Now the Americans all had their pleasure
While the music played to their leisure.
And everyone there they was jumpin'
To hear the sailor boys in our chorus saying
(Refrain)
The success of racial intermarriage is one of the most charming and encouraging things about life in the Indies.
The fabled "wealth of the Indies" disappeared with the abolition of slavery and mass production of sugar, and has been replaced by a very unromantic and real complex of problems. The economy of the British West Indies, like almost all of the Caribbean Islands, is a sugar economy.
After a long period of stagnation in the first half of this century, conditions have at least not deteriorated under pressure of burgeoning population (over 2% per annum). This is due to a British agreement negotiated at the beginning of the Second World War to purchase all the sugar that the Indies can produce (6% of the world's production) at a price fixed annually which guarantees a "reasonable" return to the planters. Queried on this point, West Indians say that the price of sugar on the world market is almost completely political, e.g. the United States buys sugar from Cuba, the world's largest producer at artificially high rates.
British Grants
The other major factor in buoying up the West Indian economy has been a series of United Kingdom grants in the amount of several millions of pounds which have been used to build badly needed schools, hospitals and roads, as well as a number of experimental projects like housing projects. The latter have not proved either attractive to the natives or able to keep pace with the need. The University College, recently moved out of refugee barracks, answers a deep and long-felt need.
Numerous other crops beside sugar are grown in the Indies. Cocoa and citrus are grown; cotton has been grown; but no other crop is able to utilize the combination of cheap and superabundant labor and the tropical climate in so lucrative a way or provide as many jobs. So there seems no so-