Raymond T. Smith

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CHAPTER IV

THE ECONOMY

IT is clear from the previous chapters that economic factors have been of great importance in shaping the growth of Guianese society.  It was European capital and the existence of European markets for tropical produce that stimulated the creation of a new society on the South American mainland; it was in the plantation cultivation of sugar and other crops that Europeans, Africans, Indians, Portuguese, and Chinese had their first contacts.  Of more importance still is the fact that effective control of the economy has been, and still is to a large extent, located outside the country.  In this chapter we shall try to sketch the main outlines of the economy, to explore some of its interrelations with other social pheno­mena, and to discuss some of the problems of ‘development’.

Like most ‘underdeveloped’ countries, British Guiana is a primary producer, selling her products overseas and relying on imports to meet her requirements of manufactured goods.  Her primary products are few in number.  The bulk of exports consist of raw sugar, rice, unprocessed bauxite, and timber.  Out of a total value of exports of domestic produce in 1959 of $101,985,268, sugar and sugar preparations accounted for $48,702,237 or 47.7 per cent.; cereals and cereal preparations (mainly rice) for $13,844,809 or 13.6 per cent.; metalliferous ores and metal scrap (mainly bauxite) for $25,281,788 or 24.8 per cent.; wood, lumber, and cork for $3,604,309 or 3.5 per cent.  These four items alone constituted 89.6 per cent. of the value of all exports.  It is the income generated within these export industries, in the form of wages, that pays for the considerable imports of manufactured goods, and even food, on which the country depends at present.  The total value of imports of food, beverages, and tobacco in 1959 was $23,834,921 and of manufactured goods and machinery $55,352,812.[1]  The inherent weakness of an economy which relies so heavily upon the export of one or two commodities is obvious; any fluctuation in the market for these products immediately reacts upon the whole Guianese economy and its effect is multiplied many times.

AGRICULTURE

In terms of the value of production, number of wage-earners employed, and of general influence sugar is the most important industry in the country.  It is the industry upon which Guiana has always depended and while there is a sense in which its main outlines have changed little during the past hundred years or so, there has been a continuous process of modification in its internal structure.  The industry has always been based upon the growing of cane, the extraction of juice and the first stages of processing; processing does not extend beyond the production of crude sugar crystals, molasses, and rum;[2] the plantation has always been the main unit of production with only negligible quantities of cane being produced by small farmers; and finally the industry has always depended upon some form of preferential treatment in the United Kingdom and Commonwealth markets to keep it going at anything like a fair level of prosperity.  While these overall characteristics of the industry have remained fairly constant there have been great changes in its internal organization.  No less far reaching in its consequences than the transition from slavery to freedom and the growth of a complex racial pattern through the importation of labour,[3] has been the gradual consolidation of plantations into large units and the aggregation of control of most of the industry by one large company.  In 1829 there were 230 plantations, owned by almost as many owners, producing about 50,000 tons of sugar per annum.  In 1958 there were eighteen plantations controlled by two companies and one small independent plantation.  This small number of large and more efficient estates produced 306,361 tons of sugar.

Many of the plantations that were operating in 1829 passed into the hands of small farmers who grow subsistence crops or rice; others were abandoned and the rest were forced into consolidation and greater efficiency to meet strong competition and insecure markets.  One of the most fascinating aspects of this process has been the growth of Bookers’ Sugar Estates Ltd.  Today out of the nineteen sugar estates in British Guiana, fifteen are operated by this company, a subsidiary of Booker Brothers, McConnell & Company, Ltd.  This latter is a London-based company with interests in Nyasaland, Canada, Trinidad, Jamaica, the Rhodesias, Nigeria, South Africa, and Britain.  Its main subsidiaries are in British Guiana and it is here that the company made its start through the trading and planting activities of its founder, Josias Booker.  The sugar and rum branches of the main company are its real backbone, but today other activities cover an extremely wide field, from shipping and retail trading to printing, cattle ranching, and balata production.  The structure and influence of the Booker Group is discussed separately below, but a realization of its manifold activities is essential to an appreciation of the present-day sugar industry.

*Estates with an operating sugar factory.

Source: G.B., Commission of Inquiry into the Sugar Industry of British Guiana, 1949, Report (Col. No. 249), p. 172, but brought up to date.

Writing in 1949 the members of the Commission of Inquiry into the Sugar Industry of British Guiana[4] reported that the then twenty-one sugar estates covered an area of 155,000 acres of which 25,000 acres were covered by buildings, foreshore, bush, water, and swamp.  Another 20,000 acres was being fallowed at any one time, 18,000 acres were under rice, ground provisions, coconuts, and other crops, and 30,000 acres were used for grazing.  At any one time the area under cane was no more than 60,000 acres and the yield was about 180,000 tons of sugar.[5]  In 1959 cane was harvested from 86,877 acres of estate land and the yield was 284,425 tons, or approximately 3.3 tons of sugar per acre.  This increased production has been mainly due to the favourable prices obtaining under the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement, which has in turn stimulated the companies to make extensive replacements of old equipment.  The most noticeable change in the sugar industry during the past ten years has been the enormous increase in efficiency through centralization of control and planning.

The common practice during the last hundred years and until quite recently has been for each sugar estate to be under the direct control of a resident manager, supervised in a general way by a Georgetown attorney responsible to the owners, who normally lived in Britain.  The manager was the head of the estate hierarchy and was in many respects similar to a petty chieftain, having almost unlimited power within his estate.  Sugar estate lands have never been brought within the local government system so that residents have never paid rates, sat on local councils, or been responsible for any of their own public amenities.  The managers have controlled not only the industrial organization of the estates but the community and social life of the resident workers as well.  Not more than ten years ago estate managers held formal ‘courts’ in which they arbitrated private disputes between resident workers.[6]  Each manager was responsible for the planning of every aspect of production on his estate, being assisted by his chemist, factory and field managers, and engineers.  As the overall control of the sugar industry gradually passed into the hands of Bookers and the Demerara Company, it became convenient for more services to be provided by central organizations.  A good deal of research on sugar cultivation had been done by government-employed agronomists and other technical people, but gradually the companies, both in­dividually and through the Sugar Producers’ Association, realizing the great importance of a scientific agriculture with more emphasis upon research, began to build up their own organizations.  In the first phase these were still services provided for the managers to assist them in improving their estates.

In the latest stage of this development control is shifting away from the individual estate manager to a highly efficient central bureaucracy in Georgetown.  This is most noticeable in the case of Bookers’ Sugar Estates Ltd, where the central organization plans the phased production pattern for each estate and so arranges the flow of cane and processed sugar that there will be no delays in the factories or on the shipping wharves.  Highly efficient cost-accounting procedures are removing the individual manager’s financial control as well.  Along with the streamlining of managerial control and the application of the most up-to-date methods of scientific agriculture, there has been an increase in the use of machinery.

Throughout the nineteenth century, and most of the twentieth so far, one major problem of the sugar planters was to secure an adequate supply of labour.  As long ago as the 1830’s there was discussion of how to replace labour by steam power but the heavy soils, and probably the lack of capital for heavy investment, as well as the absence of efficient machines, conspired against mechanization of field operations.  Instead the planters concentrated on maintaining a large supply of labour in and around the plantations.  Until quite recently it was a common complaint, and not without substance, that the sugar interests used their considerable influence to block any economic developments which would result in a drain of labour away from the sugar estates.  But the picture is changing.  Rapid population growth coupled with the increasing use of machines for field operations means that there are more people seeking fewer jobs.  So far as the sugar industry is concerned, this trend is likely to continue since there is a limit placed upon substantial expansion of production by world agreements.

The enormous differences between a highly centralized agricultural industry and one with a large number of producers and little central control is dramatically illustrated by the contrast of the sugar and rice industries.  Both are export industries and both are large employers of labour.  In 1957, according to one estimate,[7] the sugar industry produced approximately 285,000 tons of sugar valued at $58¼ million with approximately 25,000 employees, while in the same year only 79,000 tons of rice valued at about $17 million were produced by 22,000 rice farmers assisted by a good deal of family and other paid labour.  Furthermore rice was estimated to occupy about 137,000 acres as opposed to 81,108 acres under sugar in 1957.

Since the First World War the production of rice has increased steadily and rice farming has come to provide a basis for the household economy of large numbers of families, particularly East Indians.  Although rice is thought of as an Indian crop, because of the greater number of Indian farmers, Negroes have been growing rice in British Guiana for at least 200 years and the recent favourable prices have induced many Negro farmers to plant rice on land that was previously abandoned.  Apart from the government-operated plantation at Mahaicony-Abary, rice is essentially a small farmer’s crop, as can be seen from the following table referring to the 1954 autumn crop.  The few really large farms are mostly in the Mahaica-Mahaicony area where drainage and irrigation is poor, large areas of land are planted and reaped by machinery, and the yield per acre is correspondingly low.

Source: C. O’Loughlin, ‘The Rice Sector in the Economy of British Guiana’, Social and Economic Studies, vii (1958).

The typical Guianese rice farmer cultivates about five acres of rice land, some of it probably being leased from a large landowner, or from the government, and some being freehold land.  Recent legislation has standardized rents for given types of land and afforded more security of tenure.[8]  It is unlikely that the farmer will devote the whole of his time to rice cultivation.  Apart from growing a few other crops for home consumption and the local market, and keeping a cow, pigs, goats, or fowls, he probably works occasionally for cash wages on a near‑by sugar estate or on public works projects.  Or he may have a small shop or a trade such as barbering as a sideline.  Where drainage and irrigation is good it is not uncommon to plant two crops of rice each year.  The main crop is planted at the beginning of the long rainy season around April or May and is reaped in October.  In 1957 about 15,500 acres were planted for the ‘small crop’ which is reaped in the spring.  Despite the increasing use of mechanical equipment in recent years the majority of farmers still use methods of cultivation little different from those their ancestors used in India.  Light ox-drawn ploughs and harrows are used for preparing the land, and seedlings are transplanted by hand.  Reaping too is most usually a hand operation, and threshing is done by teams of bulls which tread out the grain from the straw.  These methods of cultivation are only suitable when small areas of land are being worked by family labour.  In absolute terms the results are inefficient, but there is no other use for the labour at present, and by these labour ­intensive methods high yields of up to 2,000 lb.  of rice per acre can be achieved on good lands.

In January 1953 the British Guiana Rice Development Company was established under government control to take over the old government rice development schemes in the Mahaicony–Abary area.  The object of this company was to demonstrate the advantages of large-scale mechanical cultivation and large-scale milling.  It has done good work of an experimental nature, and has provided some services such as machinery-hire and milling facilities to farmers in the area.  As a commercial venture it has been a total failure.

Milling has always been something of a problem in British Guiana; in 1959 there were 208 mills in operation most of which were very small units consisting of a concrete area for sun-drying the padi, a rough corrugated-iron warehouse, a boiler to produce steam for par-boiling, and one or more hullers.  These mills can produce a reasonably nutritious grade of rice, but they are inefficient in that they waste many milling by-products, are unable to produce polished rice, and depend on sunny weather for drying.  To counteract some of these deficiencies the Rice Development Company has established two large central mills and has plans for building more.

It is through the Rice Marketing Board that a real control of the industry can be exercised.  First formed in 1939 to regulate exports and prices of rice during the war, the Board is now the sole exporter of rice.  All rice produced in the country must be sold to it, apart from small quantities which farmers are permitted to retain for domestic use and for seed and stock-feed.  The Board grades farmers’ rice upon receipt and pays accordingly, a procedure which invariably produces complaints of ‘down-grading’.  During the crop year ending 30 September 1959, estimated total production was 104,000 tons, of which 53,873 tons were consumed locally and 51,127 tons exported.

The rice industry has grown to its present size on the basis of a steady local demand and an export market close at hand in the other British West Indian territories.  British Guiana rice was able to establish itself in these territories partly through the entrepreneurial activities of one or two Guianese merchants, but mainly because of the drying up of alternative sources of supply during the two world wars.  It is not cheap compared with rice from the Far East even when allowance has been made for shipping costs.  At present the bulk of exports is sold to the territories of the West Indies Federation by the Rice Marketing Board on the basis of price and quantity agreements negotiated between the British Guiana and the federal governments at a periodical conference.  Small quantities have been sold to some of the Dutch West Indian territories and attempts are being made to develop some trade with Venezuela, but without the West Indian market the outlook would be bleak.  The fact that British Guiana does not at present produce the polished white rice so much preferred by consumers makes it extremely difficult to break into new markets.

Because of British Guiana’s position in relation to the West Indies Federation,[9] the negotiation of marketing agreements with the chief purchaser of the country’s rice, tends to become a political as well as an economic matter.  The West Indian territories claim that through the price agreements and the guaranteed market they are extending to British Guiana the kind of treatment that could only be expected by a full member of the federation.  If British Guiana does not join, they argue, then the member countries would be justified in buying rice from the cheapest source, and in developing their own rice industries as quickly as possible.  Many of British Guiana’s rice farmers foolishly imagine that they can extract a rising standard of living from a static industry by political means.  Whether British Guiana joins the federation or not will probably make little difference to the marketing problem in the long run.  What is needed is increased economic efficiency in the industry and an ability to produce the kind of rice that customers will buy.

Sugar and rice are the only crops with any substantial export market.  Most other agricultural production is for local consumption, though some small surpluses may be exported.  Experiments are being made with some export crops such as cocoa and cotton but production is small as yet.  Coconuts constitute one of the most important crops for local use, there being about 34,000 acres planted with coconut trees in 1959.  The bulk of the production from these trees goes into the local manufacture of edible oil, soap, margarine, and compound lard.  The production of food for local consumption has always been regarded as being secondary to the main task of growing sugar or rice, and in the days of acute labour shortage it was far more profitable to import food from Canada and the United States rather than waste precious man-hours growing it at home.  Only in the very recent past has attention been given to the development of better varieties of food crops and improved techniques of cultivation.  The business of raising ground provisions, fruit, and other vegetables continues to be a spare-time activity with most farmers.  Tastes which have developed over a century or more continue a preference for the starchy foods combined with imported salt-fish or salt-meat; for luxury occasions canned meat or fish is highly favoured.  Leafy green vegetables are rarely eaten except by East Indians who usually keep a kitchen garden, or by members of the urban middle class.  There is obviously much scope for the extension of farming for local consumption, to replace imports, to provide for a rapidly growing population, and to effect a greater variety in the diet.

Livestock of various kinds are important in the local economy but as in the case of food crops there is room for a considerable expansion and improvement of production.  Beef cattle are raised in the savannah areas and some meat is now flown down from an abattoir at Lethem to the Georgetown markets.  Dairy cattle and draught cattle are to be found in the coastal area but shortage of grazing land in this intensively cultivated region sets a limit upon their production.  Large quantities of milk are still imported despite the opening of a pasteurization plant in Georgetown.  The problem of increasing supplies from local sources lies as much in the field of marketing as in that of production.  Most livestock on the coast are kept by farmers who have a few cattle, sheep, pigs, goats, or poultry as a source of subsidiary income or as a form of savings.  To collect milk supplies from a very large number of small producers, or to ensure a steady flow of small stock into the market is extremely difficult.

One of the most promising lines of development in the production of local food supplies has been the recent expansion, on government initiative, of supplies of fresh fish.  Fish has always been an important part of the local diet and most rural families possess nets for fishing in the numerous drainage trenches and rivers.  Until recently sea fishing was confined to the coastal shallows and the catches of the small boats were quite inadequate to supply local demand.  Prices too were necessarily high because of the relatively small scale of the operation.  In order to improve the supply of fresh fish the government has carried out experimental deep-sea trawling, set up a modern Wholesale Fish Market in Georgetown, and encouraged the development of fish farming in the rural areas.

MINING

Mining is playing an increasingly important part in the Guianese economy and is beginning to provide some justification for the claim that British Guiana has ‘vast untapped natural resources’.  When gold and diamonds were first worked on a commercial scale in the 1880’s all eyes were quickly turned towards the interior lands of the colony.  Discussions and public meetings were held in Georgetown on the relative merits of roads and railways for opening up the country; no one doubted that one or the other would soon be built.  The alluvial deposits of gold, silver, and diamonds proved to be less rich than had been hoped.  After 1893 the returns began to fall off and despite a lingering interest in interior development very little public money has been spent on it.  Today the gold and diamond industries are quite small and are dominated by one or two companies.  Of 16,491 bullion oz. of gold produced in 1957 a total of 10,578 oz. was produced by one company’s dredge and about 4,000 oz. by small miners.  In 1959 only 3,448 oz. were produced because British Guiana Consolidated Goldfields Ltd. were placed on a care and maintenance basis while they were under examination by another company.  In the same year diamond production almost doubled from 33,091 to 62,328 carats as a result of the remarkable find in the Kurupung, and the number of small miners increased from the 1957 total of l,900 to about 5,000.  Many of these men make only an occasional trip to the interior and are sometimes financed by the dealers who contract to buy their diamonds.

Though gold and diamonds have not fulfilled their early promise, other less glamorous minerals have begun to yield great wealth.  In 1914 the Demerara Bauxite Company was formed by American and Canadian aluminium interests and began to exploit the rich deposits situated some 60–70 miles up the Demerara river.  The scale of operations has grown considerably over the years, with a rapid acceleration during the Second World War, until in 1957 colony production totalled 2,201,903 long tons.  Most of this was produced by the Demerara Bauxite Company Ltd. (now a subsidiary of Aluminium Ltd., and complementary to the Aluminium Company of Canada), from its mine at Mackenzie, Demerara river.  Although several companies have concessions and exploration licences, the only other company producing bauxite is the Reynolds Metals Company operating at Kwakwani, up the Berbice river.  The Reynolds mine produced 225,023 long tons in 1957, as opposed to 1,976,880 long tons from the Mackenzie mine.  In 1958-9 production by both companies was cut back sharply because of the United States recession and a local strike; total production in 1959 was 1,674,416 tons.

Most of British Guiana’s bauxite is shipped as raw ore to the parent companies’ plants in Canada and the United States, but a small proportion is calcined and the Demerara Bauxite Company has started the erection of an alumina plant at Mackenzie.  Compared to Jamaica, where a bauxite industry was established as recently as 1942, British Guiana derives little benefit from its bauxite industry.  Apart from the existence of a large alumina plant in Jamaica itself, the companies operating there engage in a number of extremely valuable side activities.  These range from stock farming and poultry rearing on lands covered by their concessions to the stimulation of cottage industries such as craft weaving on aluminium hand-looms.  In British Guiana no such activities have taken place because the mining concession covered previously unpopulated land.  The companies have established mining towns in which excellent provision is made for workers’ accommodation, health, and recreation but they are necessarily small and the total effect of the bauxite industry on employment figures is not very significant.  The excellent amenities of these bauxite towns are somewhat diminished by the existence of a virtual colour bar between the mainly imported supervisory staff and the Guianese workers.  It can be, and is, argued that the distinctions are between different grades of staff, that the high fence around the ‘compound’ is to afford protection against thieves, and that the provision of separate clubs and swimming pools is also a matter of differential amenities according to grade.  But the fact remains that the atmosphere of the mining camps is more like that of the southern United States than of the rest of British Guiana.  Apart from the provision of welfare amenities for their staffs, the bauxite companies confine their activities to the extraction and shipping of ore.  The royalties and export duties paid to the government are extremely low, being 25 and 45 cents (B.G.) per long ton respectively, making a total yield to the government revenue of only 2s. 11½d. per long ton.  Since the price of raw ore can only be fixed quite arbitrarily owing to the absence of an open market, the income-tax yield is also very low.

The existence of rich and extensive deposits of bauxite gives some substance to the idea that British Guiana will be able to develop industries of her own.  At the present time she can hardly hope to launch upon a full-scale aluminium industry (apart from anything else she lacks the cheap power necessary for smelting), but she can press the mining companies to carry out an increasing amount of processing within the country, thereby securing capital investment in plant as well as an extension of training in mechanical and managerial skills that Guianese need so desperately.  Jamaica has shown what skillful negotiation can yield in the form of increased government revenue from bauxite operations.

The other minerals for which mining operations are being developed are manganese and columbite-tantalite, though operations on the latter minerals are still in the exploration and experimental stage.  Manganese mining is in process of development at a site in the North-West District, and by the end of 1958 the operating company had partially completed a short railway from the mine to a nearby river.  It was hoped that mining would begin by 1960.

No other minerals are being actively worked at present but exploration is taking place and discoveries of further useful deposits may reasonably be expected.  Much of the interior is still inaccessible and only sketchily surveyed, despite the valuable work of the very small government Geological Survey Department.

TIMBER

Flying over British Guiana gives a very good impression of the extent of her forest cover.  The green sea seems to roll on endlessly, broken only by the savannahs and the coastal plain.  These extensive forests contain a large variety of tropical woods including the durable, and therefore valuable, hardwood, Greenheart (Ocotea rodiaei).  Timber exports totalled 2,494,200 cubic feet in 1959 valued at $3,363,250 and the bulk of this consisted of Greenheart destined for Britain and the United States where it is used for marine piles and pit props.  Until quite recently, when concrete became fashionable, houses and even large public buildings were built of wood.  Georgetown with its broad streets and delightful wooden buildings which seem to float white and graceful on their pile foundations is easily the most pleasing of the cities in the British Caribbean.  The change to concrete is being forced because of the costly fires which have periodically destroyed whole sections of Georgetown, and it seems likely that the lightness and freedom of the wooden buildings will be replaced by the solidity and architectural deadness of ferro-concrete cubes.  Even the huge and fantastic pseudo-Gothic Anglican cathedral, long cherished as the supposedly highest wooden building in the world, will have to go eventually.  Perhaps by then tropical architecture will have come into its own and a more fitting replacement will be built.

Apart from the building timbers (which will continue to be used in the rural areas for a long time yet), and the high quality hardwoods, the forests contain trees which are useful for pulping and for the manufacture of chipboard.  A company was formed some years ago to manufacture chipboard and is still in operation though its activities were seriously hampered during 1960 by lack of electric power to operate its machines and it was forced to close down at one stage.  It is now in production again and promises to be a success.  The Columbian Corporation of America leased half a million acres in 1959 and announced its intention to invest $20 million in a wood-pulp industry.[10]   Improvement in the milling, drying, and chemical treatment of various woods has been stimulated by the government processing plant in Georgetown.  Forests are obviously one of British Guiana’s major assets, capable of considerable development as soon as communications are improved.

MANUFACTURING INDUSTRY

Apart from sugar factories, rice mills, and saw mills, there are few manufacturing concerns in British Guiana.  In recent years a small ‘industrial area’ has been developing just outside Georgetown but so far the industries are of the type which caters to a small market and can be operated on a small scale.  A brewery, margarine, and common-soap factory, a biscuit factory and an oxygen-acetylene plant are the most important.  Other local industries include the small-scale manufacture of ice, soft drinks, matches, some articles of clothing such as shirts, cigarettes, drugs and patent medicines, and printing.  Rum is an important export, of course, and is manufactured as a by-product of sugar.  Small quantities of gin are manufactured, mainly for local consumption.  Foundries for the repair of sugar mills and general machinery have long existed and in recent years the ship-repair yards have begun to build some excellent small vessels for coastal and river use.  As in any town of moderate size Georgetown is supplied with garages, laundries, dry‑cleaners, repair and maintenance shops of various kinds, and a number of small food-processing concerns.  Good quality furniture is made from local woods but it is made by small independent tradesmen who are extremely conservative in design and techniques.  The Industries Division of the Social Welfare Department has done something to try to improve designs, but much room for improvement remains.  This organization has now been reformed as the Minor Industries Unit of the Ministry of Trade and Industry and is actively engaged in the establishment of new, but as yet unprofitable industries using local raw materials.

The most important developments in manufacturing have been the recent start on the construction of an alumina plant at Mackenzie and the announcement of plans to establish a wood-pulp industry.  There are numerous possibilities for the development of industries using local materials such as timber, local clays and silica, cane and grasses, metals and even bagasse (the sugar-cane fibres which are at present burned as fuel when the juice has been extracted).  A mission of United Kingdom industrialists which visited the colony in 1952, and the World Bank Mission which reported in 1953 both drew attention to the problems of marketing, of capital investment, and of the provision of skilled labour and supervisory personnel.[11]  Markets are probably the major problem.  It is easy enough to forsee the development of small industries making things such as builders’ hardware, floor-tiles, concrete blocks, knitted vests and shoes, and other commodities for the immediate market, but such a limited development of industry could not possibly create enough employment to ease the pressure on the land or to satisfy the aspirations of Guianese for higher living standards.  The development of export markets, and entry into the world pattern of exchange as something more than the producer of primary agricultural products is essential to meet these demands.

COMMUNICATIONS

Guianese, like Brazilians, have long been convinced that the key to the future prosperity of their country lies in opening up the hinterland.  The same problem of finding means of settling the country even if communications are established exists in both countries, but British Guiana cannot afford the grand gesture of a Brasilia.  So far interior communications have followed the very limited settlement.  Cattle ranchers established a trail from the savannahs to the coast which has now been partially superseded by an air service carrying beef from an abattoir at Lethem in the Rupununi to Georgetown.  However, freight rates are high and many cattle are still driven down the trail.  The government maintains about 400 miles of trails across the savannahs which are usable in the dry season for linking the ranches, Government Posts and airstrips, and the Amerindian settlements.  This network of trails is navigable by jeep and truck and is gradually being improved.  Farther north a natural soil-surfaced road system runs south from the river town of Bartica for some 200 miles to the gold and diamond mining areas on the Potaro and Mazaruni rivers.  This road is well maintained, is negotiable by truck, and crosses a number of excellent bridges.

Although these roads and trails make the interior accessible after a journey by river steamer or plane from the coast, a trip to the interior is still regarded as something of an adventure in exploration.  In the past numerous schemes have been put forward for the construction of roads or railways linking Georgetown with the southernmost part of the country where it borders on Brazil.  The most ambitious of these were current between 1880 and 1914, the period of the gold and diamond boom.  Several offers were made to build railways to the Brazil border by private firms but the concessions required from the government were always considered to be too high.  One of the most persistent and charming of Guianese folktales relates how Henry Ford I once offered to build a road from Georgetown into Brazil in exchange for a ten-year monopoly on motor vehicles.  It is said that a short-sighted and pedantic Colonial Office rejected the offer.

At the present time a plan is being implemented which, because of the modesty of its aims, may prove to be a good beginning.  The idea is to build soil-surfaced link roads between the coastal road system, the Bartica-Potaro road system, and the savannah trails.  Such a road system would be of limited use but would provide a basis for future development, and once it became possible to drive from Georgetown to Lethem an entirely new attitude towards the interior lands would develop.  Ten years ago it was considered to be something of an adventure to drive across the Sahara; today it is commonplace.  If British Guiana waits for population to move inland before developing its communications further it will have to wait a very long time, whereas the existence of easy communication with Georgetown might encourage settlement, and would certainly stimulate interest.

Any discussion of roads in British Guiana always reverts to the dreadful state of the coast roads.  Guianese are firmly convinced that they have the worst roads in the world; this is not true by any means, but they are certainly worse than most in the British Caribbean.  When the first roads were built linking together the plantations along the coast at the end of the eighteenth century, their main purpose was to enable troops to move quickly to the scene of slave rebellions.  Originally each plantation was responsible for the maintenance of that section of the Public Road which passed through it.  After emancipation, when many of the plantations had been bought by groups of freedmen, the roads were often neglected and some of the earliest local government legislation was enacted to enforce contributions to road maintenance.  But then, as now, the bulk of agricultural produce was transported by other routes.  Sugar has always been conveyed by barge from the plantations to the wharves of Georgetown or to New Amsterdam before it ceased to be an important port.  Rice travels by rail except on the Courantyne and Essequibo coasts where trucks are important, and it is significant that the Courantyne coast was the first part of the country, apart from the towns, to get a modern asphalt motor road.

Because of the absence of stone along the coast and the supposed difficulty of transporting it from the interior,[12] the practice developed of metalling the coast roads with ‘burnt earth’; that is, with clay which has been burnt to brick in a specially constructed ‘heap’.  Of the 260 miles of coast roads in existence today, 75 miles are surfaced with asphalt and the remainder with burnt earth.  For more than 150 years the process of laying and rolling the broken brick has been repeated.  Every dry season the brick crumbles into a fine powder which rises in great clouds behind every passing vehicle; in the rainy season whatever remains is washed away leaving a surface pitted with holes of various sizes.  These are duly filled with new brick as soon as it is available.  The Public Works Department of the central government long ago took over responsibility for the upkeep of the main roads and the annual cycle of road repair has come to be an integral part of the rural economy.  ‘Road work’ is a form of outdoor relief, with somewhat richer pickings for the contractors who supply the burnt earth.

Inconvenient though it may be for the owners of motor cars to travel over these country roads, their condition does not, as yet, lead to any serious dislocation of the country’s economy.  As was pointed out above, the bulk of agricultural produce travels by water or by rail and the same is true of the food and manufactures which go to the rural shops.  The roads (except on the Courantyne and Essequibo coasts) are used mainly for passenger transport.  Fleets of taxis ply up and down the coast carrying passengers at moderate fares much more quickly than they can travel by rail or by the few buses which used to be very unreliable.

The government has now set up a special Roads Division as a separate sub-department within the Public Works Department in an attempt to improve and expedite the road-construction programme.  The improvement of the coast roads, and particularly the road from the airport to Georgetown, is a matter of national pride as much as hard economic necessity; the development of roads into the interior would be an act of faith in the future development of the country.  The World Bank Mission took the view that the improvement of the existing coast road and its feeders to cope with the volume of traffic now using them must be a primary consideration, and their advice has been acted upon.  This view was consonant with their general idea that the development of the interior must be deferred until the coastal area has been fully exploited.

British Guiana has two short stretches of railway which were established as long ago as 1848.  The first runs between Georgetown and Rosignol, opposite New Amsterdam, is 60.5 miles long and has a 4’ 8½" gauge.  The other runs from Vreed-en-Hoop, opposite Georgetown, to Parika on the bank of the Essequibo river, is 18.5 miles long, and has a gauge of 3’ 6".  Since 1919 they have been operated by the government Transport and Harbours Department and have proved to be a constant drain upon government revenue.  The uneconomic nature of their operation has largely been due to lack of capital for proper maintenance and equipment and not to competition from road transport as is sometimes supposed.  Both railway lines are used mainly for carrying workpeople to and from Georgetown, for the transport of rice into Georgetown, and the transport of shop goods into the rural areas.  It is realized that even if the railways are eventually made redundant by the development of road transport this stage will not be reached for many years.  In the meantime a programme of modernization and improved efficiency of the existing lines has been undertaken.

Some of the obstacles to long-distance travel through the forest area have been overcome by the development of air transport.  Starting as a small private company in 1934, British Guiana Airways built up an internal air network between Georgetown and a number of landing strips and creeks in the interior.  This was, and still is to a large extent, ‘bush flying’ in the Canadian and Australian sense and the founder of B.G. Airways was an American, Major A. Williams.  Most of the interior airstrips are just clearings in the bush though in recent years some of them have been considerably improved and are reliable even in the rainy season.  At Lethem a radio beacon has been installed to facilitate bad weather landings.  The government has now taken over the company (which was always heavily subsidized), and in 1957 maintained twenty-one airstrips and forty-three water alighting areas, the latter being used by the Airway’s amphibious Grumman ‘Goose’ aircraft.  Not all of these landing places are in regular use, but a number of scheduled services are operated to seven points in the interior.  The company also does a brisk trade in charter flights carrying parties from Georgetown for picnics in the interior, including a flight over the renowned Kaieteur Fall.

British Guiana’s international airport, Atkinson Field, is a legacy of the American ‘occupation’.  It was built during the war and used as a take-off point for the ferrying of aircraft to North Africa.  It is a fine airfield twenty-five miles from Georgetown and is used by airlines connecting it with Trinidad (which is the main West Indian link with the rest of the world), with French and Dutch Guiana, and with Boa Vista and Manaos in northern Brazil.  This latter link could become quite important in the future since the route from Europe and North America to this region of Brazil is much shorter through Georgetown than through the more southerly ports in Brazil itself.

Great hindrances to surface travel in British Guiana are the numerous rivers, streams, and swamps.  Where the rivers or streams are navigable they can be exploited as means of transport, of course, but the transfer from road or rail to water and back again is often time-consuming and tedious.  To travel from Georgetown to the Essequibo coast by car it is necessary to cross the Demerara river by ferry, drive twenty miles along the west coast of Demerara, and then board another steamer which sails around the large islands of Wakenaam and Leguan which lie in the mouth of the Essequibo river before one arrives at Suddie some hours later.  Owing to the heavy demand for space on the ferries it is necessary to book one’s car well in advance, so that every journey takes on the flavour of an expedition.  The ferry boats are much too small to cope with the amount of traffic and none of them were built to carry cars.  A number of new vessels have been ordered and this is expected to relieve the situation.  If the development of the country follows anything like the anticipated pace it will certainly be necessary to make tremendous improvements in the handling capacity and turnabout speed of the main ferries.  From time to time schemes are put forward for the bridging of the Demerara river.  This would be a most desirable thing to do but it is difficult to imagine one of the largest and most expensive bridges in the world across a river flanked on one side by a city with a population of a little over 100,000 and on the other by an agricultural area without electricity, sewage disposal, domestic piped water, or even a properly paved highway.  None the less the project is periodically debated with great seriousness in the legislature and the daily newspapers take up the argument in leader articles bristling with statistics and estimates.

Postal, telephone, telegraph, and radio-telephone communications are all being developed to meet new requirements and a programme of improvement has been in progress for a number of years.  Georgetown now has an automatic telephone exchange but the number of lines to the rural areas is still inadequate.  To make a call from a post office on the west coast of Demerara to Georgetown, a distance of perhaps less than ten miles, may take anything up to one hour because of the shortage of lines across the mouth of the Demerara river.  Internal telecommunications are operated by the government Post Office; external services by Cable and Wireless (W.I.) Ltd.

It is entirely possible that Georgetown may some day be an important port serving the northern part of Brazil as well as the whole of British Guiana.  The main drawback to the development of the port of Georgetown is the bar across the mouth of the Demerara river over which there is a controlling depth of only nine feet mean low water at spring tide.  This makes it impossible for really large vessels to cross the bar and bauxite for example is shipped in small ocean-going vessels.  There is a fair amount of ocean-going traffic amounting to about 1,000 steam vessels a year and in addition there is a large volume of schooner traffic to the islands of the Eastern Caribbean.  These schooners, which are locally built, carry anything from rice to charcoal and earthenware pots.

FINANCE AND BANKING

The problems of finance and banking in a country like British Guiana reflect very accurately some of the basic problems of economic development and the difficulties of establishing local autonomy in economic policy.  The currency of British Guiana has, since 1951, been uniform with that of the other territories of the British Caribbean except Jamaica and British Honduras.  At present Jamaica, which was a member of the West Indies Federation, has its own currency, while British Guiana, which never was a member, participates in a common currency board with the eastern territories of the federation.  The currency in circulation is designated in dollars and cents but is based on sterling; $1=4s. 2d., which means that 1 cent = ½d.  The notes issued by the Currency Board are backed 100 per cent. by sterling reserves held in the form of cash or Commonwealth securities, which seems unduly cautious, and under these circumstances they are naturally fully convertible into sterling.

There is no central bank in British Guiana, nor is there any kind of money market so that the government is unable to issue bills for short-term adjustments in its financial programme.[13]  The two commercial banks operating in the colony, Barclay’s Bank D.C.O. and the Royal Bank of Canada, follow the kind of policy one might expect from foreign concerns; they take no risks.  The World Bank Mission remarked unfavourably upon their conservative policy which leads them to invest nearly all their assets outside the colony and to lend locally only for short-term purposes.  Another result of the absence of any locally-controlled bank is that the lending rates of the commercial banks follow exactly those of the United Kingdom.  Manipulation of the bank rate in the United Kingdom has become one of the principal methods of control over the national economy; British Guiana has to share the effect of that control, irrespective of how appropriate it may be to her economic situation.  The absence of a local money market makes it difficult for Guianese capital to find outlets at home and much of it is invested abroad.  Local investors would more readily put their money into local enterprises if there were proper opportunities to do so, but the main enterprises connected with sugar and bauxite are virtually closed and proper mechanisms do not exist for channelling funds into new enterprises.  The insurance companies play some part in that they make loans but these are mainly for house purchase which is a particularly unadventurous sort of investment.

In a country such as British Guiana the whole system of finance should be organized around the necessity for economic growth and this aim should colour all financial thinking.  This is by no means the case as yet.  After the institution of Crown Colony government in 1928 caution became the keynote of government financial policy and a balanced budget became its goal.  This goal was achieved during the war because of rapidly increased government revenues and limited expenditure.  The upward trend of revenue continued after the war, the budget continued to be balanced and to show surpluses and the general conservatism of the government’s policy was maintained.  Development expenditure was engaged in on an increasing scale in both the private and public sectors of the economy.  But much of the drive for this came from Britain.  The sugar industry embarked upon a large-scale programme of capital investment to replace plant that had run down during the war, and the bauxite companies continued to invest money in plant.  Government expenditure on anything outside the normal essential services came to be classed as ‘development expenditure’.  Funds came into the country from Development and Welfare grants given by the United Kingdom government and these were applied to various projects considered to be necessary, useful, or desirable.  Revenue ‘surpluses’, as they were called, began to be applied to such things as the provision of social services and public buildings.  The World Bank Mission remarked upon the steady increase in expenditure on social welfare programmes and the relative decline in government expenditure on economically productive resources.  This bias towards welfare expenditure arose partly from the aftermath of the disturbances which swept the Caribbean just before the war and the subsequent recommendations of the Royal Commission which investigated their causes.  It was the sudden awareness of the neglect into which these colonies had fallen and the low standard of living of their people which was mainly responsible for the Colonial Development and Welfare Acts.  In the absence of any adequate knowledge of the social and economic background of the territory and a very real absence of skills for economic planning within the government (coupled with a reluctance to engage in any radical activities that might upset the traditional pattern too abruptly), the result was to try to improve living conditions by the direct method.  This has the grave disadvantage of raising standards of living without a commensurate increase in productivity.  It would be wrong to suggest that there was no increase in production during this period or that there was no awareness of the general problem.  The sugar industry was in a much better position than it had ever been in before because of the guaranteed markets and prices based on the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement.  The production of rice was also increasing because of the favourable prices obtaining in the West Indian market.  But the fact remained that these two industries are not capable of indefinite extension and relatively little serious consideration was being given to future developments in the economy as a whole.

The World Bank Mission recommended a five-year development programme in which about $65 million would be spent between 1954 and 1958, and they pointed out that past experience had shown that the government could if it so wished find most of this from within the country, rather than relying heavily upon external loans and pursuing an extremely conservative financial policy at home.

The bulk of government revenue is derived from indirect taxes, of which customs and excise duties are the most important.  In 1959 the total revenue was $48,679,637, of which 47.24 per cent. was derived from customs and excise duties, 34.39 per cent. from income-tax (the bulk of it being levied upon companies), and 14.83 per cent. from all other sources such as licences, court fees, post offices, internal revenue, and so on.  On the advice of the World Bank Mission, expenditure was divided into two separate accounts, recurrent and development expenditure.  Recurrent expenditure amounted to $45,564,880 and expenditure under the development budget to $18,757,678 in 1959.  The largest expenditure from the development funds was $7,797,035 on water control, closely followed by housing which was the biggest item in previous years.  As in previous years there was a surplus of revenue over expenditure on the recurrent costs budget and this, with a part of the surplus balance carried over from 1958, was appropriated to the Development Fund.  The rest of the money for the development budget came from Colonial Development and Welfare grants ($4,421,030) and from loans.  The total public debt of the country stood at $89,368,852 (£18,618,511) at the end of 1959.  Of this amount only $l7,872,150 represents loans raised in the country, the rest being public loans raised in the United Kingdom, an H.M. Government exchequer loan (1958), loans raised by the Crown Agents under the Inter­colonial Loans Scheme, and C.D. & W. loans.

Since 1953 steps have been taken to implement as much as possible of the plan recommended by the World Bank Mission, but the suspension of the constitution in 1953 and the subsequent reversion of complete control to the Governor and the Colonial Office led to a period of increased spending on welfare-type programmes as well as to the influx of a large number of persons and agencies bent on improving conditions as rapidly as possible so as to remove the dissatisfactions on which support of a radical party was thought to rest.  Housing became the pivot of the new programme and some excellent schemes were carried out, both in Georgetown and in the rural areas.  It is not possible to discuss the items of the development programme at length here but the main result of the large increase in expenditure has been to put more money into circulation in the form of salaries, outright grants, loans for self-help projects, and wages.  This has in turn stimulated the growth of service industries and consumer expenditure, which in the Guianese economy means imports.  Relatively little of the expenditure is likely to lead to increased production in the basic economy in the very near future, but the investment in drainage and irrigation, agricultural research, roads, and various kinds of surveys will be of long-term value.  The development programme itself is discussed more fully below.

Before concluding this short discussion of finance and banking, mention should be made of the fact that facilities have been made available under the development programme for the provision of credit to farmers and other persons engaged in productive enterprises, as well as for the construction of houses.  The British Guiana Credit Corporation was formed on the suggestion of the World Bank Mission and after 1954 became the chief agency for the distribution of loans.  These loans were distributed through a series of Regional Development Committees.  In addition to this new source of finance, Cooperative Credit Banks continued to operate to provide mainly short-term loans to rice farmers.

THE BOOKER GROUP

The Booker Group of companies is of such great importance in the economic, social, and political life of the country that it merits separate discussion.  It has already been noted that increasing centralization of control in the sugar industry has produced much greater efficiency.  The desirability of such developments for British Guiana is indisputable.  Modern efficient techniques of management are introduced and set the pattern of bureaucratic efficiency for the rest of the society.  Why then should Bookers’ face a major problem in convincing some, if not most, Guianese of their usefulness and good intentions?

The present organization of the Booker Group is relatively new, having been devised in accordance with ideas of good management and to introduce a measure of decentralization into a growing and extremely diverse economic empire.  The London company of Booker Brothers, McConnell & Company, Ltd, is the end-product of a process of amalgamation and incorporation of a large number of separate enterprises ranging from sugar-planting in British Guiana to selling carpets in London and automobiles in Canada.  The activities in British Guiana are easily the most important, supplying 65 per cent. of the profits in 1953-7.[14]  Over the same period activities in the United Kingdom supplied 19 per cent. of the profits, in Northern Rhodesia, Southern Rhodesia, Nyasaland, and the Union of South Africa 11 per cent. and in Canada 5 per cent.  The Board of Directors of Booker Brothers, McConnell & Company, Ltd, constitutes the ‘Group Parent Board’ with general authority over the Boards of the various Operating Companies in the group.  There are eighty-two of these Operating Companies, and in British Guiana, Central Africa, and Canada there are local Group Committees to act as co-ordinating bodies for local operations.  By any standards this is large-scale business organization and the wide range of different activities involved makes it a very complex group to control.  In British Guiana Bookers’ are involved in the following activities: sugar planting and processing; rum and gin manufacture and distribution; foundry operations; practically every branch of store-keeping; drug manufacture; printing; balata collection; petroleum marketing; insurance agencies; coastal and trans-Atlantic shipping; and numerous interests in smaller enterprises held by Bookers’ Industrial Holdings Ltd.  In the words of the Chairman of the Group Parent Board, Sir Jock Campbell:

Briefly: responsibility for the management of each Operating Company is placed fairly and squarely upon the shoulders of its own Board.  The Boards of the Companies throughout the Group are composed of men, and a few women, of a calibre perfectly capable of directing the affairs of independent Public Companies.  But in fact these are not independent Public Companies.  The members of the Group Parent Board have to remember that, however much they may decentralise and delegate, however complete their confidence in their colleagues, they, and they alone, are ultimately responsible to Bookers’ Shareholders—the owners of the business—for the stewardship of their property and for the success or failure of the business.

This is the main fact to be borne in mind in any discussion of Bookers’ place and future in British Guiana; the ultimate control of a very large slice of the Guianese economy is vested in a London Board of Directors owing its main loyalty to the shareholders.  The question arises as to whether the interests of Bookers’ shareholders coincide with the interests of the Guianese people, whether those interests are irreconcilably opposed, or whether some working compromise is possible which enables British Guiana to benefit from Bookers’ operations without paying an impossibly high price in loss of economic independence.

There is no doubt that Bookers’ economic enterprises contribute greatly to the material well-being of Guianese; nor is there any doubt that the various Booker companies are better run than those of most of their competitors. Bookers’ shops and stores provide excellent service, they are clean, well stocked, and provide good wages and working conditions for their employees. As was pointed out previously Bookers’ Sugar Estates Ltd are establishing a pattern of bureaucratic organization which is already the most efficient in the country and in which Guianese can learn the kind of skills necessary to the running of a modern economic and administrative system.

The skill and efficiency with which Bookers’ is managed today is a relatively new phenomenon and advanced techniques of management have been grafted on to pre-existing structures without being able to change them overnight. The economy and efficiency with which the Booker Group is run is made possible by its size and the diversity of its activities, but this size and spread also makes Bookers’ highly visible. When Guianese refer to their country as ‘Bookers’ Guiana’ they refer not only to the fact that the firm has a hand in practically every economic activity in the country but also to the fact that the real control centre of Bookers’ is in London, that it is an English company run almost wholly by Englishmen answerable to English shareholders, and that in the past Guianese were rarely able to aspire to any but the lower status positions within its hierarchy. Some of these factors may not have been so objectionable had the British not behaved very much as a dominant caste group. The prevailing sentiment among European staffs has been in favour of a sharp dividing line between themselves and coloured Guianese while maintaining an officially open and tolerant attitude. This is the ‘hypocrisy’ which is so irritating and makes many West Indians prefer the clear-cut lines of the American South. It is pointless to look upon the racial snobbery of the Europeans as either the natural reaction of an expatriate group or as a compound of individual moral failings. The fact is that most of them merely slipped into a pattern of comfortable conformity in which certain things were ‘done’ and others ‘not done’. It was the ‘done’ thing to invite Coloured people of a certain class level to sugar estate staff dances or parties, but rarely to private parties or informal gatherings in the home; it was permissible for young British bachelors to have casual affairs with local girls but they were not expected to marry them; it was permissible to mix with the local Coloured élite at public functions but not to belong to the same club or lodge.  These rituals of avoidance were, and are, not peculiar to the Europeans. They extend right through the society which tends to precipitate its various ethnic elements into different compartments for certain social purposes. But the whole system depends upon the pattern of domination by one group defined in terms of colour.  If the pattern of white political and economic domination were to be swept away, not by depressing the position of one colour-defined group and elevating the position of another but by the substitution of equal opportunity for all, then the system would begin to change all the way down.

The ‘new men’ of Bookers’ have inherited these patterns and this form of social structure and find them something of an encumbrance in the rational organization of their enterprises. They are not ‘planters’ in the old sense of the term and are much less concerned with maintaining their position within a prestige hierarchy than with maximizing production and profits and efficiency. On the other hand it is difficult for them to know what to do to alter the climate within which they operate. To offset some of the criticisms of exploitation and English dominance various measures have been taken in recent years. There has been a flood of expenditure on ‘welfare’ for sugar workers, including the provision of community centres, sports fields, cricket coaches, clinics, crèches, housing loans, co-operative shops, and home economists.  Personnel and Public Relations Officers have been appointed resulting in vigorous attempts to persuade Guianese that Bookers’ have the welfare of the country at heart and that they have something positive to contribute to its development.  Whatever the merits of the case Guianese are difficult to convince on this point and the very paternalism of many of these efforts arouses more antagonism than it allays. The simple fact is that many Guianese would like to run their own affairs even if they run them somewhat less efficiently, or even downright badly, and in the field of welfare activities at least this could easily be accomplished by the speedy implementation of Dr Marshall’s proposals for local government reform.[15]

What will happen in the future is extremely difficult to predict.  If British Guiana were politically independent there might be an open conflict between Bookers’ and an independent government.  On the other hand there would also be the possibility of some sort of partnership in the process of economic development, a possibility which cannot properly arise so long as colonialism colours the whole atmosphere in which politicians and business men operate.  In the long run there is no reason why Bookers’ enterprises should not be wholly Guianese, and the long run need not be too long.  For this to happen without the accompaniment of bitter conflict would demand more objectivity than either politicians or business men perhaps possess.  Certainly it would demand a new conception of the role of British capitalistic activities.  At the moment the policy of Bookers’ directors seems to be the building of a bigger, better, and somewhat safer ‘Booker family’ of diverse enterprises.  The abilities of the top-level management of a body like Bookers’ lie not in keeping a number of industries ticking over for the benefit of shareholders, but rather in the continuous creation of new wealth through the skilful employment of financial and other resources.  They have recently been frightened into a policy of ‘hedging against failure in British Guiana’ by buying up rather unadventurous businesses in places like England and Canada.  But could they not deploy their considerable resources in co-operation with the British Guiana or the Nyasaland governments to develop new industries or public utilities with a clear understanding that these would eventually pass into the complete ownership of the local government?  Even the most extreme politician would find it rather difficult to nationalize Bookers’ lock, stock, and barrel immediately, but there is no reason why Bookers’ should not co-operate in producing the new wealth which would make it possible for British Guiana to buy them out.  So far as Bookers’ is concerned the simple fact is that the old British Empire framework within which they grew up has gone, and the function of capital investment in overseas territories has changed.  To play a constructive part in the world of today they will need to be much more adaptable and more versatile in the application of their entrepreneurial talents and financial assets; they must in fact turn themselves into miniature development companies or perish.  The latter alternative would not really help anyone, though there is a danger that the political leaders of a nationalist movement may be tempted into increasing their attacks upon such a large expatriate concern not for economic reasons but as a means of creating or maintaining political solidarity.  Such attacks could come as easily from the right wing as from the left. 

THE PROBLEM OF ECONOMIC GROWTH

One does not need to spend very long in British Guiana to become aware that the desire for a higher standard of living is widespread and insistent.  The taste for consumer goods has taken hold; every government will in future be judged by its activities in relation to the standard of living.  Small-talk at every level of the society is likely to revolve around the same question and one may be sure that there will be as many solutions to the problem of economic growth as there are participants in the discussion.  The problems and the discussions are not new but in the last twenty years they have been given fresh impetus, and the economic aid and technical skills which have become available open up entirely new prospects, provided that the necessary internal readjustments which will make such aid effective can be accomplished.  At the moment the atmosphere in British Guiana tends to be one of despair at the magnitude of the problem, though sometimes this despair gives way to wild hopes of some simple and grand solution; perhaps the imminent discovery of oil or the magical effects of a road to Brazil.  In practice there is a tendency to try a bit of everything and what is really lacking is a long-term effort to bring plans to fruition. 

Compared with many underdeveloped countries British Guiana has a number of assets which should be of great value in the development process.  The population is mainly literate and already oriented towards the kind of goals and activities characteristic of more developed countries.  There is no tribalism to contend with and the family structure is not likely to be a serious bar to the development of social mobility.  Health is reasonably good; malnutrition may be present but it is not a serious problem.  The country is vast in comparison to the size of the population and it has a number of easily exploited natural resources such as timber and bauxite.  Why, then, the atmosphere of gloom and despondency and frustration which characterizes the country?  Before attempting to answer such a general question it is necessary to see what sort of attempts are being made to speed up development, by whom they are made, and what results have been achieved so far. 

It is not worth-while going back too far for the purpose of assessing local thought on the subject.  Immediately after the 1939-45 war the pace of change began to speed up considerably and the idea of development planning as a special activity of government was introduced.  An adviser on economic development was appointed and a ten-year development plan drawn up.  The initiative for these preliminary steps came almost entirely from the Colonial Office in the United Kingdom.[16]  Special committees were appointed to make suggestions for development expenditure in all the principal fields.  The reports of these committees were collated, estimates drawn up, and the whole thing then forwarded to London for possible action.  British Guiana was allotted a total of $20.7 million from Colonial Development and Welfare funds, this sum to be spent on the more obvious, urgent necessities, and it was spread over a large number of specific schemes.  The necessity for some more rigorous plan and determination of priorities soon became evident and early in 1953, on the eve of the constitutional changes, the mission from the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, which has already been referred to above, visited the country to draw up a comprehensive plan for development over the next five years.  This was submitted to the government in July 1953 and finally published at the end of the year.  The report of the mission was not very optimistic, nor was it a great improvement upon the development plans which had been drawn up by the local committees.  The development of the interior was dismissed as being too difficult so long as the potentialities of soils and mineral resources are imperfectly known.  The idea of developing local manufacturing industries was discouraged on the grounds that the local market is too small; the continuation of substantial imports of such things as flour, cloth, petrol, and machinery was envisaged.  The main emphasis of the plan was on the development of the basic resources of the coastlands and the expansion of production of primary products.  The development of hydro-electric power was described as ‘highly problematical’.  No doubt the plan could be described as being realistic; it was not exciting and hardly conducive to a basic change of attitude. 

The plan was received in Georgetown in July.  In October, after the constitution had been suspended,[17] the Governor complained that the deposed ministers of the People’s Progressive Party had done nothing to implement the plan and that he would go ahead with the various schemes at once.  A provisional two-year programme for the years 1954 and 1955 was drawn up, the estimated cost being $44 (B.W.I.) million.  This programme was as much influenced by the recent political events as by any suggestions put forward by the World Bank Mission.  Whereas they had clearly stated that expenditure on basic resources must have priority over the provision of social services, the new development programme laid overwhelming emphasis upon the immediate correction of those conditions which it was thought might play into the hands of ‘communism’.  Some difficulty was experienced in spending the amount of money that was made available and by the end of 1954 only $9 (B.W.I.) million had been disposed of.  This amount was increased in the following year as the new agencies for housing, land settlement, road development, and for making loans on minimal security became established.  The injection of such large amounts of capital into the country did have marked effects, though it is debatable as to whether they were entirely desirable.  In a recent study of the national income, Dr Carleen O’Loughlin has demonstrated that the bulk of investment which could be regarded as ‘productive’ went into the strengthening of the rice industry, and she calculates that this is not likely to yield a very high return for capital invested.[18]  The increase in production of rice, even if markets continue to be favourable, is not likely to be capable of maintaining the higher standard of living based upon increased imports which has been stimulated by the large capital expenditures. 

In 1956 a new development plan for the years 1956–60 was prepared and accepted by the Secretary of State for the Colonies and the local government.  This plan carries forward the same general policy as the previous plans, providing for a total expenditure of $91,350,000 (B.W.I.) over the five-year period.  The two new items were provision for expenditure on a rural-electrification scheme and on preliminary work on a road through to Lethem on the Brazilian border.  Apart from these two schemes the plan provides for the usual expenditures on drainage and irrigation, agricultural research and development, social services, communications (meaning mainly roads along the coast and some improvement of rail and ferry services), and further geological investigations. 

All these plans, expenditures, and activities are having some effect quite obviously, but there is no doubt that the progress made is much less than expected and the number of delays, setbacks, and failures is great.  It is as well to emphasize that development is taking place and that the situation is not by any means hopeless.  Increases in productivity have taken place in nearly every industry and substantial investments are being made in bauxite processing.  But there is still an atmosphere of gloom over the country and few people are satisfied with the rate of development or with future prospects.  This contrasts sharply with the much more buoyant and hopeful atmosphere in Trinidad and Jamaica.  Is there any answer to the question that was posed earlier as to why this should be so?

The first major problem confronting the country is a lack of trained personnel capable of formulating development plans and supervising every stage of their execution.  The success of a company like Bookers’ is due almost entirely to the quality of its organization and personnel.  By comparison the British Guiana public service is crude and out of date.  The number of trained economists, or even persons with some training in economics, on the permanent establishment is infinitesimally small.  Statistical services are practically non-existent; in 1958 the Statistics Bureau consisted of one trained statistician and a few clerks, and the decision had been taken to limit his activities to advice and the co-ordination of statistics prepared and published by existing departments.  The practice has been to invite ‘experts’ to carry out surveys whenever a particular problem arose and the natural consequence of this procedure has been to produce a series of technical reports which are difficult to interpret and in the absence of trained personnel the lessons they contain are difficult to apply.  The translation of basic data and various recommendations into workable policy is a highly complex procedure and it is desirable that it should be done by people who are a part and parcel of the permanent structure of government.  The intelligent use of visiting experts depends upon the presence of a well-trained planning staff.  Without it the expert comes, spends a long time searching for the most elementary information, makes a report which inevitably raises a series of new questions, and the bulk of his work is quietly forgotten when he leaves.  The necessity for a well-equipped Bureau of Statistics was clearly seen by Mr E. Mills in his report on the public service published as long ago as 1953.[19]  He considered that such a Bureau is a normal and necessary part of modern government and he detailed the staff and machines which he considered to be necessary.  It is all the more surprising therefore that a contrary decision should have been taken on the advice of a Colonial Office statistician to limit the size and functions of the Bureau to the point where it became little more than an advisory office to individual departments and the repository of a small library of books on statistics. 

Apart from the creation of a central planning and statistics organization through which the process of economic development could be initiated, encouraged, and kept under constant review by local people with a continuous interest and an accumulating experience, there is also obvious need for further training at almost every level of the public service and in all its branches.  What is particularly lacking here as in most underdeveloped countries is good supervisory personnel.  Without a class of efficient ‘expediters’, as they are sometimes called in the jargon of American industrial sociology, plans do not get properly implemented.  Much more could be done in training people for work at the intermediate levels in all government organizations, either in a special school of administration set up in the country or through co-operation with other territories such as Trinidad.  Something is already being done to make good these deficiencies through the public and business administration courses held at the University College of the West Indies, through special extra-mural department courses for trade union leaders, local government officers and teachers, and through the provision of scholarships to study abroad.  But this is such a crucial matter that it deserves even more attention, especially as there is a growing number of high school students coming on to the labour market.  The fear that they will merely form a dissatisfied and unemployable element is the product of static and unimaginative thinking.  They are one of the most important assets the country has and should be used to the limit of their capacity. 

Apart from increased training and reorganization of the administrative machine there is of course a need for much greater numbers of skilled workmen, engineers, chemists, agricultural experts, geologists, and the like.  Something is being done to remedy these deficiencies through the Technical College and through the awarding of government scholarships, but like other underdeveloped countries many of these specialized skills will have to be bought from outside for some time to come.  So far as is ascertainable no attempt has been made as yet to make an estimate of the numbers and kinds of skills available, those in process of being produced and those likely to be required in terms of expected economic development. 

Assuming that an abundance of skills and capital were available, the problem would still remain of where to apply them.  In the past the adequacy of the staffs for implementation of plans was assumed and attention concentrated upon where to apply them.  Quite rightly, agriculture has always been accorded high priority, and in British Guiana agriculture means drainage and irrigation.  Whatever other developments take place it is certain that the fertile coastal lands will continue to be one of the major economic resources of the country; whether it will always be economically profitable to use them is another question but during the foreseeable future there is no alternative.  Much discussion has revolved around the drainage and irrigation schemes drawn up by Mr Hutchinson who was Consulting Engineer to the British Guiana government from 1949 to 1952.  Speaking very generally on a highly complex subject one might say that Mr Hutchinson recommended that instead of empoldering limited areas of land along the coast, steps should be taken to provide comprehensive schemes which would enclose large areas of land between the major rivers, these blocks to be irrigated by large water conservancies situated some thirty or so miles from the coast and supplemented by water drawn from the rivers.  He made outline plans for many of these schemes but a good deal of survey work and detailed designing was left to be done.  Dr Jagan and other Guianese politicians allege that Mr Hutchinson was vehemently opposed by the sugar interests, working through the government, and that he eventually resigned in disgust and frustration.  According to Dr Jagan, the schemes were opposed by the sugar interests for two reasons: first because they would make so much land available for peasant settlement that the sugar estates would be left without their reservoir of cheap labour, and secondly because they would cost too much money.  Whatever the truth of the matter various decisions were taken to proceed with modified schemes rather than press ahead immediately with the major projects.  Both the World Bank Mission and a subsequent investigator, Mr Gerald Lacey, have endorsed the soundness of the general outline of the Hutchinson schemes and some of them are by now under construction.  Contracts for work on large schemes in the Courantyne and West Demerara areas have been awarded to expatriate firms because of the acute shortage of engineers and machinery in the country. 

The basis of all present agricultural policy is the encouragement and extension of peasant farming.  This is an extremely vague concept but it is assumed that the rapidly increasing population will have to be settled on small family farms and it is further assumed that there is at present and will continue to be a definite land shortage.  It is true that there has been an enormous increase in the area of land under rice since the war and the present favourable prices have stimulated a great demand for well-drained land within easy reach of the villages.  Relatively little diversification of crops has taken place and large quantities of food are still imported.  Experiments in the cultivation of cocoa, cotton, coffee, and citrus have all shown good results but a vast amount of agricultural extension work and closely supervised credit will be necessary if they are to be more widely introduced.  The most active farmers are the East Indians but they follow a set pattern of activity, growing rice, raising a few vegetables for home consumption and sale locally, and keeping a few cattle.  The idea of a rational planned farming is non-existent among them though they do operate fairly efficiently within the limits laid down by tradition.  A few of the larger farmers have a more business-like approach and even the small farmers will adopt new methods quickly enough if they are profitable and can be accommodated without too much disturbance.  With the increase in secondary education among the children of rice farmers there is an excellent opportunity to use them to start developing the kind of increased government services that will be essential to the successful expansion of small-scale farming.  It is not enough to give a man ten or twenty acres of land and leave it at that.  He must have all the benefits of a highly scientific agriculture supplied to him if he is going to make full use of his land.  That means not only research units working on his behalf but also a whole organizational canopy must be spread over him, providing him with drainage and irrigation, correct fertilizers, improved seed, artificial insemination services, machinery pools, and a host of other services including processing and marketing organizations.  Whether these things are provided by private enterprise as in the experimental cane-farming scheme being run by Bookers’, by co-operatives, or by the government, a prime need is for trained people to operate the services, and the farmers need to be educated to make maximum use of the facilities that are available.  A good start has already been made in the development of some of these services but there is still a great shortage of trained people.  Many farmers never have any contact with the officers who have to spread their efforts over large districts.  Whether there is any possibility of bringing about sudden and significant increases in productivity by the use of better techniques, fertilizers, and so on is very doubtful, especially in the case of rice where intensive methods and double cropping are already very general.  The most rapid results and those that would contribute most to the development process are likely to be achieved in the production of food for local consumption, including meat, fish, eggs and poultry, as well as food crops.  The construction of a ham and bacon factory a few years ago is a step in the right direction. 

If agriculture is basic to the process of economic growth, it is by no means sufficient to bring about the kind of changes and the standard of living envisaged, particularly if it is confined to the coastal area.  Relatively rapid results might be expected from the exploitation of forest resources as a supplement to increased agricultural productivity, but here the question of what Rostow calls ‘social overhead capital’ looms alarmingly.[20]  Quite apart from the deficiencies already noted in certain kinds of education and administrative skills there are the major problems of power and communications.  The half-hearted approach which has been taken towards these questions is typical of the lack of real understanding of the urgency and seriousness of the situation.  There has long been talk of developing hydro-electric power and a small plant is actually in operation at Tumatumari Falls supplying power for the operation of two dredgers in the goldfields.  Apart from this the development of hydro-electric power is still in the very preliminary experimental stage.  The World Bank Mission discounted any development of hydro-electric power in the immediate future but said nothing about the alternatives.  The Demerara Bauxite Company made some more detailed investigations in connexion with their new alumina plant, and there is a possibility of some development work in conjunction with the government.  At the moment, however, the position is that the main users such as sugar plantations and bauxite mines generate their own electricity, the rural areas have no electric supplies except that produced by small wind chargers or domestic plants, New Amsterdam has a plant run by the Municipal Council, Bartica has a small plant run by a private company, and Georgetown is supplied with power from the thermal generators operated by the Demerara Electric Company, a private Canadian-owned concern.  A $5,323,000 scheme for the electrification of the rural areas was approved and included in the 1956–60 development plan and a contract for its implementation awarded to a British firm.  In Georgetown the situation had become intolerable by early 1960 because the increased demand had outstripped the capacity of the Demerara Electric Company’s plant.  A newly developed factory for the manufacture of particle board was forced to suspend operations for lack of power, and whole areas of the city were sometimes without light.  It is obvious enough that situations such as this should never be allowed to develop and drastic action by the government is imperative. 

To a certain extent the direction and pace of economic development may be altered if British Guiana decides to participate in the West Indian Federation, but it is doubtful whether the basic pattern would be greatly affected.  It would mean a somewhat greater certainty of a market for rice, especially if federal planning resulted in a limit on the development of rice industries in the other territories.  It would mean that British Guiana would lose revenue on some imports especially when the industrial development of the other territories is more advanced, but on the other hand she would have markets for some of her own manufactures.  Unless she were to become a wholly agricultural area and supplier of raw materials to the industrial centres of other territories, which is unlikely, there would still be a pressing need for the development of local industries and therefore of the prerequisites of industry, namely power, communications, skill, and organizing ability.  Whether British Guiana joins the federation or not the desirability of interior development and of the establishment of a link to Brazil is obvious.  Even limited communications and the provision of basic services could open up a considerable amount of land on the banks of the principal rivers, land that was abandoned nearly 200 years ago. 

The process of economic growth and its deliberate stimulation is a highly complex matter about which an increasing number of books is being written, and in all of them attention is directed towards the social and political framework within which growth is to take place.[21]