Cotton (_Gossypium_) belongs to the natural order of the malvaceas,

claims more kin in the New than in the Old World, and its parents are

genuine tropical dwellers; there seems to be little doubt that the first

of the fine, long staple cottons introduced into North America were

perennials, and that they became annuals only because they were unable

to survive the winter cold. Names of cottons grown in Brazil leave the

searcher after details rather hazy on account of the many local

appellations given them, but the scientist has classified them by the

characteristics of their seeds, dividing them into eleven kinds. The

first, _Gossypium herbaceum_, is not a tropical native, was brought in

from Asia both here and to the United States, is not common or

successful, and so may be dismissed.

_G. mustelinum_ again “is only interesting for botanical reasons,” but

is found wild in the hilly interior of Brazil; _G. punctatum_ is said to

be identical with the wild cotton of the United States; _G. hirsutum_ is

a true native of South America and the West Indies, and is the lineal

parent of the “Uplands” cottons of North America. _G. mexicanum_ is,

together with _hirsutum_, which it resembles, grown all over the coastal

cotton country of Brazil; it is a small plant with a prolific yield. The

writer has seen in the vicinity of Campos, State of Rio, tiny plants of

this variety not more than eighteen or twenty inches high, bearing forty

and more bolls and forms. It is true that the district had suffered from

lack of rain and thus the tendency to run to growth rather than

production, the agricultural curse of the tropics, had been checked. The

field yielded over a bale to the acre.

_G. peruvianum_ is a highly interesting, hardy, prolific variety,

relative of the best native cottons of Brazil. Professor Edward Green

says that he considers it one of the two most valuable in the country.

It is a perennial, grows best in the humid North, often reaches a height

of four metres, and yields a crop for at least three years.[13] Maranhão

has produced it for centuries, getting a reputation for long fine fibres

on its account; the percentage of fibre is over thirty-eight per cent of

the total weight of the boll, a very high average, and it is undoubtedly

well adapted to the river valleys of North Brazil. It is said to be

identified with the carefully cultivated, irrigated cotton of the Incas.

Cultivated forms of this excellent cotton are the famous _Mocó_, grown

so successfully in Ceará, Parahyba, and other northerly states, the

_Seridó_, and the _Sede de Ceará_, local names of which Brazil is proud.

_G. microcarpum_ appears to have a relationship with the _peruvianum_,

and seems also to be derived from the other side of the Andes; it is

credited with producing a pound of clean cotton to one hundred and

twenty bolls. This is the last on the list of cotton with “fuzz” on the

seeds; the remaining four varieties have clean, free seeds. Of these by

far the most important is the fine _G. vitifolium_. From this stock most

of the cottons described as “Sea Island” are derived, as well as the

best of the Egyptian varieties, and in a genuine wild state in Brazil it

still produces a beautiful long silky fibre. When grandchildren of its

stock have been brought to Brazil from the United States they have

rapidly degenerated, delicate nurslings of exotic temperament; beside

them the old _estirpe selvagem_ flourishes and yields royally. _G.

purpurescens_ is another black-seeded perennial, identified with the

“Bourbon” of Porto Rico, and said to owe its introduction into Brazil to

the French. _G. barbadense_ is a blood-brother of the _vitifolium_, and

like all the Sea Island-Egyptian group, is a highly esteemed producer of

top-priced cotton. The fourth of this class is _G. brasiliense_, a true

native, observed growing wild by Jean Lery as early as 1557.

The two most precious of the list, _Gossypium peruvianum_ and _Gossypium

vitifolium_, possess the advantage of being genuine South Americans;

they form a magnificent stock from which the expert cotton grower can

develop a product for the market which need not fear Sea Island as a

rival.

Cultivation of cotton by the Portuguese colonists began very soon after

the granting of the capitanias in 1530. By the year 1570 large crops

were being produced in Bahia, chief centre of industrial activity,

although they could not equal sugar in value. Europe was just beginning

to use this material, for with the acquisition of strips of India by the

Portuguese there was an entry into European markets of Calicut “calico.”

Before this dawn of the cotton era Europe went clothed in leather, wool,

and, on occasions of great splendour, silk. We may conclude that the

clothing of the day was probably as comfortable as, and certainly more

substantial than, garments of the present period, if not as sanitary:

but cleanliness had not yet become a virtue. India taught Europe the use

of cotton, and the spindles and looms of the ladies were filled with the

vegetable fibre in lieu of wool.

In Pernambuco the culture of cotton became of more importance than

sugar; farther south the Paulistas set their Indian slaves to work and

were soon producing cotton crops on widely spread plantations. In the

seventeenth century cotton was carried into Minas Geraes by the gold

hunting bandeirantes, but it was only cultivated in the most desultory

manner and when there was nothing else for the slaves to do. So complete

indeed was disregard of all agricultural work that actual famines

occurred in 1697–98 and in 1700–01 on account of the abandonment of

plantations for gold-washing districts.

When the Marquis de Pombal practically ruled the destinies of Portugal

good fortune led him to take a shrewd interest in Brazil; especially

interested in the comparatively new settlements at Pará and Maranhão,

and struck by the fine fibre exported from these northerly regions, he

decided upon the establishment of spinning and weaving mills. In 1750

the Marquis de Tavora was given the task of engaging expert weavers for

the colonies, and shortly afterwards the first cotton-cloth factories

were set up in Brazil. Pombal’s fatherly interest in weaving did not

extend to the south; these sections of the country should devote their

time to mining and agriculture, he thought, and finding that looms were

being set up all along the coast and in the interior of Minas—always a

good cotton region—he passed a law in 1766 prohibiting cotton and silk

weaving. It had the desired effect of checking the development of any

considerable commerce, but did not prevent the use of hand looms in

almost every farm, where a patch of cotton was as much a part of the

crop as a field of maize. In a _relatorio_ of 1779 the Viceroy Luis de

Vasconcellos reported to Lisbon on the “independence of the people of

Minas of European goods, establishing looms and factories in their own

_fazendas_, and making cloth with which they clothe themselves and their

families and slaves....”

In 1785 the Portuguese Government ordered the suppression of all

factories in Brazil; they must have been considerably advanced, despite

the previous orders, if the decree abolishing establishments for making

“ribbons, laces of gold or silver velvets, satins, taffetas, bombazine,

printed calico, fustian,” etc., etc., meant anything. In spite of this

the weaving of coarse cottons managed to survive, perhaps with the

connivance of sympathetic Viceroys, and repeated letters emphasized the

inconvenience of factories in Brazil: a _carta regia_ of 1802 instructed

the Governor of Minas Geraes not to allow “anyone to present himself

before him unless dressed in materials manufactured in the Kingdom or

the Asiatic dominions.”

The transference of the Portuguese monarchy to Brazil in 1808 changed

all these ideas—which helps to demonstrate the still burning need for

all rulers, of whatever denomination, to take a travelling course—and in

a few years cotton threads and cloths were freed from duties, the Prince

Regent sent a master-weaver at his own expense to set up _fabricas_ in

the interior, and by 1820 the industry was thriving. Cotton growing was

equally stimulated at this period by high prices in England; in 1818

that country was not only buying raw cotton, but cotton cloth, from

Brazil.

With the development of the south of the United States in cotton

production on a great scale a shadow fell over the Brazilian industry.

Unable to compete with the low prices at which North America offered her

bales in the early eighteen-forties the farmers of the southerly states

of Brazil checked their planting, and, coffee just then dawning upon

them as a commercial possibility, filled up the empty spaces in the

fields with the beans of _coffea arabica_. North Brazil, with its

special cottons of long staple, kept on producing these varieties for

home mills, steadily at work, and for European export; a new incentive

came with the Civil War of the United States when Confederate cotton

shipments were contraband and English spinners were at their wits’ end

for raw material, but prices sank with the declaration of peace.

Since the beginning of the present century Brazilian exports of, and

prices received for, national cotton have varied so remarkably that it

is worth while glancing at the statistics; almost the whole of the

export of this raw cotton, and of cotton seed, went to England. If in

addition to this export we reckon about fifty thousand tons as the

amount consumed by the factories of the country, the whole production of

Brazil can never have exceeded ninety thousand tons.

_Year_ _Tons_ _Value in Gold Milreis_

1902 32,137 10,701 contos (one conto equals 1000 milreis)

1903 28,235 11,766 „

1904 13,262 7,347 „

1905 24,081 10,291 „

1906 31,668 14,726 „

1907 38,036 15,418 „

1908 3,565 1,833 „

1909 9,968 5,261 „

1910 11,160 7,934 „

1911 14,647 8,714 „

1912 16,774 9,221 „

1913 37,423 20,513 „

1914 30,434 16,556 „

1915 5,223 2,551 „

Exports almost vanished, to 1000 tons, in 1916, not recovering fully

until 1920, when 25,000 tons were shipped.

What measures are being taken in Brazil to develop cotton culture? First

let us take into consideration new governmental means of assisting the

industry. When the drought of 1914–15 scorched up northern plantations

the weavers found themselves paying higher prices inside Brazil than the

same national cotton was bringing in Liverpool. The Centro Industrial, a

very strong and useful body, asked the Government to hold an enquiry,

and the also extremely powerful Centro do Commercio e Industria of São

Paulo made the suggestion that duties against imported cotton should be

remitted so that the mills could get cheap supplies of foreign material.

Remarking on the situation the _Gazeta de Noticias_ of Rio said: “On one

side we have the cotton planting industry declaring that it will face

certain extinction if the door is opened to foreign raw material; on the

other is the weaving industry declaring that it must shut its doors if

it is not permitted to buy from foreign markets!”

The Federal Government only temporarily remitted dues, believing that

the situation would remedy itself with the new crop—rain fell copiously

at last in the scourged districts, and Ceará alone foretold a cotton

crop of twelve thousand tons for 1916—but prepared to consider measures

to open up larger areas of country to this culture. A project submitted

to the Legislature at the end of 1915 suggested the construction of good

cart roads in cotton districts, and the establishment of modern gins at

convenient points, at the expense of the Government.

Already, three years ago, the Government had acquired the services of

Professor Edward Green, a cotton expert from the United States who has

been working with the double object of classifying and standardizing the

best cottons for plantation in Brazil, and of noting the best regions

for such plantations. At the _Conferencia Algodoeira_ (Cotton

Conference) held in Rio under the auspices of the Centro da Industria in

June, 1916, Professor Green gave an address dealing with some phases of

his labours, and concluded by saying:

“After three years of observation and experiment in Brazil I am

convinced that this country, above any other, possesses excellent

natural conditions for cotton production, and that the development of

this great national resource depends only upon the adoption of a few

simple measures:

“1. The selection and standardization of superior types, and

the production of great quantities of selected seeds for

distribution.

“2. Introduction of simple, animal-drawn cultivators, with practical

instruction on their use to be given to large planters of cotton

in the interior.

“3. Stimulation by the Government of all activities related to the

cotton industry, and suspension for some years of all connected

taxes and duties.

“Extensive propaganda in favor of cotton growing is being animated by

the far-seeing and incomparable activity of Dr. Miguel Calmon. If this

work is continued in all parts of the country where cotton is cultivated

there is no doubt of success. The cotton production of Brazil will find

itself doubled if not quadrupled in a short time, and this country will

take the high place in world markets which is legitimately hers as the

greatest exporter of high-class cotton.”

Both Federal and State Governments have brought technical experts from

foreign countries to help in the solution of Brazilian problems; the

Directorship of the Jardim Botanico in Rio, where a series of valuable

experiments in tropical agriculture were carried out, was for some time

in the hands of an English expert, Dr. John Willis, who brought his

knowledge of Ceylon and Malaysia to bear upon Brazilian conditions; the

work of the eminent Swiss, Dr. Emil Goeldi, on the Amazon, succeeded by

the labours of Dr. Jacques Huber, have been invaluable in regard to

classification of North Brazilian natural plants and their adaptation to

commercial uses, as well as the introduction of suitable tropical

fruits, etc., from other regions. The Ministry of Agriculture in Rio is

the centre of much live work, and has had a series of excellent men at

its head. The brilliant Pedro de Toledo was neither the first nor the

last of agricultural devotees in this post.

The work of State Societies of Agriculture is more highly specialized,

and cotton has its list of societies just as coffee, cacao, sugar and

tobacco have theirs. Many big cotton estate owners take a keen interest

in improving conditions of production, and have been during the last few

years definitely helped by the American expert already referred to and

by a Texan cotton grower at the head of demonstration farms operated by

the Leopoldina Railway Company. One meets in Brazil an unusually high

percentage of finely educated men who are _fazendeiros_, who willingly

leave the gay cities of the coast to live in patriarchal authority upon

interior farms having as their sole connection with the outside world a

narrow mule-track; they appear to have inherited the affection for land

of their own possession which sent the early Portuguese so far afield,

and which seldom seems to be mingled with any dislike of solitude. It is

this feeling which scantily populates the sertão with fazendas, far

removed from any town, dotting the vast interior with _nucleos_ of

independent life; it may be partly due to a strain of Indian ancestry,

for it extends to the upper reaches of the Amazon and its tributaries,

lining, at infrequent intervals, the banks of forest-bound rivers with

palm-thatch huts, their foundations in the water, where families subsist

upon a handful of farinha, and fish caught in the flood below them,

looking with unenvious eyes at the passing boats of rubber collectors

and apparently quite content with their withdrawal from the world. To

such a people, not markedly gregarious, the opening of great tracts of

interior is in accord with their instincts, and cultivation is but a

matter of communication and transport.

The cotton country of Brazil needs expert growers and good roads or rail

service; it will not lack the work of the small native farmer.

There is a cotton cloth factory near Pernambuco which is an excellent

example of a self-contained industry in Brazil. Situated seven miles

outside the mediæval port-city of Olinda, whose narrow cobbled streets

are lined with tiled and gabled houses reminiscent of Dutch regimen, the

estate covers forty-five square miles of pasture and woodland besides

the area directly occupied by the works and the village of employees;

one edge borders on the sea, fringed with coconuts, and there are two

little ports where native _barcaças_ bring their loads of raw cotton and

merchandise, at the mouths of two rivers flowing through the estate.

Here, on the warm coast of the northern promontory with its tropic

vegetation and mestizo population, a Brazilian company started a factory

for spinning and weaving; it was not a marked success until Herman

Lundgren, an energetic man of Swedish birth, resident in Brazil since

1866 and later a naturalized Brazilian, took over the management of the

property. He made an arrangement by which the original owners were paid

ten per cent on their investment, all farther profits belonging to

himself, and later on bought out the old stockholders; new machinery was

brought from Great Britain, technical workers imported from Manchester,

and the scope of the business enlarged so that today all processes for

producing fine coloured cotton cloths are performed on the estate—

spinning, weaving, dyeing and colour-printing. When the writer visited

the factory in the early part of 1915 a shortage of dyestuffs was

predicted and I understand that since that time experiments have been

successfully made with native vegetable dyes, too long abandoned for the

convenient aniline varieties.

The factory employs three thousand five hundred people, of whom seventy

per cent are women and children; the total population in the village is

fifteen thousand. Over thirty-five thousand dollars a month is paid in

wages. The manager of the mills, an Englishman, spoke highly of the

Brazilian operatives: the company has never taken any measures to import

other labour than that of the district; the majority of the workmen’s

dwellings are built and owned by the company, and are rented out

cheaply, while in some cases these modest cottages of sun-dried brick,

thatched with palm or covered with a zinc or tile roof, have been

erected by the workmen themselves, their only obligation to the company

being the payment of ground rent of two to four milreis a month, the

palm-thatched house paying the lowest and the zinc-roofed the highest

rate. The company maintains a school, hospital and dispensary, free, for

the villagers.

Apart from the mills the estate contains a dairy and stock farm—where

some well-known English horses occupy stables, apparently unperturbed by

their transference to Brazilian tropics—tile and brick factories, a

bakery, blacksmith’s shop, and lumber yard. The company uses one

thousand tons of coal a month when it can be obtained, but curtailment

of imports since the outbreak of the European War has entailed a greater

use of wood fuel. This is cut from the _matto_ on the estate, typical

Brazilian woodland of great beauty, containing a marked variety of

different trees, but notable for its absence of animal life with the

exception of insects and some fine butterflies in the neighbourhood of

streams and pools.

The estate produces no cotton, purchasing all of this raw material from

Pernambuco and Parahyba; one hundred and fifty bags weighing

seventy-five kilos each are used daily, and the monthly bill for cotton

amounted to £35,000 or £40,000 even when the price of Brazilian cotton

was down to about eleven milreis an arroba (fifteen kilos), equal at the

rate of exchange then prevailing to about eight cents a pound United

States currency; but towards the end of 1915 native cotton rose in

Brazil to twenty-five and thirty cents a pound in consequence of the

drought in the North followed by crop failures, and factories all over

the country suffered from the shortage.

Pernambuco and other northern factories had an advantage in being nearer

sources of supply, the difference in freight enabling these mills to get

raw material at a rate at least twenty per cent below that paid by the

importers of Rio and S. Paulo. From forty thousand pounds to fifty

thousand pounds a year is spent by the factory on drugs, colours and

chemicals.

Production of cotton cloth averages one million, five hundred thousand

metres a month, woven on nine hundred and sixty looms; the cloth

measures twenty-two to twenty-six inches in width and has an immense

variety, from heavy blue denim to fine flowered fabrics woven or printed

in brilliant colours, beloved by Brazilian working classes. Trains of

mules pass daily along the road from the factory, each animal carrying

two bales of cotton cloth weighing seventy-five kilos each; the whole of

this output is sold in Brazil, distributed over half a score of

different States by shops established by the company. There are over

eighty of these stores, selling cloth and also ready made garments of

simple make, in Pernambuco State alone, as well as others in Bahia,

Ceará, Parahyba, Rio, S. Paulo, Matto Grosso, etc.

HERVA MATTE

Herva matte, sometimes called “Paraguay tea,” is the leaf of a small

tree belonging to the ilex family. It is, botanically, _ilex

paraguayensis_, and has much the appearance of a small, particularly

dense live-oak. It grows wild, and very thickly, in the south Brazilian

State of Paraná, the forests straying out into Matto Grosso, São Paulo,

Santa Catharina, Rio Grande do Sul, and over the borders of the

Argentine; but Paraná is the great home of the little tree and of the

manufacture of the leaf into a commercial product. Its preferred habitat

is from 1500 to 2000 feet above sea-level, and until recently it had

never been cultivated successfully except by the early Jesuit

missionaries; but now Argentina announces her intention of fostering

plantations of matte, and the Brazilian exporters are more alarmed than

were the rubber shippers of the Amazon when they first heard of

Wickham’s experiments.

Prepared in Brazil, matte has little sale in that country; only the

states of the southern border have learned to drink the infusion. Buyers

and users of the leaf are, first, Argentinos and next Paraguayanos, with

several other South American countries taking smaller quantities; the

confirmed matte drinker rejects Indian teas and coffee with contempt,

and there is undoubtedly much to be said for this herb. It is tonic, is

not accused of possessing nerve-attacking properties to the same extent

as tea or coffee, and has a delicate flavour: it has a good opportunity

to prove its qualities in world markets, now that a society has been

formed in Paraná to defend and advertise it. In the Argentine

stock-raising districts every _gaucho_ has his apparatus for making the

infusion, and is said to be able to work all day on this drink and a

little bread.

The leaves are gathered for three or four months in the year, May or

June until August; carried to a central hearth, they are dried over

fires, packed in bags and sent on mule-back to Ponta Grossa or Curityba,

and there carefully prepared for export. Mills and sieves of Brazilian

invention reduce the dried leaves to powder, divide it into qualities

according to the fineness of the reduction, and pack for export;

Paranaguá is _the_ matte port. Thousands of colonists and isolated

dwellers of interior Paraná depend upon matte for the basis of their

living; the _hervaes_ (matte forests) are often seen together with the

fantastic Paraná pine, a thick green growth below the tall stems of this

other tree characteristic of the landscape of southern Brazil. The

Paraná pine, besides its value as a yielder of excellent lumber, is

noted for its product of pine kernels so large that they often exceed

good-sized chestnuts in bulk. They are to be seen in huge sacks on sale

in all the markets of South Brazil, are boiled like chestnuts and form a

nutritious and excellent food. They should be better known, but their

use seems to be largely confined to the Italian population, who have

always had a predilection for pine kernels: when the Romans invaded

Britain they brought and planted pine trees of the nut-yielding variety.

Each matte _herval_ is invaded in the picking season by local gatherers;

the central fire is started, the trees stripped of small branches; care

is taken to prune them so that succeeding yields are not injured; there

is not a great variety of shrubs in the vicinity of the matte forests,

and not much cleaning has to be done. Brought down to the ports, the

cost of prepared matte rarely exceeds six cents: including freight and

other costs it could be placed upon North American markets as it is in

European, at about eighteen to twenty cents a pound in normal times.

During the year 1915 Brazil exported her highest record of matte to

date, 75,800 tons, but left this figure far behind in 1919 and 1920,

with over 90,000 tons. This was not such a good price as that of 1913,

when sixty-five thousand tons fetched 21,000 contos, at an average price

of five hundred and forty-two reis per kilo. The amount exported has

gone up steadily since the beginning of the century, when thirty-five to

forty thousand tons was a fair total.

Argentina, the most important buyer of the “yerba,” has for some years

imposed certain restrictions upon the entry of Brazilian matte,

insisting, as she is right to insist, on guarantees and proofs of its

purity: Brazil has conformed with wishes of the Argentine authorities.

In April, 1915, the customs-houses of Buenos Aires were circularized by

the Argentine Minister of Finance, requesting tests which would have

meant the opening and submitting to chemical analysis of each package of

matte. Compliance meant a very large addition to costs, as each separate

analysis meant an expenditure of at least ten Argentine pesos, or about

four dollars; as a result importation ceased and orders were

countermanded. A month later restrictions were modified, but one

analysis of each consignment being obligatory; at the same time even

more rigid measures were taken to ensure the entry of nothing but

unmixed leaves, the Argentine Counsel of Hygiene urging the Government

not to admit any matte which did not contain at least seven per thousand

of _mateina_ or _cafeina_.

No such rules, meanwhile, have been imposed upon matte of Argentine

origin or milling; the product of the home mills is not free from

suspicion of adulteration with other herbs, and the _Revista de Economia

y Finanzas_ of Buenos Aires (July, 1916) wrote scathingly of the law

which “imposes analysis upon the foreign product, with the preservation

of public health as object, while the product of our mills, uninspected,

may endanger it.” The root of the Argentine obstacle really seems to be

a new project for planting the tree on an extensive scale in the

territory of Misiones, bordering on the south Brazilian,

matte-producing, states; the plan includes plantation of thirty thousand

hectares of land and the construction of a railway line. If success

crowns this enterprise Brazil will not immediately be forced to search

for other consumers of the product of her two hundred thousand square

kilometers of matte forests, but in the course of a few years she might

find her industry seriously threatened. If the society which has taken

up matte defence and advertisement is only half as successful as that

specializing in Brazilian coffee propaganda, matte will find good

markets north of the equator should those below it fail her. The

following is the analysis of matte, compared with green tea, black tea,

and coffee:—

In 1000 parts.

_Green Tea_ _Black Tea_ _Coffee_ _Matte_

Essential oil 7.90 6.00 0.41 0.01

Chlorophyll 22.20 18.14 13.66 62.00

Resin 22.20 36.40 13.66 20.69

Tannin 178.00 128.80 16.39 12.28

Theine or caffeine 4.30 4.60 2.66 2.50

Fibre & cellulose 175.80 283.20 174.83 180.00

Ash 85.60 54.40 25.61 38.10

Extract and colouring matter 464.00 390.00 270.67 238.83

─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

960.00 921.54 517.89 554.41

Out of her total exports in 1915 of nearly seventy-six thousand tons,

Brazil sent over fifty-eight thousand to Argentina, fourteen thousand to

Uruguay, and three thousand tons to Chile. In 1920, seventy thousand

tons were sold to the Argentine, eighteen thousand tons to Uruguay, and

rather more than three thousand to Chile, where sales of Oriental teas

compete with the matte leaf.

SUGAR

Sugar production is one of the Brazilian industries which have waxed,

waned, and with the encouragement of high market prices abroad, has

recently again forged ahead. As in the case of cotton, sugar can be and

is grown in the great majority of Brazilian states, from the mouth of

the Amazon down to the Laguna Mirim, but there are areas, chiefly on the

central littoral, where soil and climate are so well suited to sugarcane

that production from these regions is able to compete with other world

offerings. There was a time when Brazil was the chief source of sugar

supplies to Europe, but the industry suffered two great blows—one, the

stimulation of cane-growing in the British West Indies, and again the

abolition of slavery in Brazil in 1888, which resulted in many instances

in the abandonment of the plantations by a large part of the negro

population, crowding into the coast cities to enjoy new liberty.

Cane production has all the advantages of an ancient industry whose

details have long been reduced to an exact science. Its recorded history

goes back to the fifth century, so that we can reckon that there have

been fourteen centuries of experiment in cane culture. A native of

Bengal, sugar was in cultivation in the fifth century along the valleys

of the Tigris and the Euphrates; the conquering Moors took it into Spain

in the eighth century, and during the following six or seven centuries

its cultivation on a limited scale proceeded on the shores of the

Mediterranean. In the fifteenth century when Portugal re-found and

colonized Madeira and the Azores, sugarcane was introduced into these

islands, flourished there, and yielded sugar to the home market in

Lisbon. That it was an exotic luxury in Europe generally is proved by

its price: a hundredweight sold in London in 1842 fetched £55.

Twenty-five years later the price had dropped to ten pounds for a like

quantity, but by that time larger supplies were coming in. After the

discovery of the West Indian Islands by Columbus cane was introduced

into Hispaniola and Cuba by the Spanish settlers, but cultivation was

strongly discouraged by the home government, who chiefly aimed at the

stimulation of gold-mining. Brazil, whose gold-deposits were luckily not

discovered until the seventeenth century, became in contrast to New

Spain an agricultural country from the time when the first _capitanias_

were allotted: she began shipping sugar in the visiting Portuguese

caravels in a few years after first settlement.

Thenceforth for over a century and a quarter Brazil became the main

source of sugar supplies to Europe; when placer gold and diamond-bearing

gravels were found by the _bandeirantes_ everyone rushed to the General

Mines taking slaves along, until the coast plantations were denuded both

of masters and labourers. Consequent languishing of sugar production

made it worth while for both England and France to develop cane growing

in the West Indian isles which they had seized from Spain. It was in

1662 that the British “Company of Royal Adventurers of Africa” agreed to

deliver three thousand slaves a year to the British West Indies, and

sugar production in Jamaica, Barbados, etc., began to attract wealthy

planters: whole fleets of high-prowed sailing ships came into Caribbean

waters to take away sugar, rum and molasses in those palmy days,

enduring until Napoleon started the beet-sugar industry and Great

Britain, not long after, abolished the slave trade.

Europe only discovered her possession of a sweet tooth during the

sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Before the great production of

sugar from the New World began to be carried to Spain and Portugal, and

by them distributed at high prices and in small quantities to the rest

of Europe, the only sweetening known to the masses of the population was

honey, and this was a luxury. There was no taste for sweets until sweets

became common. The real taste of the Middle Ages was for spices; it is

not generally realized today to what extent the food of Europe was at

this period saturated with cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon and other spices

brought from the Orient. It was for the “Spice Isles” that the early

navigators searched the wide seas, spices that they ate with a gusto

almost incomprehensible today: they flavoured their beverages and

scented their clothes with spices.

The most flourishing centres of sugar production in Brazil are in the

State of Rio de Janeiro, where Campos is the focus of sugar deliveries,

and Pernambuco, a thousand miles farther north; São Paulo has also an

increasing sugar industry, as may be seen from the following list of

large sugar mills; small factories, of which there are hundreds in

Brazil chiefly turning out _rapadura_, a brown sugar-brick, and

_cachaça_, the native rum, are not included:—

Alagôas 9

Bahia 7

Maranhão 3

Minas Geraes 7

Parahyba do Norte 2

Pernambuco 46

Rio de Janeiro 31

Santa Catharina 2

São Paulo 20

Sergipe 15

Piauhy 1

Rio Grande do Norte 3

———

139

On almost every cotton, coffee, tobacco or other _fazenda_ in Brazil,

besides those given over to sugar production, one finds patches of the

bright veridian green that demonstrates the presence of sugar, grown and

milled for home uses; altogether the production of sugar in Brazil must

be much larger than is shown by any statistics, and there does not exist

any comprehensive estimate of the total amount. A few years ago the

charge could be made that Brazilian sugar-milling methods were

antiquated, extraction low because the machinery employed was inferior:

but whoever repeats this tale today has not seen any of the huge,

scientifically managed estates and mills of Pernambuco, the _usinas_ of

the country about Campos, where the sky-line is punctuated by slim

chimneys, or any of the fine modern equipments of São Paulo. One of the

first good mills that the writer saw in Brazil was at Piracicaba, in the

interior of São Paulo, where an excellent product was marketed by the

employment of thoroughly up-to-date methods. Here the installation of

machinery is European, chiefly French, but there has been an increasing

tendency since the outbreak of war in Europe towards purchases of

American equipment, perhaps especially among the _usinas_ of the

northern promontory.

Exports of sugar from Brazil have fluctuated in an extraordinary manner

since the beginning of this century; swift drops in amounts sent abroad

have nearly always spelt “drought,” but there seems to have been a

general tendency to decline until the stimulation of war prices helped

the industry, due partly to formidable competition from the Caribbean

islands and coasts, and partly to increased consumption in Brazil. A

marked feature of the Brazilian sugar export lists is a developing sale

to Argentina; it has been recently stimulated by the failure of

Argentine supplies, but is also part of the symptomatic increase of

interchange between the commercial South American countries. Brazilian

sugar exports, shipped in bags of sixty kilos weight, 1906 to 1920 in

round numbers:—

1906 85,000 tons

1907 13,000 „

1908 32,000 „

1909 68,000 „

1910 59,000 „

1911 36,000 „

1912 4,800 „

1913 5,400 „

1914 32,000 „

1915 59,000 „

1916 54,000,000 „

1917 138,000,000 „

1918 116,000,000 „

1919 69,000,000 „

1920 109,000,000 „

The price has ranged during this period from two hundred and twenty-five

reis per kilo paid for the short crop of 1904, down to one hundred and

eight reis paid in 1906 when the crop was large; from that low point it

climbed upwards, fluctuating about one hundred and sixty to one hundred

and eighty reis from 1907 to 1913, fixed exchange making this price the

equivalent of about three and a half to four cents a kilo, or something

like a cent and a quarter to a cent and three-quarters per pound. In

1914, with war prices encouraging the sugar market, the price rose to

two hundred and twelve reis a kilo, and in 1915 to two hundred and

forty-four reis, a figure exceeded enormously in the post-war boom of

1919–20.

The average yield of sugarcane per hectare in Rio de Janeiro and São

Paulo is fifty tons, or let us say something over twenty tons an acre;

this does not compare with Caribbean coast yields, where eighty or

ninety tons an acre is obtained from lands impregnated with volcanic

ash, and fields are to be seen which have not been re-planted for a

dozen years. Brazilian soils, chiefly composed of drifts of

disintegrated granite, oxidized by the sun to a brilliant red tint, are

sometimes very rich, but also are frequently just good honest soils that

cannot stand abuse without exhaustion following; with proper rotation of

crops these lands will yield generously, but it is scarcely surprising

that, in regions where sugar has been almost continuously cultivated for

a couple of centuries, the cane crop per acre is comparatively low.

Pernambuco, for instance, counts her cane cultivation from the year

1534, when the first _engenho_ (sugar mill), piously named _Nossa

Senhora de Ajuda_, was established near the settlement at Olinda.

Brazilians are large consumers of sugar; the internal consumption has

been calculated at three hundred thousand tons a year, or some eighty to

ninety pounds a head of the population, and, with the exception of fine

sweets imported, chiefly from France, all of the sugar used in Brazil is

nationally produced. The sugar growing and refining industry is in an

exceedingly healthy condition, is one of the important national

resources, and has shown marked revival during the last two years.

[Illustration:

Carioca Cotton Mill, Rio de Janeiro.

Catende Sugar Mill, Pernambuco.

]

TOBACCO

The use of tobacco in Brazil dates back an unknown number of centuries:

the natives smoked the leaf, both in the form of rolled cigars and also

in small quantities in wooden pipes, made in the fashion which Europe

subsequently adopted. The first European to make any record of this

habit was that painstaking Frenchman, André Thevet, who came to Rio de

Janeiro with Villegaignon’s unfortunate expedition in November, 1555; he

says that the native name for the plant was “betun” or “petum,” and the

drawing in his book (_La Cosmographie Universelle_) identifies it with

_Nicotiana tabacum_. In the Amazonian regions both men and women smoked

tobacco as a recognized form of enjoyment, and its effects were so much

appreciated by another traveller, Piso, that he declared it to be one of

the three American plants which had no equal in the Old World for

beneficial uses—coca, tobacco, and the root of mandioca. Tobacco-smoking

by American natives had first been noticed by the crew of Columbus in

1492.

During the latter half of the sixteenth century Europeans began to take

to the use of tobacco, the Spanish colonies sending it home from the

West Indian Islands and the Portuguese from Brazil; it was not until

about 1600 that it was seriously cultivated for export in the Brazilian

_capitanias_, and when experiments were made with this object it was

found that Bahia yielded the best product, although that of Pernambuco

was also good, and the plant produced freely all along the littoral,

from Amazonas to the lagoons of Rio Grande do Sul. Tobacco became during

colonial days one of the important exports of Brazil, together with

dyewoods and sugar.

Brazil marks her extensive cultivation of tobacco from about 1850, after

her ports had been thrown open to world commerce and the flags of all

lands were seen in her ports. In 1860 she exported 4,609 tons; in 1870,

13,276 tons and in 1873, nearly 17,000 tons, of which over 14,500 tons

came from Bahia. By the year 1886 Brazilian exportation had risen to

23,000 tons, the value was over 15,000,000 francs (or more than

$3,000,000) and a part of this to the value of 3,500,000 francs, “was

returned to us made up into so-called Havana cigars,” remarks Almeida.

“It was not fashionable to smoke any tobacco or cigars other than of the

Havana kind in Brazil fifteen years ago.”

Now ideas have changed: Brazil realizes the value of her own product,

and Bahia has no hesitation in challenging Vuelta Abajo to a comparison.

Soils of the two regions are similar in qualities. Farther north, the

Brazilian _fumo_ has a stronger, less delicate flavour, and is largely

consumed at home; cigarettes of Pará, Amazonas, Parahyba, Pernambuco,

Matto Grosso, Minas, and many other states are manufactured in large

quantities, and sold cheaply; very good Pará cigarettes made of the

black local tobacco sell at ten for a “tostão”—a fraction over two

cents.

By the end of the century Brazilian tobacco production had grown to some

forty thousand tons, largely the result of ready markets in Germany,

which practically absorbed the whole of this export until the outbreak

of the European War, and the adoption of North American seeds and

methods of cultivation. The output suffers fluctuations due to climatic

conditions, as will be seen from inspection of the following figures; it

will be noticed that prices have on the whole a tendency to rise:

_Year_ _Tons_ _Total Value in Gold _Price per Kilo in Paper

Milreis_ Milreis_

1905 20,390 7,335 contos 636 reis

1910 34,149 14,453 „ 714 „

1915 27,096 10,328 „ 835 „

1920 30,561 1200 „

In calculating prices it is well to bear in mind that the gold milreis

is always worth twenty-seven English pence, while, although fixed

between 1906 and 1914 at sixteen pence, the value of the paper milreis

fluctuates. During 1915 it was worth an average of a fraction over

twelve pence, so that the price of tobacco—eight hundred and thirty-five

reis a kilo—may be considered as about eighteen cents a kilo, or a

little over seven American cents per pound. While, as we have seen,

thirty thousand tons of tobacco is exported each year from Brazil,

enough remains in the country to supply ninety-six per cent of the

internal consumption; cigars, tobacco and cigarettes are consumed in the

country to the value of 40,622 contos, importations being worth only

1,500 contos of this amount.

Every state in Brazil has its large or small tobacco factories, but the

great manufacturing region is that of São Felix, just across the bay

from São Salvador (Bahia) city. Accessible to the factories established

here are the finest tobacco regions: the product is excellent in flavour

and well prepared for a discriminating market. Organizers of the

manufacturing industry, as well as shippers to Europe, are largely

German; German also is the big cigar factory of the South, that of Poock

in Rio Grande do Sul, whose product goes all over Brazil.

Since the beginning of the European War the absence of German and

Austrian shipping movement has paralyzed tobacco sales, and as this item

forms about thirty per cent of Bahia’s exports it was necessary to seek

unimpeded sales channels. Negotiations were opened with the _Regie

Française_, the great French tobacco-buying organization, and the

packing, quality, fermentation and other conditions studied with

reference to sales.

CEREALS

Wheat growing is only possible on a commercial scale in the south of

Brazil where temperature and climate are not unlike those of the

European lands of origin of this cereal. At present Rio Grande is the

only great wheat producing state, although Paraná has a budding

industry; the great Italian firm of Matarazzo has recently acquired

large areas of land in that state with the object of growing wheat and

establishing a flour mill.

Rio Grande, which owes the major part of its opening-up to the German

settlers who emigrated there about the middle of the nineteenth century,

already grows half enough wheat to satisfy the internal needs of the

State, for although she still imports 361,000 barrels of flour, and

236,000 bushels of wheat (equal to another 47,000 barrels) yet she also

grows enough wheat to yield 407,000 barrels of native flour. She has, it

is calculated, over 83,000 hectares of land under wheat, employs 29,000

field hands, and has over a thousand grain mills. Many of these are

equipped with out-of-date machinery, and are small, but there are others

fitted with good modern systems producing fine flour.

Two of the best wheat producing municipalities are Alfredo Chaves and

Caxias, each of which have over four thousand hectares under wheat and

produce an average of six thousand tons of this grain; the first

municipality has fifty-one and the second sixty-seven mills. To show the

“riograndense” growth in wheat production:

1909 15,250 tons

1910 31,267 „

1912 52,332 „

1915 55,000 „

Santa Catharina is a cereal State, but does not today produce notable

quantities; São Paulo, the high interior of Rio de Janeiro, and the

hills of Minas, are all suitable; fine wheat, barley and oats are often

seen in the vicinity of European colonies. But Brazilian production is

not yet within measurable distance of coping with internal demands, and

as a result wheat, with wheat-flour, accounts for one-fifth of Brazil’s

total import values. The bulk of the grain imported comes from the River

Plate.

Linked with the agricultural production of cereals is the flour-milling

industry, which dates from the time when wheat entered Brazil free of

duty while wheat-flour paid thirty reis a kilo: this was the condition

of the tariff until December, 1899, by which time two large mills had

been established in Rio de Janeiro. In January of the following year

imported wheat was taxed for the first time, ten reis a kilo, while the

duty on flour was reduced to twenty-five reis; national milling profits

suffered correspondingly.

In 1906 other alterations were made in the tariff as regards flour from

the United States, in addition to certain manufactured articles; it was

suggested to Brazil that the United States was a good customer for

Paulista coffee and Amazonian rubber, and that she expected “most

favoured nation” treatment in return: a tax of three American cents per

kilo against coffee was indicated as a short way with objectors. Brazil

yielded, giving the United States a twenty per cent reduction on flour

import duties, as well as for condensed milk, manufactures of rubber,

clocks, dyes, varnishes, typewriters, ice-boxes, pianos, scales and

wind-mills. Four years later the preferential tariff was extended to

dried fruit, cement, school and office furniture, and in 1911 the rebate

on flour entries was changed to thirty per cent.

As a result American sales of the goods indicated have increased very

largely, although sales of rubber and coffee have remained, on Brazil’s

part, about the same for the last seven or eight years; her more

markedly larger shipments to North America are cacao and hides. But

American flour imports into Brazil have increased from a little over

twenty-four thousand tons in 1906 to nearly sixty thousand tons in 1920,

with rises in other articles equally pleasant for the northern

manufacturer—cement sales, for instance, increased from one hundred and

twenty tons in 1908 to over 76,000 tons in 1920; but in 1921 Germany,

selling 30% below her rivals, captured this trade. Reduction of taxes on

American flour is actively opposed from two points; the first is the

group of flour mills operating in the country, and the second in the

sister republic of Argentina who also has flour to sell.

The flour mills in Brazil of commercial importance are eleven in number:

the Moinho Fluminense and the Rio de Janeiro Flour Mills, in the city of

Rio; Moinho Santa Cruz, across the bay in Nictheroy; Grandes Moinhos

Gambas and Moinho Matarazzo, in São Paulo city; Moinho Santista, in

Santos; there are three modern mills in Rio Grande State, at Pelotas,

Porto Alegre, and Rio Grande City; Paraná has two, at Paranaguá and

Antonia.[14]

The great cereal of Brazil is that wonderful plant developed by the

aborigines of the Americas, maize: it is commonly known as _milho_ in

Brazil. Only recently has the wild plant, mother of all the different

kinds of maize in the world, been identified—a proof of the long culture

which brought it to the perfection which the first European conquerors

encountered; yet such was the hardihood of this cereal that thirty years

after the Conquest it had spread all over the warm parts of Europe and

was thriving in Africa and Asia.

It is, with mandioca, the great food of all South and Central America

and Mexico, grows under almost any conditions, apparently, and while the

seed is seldom carefully selected, strongly marked varieties of prolific

habit are found in Brazil, the red, white and yellow all yielding well.

It is found in patches outside every little hut, and in enormous fields

in Central Brazil. In spite of the large importation of wheat nowadays

to satisfy the more luxurious tastes of the cities, Brazil could not

live without maize.

Rye is grown by the Russians of the southern colonies, and the south

also produces a limited quantity of oats and barley.

FIBRES

Among the fibres of Brazil which are offered extensive markets is the

wonderful _paina_, known in European markets as kapok, which is

thirty-four times lighter than water and fourteen times lighter than

cork. Produced chiefly in the Orient, its qualities were many years ago

appreciated by German manufacturers who were until recently the largest

purchasers of the fibre, using it for life-belts, mattresses, etc. Today

an unsatisfied demand for kapok comes from the _Société Industrielle et

Commerciale du Kapok_ of Paris and London, which is said to expect

enormous calls after the close of the war, when rehabilitated Belgium

and northern France will need pillows, mattresses, coverlets, and

quantities of other things with the qualities of lightness, warmth,

elasticity and impermeability possessed by this renowned fibre. At

present world supplies come from Java (best fibre, cleanest, best

packed), British India, an inferior grade, as is also that of Central

Africa and Senegal; a few years ago, at the suggestion of Germans

interested in Venezuelan railways, the kapok tree was introduced there;

but when the cotton was sent to Europe it was rejected on account of its

condition “the greater part of the bales containing stones, refuse,

etc., which sometimes amounted to thirty per cent of the total weight;

thus, in spite of the fine quality of Venezuelan kapok, French importers

were obliged to cease purchases,”—a lesson for careless exporters.

Many parts of Brazil display this beautiful tree. When the writer was

first in Petropolis, in bright May weather, the avenues of that mountain

city were gay with the large bright pink flowers of this grey-trunked,

spreading exotic. Later, when the bolls ripen, the fibre is collected,

sold by the kilo over many counters throughout the country, and used

locally for stuffing pillows and cushions.

The price paid by France for paina fibre is about one hundred and forty

to one hundred and sixty francs per hundred kilos of good-grade

material: she imposes no duties against its entry. Brazil has many good

fibres, but their extensive industrial use is as yet limited to

_aramina_, of which coffee bags are made in S. Paulo, a flourishing

industry, and the _pita_ which is used by the Indians of Amazonas to

make hammocks. These are woven with great art, interspersed along the

edges with delicate feathers of gay-coloured Amazonian birds.

Fibre production in a scientific manner and on a commercial scale is

only in its infancy in Brazil, but has recently shown interesting

development. There are numbers of fine fibres native to the country,

yielded not only by a large number of palms, one of which supplies the

_piassava_ exported for broom-making, but also by many plants of the

aloe tribe. Some of these produce fibres equal in commercial value to

the famous _henequen_ (sisal) of Yucatan, upon which the rope-making

industries of the United States so largely depend.

Banana fibre is used by the lace-makers of the north for the production

of a curious, stiff, shiny lace of fairly intricate workmanship. The

best specimens which I possess of this lace were bought at Maceió, but

the great home of the lacemaker is Ceará. She usually works with linen

or cotton threads, and is to be seen at every cottage door, with her

pillow bristling like those of the Devonshire lace-makers, with scores

of pins, while she throws the myriad bobbins to and fro, working her

pattern on the pins.

Some of the lace produced is quite beautiful, of extreme fineness and

intricacy, some of the most prized being the _labyrintho_, with its

darned-in pattern of heavier, silky thread, among the fine filaments of

the background. Lace-making is one of the small industries of Brazil

which are little known, but deserve a better market.

CACAO

Cacao culture and preparation is the great absorbing industry of

southern Bahia, where soil and climate, particularly along a couple of

river valleys, combine to render the pretty little cacao tree fruitful.

Not even coffee presents a more charming sight than a good cocoa

plantation ready for harvest, the sun filtering through the light

branches, and these, as well as the trunk thickly clustered with the big

heavy red or yellow pods, looking something like elongated melons

attached, almost stemless, to the strongest parts of the tree. Methods

in use on many native plantations in Brazil are fairly primitive, and it

is the exception to see the elaborate machinery for fermenting, washing,

and drying such as is common in Trinidad; but the cacao produced is

good, has a ready sale in a market which never seems to have too much

cocoa and chocolate, and has made remarkably good prices since the

European War began. Bahia is the great producing state, but Maranhão,

Amazonas and Pará also send contributions to the export lists; the chief

Bahian centres of production are Ilhéos and Itabuna, which send

two-thirds of the crop, the rest coming from Cannavieiras and Belmonte

primarily. The groves run inland for more than two hundred miles along

the river valleys, full of the red triturated paste which is the base of

Brazilian soil.

The cacao year is reckoned from May the first to April the thirtieth,

and there are two gathering seasons: the _safra_ proper begins in

September and goes on until April, while the summer crop, the

_temperão_, begins in May and has a less important yield. Practically,

picking goes on all the year.

Cacao is native to the Americas, but its first cultivation and export

from Bahia appears to date no earlier than about 1834, when there are

records of shipments of 447 sacks of sixty kilos each. In 1840 the

export was nearly 2,000 sacks, and in 1850 had risen to more than 5,000

sacks. In 1915 Bahia shipped about 750,000 sacks, as a result of the

enthusiastic planting which has gone on in this favourable region for

the last twenty years.

Until the war broke out the average price for six years for Brazilian

cacao was about 725 reis a kilo—about seven cents a pound. It was at

this price that Brazil sold an average of thirty-two thousand tons. In

1915 the price soared to 1$248 a kilo, or about twelve cents a pound,

and Brazil with the biggest crop then on record exported 44,980 tons, a

total exceeded in each of the following five years, 1919 showing exports

of 93,000 tons, at 1$500 per kilo.

Cacao is a very good business, because there is seldom a surplus in

world markets; a demand exists for every pound, and the populations of

great centres seem to consume it in increasing quantities; it is a

valuable food, against which as yet no analytical chemist has laid one

of the charges that seem designed to warn us from most things that are

agreeable to eat and drink.

Anyone accustomed to warm climates, with a little capital to invest, and

able and willing to wait three or four years for his first returns,

could do worse than to take up cacao planting in Brazil.

Agricultural methods in Brazil are in many regions quite primitive. When

wild land is taken up, it is denuded by the axe of its big trees, and

the small scrub disposed of by burning the land over. Frequently the

next process is little more than that of making holes in the ground with

a stick, dropping in seed, and waiting for it to come up: a fertile

land, Brazil gets her crops with a minimum of trouble. That is all very

well for the little owner of a small property, but it has already given

way in more advanced districts to sound agricultural methods. Modern

scientific agricultural implements of American and European make are

commonly seen in the centre and south, but in the extreme north and the

deep interior they are more rare. There is an excellent market for

small, light hand ploughs, harrows and cultivators, for in some parts of

the country, such as interior Rio, the land in the bottoms of valleys is

very good, has been neglected because only coffee, planted on the

hilltops, has pre-occupied the small farmer, but there is not sufficient

flat space for the use of large motor or animal operated machinery. A

campaign of agricultural instruction has been inaugurated for some years

by the Department of Agriculture, some good statistics and maps and

literature sent out, but perhaps less theory and more practical

instruction is needed. A recent writer in the _Estado de S. Paulo_

remarked upon this, rather caustically: “... instructions for the

culture of squashes—plough the ground with a plough with a disc of such

a number, harrow it with such or such a harrow, drill it with such or

such a drill; afterwards fertilize it with so many tons of phosphate of

lime, so many of potash, and a few kilos of powdered gold; cultivate it

with such a cultivator, harvest the crop with such and such methods, and

take it to market in a certain kind of motor-truck, et cetera, this

‘etcetera’ meaning that the farmer must hand over his farm to his

creditors and go to hunt a job as sanitary inspector....”

Other countries have also suffered from a plethora of agricultural

theory, but there is plenty of room for instruction of a practical

character and several good agricultural schools in Brazil, notably that

at Piracicaba, São Paulo, are leading the way.

BRAZILIAN FRUITS

There are many fine fruits in Brazil, unrecognized abroad, which may

some day, with refrigerating spaces in outgoing vessels multiplied, find

a way to international tables; there is already a pineapple export to

Europe, arriving in time for Christmas, and Brazil’s sweet bananas are

shipped to the Plate. But who realizes that Brazil is the native home of

the finest oranges in the world? Bahia is the place of origin of the

seedless orange; slips of this tree, taken to California, have created a

tremendous daughter industry whose products are spread far and wide by

steamer and train; there is no export from Brazil, the Bahian orange,

which is greatly superior in size and flavour to the Californian, hardly

creeping down the coast to the markets of Rio and São Paulo. There is

room for a huge industry in growing and shipping in this direction, and

some of the planters of California, trembling of nights when the frosts

come and smudges have to be burnt—sometimes in vain, would do well to

transfer their skill and energy to a land where frosts are unknown, land

is cheap, and the best oranges known are produced without any great care

or science.

MINING

Brazil was for more than a hundred years after the discovery of placer

deposits in the interior the source of important gold exports;

altogether she is estimated to have yielded gold worth more than a

hundred million pounds sterling, but her fame diminished with the

exhaustion of the gold-bearing river sands. It was easy enough to wash

out gold grains with the _bateia_, but when it became necessary to seek

mother lodes and to use machinery, native capital and technical skill

were lacking. Two gold-mining companies are working today in Brazil,

both British owned and operated, and both in the State of Minas Geraes.

One, at Morro Velho, property of the S. João del Rey Mining Company, is

worked at a depth of a mile and a quarter, pays dividends regularly, and

is a standing tribute to British energy and skill: it is a magnificent

social organization as well as an engineering triumph.

The second company of importance using modern equipment is that of

Passagem, close to the old capital of Minas Geraes, Ouro Preto; it is

excellently operated, but has not had equal good fortune with the Morro

Velho mine. In 1916 Brazil’s gold exports, in bars, weighed 4,564,523

grams, were worth about £480,000, and went entirely to England, but

Brazil subsequently forbade gold exports, and now takes over all the

product.

A certain amount of Brazilian gold is absorbed internally every year by

the excellent native goldsmiths, for the fabrication of special

jewellery objects, but no estimate of the value is obtainable.

Until diamonds were found in South Africa Brazil was the cradle of the

most important diamonds put on foreign markets; the stones are still

sought by native _garimpeiros_, mostly, in the interior of Minas and

Bahia, and from the _grutas_ of the latter State are obtained the finest

white diamonds known. But they have practically disappeared from export

lists together with the black _carbonados_, even more valuable, for a

reason commented upon by the _Diario Official_ of Bahia, discussing 1915

trade: “If diamonds and carbonados have been, since the war, sent to

Europe or North America, their exportation, which is for the most part

unknown, has been realized by the habitual processes of smuggling.”

Brazil is the main source of these “carbonados,” black diamonds of great

hardness and therefore value, used industrially.

The precious stones openly shipped from all Brazil during 1915 were

worth only about one hundred and seventy-six contos of reis (say

forty-four thousand dollars), of which about fifty-five per cent went to

the United States and the rest to France. During 1916 the export of

precious and semi-precious Brazilian stones to North America has been

greatly stimulated by the access of luxury-purchasing which has

coincided with the accumulation of war profits, and out of American

purchases of jewels from abroad at the rate of a million dollars a week

Brazil has her share. The stones of Brazil have long been appreciated in

Europe—I am thinking of a certain shop in the Rue de la Paix in Paris

and another at the top of Regent Street in London—and deserve to be

better known in North America; the diamonds are beautiful, and their

distribution among not only the wealthy but the “middle” classes in

Brazil is so usual, the possession of good diamonds is so universally

considered the right of every woman, that a gala night at the theatre in

São Paulo or Rio is a display of brilliant stones which would put, for

choice jewels, many capitals of the world to shame.

The lovely sea-blue _agua-marinhas_, with exquisite transparency and

lustre, the soft green _tourmalinas_, the pink and golden topazes and

purple amethysts are all found in great quantities in the Brazilian

interior: many are native cut, and the wheel of the lapidary using

beautiful coloured stones may be seen at work in Bello Horizonte, Rio,

Bahia, and São Paulo.

If half that geologists have said of Brazil is true, this country is

destined to become one of the greatest mining regions of the Americas;

it has an extraordinary variety of minerals, but their location in the

interior where little transportation exists, added to the restraining

influences of archaic mining laws, has checked enterprise. Before the

European War began plans were well under way for development of

important iron mines in Minas Geraes by an English company, but work is

in abeyance at present. There has been, however, a marked increase in

exports of high-grade manganese, chiefly from Minas, chiefly shipped

away in the newly operating line of freight steamers owned by the United

States Steel Corporation, which bring manufactured products to Brazil.

Out of the total of more than three hundred thousand tons of this ore

exported from Brazil in 1915, over two hundred and sixty-six thousand

tons were sent to the United States, the price paid being over two and a

half million dollars; Great Britain also took ten thousand tons, but

Germany and Belgium, former customers for this ore, were eliminated from

the lists.

During 1916 production, mainly from Minas deposits, rose to over five

hundred thousand tons, again increasing to five hundred and thirty-three

thousand tons in 1917; after this time depression was experienced, due

in great measure to lessened demands from the United States using

home-produced low-grade ores for steel hardening. Post-war prospects of

development of the great Itabira iron deposits suggest iron and steel

industries within Brazil.

Large manganese deposits also occur in the neighbourhood of Nazareth, on

the mainland side of the Bahia de Todos os Santos (Bahia State),

situated conveniently for shipment; its export was reduced to

practically nothing from this point during 1914 and 1915, probably for

the same reason that shipments of another famous Brazilian mineral,

monazite sand, vanished about the same time from Bahian lists. This

reason was the imposition of strangulating export taxes, amounting to

about twenty-two per cent of the value of the mineral. Manganese

deposits are known to exist, in addition to the beds in Bahia and Minas,

in Matto Grosso, Santa Catharina, Paraná and Amazonas; the total

quantity available is estimated at one hundred million tons.

Monazite sands lie all along the southerly shores of Bahia, extending

into Espirito Santo; their peculiar glow and lustre was first noticed by

an Englishman, John Gordon, who had samples examined and found that they

contained thorium, used in making incandescent gas mantles; he was in

the shipping business in Brazil, and had no difficulty in thenceforth

sending large quantities of the precious sands abroad, as ballast; the

story goes that only by an accident was the fact revealed to the

authorities that the sands were valuable above the ballast of most

vessels, after some years. Duties were put on, and eventually exports

slumped. The largest amount officially sent abroad in one year was 2,114

tons, 1908, with a value of 609 contos of reis. In 1915 only 439 tons

were exported, all to the United States.

These three meagre items, precious stones, manganese and monazite sands,

complete the 1915 official mining exports of a great mineral country.

Probably increases will be shown for the year 1916, for, in addition to

manganese increases, there has been great stimulation of coal mining in

the States of Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catharina and Paraná. More than

one Brazilian railway, exasperated at the prices demanded for foreign

coal, has been using native coal and helping in its production, and

during the latter part of 1916 experimental shipments were made to the

Argentine. Results are said to be good, but a little caution must be

used before serious claims are made concerning the existence of very

extensive deposits of fine hard steam coal. In any case the production

of useful coal is a blessing to the east coast of South America, devoid

as this region has been up to the present of any source of reliable

_carvão de pedra_; every ton has been imported, chiefly from Wales but

latterly from North America. Chile, on the other side of the Andes, has

been mining coal for years, but the quality is not satisfactory for all

purposes, and supplies have been supplemented from Australia in normal

times.

Brazil has, it is known, important deposits of nickel, copper, lead,

mica, platinum, wolfram, and many other minerals, but there has been no

real attempt at operations, and until prospecting is systematically

undertaken and money put into good equipment, Brazil cannot take her

place as a great mineral producing country. She has the minerals, but

she needs roads to get them out, and favourable laws to encourage mining

development, as well as abolition of strangulating taxes. With

intelligent assistance, Brazil’s manganese should be able at the close

of the European War to compete with that of Russia, and her monazite

with that of Travancore (India), aside from the other rich deposits.

BRAZILIAN MANUFACTURES

There is much controversy in Brazil on the subject of national

manufactures. I have heard extremists declare roundly that Brazil ought

not to manufacture anything at all, because each mill-hand is one more

person taken away from the fields to which all Brazilian attention

should be given.

“Brazil is an agricultural country,” a cotton planter said to the

writer. “She cannot legitimately compete with the manufactured products

of great industrial countries because the price of living is too high

here. To obtain large revenues from the import taxes which are the

Federal Government’s source of support we have heavy duties against

large classes of goods entering the country; the barrier has been so

high that it has been worth while for factories to be started here,

sometimes making things from material produced in the country, which is

not bad policy when we have enough labour, but often making goods every

separate item of which is imported, an absurdity.”

He went on to say that there is a considerable manufacture of matches in

Brazil, but that the igniting chemicals, the little sticks, and the

boxes were all imported; nothing was done but the mere putting together.

“It is only remunerative because the tax on imported matches is so high,

and in many districts owing to want of communication the match factory

has a monopoly of local trade—a purely artificial condition.” This

fazendeiro was equally opposed to the silk and velvet factories of

Petropolis, declaring that “every item, raw silk, colours, machinery,

even the skilled weavers, are imported” and that until Brazil produces

national silk—a beginning has been made—she should not have silk

factories.

[Illustration:

Coffee-loading equipment at the port of Santos, State of São Paulo.

Sugar lands In Pernambuco.

]

This view was that of the agriculturist who sees a menace to labour

supplies in the growing manufactures of Brazil: I give it for what it is

worth, as an interesting view point with force in some of the argument.

But there are industries in Brazil which the agriculturist will admit to

be legitimate in themselves and helpful to himself in that they tend to

raise prices for his raw products. Of this class the most shining

example is the list of cotton mills. They are already so active that the

national supply of raw cotton is not sufficient for their needs, demand

being so acute in 1919 that the price in Brazil rose to forty cents a

pound. The output is sold in Brazil, supplying over eighty per cent of

the fabrics used, with a surplus for export since 1918.

It is not generally recognized to what extent Brazilian manufactures

have developed. The great industrial region is Rio de Janeiro. Her

industrial advance has been made possible in this direction, as in

agriculture, by the influx of sturdy Italians, Portuguese and Spanish

workers.

At the same time the manufacturing section is not confined to S. Paulo;

it is notably active in Minas and Rio, especially where electric power

derived from waterfalls is employed, and in Bahia and Pernambuco where

tobacco and sugar create legitimate home industries, and where there is

a sufficiency of native and negro labour, the latter an inheritance from

slavery days.

The total value of the products of Brazilian factories is about

2,000,000 contos of reis, equal at twelve pence exchange to £100,000,000

or in U. S. currency, $500,000,000 _mais ou menos_. This is a larger sum

than the value of Brazil’s exported agricultural and forestal products,

which was about 1,811,000 contos in 1919, and 1,464,000 contos in 1920.

This calculation, however, is not quite fair because it does not take

into consideration the agricultural produce consumed in the country;

there are no figures available on this subject.

In a review of commerce published in May, 1916, the _Jornal do

Commercio_ said that out of the ninety-four classes of Brazilian

manufacture, eighty were free from internal taxes (the “imposto do

consumo”) while fourteen were subject to tax, as well as to foreign

competition.

It was demonstrated that in these fourteen classes Brazilian

manufactures fell below fifty per cent of the total consumption in only

one instance, that of pharmaceutical specialties. The most important

items are these, in round numbers:

_Brazilian-made_ _Imported_

Woven fabrics (chiefly cotton, but 450,000 contos 47,300 contos 82

some silk and wool)

Beverages (mineral waters, beer, 101,300 contos 47,640 contos 68

wine, spirits)

Footwear (leather shoes and boots, 150,225 contos 2,425 contos 97

and _alpagartas_)

Prepared tobacco, cigarettes and 39,000 contos 1,565 contos 96

cigars

Hats 29,000 contos 3,800 contos 86

Matches 18,000 contos 4 contos 99.9

Conserves 13,300 contos 9,800 contos 58

Pharmaceutical specialties 11,700 contos 15,780 contos 43

In 1921 the number of home-made goods paying imposts rose to 21, and the

value to well over one million contos, and includes, besides those

detailed above, vinegar, walking sticks, salt, candles, perfumeries (of

which Brazil makes sixty per cent of the consumption) and playing-cards.

Among the large class of manufactures free from internal taxes are the

important items of cotton thread, jute products (rope, cord and coffee

bags) the products of ironworks, potteries, furniture factories;

goldsmiths and jewel-workers, soap makers, paper and paper-bag

factories, biscuit and bottle, shirt, mirror, trunk, ink, pipe, pin, and

window-glass makers; but all of these pay a contribution to their State

or municipality or both, appearing in revenue lists under “_Industrias e

Profissões_.”

In the city of São Paulo this tax upon industries and professions, the

latter list embracing bankers, lawyers, barbers, shoe-shiners,

hotel-keepers, doctors, newspaper sellers and so on with true democratic

impartiality, brings in over forty per cent of the municipal income; it

is now worth some three thousand five hundred contos a year, or let us

say nine hundred thousand dollars, the cotton factories paying the

biggest item, twelve thousand dollars, while shoe factories, jute mills,

potteries, jewellers, furniture makers and metal works each pay about

eight thousand dollars.

It is plain that manufacturers do not have things all their own way in

Brazil, and must be prepared for fairly heavy taxes, but one does not

hear the same complaints about petty taxation for every trifle as in the

Argentine; on the other hand, the mill owner has not to face cut-throat

competition as in older manufacturing countries, is able to get an

excellent price for his products, is able to buy land at inexpensive

rates and to obtain comparatively cheap labour. As soon as a district

becomes thickly sown with factory chimneys prices of land and labour

automatically rise, of course; this natural law has operated already in

the now densely populated and built over suburbs of São Paulo, Braz and

Moóca, and is, under one’s eyes, transforming the windy upland flats of

Ypiranga. A year or two ago much of this area was red clay swamp, with a

cottage here and there and a few Italian market gardens producing

vegetables for the city dwellers, and land could have been bought for

ten milreis an acre or less; today it is worth from two hundred to five

hundred milreis; the wet lands have been filled in, an enormous

undertaking, rows of workmen’s houses extend for miles to the crest of

the hill where the Monument stands commemorating the _Grito da

Independencia_, and from its summit one has a view that is mottled with

factory smoke and punctuated with tall chimneys. To see this and to

watch the crowds of pretty chattering Italian girls pouring out of Braz

and Moóca factories at noon or evening is to obtain a revelation of the

newer South America. It is no longer a land of sugar and brazil-wood

only and although the agriculturist may shake his head over the lack of

hands on the farm, manufacture in Brazil is a live, energetic phase of

her modern development. São Paulo City was employing, by the end of

1921, over twenty-five thousand horsepower of electrical energy in her

factories.

The fabric-weaving factories in all Brazil, including cloths of cotton,

jute, linen, silk and wool, were 303 in number in 1914, employing 75,000

workpeople and capital totalling over 368,000 contos of reis; in 1920

they had increased to 328 including 242 cotton mills which alone

employed 109,000 hands. The premier producer of cotton cloth in 1920, in

values, was Rio de Janeiro (Federal District) with an output worth

102,000 contos; next came S. Paulo State, 92,000 contos; then Minas

Geraes, 91,000; Rio de Janeiro State, 46,000; Bahia, 32,000; Pernambuco,

21,000; Alagôas, 16,000; Sergipe, 12,000; Maranhão, 11,000; Rio Grande

do Sul, 9,000; Ceará, 3,000; and Piauhy, Rio Grande do Norte, Paraná,

Parahyba and Espirito Santo, about 1,200 contos each. The States absent

from cloth manufacturing returns are the great forestal territories of

the extreme north, and those of the vast interior uplands, where

conditions are not greatly changed from the time prior to the Portuguese

discovery so far as development is concerned.

In numbers of mills São Paulo again comes first with seventy-eight mills

making cloths: fifty-five of these weave cotton alone, leaving a higher

proportion of fabrics made from other materials than in sister States;

generally speaking cotton cloths occupy the greatest share of capital

and labour, as for example in Minas, where sixty _fabricas de tecidos_

operate, and out of the total value of the production, 23,500 contos,

cotton accounts for over 22,600 contos. With a larger number of

cotton-cloth mills at work than S. Paulo, but with production worth not

much more than one-fourth, it is clear that factories are very much

smaller in the interior State; nevertheless, she is able to pride

herself upon a thriving industry, occupying nearly nine thousand people,

twenty-five thousand contos of capital, and using ten thousand tons of

raw cotton. In common with the other weaver States of the Brazilian

Union, Minas ships her cloths to less industrially developed regions: in

this connection some light is shed upon the ramifications of finance cum

industry by the President of the Sociedade Mineira da Agricultura (Minas

Society of Agriculture), Dr. Daniel de Carvalho, in an address at the

Cotton Conference held in Rio in June, 1916. Stating that the Minas

export of cotton cloth (to other States) was nearly 28,000,000 metres in

1915, he showed that, at an average price of four hundred reis (eight

cents) a metre, the total value was more than eleven thousand contos:

but in the official statistics the value of exported cotton cloth

appeared as only 3,893 contos. “This anomaly is an example of the

regimen of fiction in which we live, from the taxation point of view.

The Minas legislator votes for high and sometimes excessive taxes,—and

the Government in a fatherly manner corrects the excess in calculations

of ad valorem percentages, accepting a benign interpretation of

merchandise values. Instead of products appearing with exaggerated

values we find on the contrary that most estimates are well below the

real amount, as in the case of manganese....” The cure for this

deliberate lessening of values, which certainly does Brazil poor

service, would be, said Dr. Carvalho, an all-round diminution of

tribute, together with a rigorous application of the law.

In the Federal District the number of weaving mills is thirty-five,

several clustering in the mountain valleys of Petropolis and deriving

power from waterfalls; the State of Rio has twenty-seven; Santo

Catharina, fifteen; Bahia and Maranhão have thirteen each; Rio Grande do

Sul, twelve; Ceará and Alagôas, ten each; Pernambuco, nine; Paraná and

Sergipe, eight each; Espirito Santo, three; Rio Grande do Norte, Piauhy

and Parahyba, one each.

The largest employer of labour in weaving mills is S. Paulo, with (1920)

over thirty thousand hands; the next is the Federal District with about

twelve thousand; third comes Minas with over eight thousand. São Paulo

is also the greatest consumer of raw cotton, using thirteen thousand

tons; the Federal District uses eleven thousand tons and the State of

Rio nearly six thousand tons, Minas using, as we saw above, about five

thousand.

At the end of 1915 when, in spite of great demands upon the national

mills consequent upon checked importations of cotton cloth several had

to reduce their staff on account of shortage of raw cotton, the Centro

Industrial addressed a letter to the President of the Republic in which

the plight of the manufacturers was displayed. A cotton famine in the

North had reduced the national supply, and raised the price beyond

precedent, while importations are always minute in Brazil owing to the

heavy duty of about six cents per pound against it. The signatories of

the letter explain that the cotton cloth industry never calls for less

than forty-five thousand tons[15] of raw cotton produced on national

soil, and that this amount was made up in 1913 into cloth worth over

162,000 contos; that, with the exception of aniline dyes, which cost

about 2,000 contos a year, no other prime material enters into the

Brazilian cotton Industry.

“The time is long past when cotton yarns were imported on a great scale

for weaving. Now, our numerous factories have created in their vast and

modern mills a perfect industrial cycle from spinning to printing,” so

that the present import of yarns is worth only 1,800 contos, and the

value of cotton cloths brought from abroad less than 17,000 contos (1914

figures).

At the same time Brazil’s export of raw cotton from the Northern States

of fine long staple, usually practically all sent to England, diminished

until returns for 1915 show only 5,223 tons against over 37,000 tons in

1913 and 30,000 in 1914, but this restriction did not make up the

shortage following the drought. The Centro Industrial asked for a

governmental enquiry into cotton conditions; in the middle of 1916 the

Conference was held in Rio, samples of cotton, etc., displayed, and,

after a collection of facts by a _questionnaire_ sent to all weaving

mills, expositions of the highest interest were made by officials of the

government, technical experts, and cotton growers. Reference is made to

this valuable conference under “Cotton,” but the manufacturing notes of

these pages may include the name of Miguel Calmon, Chemical Director of

the Companhia Industrial do Brasil, popularly known as the “Bangú”

factory, who gave an address on the use of native vegetable dyes;

optimistic as regards tints drawn from Brazilian forests, Senhor Calmon

spoke with appreciation of the “urucú,” a dye producing hues ranging

from yellow to deep red, as well as many other better known colouring

matters. There is already a very busy dye factory in Minas, the _Fabrica

de Tinta Machado_, using native vegetable bases, and much is expected in

S. Paulo from dyes made by the use of “Inglotina,” obtained from

mangrove leaves: a factory has recently been established at Cubatão.

It was at the same conference that Dr. Costa Pinto gave details of the

threads spun in Brazil; counting in English measurement, Brazilian mills

spin from No. 2 to No. 100 thread. From No. 30 upward a long staple

cotton is needed, and only a small proportion of native-grown fibres are

suitable, although there is plenty of short fibre for the coarser

weaves.

Brazilian manufacturing already depends considerably upon the water

power accessible, especially in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Minas.

There is enough hydraulic force available in Brazil to turn the wheels

of the world but the majority of these wonderful cascades are scarcely

known by name, and many were not charted in the interior of Matto Grosso

and Amazonas until the work of the Rondon Commission opened great tracts

of those unknown lands. It is not possible here to do more than mention

one or two of the most important falls. The Maribondo, in the Triangulo

Mineiro, has an estimated force of six hundred thousand horse power;

Urubupunga, on the Paraná river, has some 450,000 horse power; Iguassú

has 14,000,000, four times as much as Niagara; and the force of the Sete

Quedas, or Guayra Falls, on the Paraná near the Paraguay boundary, is

calculated at 80,000,000 horse power. The Light and Power companies of

Rio, São Paulo, Campinas, Petropolis, and other cities obtain their

force from falls, hundreds of little townships in the central interior

sparkle with electric lights, run factories and public utilities as a

result of a nearby source of water power.

Allusion has before been made to the variety of Brazilian soils and

climates which result in her possession of several important and utterly

diverse industries; the list is so long that many interesting embryo

industries, or others of local or internal importance only, can only

claim space for passing mention. Among these is the wine-making industry

of the far south, where European colonists cultivate grapes and have

created quite a notable business in the production of fairly light red

wines. These are shipped to many other parts of the country, are sold

inexpensively in Rio and other cities, and while they lack the mellow

tone of imported wines, they are sound, good, and popular.

Salt extraction in Rio Grande do Norte is another busy industry, and

here is the chief source of Brazil’s native salt; it is exported from

the ports of Macáu and Mossoró. Also in the north are the famous

lace-makers, whose yards of fine _rendas_, made on a pillow with scores

of bobbins, would not disgrace Malta; the big, thickly woven white

hammocks of Ceará are justly prized all over Brazil, and both lace and

hammocks should form the base of an export business. In Maranhão, where

the babassú palm grows luxuriantly, a local industry extracts the fine

oil from the kernel hidden in a stony shell, and experimental exports

have occurred during the past year; the babassú is but one of the

valuable nuts of the Brazilian north. One, the “Brazil nut”[16] of

commerce, has of course been exported from the Amazon for nearly a

century, and is a considerable revenue yielder to Pará and Amazonas

states, but the _sapucaia_, of the same family but larger and sweeter,

is rarer, less known, and fetches much higher prices in sophisticated

world markets.

[Illustration: [Agriculture Map]]

In Parahyba State there is at least one considerable coconut oil

extracting factory, on a sandy spit south of Parahyba city; several

thousand people are said to be employed in this industry and the product

is shipped as far south as Rio: in spite of the immense quantity of

coconuts on the littoral of the northern promontory there is no copra or

fibre industry yet established, apparently because the native

consumption of the nut leaves little surplus for the one, and interest

is lacking in the other.