Richmond daily palladium. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1905-1906, 1906-03-03

pitched and tossed into hillocks all
along the route, with great trees
leaning over the road, moss draped
and orchid spangled. Dense growth
packed the spaces next the ground,
water dripped and mist hung low.
The sun was so many miles away
behind the clouds that it seemed
natural impossibility for any blue
sky whatever to be behind the vapor.
Jamaica negroes, clad in kahki, in
gunny sacks, in anything, barefooted
with broad brimmed hats, carrying
inevitably the machete and the UNI
brella, tramped up and down the
track, lodged the train by plunging
into the jungle, and smiled broad
grins as the group on the observation
car whirled on into the planttions.
Then the banana district came
about the road, first the small farms,
ill-kempt, ragged, then the larger
private estates; then the great Zent
district. For miles and miles the
train went through a monotonous,
close reaching jungle of bananas. The
plants lowered, twenty, thirty feet in
the air, standing in groups of four
and five in cross checked rows Of fif-
teen feet apart, where they were
planted when the underground was
first cleared away, and permitted to
come to first fruition during the year
it took the tall timber to rot after
having been felled across the young
paintings, sprouting from the. ban
ana eyes.
Fields were in all stages, because
cutting goes on throughout the year,
each plant being chopped down, when
its bunch is cut, and given about
three months in which to grow anew.
and produce another bunch. Three
or four times a year the ground is
cleared away beneath the plants,
grass and sprouting underground be-
ing hacked down and allowed to rot
away-each clearing done by contract
labor at about $3.50 per hectare
leach hectare being "a acres land
this well done enables the land to
continue yielding for years and years
without replanting.
On one side of the train, steaming
in the rain could be seen a squad of
workmen under the negro contracting
foreman hacking away with their ma
chetes at the underground, leaving
great cross-alternat avenues under
the towering tropical foliage. !
On the other side could be seen the
squads of two or three working with
a single mule or pony cutting fruit,
one man armed with long pole, with
a cross-knife at the end, chilling"
the stalks until they should bend
gradually toward him, and then cut
ting the bunch with his machete, his
companions binding the punches in
paniers on the mules or pony's back
and carrying six or eight at time to
the platforms along the track. Each
bunch removed, the cutter could be
seen chopping the stalks to the
ground.
For this work, all were told the ne
sroes receive from two and three
quarters to four cents per bunch, ac-
cording to the distance from the road
with three and half cents as the av-
erage. Each squad is said to be ca
pable of cutting under contract three
hundred punches a day. The yield |
on good banana plantation is five
punches per hectare, per an
mum, with some instances where $50
punches have been raised, this in the
Banana river district
There are seven varieties of ban
anas-the regular or standard COM
mercial banana, called the patricia;
the red, the gueno, the buneo chino,
the mazana, the datil and the Indian. |
The fruit company, so it was said, |
allows itself on its book estimates
twenty-three cents a bunch, gold, as
the cost of production. 1t pays