In January 1842 Henry James Ross published a 114 page pamphlet in London with the inconveniently long title, Thoughts on the Objectionable System of Labour for Wages in the West India Colonies; and on the necessity of substituting A System of Tenancy and Allotment of the Staple Cultivation. The pamphlet is extremely rare (copies are known to exist in two or three British libraries) which probably explains why it has escaped scholarly attention.1 But the pamphlet had at least topical interest: it appeared a few weeks after the publication of the well-known work, Observations on the present Condition of the island of Trinidad, written by William Burnley, Trinidad's leading planter and lobbyist. The pamphlet was published at the height of the debate being conducted in the British press, in the West India Committee, in the Colonial Office, and among all West Indian planters about the parlous state of the "great experiment" of slave emancipation and the impending "ruin" of the planters. More to the point, the pamphlet was intended as a contribution to that debate, and was so recognized. Its contents conferred on its author immediate if temporary status as an expert commentator on West Indian labour issues, almost certainly influenced Colonial Office thinking on possible solutions to the perceived labour problems, promoted the spread of sharecropping arrangements in several West Indian territories, and may have been the inspiration for both the "contracting" system in cocoa cultivation and the cane farming industry in Trinidad. The pamphlet therefore deserves attention as a source on sharecropping and on labour conditions in the immediate post-slavery years.
Who was Henry James Ross? He was described by the Grenada lieutenant-governor in February 1841 as "a native, a West Indian", but all evidence suggests that he was a white Creole who, like most members of his class, was more "sojourner" than native.2 He was the only son of Andrew Ross of St. Vincent, the co-proprietor of Peruvian Vale and Henry's Vale estate, who was probably one of that group of British entrepreneurs which came to the Ceded Islands in the late 1760s and early 1770s to exploit the possibilities for extensive sugar plantation ownership. Andrew Ross became very prominent in Vincentian society, holding the positions of member of the Legislative Council and Colonel in the militia until he was summarily removed in 1806 by the Governor because of his stubborn opposition to the British Government's decision to grant 6,000 acres of former Carib lands to Colonel T.A. Browne, the American Loyalist.3
Henry James Ross was probably born in St. Vincent around 1794, but he spent some twenty-five years, from 1813 to 1838, living in Britain. He was admitted to Middle Temple in April 1813 and, after being called to the Bar in November 1820, he practised law in and around London mainly as an equity draughtsman for the Court of Chancery. He returned to the West Indies in July 1838 for what was intended as a visit of a "few months" to oversee the transition to wage labour on Plaisance, a coffee and cocoa estate that he owned in the St. John parish of Grenada. According to Ross, the estate had failed to make a profit "for twenty or thirty years", and it was therefore likely to be severely embarrassed by the final ending of the forced labour regime. In the event, the successful attempt to turn around the estate's fortunes meant that Ross's visit would be extended to three years - until June 1841. That experience presumably persuaded Ross to relocate in the West Indies in 1842, and he only returned to Britain in 1866-7 to live out his retirement. He probably died in 1868.
Henry James Ross's connection with Grenada fitted into a common pattern of multi-ownership of plantations in more than one territory. His brother-in-law, George Whitfield, also a barrister, eventually assumed possession of Andrew Ross's Vincentian estate, but he also was the owner of Plaisance in Grenada. In his will of July 1819, Whitfield bequeathed Plaisance to his two daughters, Elizabeth and Frances, and named Henry James Ross as an executor and trustee. Ross received the Compensation Money on behalf of his nieces in November 1835, and apparently bought them out shortly afterwards ("It was not my estate till after the Compensation Money was received, but I was connected with the estate and therefore knew its history very well." Evidence of Ross [Q7504] before the 1842 Select Committee on West India Colonies).
Ross therefore came to Grenada as an absentee owner but he soon converted himself into a resident proprietor and active professional. Between 1841 and 1857 he played the type of public role normally associated with a man of property, of sound education, professional standing and metropolitan connections. He briefly served as a member of the Legislative Council in 1841; represented the united parishes of St. George and St. John in the House of Assembly from July 1843 until May 1846; held the office of Speaker of the Assembly for four months in 1844; and served as a member of the Legislative Council from June 1846 until 1857. His professional avocation, however, probably mattered more to him. He practised at the Grenada Bar from 1840 and also held a number of judicial positions over the following sixteen years. He served temporarily as Assistant Justice of the Supreme Court in 1841; acted on several occasions as Attorney General; and was eventually appointed to that post in October 1856. He achieved his professional ambition in March 1857 when he was appointed Chief Justice of both St. Kitts and of Nevis where he served until ill health forced his retirement in 1867.
The evidence suggests that he was not an outstanding public official or lawyer. He gave the impression of being both lazy and self-centred, always concerned about the most profitable use of his time and energies. When he resigned the Speaker's post after a brief tenure, he complained that the post called for more sacrifice of time and "professional occupation" than he could or would afford.4 Similarly, Governor-in-Chief Sir Francis Hincks supported his application for the Chief Justice's post by observing that he spent "most of his time" on his cocoa estate, and that "he would be a much more efficient public servant in any other Colony than Grenada"!5 He had been appointed Attorney General of Grenada because he was the only practising barrister in the island; and he was the second or third choice for the post of Chief Justice of St. Kitts. The one positive recommendation that he received from a superior spoke mainly to this authorship of the pamphlet. Francis Checkley, President of the Legislative Council and Acting Lieutenant-Governor, proposed Ross for membership of the Legislative Council by noticing that he was "a Proprietor and the originator of the Metairie system here which his successful example and valued Pamphlet have so much promoted."6 The pamphlet, it would appear, is his claim to fame.
The core of the pamphlet is a description of a proposed tenant farming system supported by a report on a successful trial of that system at Plaisance. Essentially the system was an adaptation of the cane farming systems that G.R. Porter had observed in the Dutch East Indies and in Mauritius and had described in his well-known book published in 1830, The Nature and Properties of the Sugar Cane; with Practical Directions for the Improvement of its Culture, and the Manufacture of the Products. Ross reduced the scale of operations, eliminated all wage labour elements in cultivation and harvesting, and added a slight manorial gloss. What makes the pamphlet particularly important, however, is the quality of the context in which the proposed system is placed. Ross clearly blended an appreciation of the market prospects for British West Indian sugar, knowledge of population density in the various territories, the results of reading in political economy and his own first hand experience in Grenada to create a context that had relevance beyond Grenada.7 The pamphlet is therefore as much a persuasive argument for a radical change in labour and production processes as it is an extended insider's commentary on post-slavery labour conditions that is more sharply focussed and rendered in more colourful detail than any other contemporary account.
The structure of the argument is clear and logical for the most part. Ross first identifies the "evils", the deficiencies in the wage labour system; then he describes the "feeble effects" of the planters' expedients to deal with these deficiencies; which sets the stage for the elaboration of the merits of the "obvious" remedy that should be applied; which leads naturally to the report of "the beneficial effects instantly produced" at Plaisance; and appropriately concludes with suggestions for the extension of the proposed system to "every species of tropical cultivation", especially sugar and cultivation. The one criticism of this structure is that, while separate analyses of deficiencies and expedients add force to Ross's central arguments, that separation cannot be logically defended. Both deficiencies and expedients constituted the dynamic operation of a wage labour system that was new and challenging to both employers and labourers.
The "evils" of the wages system. Ross identified four main deficiencies which, in a situation where "an uncivilized population" and land were "enormously disproportionate to each other", conduced to the "helplessness of the master" in relation to his labourers. The first of these was the extremely irregular work habits of the labouring population which underscored the "powerless position" of the planters. Labourers were exercising their freedom by changing employers frequently, by indulging in internal migration, sometimes to reconstitute families, by malingering, by absenting themselves without excuse, etc. The result, Ross asserted, was instability in the work force and low productivity for which the employers had no effective sanction. Control of the labour market was so fully in the labourers' hands that the execution of a threat of eviction or confiscation of wages would be a "suicidal act." Any evicted labourer would receive a ready welcome at a neighbouring estate where he might have a second or a third wife.
The second deficiency identified by Ross was an absolute decline in the size of the labour force. Because of the stigma attached to it during slavery, Ross asserted, there was now "a general disposition" to shun field labour. Instead, the male labourers preferred small-hold cultivation, jobbing, work in the sugar factory, picking coffee and cocoa, work as tradesmen, etc; the females shifted to huckstering, retailing and domestic activity; and the children were sent away from the estates to school or to "godparents" whom they might assist in provision cultivation and marketing. "In short", Ross alleged, "the endeavour is universal to escape from the work of the estates and from the staple products of the country."
This led to the third main deficiency, the growing demoralization of the estate management. An unstable and shrinking labour force meant reduced output and lower profits, both of which impacted negatively on the compensation and employment prospects of managerial and supervisory staff. Ross noted that this "valuable class of men" was becoming "scarce"; they were seeking alternative employment outside the region and even outside the Empire.
However, in Ross's view, these deficiencies were mainly a consequence of the "principal" cause of the planters' difficulties, the provision ground system. Like others before him and since, Ross was satisfied that cultivation of the provision grounds with "moderate application of labour" gave the ex-slaves a life of virtual ease - food for subsistence, large surpluses for sale in local and intercolonial markets, sizeable sums of cash, and independence of wages paid by the plantations. Planters could not check this "misapplication" of labour because of the operation of natural and human factors. The woody and mountainous terrain impeded detection of unauthorized provision ground cultivation. More important, "the ingenuity of the negro" often ensured that evicted labourers could, with the assistance of relatives or "reputed" wives, clandestinely cultivate and reap provisions; and the polygamous tendency of many males often ensured they were virtually vagrants between estates where their "wives" were resident, enjoying accommodation and subsistence while being under no obligation to work for any estate. Even where rent was charged for provision grounds, Ross asserted that the advantage of occasional labour assistance to the estate could be offset by the danger that such an example could trigger additional withdrawal from the staple cultivation.
Planters' expedients to cope with perceived deficiencies. Ross noticed the adoption of five expedients but asserted that none had managed to check or cure existing evils. Task work was the first. Ross conceded its advantages: the preference of the ex-slaves because it was "an escape from slavish toil", and the extent to which it represented a "first advance" towards releasing the full energies and productivity of the ex-slaves. However, in Ross's view, the disadvantages were weightier. All the estate's operations could not be done by task work; and supervision was still required in operations like weeding, stripping and cutting because labourers "had a habit of deceiving" and would, if permitted, perform the task indifferently or hurriedly. Therefore, the planter could still be exposed to uncertainty in the supply of labour because a task work regime might make the labourer "a greater wanderer than before."
The weekly allowance of two pounds of salted fish was a second expedient. Ross noted that the allowance was offered in the older islands for performance of five days' continuous and satisfactory work, but it was now regularly used as a "bribe" to induce labourers to desert one employer for another. Ross was satisfied that the allowance was a "trifling" incentive to only a few labourers; most of them could expect better returns from employment of their labour in provision ground cultivation. But he was particularly opposed to any pampering of labourers, for such a practice was a "subversion of the natural order of dependence" which could only result in the eventual ruin of both master and servant.
Deduction of rent from house and ground from labourers' wages was a third expedient. Ross recognized that such a practice was designed to secure the continuous labour "which is so necessary" and acknowledged that it could have the salutary effect of teaching labourers that they should pay for advantages they enjoyed and of reminding them of the planters' property rights. But he thought the policy was objectionable on the two grounds. First, it tended to create "a distinct tenancy" which, under existing contract legislation, impeded summary eviction. Planters had "no time" to spend in the long legal process that eviction in such circumstances entailed and, in any event, it was probably neither just nor equitable to place the West Indian labourers on a "better footing" in these matters than English labourers. The second basis for objection was the difficulty in collecting rent once it fell in arrears; "let the arrears of rent exceed the wages to be received, farewell to rent and perhaps to your labourer too!" According to Ross, ex-slaves did not relish working out a debt or paying one even when they had money; therefore those in debt for their rent were likely to leave their employer with the debt and with no means of recovering it.
Increases in wages was the fourth expedient examined by Ross. For him, this expedient was an "evil" because it aggravated irregular work habits "by increasing the means of independence" and "by taking away, so far, the stimulus of necessity." Ross conceded that the level wages had to operate as an incentive, that the level had to bear some "sensible" relation to the value of provision grounds and to rates paid to jobbers during the Apprenticeship, and that there was therefore a convincing case for an increase from the original offer in August 1838 of seven and a half pence to one shilling per day. However, he was utterly opposed to the "extravagant" rate of wages, operating particularly in Trinidad and British Guiana, which was the result of "blind and intemperate competition for labourers between rival estates and colonies." In all this, he found the case of Trinidad instructive. "Extravagant" wages had been countered by "extravagant prices" in the estate shops, with the result that emigrants who had been enticed to that island by the high rate of wages soon discovered that they may have been better off by staying at home.
Immigration, perceived by planters as "their only chance of escaping from certain ruin", was the final expedient. Ross asserted that none of the multiplicity of immigration schemes, except the case of the "civilized" Americans in Trinidad, had effectively increased the supply of field labourers. Portuguese immigration into British Guiana seemed to be failing, and Maltese immigration into Grenada and British Guiana had been "disastrous" for both immigrants and employers. The failure of the Maltese immigration into Grenada had not been due, he claimed, to the climate, the regime of agricultural labour, or to "the pernicious cheapness of rum"; rather it was due to issues of "a moral quality and consideration". Ross was satisfied that the Maltese in Grenada had rapidly lost caste and become vagrants because their status was "but little distinguished from the field negroes" and their actual condition was inferior to the ex-slaves' because they had not yet established provision grounds. Therefore, for Ross, immigration could succeed in alleviating planters' problems if large numbers of immigrants could be secured from Africa, for these individuals were "best adapted by nature to the labour of the West Indies". European immigration could also succeed if planters applied the lessons of their experience with the Maltese; "any European or more enlightened labourer" was unlikely either to accept the "slavish obligation of hours and days" that had been imposed on slaves and ex-slaves, or to accept conditions of employment that the ex-slaves were rejecting. Future European immigrants should be recruited, not as "hired servants", but as "free tenants under an allotment system." In this way, they could enjoy opportunities for upward mobility, provide the requisite examples to the ex-slave labour force, and constitute a base for European emigration and colonial civilization and prosperity to flourish together.
The "obvious" remedy. Ross outlined the system that he had been considering "at an early period" and which "dire necessity" and "the safe course" demanded immediate adoption.
Pay no more in wages for the cultivation of the land - reform your entire system - reverse the tables - place yourself on the safe side - instead of paying wages to the negro, let the negro pay you, not in money but kind, a proportion of the staple products, which, be sure, he now knows well, and will hereafter know still better how to cultivate to best advantage, - throw off the master and become his landlord, - trust him (by degrees) as your tenant - identify your interest with his in the land and staple products of the estate, - let him clearly see and find his own advancement, credit, and profit in that union ... let him share with you a due proportion of the anxiety, risk and loss, as well as profit. Make him your partner at once, by making him your tenant. (pp. 46-48)
Ross was satisfied that several advantages would flow from this change. First, "the perverted tendency of negro industry", that "centrifugal tendency" to emphasize provision cultivation at the expense of staple cultivation, would be checked. The tenant would receive no house and ground, no allowance or prerequisite except "in tenure and connection" with land designated as "staple land" on which he would be required to raise as large crops of the staple as possible. In return, the tenant would receive the value of an "adequate" share of the produce paid in cash. Such re-orientation of priorities would ensure that provision cultivation would become subsidiary and conditional upon due cultivation of the staple products and that abandoned estate land would be brought back into cultivation. The tenant's "adequate" share, computed roughly on the same basis as that described by Porter in the Dutch East Indies, would take account of soil fertility, proximity of allotment to sugar works and "many other particulars", and would vary from one-half to one-fifth. However, it should always be "so great at this time" that the tenant's return should exceed the "fair and moderate wages" now being paid; and this return would render the tenant "more effectively enriched as well as enfranchised" because he would have "free disposal of his time" while being relieved from the "old routine of estate work." Moreover, the agreed share should be paid "forthwith" in money, and the tenant would be afforded every inducement "to lay out his money in the way most conducive to his advantage, his civilization and respectability."
A related point, from Ross's perspective, was that emphasis on staple cultivation would entail, not more labour from the ex-slaves, but greater returns from labour. For him, staple cultivation, particularly sugar cane cultivation, could not be more onerous than provision cultivation, particularly since it was evident to most observers that the slave and ex-slave not only taxed his industry, perseverance and strength in that activity, but also loaded himself like a "beast of burden" when taking his crops to distant markets. In staple cultivation, he might even have an advantage - the regular assistance of family and friends instead of working, as he was doing now, "in snatches and intervals."
A second advantage would be a stimulus for immigration, particularly European immigration because it would clothe it "with a new character." Provided sensible precautions were taken in settling the European immigrant in cooler areas, in ensuring that he dressed appropriately (in flannel with a change of clothes after physical exertion), and in arranging working hours during the cooler periods of the day, Ross was satisfied that he could cultivate sugar cane "as well as any Creole labourer." Such a result would be more than guaranteed, Ross urged, if he was given an allotment (3-6 acres) that could be cultivated by family labour in the main, where a rational system of renewal and ratooning would demonstrate efficiencies over gang labour in "large rambling fields." Husbandry would be improved because of "the immediate and undivided care of the tenant", and the plough might be more generally introduced. Therefore, the tenancy and allotment system would ensure that European immigrants would not lose caste, and it would create the appropriate environment for them to offer examples through their "superior civilization" to the Creole labourers who would then be induced to seek allotments "with or under them." This could lead in turn to improvements in the social infrastructure, stimulating the building and repair of roads, the establishment of homesteads, etc.
For Ross, a third and important advantage would be the "better and more steady division of labour." The cultivation of provisions and staple crops would be done steadily and separately. Provisions raised on "settled provision estates" would greatly increase the volume of these crops and reduce their price, thereby indirectly enhancing the value of staple cultivation. Such a development would force labourers to recognize where their advantage lay and encourage them to return as permanently settled farmers on the estates. Tenants' self-interest would ensure both efficiency and economy and labour use. Tenants would not need excuses not to work; rather, they would be "watchfully aiding and assisting in the safe ascertainment" of their share of the crop. Specialization in the labour and production functions would become possible because surplus hands released from the agricultural department would trigger the reform of the existing "bad system" where the operation of a sugar estate was "endless with all hands all the year round", where "the cooper might be metamorphosed into a boilerman" or "the best fieldman become a fireman", etc. The result of such reform would be opportunities for the upward social mobility of the tenants, reduction in the costs of production, improvement in the calculations of costs and of the value of property, and a removal of those factors of uncertainty and unreliability which rendered the ownership of West Indian property so precarious.
Details of the System at Plaisance. Ross sketched the history of Plaisance as the necessary background for the introduction of the "great change". Mismanagement and the expensiveness of slavery had meant that the plantation, despite good soil, mild climate and ample labour force, had been unprofitable for more than twenty years. Some improvement had been noticeable under an energetic manager during the last two years of the Apprenticeship, but the situation had returned to a dismal state after July 1838. The combination of a fifty per cent reduction and irregularity in the labour force had resulted in short crops, a want of "impulse", uncertainty, vexation and disappointment. The one consolation was there were a few labourers, as was usually the case, "whose zeal and excellent example and good feeling" seemed powerfully to influence to conduct of the others and "to act more efficiently in the aid of the estate than any authority whatever." It was "one of the best carpenters" who provided Ross with the opportunity to start his system in August 1840 by requesting an allotment of ten acres of mainly abandoned cocoa land.
The terms of the thirty-three allotments that were eventually made by Ross constituted the details of the system. Tenancy was year to year with two months' notice to quit; the tenant was responsible for clearing the trees and clearing moss; the tenant had the right to enjoy all provisions cultivated between the trees; the tenant was responsible for picking the ripe fruit but the landlord supplied the draught animals to transport the ripe fruit to the boucan; the tenant would receive agreed shares (¼ to ½) in money on the arrival of the fruit at the boucan; the tenant was obliged to give two day's notice of intention to pick fruit and immediate notice when picking ended; and the tenant was under legal penalty to refrain from trading in the staple produce.
The conversion of the estate to the tenant farming system was driven, according to Ross, by labourers' requests for participation during a nine-month period (August 1840 to March/April 1841). By January 1841 every man on the estate had come to "entreat" for an allotment, followed by several "strangers" and "stragglers".
The results, by Ross's account, were impressive in terms of improved labour relations, productivity and reduced costs of supervision. First, most of the women and children were immediately liberated from estate work; and the women's time could now be "better" employed in the cultivation of the allotments of friends and families. Second, almost no wages had to be paid; and all the residents on the estates who were not tenants signed an agreement to give one day a weak gratuitously to the estate for the purpose of repairing roads, clearing the canals and to work for wages on as many days as might be required. Third, the entire estate was "perfectly clean" and many portions of it had been supplied and renewed. Fourth, all the crops had been reaped "without the loss of a single grain"; tenants, families and friends had cheerfully worked together in "mutual aid"; no one malingered; all were "making the bush fly"; and all tenants seemed to accept that these arrangements were superior to all others. Fifth, estates costs had been reduced: production costs were down by as much as fifty per cent, productivity gains were impressive, and the responsibilities of manager had decreased. The manager still had to ensure that each tenant did justice to his allotment, but no overseer was needed for the field and there was "no driving, no trouble, no vexation or disappointment - no loss of produce". This was exemplified by a "wonderful acceleration" in the rate of gathering the produce: a tenant would now collect two, three or four barrels daily, the same amount that six, nine or twelve labourers had daily collected during the Apprenticeship.
Applicability of the proposed system to sugar cane cultivation. Ross reasoned that his system could be successfully extended to sugar cane cultivation because the ex-slaves valued the sugar cane and its products more highly than they did coffee and cocoa. However, he noted the presence of several constraints on this desirable development. The first set of constraints was substantial because they related to the lack of discretion possessed by managers of absentee-owned estates and by resident owners of mortgaged property in conducting experimentation. The second set of constraints, relating to the ex-slaves' presumed attitudes, was not as substantial because they were either untested assumptions, or they flew in the face of evidence, or could be dissipated by simple expedients like the making of advances to ease the long wait for returns from the share of the sugar crop. The final set of constraints, the presumed peculiarities of sugar cane cultivation, was, for Ross, equally without a strong foundation. The basic argument seemed to be that the extended cycle of planting and renewal in sugar cane cultivation would overtax the ex-slaves' industry. But Ross countered by showing that coffee and cocoa required constant clearing and weeding, that a cane farming system did exist in the East and, that the Guinea yam, "to which all the negroes are all devoted," required complete renewal, considerable labour in digging, and most elaborate weeding and earthing. Moreover, there was abundant evidence coming from many of the West Indian territories that ex-slaves were performing all the requisite functions in cane cultivation on the basis of job, piece and contract work. But if doubts still persisted on his point, he suggested that the tenant could be given a planted allotment.
Ross recognized that his system could not be immediately implemented on the sugar estates without due consideration of the peculiar circumstances of each and therefore offered advice on incremental establishment. He advised planters to pilot the system with "a few of the best people" in order to gain the confidence of the others; to start with small allotments, probably no more than half an acre, under the manger's immediate supervision; to give all possible help and encouragement to the tenants to enable them to see the advantages of the system; and to establish model plots where they could exhibit specimens of their own plantership.
Finally, Ross noticed certain developments in some of the neighbouring territories that could facilitate the extension of his system to sugar cane cultivation. First, there were examples of cane farming in Grenada where peasants or small farmers cultivated sugar cane and either paid in kind for the canes to be ground at planters' mills or established small sugar factories of their own. The second example was piece-work in St. Lucia and other colonies which was an approach to a "better system" but still left the planter "at the mercy of the jobbers and contractors." The third and "still nearer approach" to the recommended system was the sharecropping arrangements that existed in St. Lucia, St. Kitts, Nevis and the Grenadines. For Ross, the sharecropping arrangements on the cotton and corn estates in Canouan (Grenadines) could not compare with the tenancy and allotment system because the proprietor was obliged to keep accounts of the work performed by each member of the partnership that cultivated the piece of cotton or corn. The sharecropping arrangements in St. Lucia, on the other hand, compared favourably with the tenant farming system but it was still "in its infancy and in a very crude state." But there were, Ross insisted, important points of difference between those arrangements and his system. In the first place, it was a part-production system: planters with surplus cane land secured its cultivation which therefore "stimulated extra labour at extra hours". Secondly, these arrangements lacked those incentives which the tenant farming system possessed - "the solemnities and privileges of tenancy", the "perfect independence" of time and action accorded to the tenant, and "the possession of his allotment as his own property, secured to him by that best title, viz., his adherence to his own and to his landlord's interest."
Ross also noticed the proprietary villages of Guiana. He thought that these might encourage industry and good conduct but were unlikely to provide the estates with a reliable labour supply; they could not replicate "the free, divided labour of the East" because the labourers in these villages were not "wedded", like the proprietor, to the estates " for better or worse". Similarly, he dismissed Samuel Jackman Prescod's suggestions that free labour should be left to find its own level by asserting that Prescod's logic was weak and that the evidence pointed in the opposite direction. There was no reason to suppose that freedom from estate labour would dispose the ex-slaves to return to it, and the activities of free settlers on the borders of the Plaisance and Florida estates seemed to confirm the opposite conclusion. The existence of proprietary villages promised advantages in "remote futurity" while rational effort expended in the establishment of the tenant farming system would immediately effect a "re-marshalling" and maximum utilisation of the available supplies of labour within each estate.
A free system of tenantry, such as proposed, will effectually locate, on each estate, the labourers of each: putting an end to that baneful, ruinous competition between different properties and different colonies for the worst subjects, which is attended (as has been shown) with such demoralizing consequences to the negro, and with such continual loss of labour to the land. Mutual support will them spring up in the place of mutual jealousy and opposition, and the prosperity of one estate will not then be built (shifting and unstable as it is) on the downfall or misfortunes of another. Not without much reason is the want of union and cooperation, for any great and good purpose, a constant subject of complaint in the West India colonies. The removal of those difficulties which press most severely upon the planter at home, in the internal economy of his estate, will tend to promote a useful combination, as it will afford him leisure for the pursuit of other objects than the all-engrossing one - the unimproved growth of the cane. (pp. 100-101)
The contents of the pamphlet were at least a brief talking point in Britain during early 1842 if we are to judge by reactions in sections of the British press, comments by some West Indian merchants and planters, and statements by the Colonial Secretary. Somewhat surprising in view of the pamphlet's topic and topicality, it was ignored by influential journals like the Times, the Spectator, the Edinburgh Review, the Westminster Review, and the Colonial Gazette, most of which did at least notice Burnley's book. However, the pamphlet was reviewed by three journals and noticed by a fourth.
The Emigration Gazette's review (29 January) was mainly a series of unacknowledged quotations from the pamphlet, but the leader writer did observe that Ross was "no mere theorist" and, though he strongly disagreed with Ross's views on European immigration, he conceded that his plan was "well worthy of attention." The review by the Naval and Military Gazette (12 March) was similar: essentially a paraphrase of what it described as "a very clever pamphlet", and a recommendation that general attention should be given to a plan that seemed "most clear, satisfactory and apparently most advantageously practicable." The Anti-Slavery Reporter, for its part, having failed to secure a copy of the pamphlet by 9 March, reprinted a section of the Morning Herald's review that had appeared on 1 February, and recommended Ross's plan for "consideration by the planters of Guiana and Trinidad together with their Magnus Apollo, Mr. Burnley."
It was the Morning Herald that gave most exposure in Britain to Ross and his proposed system in editorial comment on 29 January, 1 February and 26 March. This newspaper was Tory in politics, protectionist and therefore pro-planter, and harshly critical of the "bumbureaucrat" in the Colonial Office (James Stephen) who was being identified as the principal wrecker of all the planters' proposals for relief.8 Not surprisingly, the newspaper had given enthusiastic welcome to Burnley's book on 8 January and, though a week later, it expressed some reservations about Burnley's opinions and proposals, it was not until Ross's pamphlet appeared that it clearly distanced itself from the repressive positions on immigration and strict contracts that Burnley had advanced. By early March, the newspaper had endorsed in its entirety Ross's analysis of the wage labour situation and had commended his "very practical" views and suggestions. When therefore in March it somewhat disingenuously identified Ross as "a most impartial observer", it was signalling that Ross had been installed as its own authority on the West Indian labour question.
The basis for the endorsement seemed to be twofold. First, the leader writer was impressed by Ross's evident determination to safeguard the interests all the parties involved in the "great experiment" of slave emancipation. His position contrasted sharply with that of the planter lobby where an obsession with staving off "ruin" seemed to lead to support for a covert slave trade and to infringements on the rights of ex-slaves and immigrants. Second, the leader writer obviously concluded that Ross's analysis of the wage labour situation was far more thorough than Burnley's. In particular, he agreed with Ross on the connections between "misdirection" of ex-slaves' labour, staple cultivation, and viability of the immigration solution. Like Ross, he thought that planters were short sighted in seeing extensive immigration as the only guarantee of the future profitability of their sugar industry. Therefore, the newspaper had absolutely no reservations in recommending the pamphlet "to the earnest consideration of all interested in the success of emancipation, but most strongly to Lord Stanley and the planters."
No direct evidence has been found to confirm that the pamphlet was discussed in either the West India Committee or inside the Colonial Office. However, inferences about the possibility of such discussion can be drawn from statements that emanated from both agencies. Members of the West India Committee (in London and in the affiliated branches) would naturally have been aware of the pamphlet's existence (and a copy was found in the library of the West India Committee) but there is no mention of it in the minutes of the meetings of any of the sub-committees. However, an affiliate, the West India Association of Planters and Merchants in the City of Glasgow, did make what appear to be references to Ross's plan in the memorial that it sent to the Colonial Secretary on 22 February. That memorial, part of the planters' orchestrated demand for relief in the form of government-sponsored immigration from Africa and India, commented negatively on the remedy recently prescribed by the Colonial Office for the alleviation of planter distress. The Colonial Secretary had proposed alternatives: personal superintendence of West Indian property or "a free tenancy under leases." The memorialists' response was an apparent rebuttal of the closing remarks in the pamphlet:
... although the plan of farming allotments to the labourers, and every other mode of stimulating their energies, are well worthy of experiment wherever circumstances will permit, yet such a process of recovery must from its nature be slow and gradual; while the present is a case where the patient may perish in the course of the treatment, and which demands immediate remedy to preserve existence.9
Direct comment on the pamphlet by the Colonial Office may have been muted as a result of the coincidence of this publication with circulation of information on sharecropping arrangements in St. Lucia particularly. Because there was some similarity between the two systems, it is possible that, at the official level, they were often confused one with the other and that comment on one may have been equally intended as comment on the other. It was Stipendiary Magistrate A.C. Colquhoun of St. Lucia who had in March 1841 drawn the attention of the Colonial Office to "an excellent practice", well established in the Vieuxfort district, which he thought "worthy of adoption" in other territories.10 The Colonial Office's response was to circulate Colquhoun's report on metayage in the West Indian colonies and to seek additional information on a practice that seemed "well adapted to the present circumstances of the colonies."11 By February/March 1842, Colonial Secretary Stanley's endorsement of "Metairie" seemed to include Ross's plan as well. For example, he told the governor of Jamaica on 1 March 1842:
I would be glad to be informed whether any attempt has been made to introduce the system of Metairie by which the labourer becomes a small farmer paying part of the produce instead of Rent ... or whether any plan has been tried for the cultivation of Estates by Tenants separating the Business of Owner, Grower, and Manufacturer.12 (Emphasis added)
An even more explicit reference to Ross's plan can be read into Stanley's comments to the House of Commons on 22 March 1842 when he proposed the establishment of the Select Committees to investigate West Indian labour conditions and the prospects for immigration from West Africa. He was reported as saying that he expected the Select Committee on West Indian labour conditions to consider
whether it would be possible to introduce a system somewhat similar to our English one, placing the labourers somewhat in the condition of tenants and giving an interest dependent upon, and inseparable from, that of the landlords and considering them participators in the benefits arising from the improvement of the soil and the retention of an amount of the produce.13
Ross's appearance as a witness before the 1842 Select Committee on West India Colonies is the final confirmation of official recognition and of his new-found prominence. No trace of the official invitation seems to survive but there is no reason to doubt the assertion of the Anti-Slavery Reporter that Ross was one of the two witnesses (out of twenty-seven) who were "specially summoned" by the Committee itself.14 Like Capt. Allen, a Stipendiary Magistrate from British Guiana, Ross was perceived as an expert witness and was questioned in relation to his area of expertise - the nature of his plan and its applicability to sugar cane cultivation. His was not a distinguished performance, and the Committee did not detain him long. He clearly repeated the details of his plan but seemed out of his depth when questioned about how his system would work in the sugar industry, and he even seemed vague about the odd detail in coffee cultivation. Because he thought that his plan had been "misunderstood" and "confounded with some other system", he sought opportunity to clarify the ways in which it was different. He insisted that it was not cultivation in partnership (as was done in Haiti and in Berbice) but he did not on this occasion clearly distinguish it from the sharecropping arrangements that prevailed particularly in St. Lucia. Indeed, he might have added to the confusion by describing his plan as "the share" or allotment system similar to the sharecropping arrangements that John Candler had found in Haiti.15 It might have been wiser for him to stick to the description that he had written in the pamphlet. More to the point, he did provide the Committee with the information that his plan had been positively received in Nevis, Trinidad and St. Vincent. However, Ross clearly made no impression on the Committee. Its final report (in the form of resolutions) made no reference to sharecropping or to tenant farming, but strongly endorsed the planter lobby's request for government-sponsored immigration. Burnley, not Ross, had won the war.
Public and official reaction to the pamphlet in the Caribbean was, except for Trinidad, mainly derivative. In the Windward Islands Government, there was hardly mention, far less official promotion, of the system. Indeed, the official correspondence contains only two references to the pamphlet - in Acting Governor Checkley's recommendation in February 1846 of Ross's appointment to the Legislative Council and in a somewhat belated endorsement of the plan by Governor-in-Chief Sir William Colebrooke in October 1849. What is particularly surprising is that no stipendiary magistrate even mentioned the scheme, not even the stipendiary magistrates stationed in the district (St. John and St. Mark) in which Plaisance was located. Those stipendiary magistrates did report the extension of metayage in cocoa and sugar cultivation after 1844, but they noted no connection between these developments and the Plaisance experiment. One can only suggest that the officials, from stipendiary magistrates to the governors, were taking their cue from the Colonial Office and were lumping together all production arrangements that involved shares.
However, Sir William Colebrooke, the Governor-in-Chief, showed a clear appreciation of the different systems in 1849. Commenting on the responses to the crises of credit and capital shortage after 1847, he noticed the "great success" of small scale cane cultivation in Barbados and linked that development to Ross's tenant farming system. He felt compelled to suggest to Grenada's lieutenant governor that a report on Ross's experiment at Plaisance would be "valuable" in solving the question "whether by such a system of tenancy, cautiously and discriminately introduced, a considerable part of the sugar crop might not be economically raised, a farming capital accumulated, and the ordinary plantation management then gradually superseded." Showing himself a convert to Ross's views, Colebrooke argued that, despite the recent decline in metayage agreements in Grenada, resident proprietors could still take action to locate on their estates "respectable heads of families in security of tenure and under precise and definite engagements", because such an action might be "a means of giving stability to property in the preservation of so valuable a staple and of establishing those relations which would conduce to the improvement of society."16 This was the sort of call for economic and social innovation that Ross had been seeking; but there is no indication that any other local official echoed the call, and the Grenada lieutenant-governor never did supply the report on the Plaisance experiment that Colebrooke had requested.
Public reaction, judged by press coverage, was less reticent. Between April and May 1842 newspapers in at least four territories drew public attention to the pamphlet through reprints of reviews from British journals; but it is doubtful whether any of the editors/leader writers of these newspapers read the pamphlet. The Royal St. Vincent Gazette reprinted without comment on 9 April 1842 the review that had been carried by the Emigration Gazette. Apparently, Grenadian newspapers did produce similar coverage but the relevant issues have not been located. The Falmouth Post of Jamaica reprinted on 4 May the Anti-Slavery Reporter's reprint of the Morning Journal's review of 1 February. It congratulated itself for having proposed a plan similar to Ross's as early as 23 February, recommended the adoption of the Ross plan (which it repeated on 29 June), and expressed the hope that "some gentlemen of influence and wealth" would try to do for Jamaica "what Mr. Ross has done for Grenada."
Coverage by the Gazette and General Advertiser of British Guiana was more substantial. It too reprinted reviews from British journals: from the Naval and Military Gazette on 21 April, and from the Morning Herald (via the Anti-Slavery Reporter) on 26 April. But the editor/leader writer, who seems to have read the pamphlet, made his own comments on it in the editorial of 26 April. He described Ross as a "practical man", fully endorsed his views on immigration and on the necessity for a more efficient division of labour in sugar production, and commended the plan for its "appearance of great plausibility."
The Trinidad Standard was the newspaper which did most to circulate the pamphlet and to promote adoption of Ross's system. In the first place, the editor serialized the pamphlet because he was convinced that no other work had either "commanded such general attention at home" [Britain] or was "so well deserving of extensive circulation and deep consideration from those whose fate it is to own or manage property in these Colonies." The editor admitted that serialization could damage Ross's royalties but reassured himself with the thought he was merely "seconding" and promoting Ross's objective of "extricating fellow proprietors from difficulties common to all." Second, in editorial comment spread over five issues in about three weeks, the editor fully endorsed Ross's analysis and his plan, offered insightful commentary on that plan, and provided advice to his readers on how and where the plan could be implemented. For example, the editor noted one constraint on the adoption of the plan was the absence of precise data to inform the calculation of an appropriate rate of rent. He suggested that planters should start the exercise of costing each department of their operations by sitting down together and circulating information derived from practical observation. When the calculation of rent was completed, the system should be introduced as Ross proposed - by degrees and with a few handpicked tenants. The other important piece of advice that the editor offered was directed to the cocoa planters. Because introduction of the system into sugar cultivation would require more preparation by the planters and more confidence and determination from the labourers, he advised implementation in cocoa cultivation, and pointed the planters to the "ample instructions" that Ross had set down in the pamphlet.
Hard evidence of the impact of Ross's proposals on the region's agricultural production practices is difficult to retrieve. The basic difficulty is that commentators seldom distinguished between metayage, which was often part-practice, and a tenant/cane farming system like Ross's which was intended as a total production system that could be implemented incrementally. Both systems had the share component and could therefore appear to be sharecropping arrangements. Moreover, formalisation of metayage arrangements (through registration of contracts and the drafting of farming leases) as occurred in St. Lucia in 1850, did further blur distinctions between the systems.17 A metayer, no matter if he was a part-time cultivator, could be regarded as a tenant paying rent in kind or as a partner in staple production. Finally, the dynamic for the extension and formalisation of metayage arrangements was more economic than intellectual; for example, it was continuing financial crisis and the force of example on the ground rather than articulated models that drove the conversion of the plantation-based Tobago sugar industry into a metayage dominated industry by the 1860s.
What we are left with then are scattered pieces of suggestive literary evidence. The first of these relates to Grenada. Both the Trinidad Standard (in May 1842) and William Checkley (in February 1846) asserted that the Plaisance experiment constituted a model that was adopted in that island. The Trinidad Standard's reliable "private" source in Grenada not only confirmed "the perfect truth" of Ross's description of the Plaisance experiment but reported that the "considerable effects" of Ross's example could be seen in "the introduction of the system of tenancy on many properties." The second piece of evidence, supplied by Ross himself and corroborated in part by the Trinidad Standard, confirmed the "very general attention" that the plan received in Trinidad and Nevis. In Trinidad, substantial planters, La Perouse and Pasea, were preparing in May/June to implement it, while Mrs. James Maynard of Symonds estate in Nevis was telling her London agents that the plan was "very good", and that it had been "adopted in some measure" in that island. She had found that it had worked so well on a small scale on the estate that she was extending it; "they [the labourers] all seem very anxious to get land, and all that is near enough to the works I shall endeavour to get cultivated."18 Whether, strictly speaking, this development was metayage cultivation or tenant farming is difficult to determine. The important point is that the impulse for the innovation came directly from Ross's pamphlet. What is required for full verification is a follow-up of these initiatives; but it is unlikely that the detailed information still survives.
Even more problematic is a probable link between Ross's scheme and the establishment in Trinidad of a cane farming industry and of "contracting" in cocoa cultivation. The difficulty is the lack of detailed information on the models and the dating for both developments. Modern historians, Howard Johnson, Bridget Brereton and Kathleen Phillips-Lewis, like their predecessor, C.Y. Shephard, provide useful information about how both innovations operated in the late 19th century, but they are vague about origins.19 The dates which they suggest are the 1860s for "contracting" and the 1870s for cane farming. The date for cane farming is probably accurate because the importance of the sugar industry ensured that full records were consistently kept particularly for the operations of major transnational companies. The date for "contracting" is probably less accurate partly because the cocoa industry, though a sturdy second staple until the 1860s, was the domain of those less visible and with minimal political clout - peons, peasants, French Creole planters - and therefore attracted less close scrutiny. It is arguable that "contracting" in cocoa cultivation started in the 1840s when cocoa planters accepted the pieces of advice offered by the Trinidad Standard.
What makes the case for the link is the great similarities in the details of the systems. Cane farmers grew cane on their own or rented land and sold it to central factories, thus fully establishing that division of labour that Ross had advocated. Moreover, important elements in the cane farming system suggested an obvious parentage. Cane farmers were increasingly encouraged to rent or lease plantation land; rental or leasing of that land often carried the condition that cane farmers should work in the plantation during the day and on their "farms" in their leisure; and some proprietors (landlords) encouraged the labourers/farmers to settle in villages near the estates. It is entirely possible, as Howard Johnson asserts, that metayage cultivation in St. Lucia and Tobago was the "principal model" for the cane farming industry;20 but it is equally probable that it had dual parentage.
Similarly with "contracting": most of the principal details could have been (and probably were) taken straight from Ross's pamphlet. Proprietors farmed out the cultivable area in 3-5 acre lots to contractors; contractors were responsible for preparing the land for planting, for laying out the irrigation system, planting the seed, creating windbreaks, supplying the young trees, etc; and contractors were permitted to cultivate ground provisions on the land while the cocoa trees were growing.21 The one important point of difference related to the method of compensation: Ross's tenants were paid annually a share of the crop while the contractors were paid for each mature tree, usually after five years; but this difference followed from the fact that Ross's tenants usually farmed established plantations while the contractors' major role was to create cocoa plantations. When this similarity in detail is added to the Trinidad Standard's advocacy at a particular time, there is at least a prima facie case for concluding that Ross's pamphlet was the source of the ideas and details for the "contracting" system.
The question remains: what accounts for the apparently limited implementation of Ross's scheme during the 1840s? The basic reason is likely to be that deep-rooted conservatism which Ross clearly argued against and which the Trinidad Standard articulated. According to that newspaper, all planters were unlikely, "except by slow degrees", to adopt a scheme that was "so entirely novel" and "so contrary to all preconceived ideas of the best mode of conducting sugar properties."22 In short, most planters during the 1840s believed, as they said to the Trinidad Agricultural and Immigration Society in 1841 and to the 1842 Select Committee, that profitable staple cultivation depended on the availability of the traditional inputs, particularly a supply of cheap and dependent labour. They were therefore deaf to any proposals for fundamental reform in management, production or landownership, and were only prepared to adopt expedients until their optimal conditions for normal business could be met.23 A tenant farming system, like metayage cultivation, went against the grain of conventional wisdom; because it seemed to reduce planter control over a crucial input, it could only produce inefficiency and lower levels of production and productivity while disturbing social equilibrium by forcing upward social mobility.
However, ex-slaves' attitudes might also have constituted a constraint on the implementation of the scheme. While that scheme did attempt to exploit the ex-slaves' preference for own-account farming in the interest of staple cultivation, there was no logical reason to suppose that ex-slaves wished to constitute themselves as a permanent class of tenant farmers. If the returns for provision cultivation were as ample as Ross and others claimed them to be, and if some possibilities for small-hold land acquisition were open, was it not possible that new tenant farmers, like metayers, might exploit landlords' land for provision cultivation and short change staple cultivation? Might they not have seen the tenant status as an intermediate step in the creation of a peasant class? Moreover, tenant farming could look suspiciously like the coercive labour/rent arrangements that planters all over the region had attempted to put in place as soon as the Apprenticeship ended. It is therefore likely that, in the circumstances, the tenant farming population might have been inherently unstable.
This constraint could only have been eased by the implementation of structural reform. Rationalization of the sugar industry in the direction of the separation of cultivation from manufacture, the sale or unconditional leasing of plantation land to ex-slaves and immigrants, and fully negotiated arrangements for the manufacture and purchase of smallholders' staple produce were the essential preconditions for the implementation and sustainability of tenant and cane farming systems. Only a few visionaries in the 1840s and 1850s saw the present and the future in these terms; and Ross may have been one of them. However, as long as structural reform remained absent from the agenda of the decision-makers, Ross would be a pioneer whose time had not yet come.
4 St. George Chronicle, 21 Sept. 1844.
5 Colonial Office Papers (CO) 101/112 Hincks to Labouchere, 27 Nov. 1856, No. 66.
6 CO 101/96 Grey to Stanley, 5 March 1846, NO. 10, enclosing Checkley to Grey, 18 Feb. 1846.
8 See A.J. Lee, The Origins of the Popular Press in England, 1855-1914. London, 1976.
10 CO 253/73 MacGregor to Russell, 24 March 1841, No. 20.
11 CO 254/13 Stanley to Darling, 26 Jan. 1842.
12 CO 138/64 Stanley to Metcalfe, 1 March 1842, No. 56.
13 Morning Herald, 26 March 1842.
14 Anti-Slavery Reporter, 30 Nov. 1842.
15 John Candler, Brief Notices of Haiti. London, 1842, pp. 123-147.
16 CO 101/101 Colebrooke to Grey, 18 Oct. 1849, No. 40.
22 Trinidad Standard, 6 June 1842.
23 See W.H. Burnley, Observations on the Present Condition of the Island of Trinidad. London, 1842.
© Woodville Marshall, 2002. HTML last revised 1 February, 2002.
Return to Conference Papers.