publishing for four years the JOURNAL OF NEGRO HISTORY,
a repository of truth now available in bound form, the association has
brought out also _Slavery in Kentucky_, an interesting portraiture of
the institution in that State; _The Royal Adventurers Trading into
Africa_, one of the best studies of the early slave trade; and _A
Century of Negro Migration_, the only scientific treatment of this
movement hitherto published.

The circulation of these publications has been extensive. They are
read in North America, South America, Europe, Asia, and Africa; they
reach more than three hundred college and public libraries; they are
found in all Negro homes where learning is an objective; they are used
by most social workers to get light on the solution of the problems of
humanity; they are referred to by students and professors conducting
classes carrying on research; and they reach members of the cabinet
and the President of the United States.

* * * * *

Carter G. Woodson is not a contributor to the _Official History of the
Negro in the World War_ by Mr. Emmett J. Scott as has been reported
throughout the country. He has given the author several suggestions,
however, and such editorial assistance as the many tasks and
obligations of the Director permitted.

THE JOURNAL

OF

NEGRO HISTORY

VOL. IV--OCTOBER, 1919--NO. 4

LABOR CONDITIONS IN JAMAICA PRIOR TO 1917

To show the lack of progress in Jamaica since the abolition of slavery
by the gradual process inaugurated in 1833 and its final extermination
in 1838, nothing will better serve the purpose than the review of the
system of apprenticeship established as a substitute for that
institution. According to the portraiture given by Sturge and Harvey
in their work entitled _The West Indies in 1837_ and the conditions
now obtaining in the island, very little progress in the condition of
the laboring man has been made since that time.

For scarcely any remuneration the Negroes were required by a
compulsory arrangement between their overseers and the Special
Magistrates to give during the crop the time granted them under the
law for their own use and they were on many estates obliged to work a
greater number of hours than was required by law. The apprentices were
compelled to work by spells of eight hours in the field on one day,
and for sixteen hours in and about the boiling house on the next day,
giving up their half Fr