Inducements to the Colored People of the United States to Emigrate to British GuianaHildreth, Richard
History
Inducements to the Colored People of the United States to Emigrate to British Guiana
Hildreth, Richard
African Americans -- Colonization; Guyana
British Guiana possesses a superabundance of the most fertile land.
The planters are wealthy, and well provided with the most complete
machinery for the manufacture of sugar. The only deficiency is a lack
of labor. The harvest is abundant, but the laborers are few. For
example,--on a coffee plantation, called _Dankbaarheid_, in the county
of Berbice, belonging to Mr. Carbery, it was estimated by the owner and
other competent persons in September last, that the crop of coffee on
the trees exceeded one hundred thousand pounds weight. Of this crop,
through deficiency of labor, only forty thousand pounds weight were
gathered. Sixty thousand pounds of coffee on that single plantation,
worth, in the British market, sixty thousand sterling shillings,
or about fifteen thousand dollars, perished for lack of hands to
gather it. It is the same to a greater or less extent, on every other
plantation. Indeed this deficiency of labor is more peculiarly felt
on the sugar estates, upon many of which it is not uncommon for ripe
canes, which if manufactured would have produced the value of several
thousand pounds sterling, to perish in the field for want of hands to
gather it.
There is indeed a great opening for industry of every kind. All sorts
of mechanics are sure of steady employment at wages from one to two
dollars per day, according to their skill. Seamstresses and domestics
are much needed and will find full employment. Any emigrant who can
command a small capital, can open a shop, or set up various kinds of
business to good advantage. Georgetown, the capital, situated at the
mouth of the river Demarara, is a place of about twelve thousand
inhabitants, and furnishes abundant employment in all those branches
of business usually carried on in a commercial town. New Amsterdam,
at the mouth of the Berbice, has about four thousand inhabitants, and
there are besides several villages, containing each some hundreds of
inhabitants.
The greatest demand however for labor is, on the plantations.
Agricultural laborers are always sure of abundant employment and
high wages. The labor of agriculture is of various kinds, and may be
performed by any man accustomed to work, with little or no previous
instruction. It consists principally in cutting up weeds with the hoe,
cutting down sugar-cane, and throwing it into boats on the canals, to
be transported to the sugar-house; tending the sugar boiling; packing
away the sugar; boating it to market; picking and curing coffee, which
is very light work; tending cattle; cutting timber; and a great variety
of other labor, almost all of the simplest kind.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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