St. Croix

IN the upward stage of the business cycle the marginal producer may share in the profits of industry: if, however, the cycle continue through a period of overproduction, sharp competition, and low prices, his profits rapidly disappear. This is the situation in the cane-growing island of St. Croix. A few figures suffice for the general situation. The world production of sugar virtually doubled in the last decade-i8,ooo,ooo tons in I920-I92I; 30,000,000 tons in 1930-1931.1 Paralleling this expansion the price of sugar declined from an average of 12.06 cents (c. i. f. New York) a pound in 1920 to 1.33 cents in 1931 and in I932 reached a record low price of 0.57 cents.2 The crisis renders more acute a development that had already begun in St. Croix, a development in which geographical factors play an important part.3 St. Croix has long had a close association with sugar: it was the island's first money crop, and it continues to dominate the economy of the island after two hundred years of production. In early days high prices and slave labor enabled even the more rugged Virgins, St. Thomas and St. John, to share in the industry. At the close of the eighteenth century more than 30,000 acres in the islands were under sugar.4 When markets fell in response to the increase of beet sugar and the severe competition of East Indian areas only regions topographically suited to machine cultivation and supplied with cheap labor could continue profitably. At present St. Croix produces all the Virgins' sugar, and the output continues to decline. According to the census of 1930 the crop of 1929 occupied 5823 acres and yielded a harvest of 56,400 tons, whereas in 1917, when the United States acquired the island, the harvest was more than 84,000 tons. St. Croix cannot compete with the world's leading low-cost cane producers. The limiting factors will now be discussed

Biology · Geography · Sugar · Food Science · Island Studies and Pacific Affairs

• Botany in the Service of Empire

  J H Galloway•Annals of the Association of…•1996

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