of a long standing problem. It
seemed, however, as if an attempt was at last to be made to do
something. A news article in _The Daily Gleaner_, February, 1917,
announced that the Government had at last realized the urgent need of
improved barrack accommodation on the estates, and of proper medical
supervision of the laborers. It desired to stem the exodus of
laborers, but from its own statement given out to the press in the
article referred to, not so much for the benefit of the ill-paid
laborers, but in consideration for the employers who would soon have
to face a labor market relieved of imported coolies. And so, for the
sake of the employers, it was proposed to ask the native laborer to
agree to be indentured for twelve months at the same miserable wages
of eighteen pence or 36 cents a day, with the addition of a tempting
(?) bonus of two pounds or $9.60 at the end of the term. And this
paternal suggestion was made in order "to improve the local sources of
labor supply that were available" at a time when Cuba was offering
from one dollar to one dollar and a half a day!

The Labor Problem of Jamaica may then be briefly stated thus: After
seventy-eight years of freedom the laboring population was
economically no better off in 1916 than their forefathers who lived in
the early days of emancipation. The laborers received a daily wage
which was but a small pittance, and they worked under conditions that
were appalling, and that were a disgrace to any community pretending
to be civilized. The government instead of taking steps to improve
these conditions and thus to induce the laborer to give in Jamaica
that reliable and continuous service which hundreds so willingly and
efficiently gave abroad, promoted the perpetuation of those conditions
by spending each year over L3,000 or $14,400 of the taxpayers' money
in establishing and maintaining a system of immigration which
demoralized the best labor market by providing the employers with an
undesirable class of laborers whose standard of life is abnormally
low, and to whom twenty-four cents a day is a considerable sum, and
thereby compelled the native laborer either to accept the
unsatisfactory conditions or to emigrate.

The following extract from an article entitled, "What Feeding Him
Means," which appeared in _The Daily Gleaner_ of February 7, 1917,
throws more light on the problem:

"Captain Fist tells us that what the peasant needs to make him a
better work