nce per diem is not a
fair living wage for any laborer to receive, and that the minimum
he ought reasonably to expect to enable him to meet the ordinary
demands of existence is two shillings per diem (48 cents), is to
be inferred from the letter from this office, No. 737/15568 dated
the 17th of January, 1913.

"2. I am to add that His Excellency is not in a position to
comply with your request that steps should be taken to ensure to
all laborers working under the Public Works Department a minimum
wage of two shillings per diem (48 cents) as from 1st April
next."

The problem becomes real and serious when the ruling authorities are
unwilling to admit what is absolutely clear to every one who is not
hopelessly prejudiced, namely, that eighteen pence or thirty-six cents
a day, the amount which was paid to the emancipated slaves in 1838, is
not a living wage for his descendants in the year 1913, and when they
are either unable or unwilling to set the pace for other employers of
labor by paying their own laborers a minimum wage of two shillings or
forty-eight cents a day.

With the labor problem of Jamaica the question of East Indian
Immigration is intimately connected. While, on the one hand, we have
the able-bodied native laborers miserably and cruelly underpaid, and
having in consequence to emigrate in large numbers to other countries,
on the other hand, we have the importation into the island of
indentured immigrants under the conditions which make the economic
improvement of the native laborers an impossibility. On the one side,
the available records inform us that from April 1, 1905, to March 31,
1908, laborers numbering 39,060 emigrated from this island and
deposited with the local Government the sum of L22,217 or $106,641.60
as required by law. The exodus to Cuba is at present a very serious
comment upon the existing labor conditions. During the month of
December, 1916, 761 persons emigrated from the island, 580 to Cuba and
181 to other places.

The figures, on the other side, reveal the fact that since the
introduction of East Indian Immigration in 1845 to the present time
35,933 East Indians have been brought into the island; and it is
estimated that there are to-day resident in the island over 20,000
East Indians, 3,000 of whom are indentured and 17,000 have completed
their term of indenture. These immigrants are distributed to the
several estates by the gove