It suggests that somehow or other the world has been
switched on to a wrong rail when one finds, as often, intense poverty associated with a rich soil. The ship by which I returned carried some 8,000 baskets of beans designed fur the British market. It is tribute enough to the clime of Madeira that they were all grown out of doors without pro- tection, and in some places without the help of much manure. The land will produce almost of its own volition " primeurs," such as the French Maraichers force with the help of frames, cloches and the agency of a soil that may be called synthetic. Yet in a climate and on a soil so perfect, in an atmosphere so warm that the slightest forms of dwelling and of clothing are consistent with comfort, the people support the barest livelihood by the maximum of labour. Women and old men will work all day for a penny or two, and large households exist on less than our old age pension for a single man. The minimum agricultural wage in England (which in all conscience is low enough) would be inordinate wealth to most of these Portuguese smallholders or intensive cultivators. An excessive population is one reason ; but not, I think, the chief. Incomprehensible contrasts exist in the world. The men I saw cutting sugar cane in Queensland were earning rather more than £1 a day. A sugar grower in Madeira would not earn LI within a fortnight. Both are protected, so to say, by high tariffs.
Previous page
