BANANAS.
AGOVERNMENT inquiry seldom has the good fortune to suggest a way out of an economic tangle by a path so attractive as that recommended to the people of the West Indies. The Report of the Commission which has recently 'visited these beautiful but "distressful" islands does not discourage the growth and manufacture of sugar, though it would improve its processes ; but it strongly recommends, as an alternative, the cultivation of tropical fruits for the markets of Europe, as well as those of America. The climate of the islands, owing to the difference of temperature due to the height of the mountains, makes it possible to grow fruit of all kinds, both tropical and temperate, from the banana to the vine. In the single island of Jamaica fruit, both known and 'unknown in the London market and of the very finest quality, is already produced on a scale which the English public has scarcely realised, but which has already become almost a necessity of domestic use to the citizens of New York and Montreal. The list includes bananas, limes, oranges, pine- apples, and, recently, grapes ; to which must be added a fruit quite unknown in this country, the grape fruit, a variety of the shaddock, which grows in clusters like a bunch of grapes, and is now eagerly purchased in the American markets.
But the chances of profitable fruit-growing in the West Indies are not based merely on the capacity of the islands to produce it. Encouragement and hope come from another quarter, and are the result of a new taste created among the great urban populations of the United States and of Eastern Canada. By some fortunate means, partly accidental, partly due to the enterprise of the fruit merchants of New York, the population of the United States has acquired a taste for bananas, both as an article of food and as a luxury ; and this -demand, fostered and supplied by the market traders of the great cities, has outstripped even the available supply from all sources on the west of the Atlantic. It is now matter of experience that among the Anglo-Saxon race, living in large t owns at high pressure, the craving for fresh fruit can be induced almost as certainly as the craving for alcohol, if only it is offered in an attractive form and at a price which breaks down the conscientious objection of the working - class to pay a high price for a luxury. Good fruit is a luxury, whether it costs a shilling a pound or a penny ; but the commercial difference to the fruit-grower depends on the fact that millions of purses which would never open to yield the shilling will produce the twelve pennies separately every week in the year. This extension of the range of diet in great cities is still mainly confined to the United States, and, as we have said above, the banana was the enchanted fruit which took the fancy of the masses. Though the demand for this soon extended to other varieties, it still remains the great staple of the West Indian fruit trade, and though the black population of the Southern States consume large quan- tities, it is in the North and in Canada that it has become first favourite and indispensable. It still maintains the first place among all tropical fruit consumed in the States. Thirteen million bunches are now imported annually into New York alone, the value of these being over four millions sterling. They are consumed by all classes, from the richest
to the humblest purchaser from street barrows. "Twenty years ago I imported four thousand bunches of bananas to New York, and it took ten days to sell them," writes one of the New York merchants. "Ten years later I brought over
ten thousand bunches from Jamaica ; every one here said I was crazy. This year I have seen fourteen steamers dis- charging cargoes at New York in one week ranging from ten to sixteen thousand bunches each. The cargoes were sold out in a few hours." Another New York merchant states that "our market would take one million bunches of bananas a month, at two dollars a bunch, in the months of March, April, May, June, and July, and the trade is only in its infancy."
It would be easy to quote more figures to illustrate this interesting example of the demand which may be created among a vast and well-to-do industrial population for a new and inexpensive luxury; but the source of its supply is a matter of more immediate interest. The greater part of the bananas consumed in the United States are now grown in the West Indies, mainly in Jamaica, and in British Guiana and Honduras. Wherever the plant has been intro- duced, whether in the form of the plantain or "cooking" variety, or of the banana, it has brought plenty and prosperity, first as a food plant to the cultivators, and now recently as a source of wealth by export trade. Jamaica exports 2316,560 worth of bananas as against £360,000 of sugar and sugar products, and the total annual value of fruit exported is no less than £536,811. Twenty years ago the total fruit shipped from the island was 022.900. In British Guiana it was the " plantain " form, not the banana, which was really prized. "Plantains were regarded as an essential article of food, while the bananas were a luxury, and could be dispensed with or not, according to the circumstances of the moment." But the best of all bananas, the "fig" or "lady's finger" variety, can be grown there in abundance and of excellent quality. These are as superior to the fruit which finds its way to this country as the apricot is to the plum. Its flavour is better even than that of the " quindy " of Madras. In British Honduras the export has risen from 2700 in 1880 to £100,000. Across the Pacific, in Fiji, the banana trade is now "thoroughly established," and it is hoped that New Zealand will take the surplus crop. In the Philippines another form of banana has achieved a com- mercial success of a different kind. This is the variety known as masa textilis, the fibre of which supplies all the finest white cordage in the world, under the name of Manilla hemp. It only grows successfully in the very rainy climate of parts of the islands. Three millions sterling represents the annual value of this plant, which, owing to the peculiar climatic conditions which it needs, will now become a monopoly of the United States. A use will be, doubtless found for the fibre of the common banana of Jamaica, of
which some fifty million stems lie annually rotting on the ground in Jamaica alone. But of other manufac- tured products of the plantain and banana there is no lack. Cyder of the finest quality is made from the fruit, otherwise known as plantain wine ; banana meal, made from the dried fruit, is likely to become the diet par excellence of weak digestions ; and it is by no means impossible that some profitable use will be made from the husks, the strong dye in which is used in the Dutch East Indies fot blacking boots.
The latest " scare " of the West Indian fruit-grower is the danger that American firms will grow bananas in Cuba, and import them free of duty into the United States. The English Colonies would then be unable to compete. The answer is that in that, or in any, case a market must be created in England. The demand for bananas is only beginning in this country. That it can be created has been shown by actual trial. Some years ago a firm of fruit merchants determined to try the experiment in Liverpool. A shipload was brought over from the Canary Islands. These the local merchants refused to buy. Fortunately, bananas will keep. The importers ventured on a farther importation of a different kind, in the form of fifty London costers, and sent them out into the streets, with orders practically to give the bananas away. The costers got into trouble with the police ; but their employers paid their fines, told them to be more cautious, and had their barrows loaded up for the next day. Then the people began to buy ; and since then there has been an ever - increasing demand for bananas in Liverpool. They then tried the same experiment, with the same results, in Manchester. London is still behind, though the fruit is now to be seen on street barrows. Bat with London, Leeds, Birmingham, Glasgow, and New- castle waiting to taste and follow, there is a field for the West Indian fruit trade to which no present limits can be assigned, and which must soon exhaust the resources of the Canary Islands and Madeira, from which nearly the whole of our present supply of bananas and pines is drawn. What is needed, from the point of view of the prosperity of the West Indies, is a good service of steamers. It is this which has preceded and made possible banana culture both in Jamaica, Honduras, Nicaragua, and later in the Canary Islands. That it will pay there is no doubt what- ever ; for daring last July, in consequence of the demand for fresh fruit in New York. steamers were passing at the rate of two per week from Sicily to New York !
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