"Few coffee planters have anywhere near a reasonable amount of their land under cultivation for the reason that with the poor help and methods now existent they are unable to extend their plant. The regular labor, employed all the year round, the peons--who form a relatively small percentage of the entire number available for work--are paid for a full day's work, and their degree of anemia is such as to prevent their doing but about 50 per cent of what they are paid for doing. Our estimate of the relative efficiency of labor was made from what the planter himself told us and by a simple experiment which we tried upon about 500 adult workers in different parts of the interior. We questioned each one as to the amount of coffee he could pick in a day and found that from two to three _almudes_ was the utmost the majority could do, and that one _almud_ was too much for many. Some stated that after picking a sack full in a remote part of the plantation they were unable to get it in to the mill without a mule, on account of the fact that their limbs refused to bear them up. When these people were working at light work, and at a time when the more they picked, the greater the profit to themselves, is it reasonable to suppose that when working for a wage without this incentive this 50 or 60 per cent labor would be any more efficient? This reduction in laboring capacity demonstrates what a heavy toll is paid by both employer and employee to uncinariasis in Porto Rico. "As to absentee landlords, Weyl says: 'Many of the absentee owners of Porto Rican properties and many of their agents in Porto Rico consider the island and its population as equally fit for the crassest exploitation, and are as contemptuous of the people as they are enthusiastic about the island. The current use by many Americans of an opprobrious epithet for Porto Ricans bespeaks an attitude which takes no account of the human phase of the problem, but considers the population as composed merely of so many laborers willing to work for such and such a price.'