tal and capitalistic
intelligence, the absence of fixed industrial habits, as well as by a
general inertia and distaste for continuous labour under the hot sun.
As a result, industrial nations are deprived of the markets and food
supplies, which they consider necessary to their development.[2]

No necessity of feeding Europeans appeals to the West Indian negro when
he emerges from his thatched hut after a comfortable night's sleep.
Though unskilled, he is a strong and capable man, willing, when incited
by friendship or gratitude, to incur trouble and endure fatigue. But,
as Olivier points out, "the capitalist system of industry has never
disciplined him into a wage-slave," and perhaps never will. The
tropical negro "has no idea of {87} any obligation to be industrious
for industry's sake, no conception of any essential dignity in labour
itself, no delight in gratuitous toil. Moreover, he has never been
imbued with the vulgar and fallacious illusion which is so ingrained in
competitive industrial societies, that service can be valued in
money.... Work and money are not yet rigidly commensurable in the
consciousness of the African. Half a dollar may be worth one day's
work for him, a second half-dollar may be worth a second day's work,
but a third half-dollar will not be worth a third day's work....
Moreover he lives in climates where toil is exacting, and rest both
easy and sweet. There are few days in the year in England when it is
really pleasant to loaf, and the streets of civilised cities are not
tempting to recumbent meditation."[3]

It is not always necessary for a foreign power to intervene in order to
disturb this "recumbent meditation." In certain tropical and
sub-tropical countries there develops within the nation a group of
exploiters, who control the government, such as it is, and force the
natives to work. The atrocities of the Putumayo district in Brazil
illustrate the capitalistic spirit in its very worst form, as did also
the forced labour on the Yucatan plantations during the Diaz regime in
Mexico. To meet the economic needs of the industrial world, it makes
little difference whether peons are enslaved by Mexican, American or
English capitalists, so long as the output is the same. But native
capitalists are often unable to secure the desired economic result
because they are too ruthless and, through lack of adequate financial
and military resources, cannot maintain order. Despotism tempered b