters claim that it is not enough; while the government insists that it cannot pay more and keep the factory going The new order of things seems to have ben bad, too, for the overpow- ering negro element having thrown thousands of them out of employment | and reduced wages of the comparatively ! few who are willing to work on the planta tions to ten cents a day--in many 1 cases even less than that. As a nat ural consequence, innumerabe tiny | farms and sub-lettings have sprung up | all over the island, carried on, hap-haz- gard fashion, by the blacks; thus draw | ing labor from the larger estates that have managed to survive and rendering helpless the few planters who were able to resist the central-factory The whole business seems to be sort of boomerang disastrous to every body concerned and hitting the government which instituted it hardest of all The wealthy plant CTS, finding 1t a loosing game, simply gave it up and went back to Denmark, to Paris Or some other part of the world, where they could enjoy life bet ter with their money, and the poorer cane raisers abandoned their planta tions to engage in business in the towns, or to seek work elsewhere. Hence, as before mentioned, there are many unoccupied estates all over the beautiful island, which may now be l. fo,s l small portion of their real value Su- gar cane is probably a dead issue here, at least for years to come; but the energetic and thrifty Northerner might easily turn plantation into profitable orchards and gardens for the raising If all sorts of fruits and vegetables to supply the winter markets of Northern cities. The soil of Santa Cruz is fertile enough and there seems to be no lack If water. Probably nearly everything II would grow here to perfection, if intel igently cultivated. As a sample of ormer methods when times were flush, we are told that, few years ago, all he fruit trees outside the town were ut down, thousands of them, simply because the negroes were inclined to do , nothing but pick, lie down and eat, so , ong as there was fruit in sight There , ore, to remove temptation from their ( oath, in the hope of getting more work ( nut of them, the heroic measure was { dopted of destroying all the fruit z rees. 1 One who has never seen it can have ( 10 idea hoI beautiful is a vast field of ' ustling cane. There are still a num- { er in these Danish island. in spite of ,, raw- backs-all those stretches of bril- 2 ant emerald on the hillsides, shading { rom pale yellow to pea tint, then to { ark grass green, with whose shadows z he peculiar light of this latitude plays I trange freaks-are corn fields. Watch i ng one of them from a little distance, s pillows like an ocean under the soft . y blowing trade winds, refectng ev- ny passing cloud and the shadow of irds flying over-nOW almost black; hen. as sunbeams catch it bending own, turning pale red; and again vel aW as furnished gold Through it's