According to Government statistics, all but a very small proportion of the islands’ inhabitants can both read and write. The Danish system of education will to a great extent be continued by the United States, exclusive of denominational training. There are no high schools in the islands. On St. Thomas there are two private academies. The abolition of slavery and the prominence of St. Thomas as a port have so impeded the development of the island’s natural resources that today most of the produce consumed by St. Thomians is imported from nearby islands and from the United States. Farm laborers are given thirty-five cents a day, but as dock laborers a dollar a day can be earned. On St. John the soil is used for the cultivation of bay and lime trees, and a few hundred head of cattle find grazing ground on the hilly slopes. Thirteen thousand acres on the island of St. Croix are devoted to the growing of sugar cane, 2,000 acres to cotton, and 30,000 acres to a variety of crops chiefly useful for cattle fodder. Consular reports give the main manufacturing industries of the islands as sugar, rum and molasses on St. Croix; bay rum on St. Thomas; bay oil, bay rum and the products of the lime tree on St. John. The hurricane of October 9, 1916, was the most disastrous to real estate and commerce that had been experienced in the islands since 1867, the loss being estimated at about $1,500,000. The full force of the wind fell upon St. Thomas, though the greatest number of deaths--about fifty in all--were reported from St. John. The accustomed signals--two guns fired at a short interval--gave warning early in the afternoon of the approaching high winds. Accompanied by heavy rain, the wind blew at the rate of 125 miles an hour. It bared hills of turf and trees, lifted houses from foundations, wiped out villages, laid cocoanut groves low, stripped bay trees of their leaves, destroyed oil stills and sunk ships in the harbors, or drove them ashore and left them but disordered piles of wood and metal. On June 25th of each year it is the custom of the islanders to hold services of prayer to ask protection from the raging trade-winds that blow across the Atlantic from southwestern Europe, and on October 25th they give thanks if the prayer has been answered. PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR. VOL. 6. No. 13. SERIAL No. 161 COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION, INC. [Illustration: PHOTOGRAPH BY E. M. NEWMAN CHRISTIANSTED. ST. CROIX. VIRGIN ISLANDS] _THE VIRGIN ISLANDS_ _St. Thomas and St. John_ FOUR