Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1905-09-26
IN THE WEST INDIES
THE DISTINGUISHED TRAVELLER
TALKS OF ISLANDS FUTURE.
DR.. Robinson Of the Universities of
Edinburgh and London Ends
Long Journey.
Special Correspondence of The star.

Special Correspondence of The Star
SAN JUAN, P. R., September 90 1906.
Charles H. Robinson. NJ. A, NJ. D., of the
universities of Edinburgh and London, has
been spending few days in San Juan
prior to the arrival of the homeward
bound French transatlantic steamer which
will take him to Havre, whence he will
cross the channel to England.
DR.. Robinson has travelled extensively
through Europe, Asia, Africa and the
United States. and is just concluding a
long tour of the West Indies DR.. Robin
son is the son of wealthy English mer-
chant and has travelled continuously for
the last ten years without having revisited
his home during that period
Gloomy Future for Some.
In speaking of the West Indies he said:
with the exception of Cuba, Santo Do
mingo, Jamaica, Porto Rico and Trinidad.
but a gloomy future awaits the other is
lands and islets that form the West Indian
archipelago Commercially, they now
of very little significance, and what little
importance they still have Is daily de-
creasing. The past prosperity of these lit
tie islends are chiefly based on the sugar
cane industry. Powerful machinery for
triturating cane and centrifugals for wash
ing sugar had not yet been introduced
neither had beet root sugar swamped the
market and reduced prices. Labor, then
as now, was cheap, and planters could af-
ford the loss entailed by the use OF defec-
tive, oId-fashoned apparatus and yet dis
pose of their muscovado sugar and mo-
lasses at rates that made the business
profitable. Now all that is changed. Sugar
and molasses do not pay on the petty scale
in which they are produced In those islands,
and their other products are too insig-
nificant to make them self-supporting
Most of those islands are also very thickly
populated, and this increases the evil.
1.-THE British. Danish and Dutch govern
ments have practically grown tired of their
improbable West India possessions. and
continue to hold them because of the lack
of feasible and satisfactory means OF re-
lieying themselves of the burden.
1.-THE French West India islands are very
small and very poor, yet on account OF
the fewness of their number and their i'm
portance to the French government their
condition is by no means so precarious as
that of the large group of little British is
lands, nor as that, of the extremely small
and practically barren or otherwise unpro-
ductive Danish and Dutch islands.
what would most likely ameliorate the
condition, or rather reduce the administra-
five expense of the British West Indies,
would be to bring them under confed-
Grafton, making Jamaica, for example. the
largest and wealthiest of them, the seat of
government. Even so the benefit would
only be extremely partial. Confederation
is, however, strenuously opposed by the ma
aware that they would not could not
become the seat of government.
-..s7 Another Solution.
Another practical solution of the econom-
ical problem would be for these little is
lands to be coded to the United States, but
this the patriotic British islanders will not
for moment consider. at least at present,
and they assert in their majority that they
prefer to lead a penurious existence under
the British flag than to enjoy a life OF
comparative prosperity under the stars and
stripes There is. however, no knowing
what time and a change of policy on the
part of the United States and Great Brit
ain may bring about. 1 agree with the is
landers in their opinion that the advantage
to be derived by passing under American
rule would only be from an economical
standpoint; in all other respects they
would greatly be the losers
with respect to Cuba, Santo Domingo
Jamaica and Trinidad conditions are far
different. Cuba is large, fertile and quite
able to decently support itself, provided the
administration of the island be kept clean
and the Cubans do not permit petty poll
tics hot-headed folly and groundless preju-
dices to rule their official life. Students
OF the situation in Cuba agree that that re-
public will eventually enter the Union or
will be brought under American rule"