JAMAICA
Jamaica lies 80 miles south of the eastern end of Cuba, between 17 degrees 43 minutes and 18 degrees 32 minutes north latitude and 76 degrees 10 minutes and 78 degrees 20 minutes west longitude. It is 144 miles long and 50 miles across at its widest part, with a total area of 4207 square miles.
The island is traversed from east to west by a mountain range from which a number of spurs run out to the northwest or southeast. This range is more sharply defined in the eastern end, where the highest point is Blue Mountain Peak, 7360 feet above sea-level. The mountains gradually slope westward down to the hills of the western plateau, which is of limestone formation and comprises two-thirds of the island’s surface. As a rule the highlands terminate abruptly in steep bluffs, a strip of level land lying between them and the sea. On the south coast there are extensive plains. Fully one hundred rivers and streams empty themselves into the Caribbean, but the greater number of them are not navigable and in flood time they become raging torrents. In 1911 the population, of whom only 2 per cent are white, was estimated at 831,123. It is made up of Maroons, descendants of the slaves of the Spanish; descendants of African negro slaves; a mixture of British and negro; laborers from India; a sprinkling of Chinese, and the white settlers.
On the coast the climate is hot and humid, but at the higher elevations it is mild and delightful. The temperature at Kingston and the low sea-level region generally ranges between 70.7 degrees and 87.8 degrees Fahrenheit. At Cinchona, which is 4907 feet high, it runs from 57.5 degrees to 68.5 degrees. Withrare exceptions, rain falls during every month in the year, and there are two wet seasons, each of about three weeks duration, one in May and one in October. The amount varies considerably; the yearly average for Kingston is 32.6 inches, for Cinchona 105.5 inches and for the entire island 66.3 inches. Hurricanes, which were of frequent occurrence during the early part of last century, have not visited the island so often of late years. Earthquakes take place from time to time, that of 1907 having been particularly violent and destructive.
Transportation facilities are excellent, the roads are good and a railway 180 miles long connects Port Antonio, Kingston and Montego bay.
Jamaica was discovered by Columbus on May 3, 1494, and was called Santiago by him, but this never supplanted the original Indian name Jaymaca, “the island of springs,” modified into its present form, Jamaica. Columbus put in at the island for shelter in 1505, and four years later his son Diego sent out Don Juan d’Esquivel to take possession of it in the name of the Spanish crown. Sant’ Iago de la Vega, now Spanish Town, founded in 1523, was destroyed by the British in 1596 and was rebuilt after their departure. The British raided the island again in 1635, and twenty years later they occupied it permanently, expelling the Spaniards entirely by 1658. During the three years that followed, Jamaica was under military rule and then a constitution modeled upon that of the mother country was established.
About this time the island became a rendezvous for the buccaneers. These gentry quite often combined the roles of merchants or planters and pirates or sea-rovers. In 1670 the treaty of Madrid confirmed the British in their possession of the island and the buccaneers were suppressed. Jamaica then became a great slave market, and the growing of sugar cane and the manufacture of sugar on an extensive scale were begun.Civil disturbances retarded the progress of the colony until 1728. The town of Port Royal was destroyed by a great earthquake in 1692, while in 1712 and 1722 hurricanes of extreme violence carried destruction throughout the island.
When the Dutch were driven from Brazil by the Portuguese in 1655 many of them settled in Jamaica, Barbados and other West Indian islands. They brought their slaves with them, and, besides, they had a good knowledge of sugar and the necessary capital, so that the industry entered a new phase of development after their arrival. The keenest competitors of the British islands were the French sugar producers of Saint Dominique, Guadeloupe and Martinique, as they were more skilled in manufacturing methods and made sugar at a lower cost. A heavy export tax affected the sugar trade of Jamaica and her sister colonies adversely. The refining of sugar was prohibited and heavy import duties placed upon sugar and syrup entering British North American possessions closed that market to the Jamaican product. Notwithstanding these drawbacks the industry continued to grow and in 1791 the destruction of the plantations of Saint Dominique removed a formidable rival.
Since the passage of the emancipation act in 1834 and the granting of £16,500,000 as partial indemnity to the planters for the loss of their slaves, there has been persistent agitation by the planters, both in Parliament and outside of it. It became very loud when the protection afforded West Indian sugars as against sugars raised in slave-owning countries was lessened and finally withdrawn. It subsided somewhat with the abolition of slavery in the colonies of other European nations, and it was renewed with added vigor when the competition of bounty-nourished beet-root sugar manufactured on the continent of Europe made itself felt. As has been shown, bounties and cartels enabled the European beet-sugar manufacturers to sell their product in foreign markets below actual cost, whilerealizing a handsome profit in the quantity sold for home consumption. Jamaica and the other cane-producing colonies which had no domestic trade to fall back upon found themselves in a grievous plight.
By 1895 matters had reached such a pass that a royal commission was appointed to make a thorough investigation of conditions and report to the home government. The main features of the remedial measures adopted as a result of the work of this body were:
First: The establishing of the farmers as owners of land, that is to say, parcels of land were sold to small farmers, who were assisted by money advances in the cultivation of their crops, with the understanding that they were to grow cane at their own risk and sell it to the mills.
Second: Planters were encouraged to raise crops other than sugar.
Third: Agricultural experiment stations were built and equipped in Barbados, Trinidad and Jamaica with sub-stations in a number of the smaller islands.
Fourth: A direct steamship service to Canada was established. The service between Jamaica and England was improved and regular steamer communication between the islands was provided.
It was stipulated that the cost of building and maintaining the experiment stations was to be borne by the home government until the results obtained justified their being supported by the colonies. In addition, a grant of money was authorized by Parliament to take care of the pressing needs of the planters during the year before the Brussels convention became effective.
With improved steamship facilities between Jamaica and the mother country, the volume of the trade in fresh fruit was greatly increased.
Photo by H. H. CousinsMORELANDS SUGAR MILL, VERE, JAMAICA
Photo by H. H. CousinsMORELANDS SUGAR MILL, VERE, JAMAICA
Photo by H. H. Cousins
MORELANDS SUGAR MILL, VERE, JAMAICA
THE FLEET, MORELANDS, VERE, JAMAICA
THE FLEET, MORELANDS, VERE, JAMAICA
THE FLEET, MORELANDS, VERE, JAMAICA
In 1907 the value of the fruit shipments in pounds sterling was as follows:
as against
On January 14, 1907, an appalling earthquake occurred. The buildings in Kingston and Port Royal were destroyed or badly damaged and about one thousand people were killed.
In 1906 the area under cultivation in Jamaica was 750,000 acres and of this only 26,000 were devoted to cane. Sugar planting has been in a stagnant condition for years and only a limited number of the estates that still carry on the industry are making money. Many have stopped growing cane entirely and have turned to bananas, cocoanuts, coffee or cattle raising. In certain districts there is plenty of fertile alluvial land, ample water and cheap labor, but proper cultivation is lacking, so that the results are far from what they should be. Planting simply consists of sticking a piece of cane stalk in a hole in the ground and very little ploughing is done, consequently the weeds are never under control. It takes about twelve months for the cane to ripen and the yield per acre varies widely, ranging from ten to forty-five tons. The average may be taken as about twenty tons per acre.
The island boasts of three central factories and eighty-two small mills, only twelve of the latter having vacuum pans. The others make muscavado sugar and rum. In the operation of boiling by no means all of the sugar is extracted, as a pure liquor is needed for the manufacture of good rum and quite a large amount of cane juice is made into rum direct.
In the process of making muscavado sugar in Jamaica, the cane juice after being brought to boiling point in an open kettleis transferred into a second kettle, where it is treated and the heavy impurities allowed to settle. The clear juice then goes into copper walls, a series of three or more large open copper pans, called teaches. These pans rest above an open fire fed by bagasse, cane trash and wood. After the juice has been boiled to a certain density in the first pan it is transferred to the second and the final concentration takes place in the third or fourth, as the case may be. In some mills the last boiling is done with steam in what is called an Aspinall pan, instead of over an open fire. When the mass becomes sufficiently thick, it is put into large tanks and left to crystallize. Sometimes it is kept in motion during crystallization, but usually no stirring whatever is done. Crystallization completed, the mass is packed in hogsheads with perforated bottoms. These hogsheads are allowed to stand over drainage troughs for two or three weeks so that the molasses may run off. The holes are then plugged up and the sugar is ready to be shipped.
The percentage of sugar, glucose and water in Jamaica muscavados is approximately:
Management is slipshod and the extraction is poor. It takes fifteen tons of cane and sometimes more to produce a ton of sugar.
As for the future of the sugar industry in Jamaica, much in the way of improvement could be done by the introduction of systematic management, proper cultivation, adequate fertilization and scientific methods of manufacture. Labor is plentiful and cheap, and it would seem that sugar could be producedin Jamaica at as low cost as in Cuba. Thus far, however, there have been no signs of a real awakening.
As regards production, the following figures are taken from Willett & Gray: