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Caribbean Exercise Caribbean Air Art Print Buy at AllPosters.com The scientific invasion of the tropics is exposing many fallacies. No question is more important than the truth or falsity of the popular belief that the white man, and still more the white woman, must avoid manual labor in the tropics. This theory, which undoubtedly originated in the earliest days of the prescientific invasion, may have been due to conditions of climate, to health, to laziness, or to pride of race. Whatever its origin, it fed on conquest, enslavement, and exploitation until it became a creed, which, however false, had tragic effects upon many groups of whites. If we consider the history of the white invaders of Asia or of the New World, we find that they would toil prodigiously in the operations of war but quickly came to regard any manual labor as contrary to their creed. In almost all tropical countries the whites could secure colored slaves and servants cheaply and easily. The factors of climate and disease were important, but the dominating factor seems to have been the plantation with its enslavements. As has been shown in the chapter on the West Indies, the whites themselves employed colored workers to undercut white labor, so that few white working communities remained. The tangled evidence from the West Indies does not prove that the whites could not settle the islands and engage in all types of labor. On the contrary it is significant that the planters long continued their demands for white workers. Moreover, in regions such as Costa Rica, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Saba white working communities have managed to survive. The southern United States offers evidence from a different angle. The negro, the plantation system, and disease forced the whites to emigrate, or produced white degeneracy in environments which, with the growth of science, have proved suitable for white labor. Authorities still disagree on the question of labor and exercise in the tropics. As Earl Hanson says, "On the one hand they tell us that exercise is essential to health, and on the other hand they tell us that it must be indulged in very carefully in the tropics, because there it is apt to be dangerous." Thus Sir Raphael Cilento, long a resident in the Australian tropics, attaches the greatest importance to the value of manual labor, whereas Sir Aldo Castellani writes, "If possible, travelling and muscular exertion should be done in the early morning or late afternoon, and avoided in the middle of the day, when a siesta, where possible, is beneficial." We found in Burma that British military officers were prepared to tramp a score of miles through mud or dense jungle and during the hottest part of the day if good shooting offered. Experience in the tropics makes one agree with E. R. Stitt, who considers that women in general stand the tropics less well than men, because, as a rule, they have no serious employment and considerably less domestic work than at home. In many cases this dictum is undoubtedly correct. Almost every tropical settlement has its quota of lazy, bored, card-playing, spirit-drinking women, who would be far healthier and happier if financial circumstances forced them to do their own housework, if not some labor out of doors. There are many healthy and happy women in the white working communities of northern Queensland and the Northern Territory of Australia. Hanson notes an interesting case from the Amazon. The white ranchers of Marajo Island, at the mouth of the river, are "strapping, big, active people, as fine examples of good mental and physical health as one could find anywhere." They are totally different from other white men on the Amazon, probably because they lead active, outdoor lives in all weathers, whereas the other whites are planters or traders, who live by peon labor and hence believe firmly that the climate prevents the white man from undertaking manual work. Hanson suggests that a careful study should be made of Marajo Island. The white ranchers are not newcomers. They are descendants of colonizers who established themselves three centuries ago and handed down the unusual tradition that it was not necessary for the native to make every physical effort for them. This point is indeed of fundamental importance. Only too often a white man goes to the tropics with the fixed idea that he will die if he works. He hires native labor cheaply and he drills the same views into his son. The son too "will be quite honest in thinking that the white man cannot work in that region, and the fact that he has to keep dosing himself with patent medicines all his life will prove to him that the tropics are essentially unhealthy." The most important evidence, which is vital in its bearing upon north European settlers, comes from those regions of scientific penetration where disease is under control. In Florida we were told that the white man could manage all types of field labor except cane cutting and that negro labor was no longer essential. In Panama we saw white artisans who had toiled strenuously in machine shops for upwards of a quarter of a century and white prisoners whose health improved under labor on the roads. The United Fruit Company--the great banana organization--reports similar circumstances in the low tropics. In the Queensland tropics, where the Australians have established a white working population of more than 300,000 persons, the white man and white woman not only perform all their own domestic work but fill every type of employment. From the records of the sugar plantations and mills in tropical Queensland it appears that the British gangs (tropical Australians or immigrant Britishers) head the list for physical fitness and endurance. Breinl presents similar evidence from the shipping companies of north Queensland: in the arduous employment of wharf lumping only in a few of the very hottest months of the year (and in these only on certain extremely dry, hot days with northerly winds) was the summer efficiency lower than the winter efficiency, and then only to the extent of 11 per cent. Cilento notes that it would be interesting to compare the figures with the "time lost" records of any European or North American country. These statements and statistics are impressive, but many scientists view them with suspicion, and there are evidences both in northern Queensland and the Northern Territory that the tropical climates affect the efficiency of labor and that it is less satisfactory than in the temperate zones. Again, although we must hold experimental work in cooltemperate laboratories and factories as suspect owing to problems of acclimatization and of reproducing outdoor conditions, great weight must be given to the statement of C. P. Yaglou that. . . it has been proven by recent laboratory experiments and verified in actual practice that the highest effective temperature under which a man can perform muscular work and maintain his efficiency is about 80°. . . . Continuous exposure to excessive heat lowers the stamina of man and destroys much of his economic usefulness. He becomes susceptible to disease, and suffers from anemia and muscular and joint pains, which eventually induce premature old age. On the whole, it appears that the vexed question of manual labor by white races in the tropics is not yet answered satisfactorily. It seems that exercise is essential and that even the northern whites can perform manual labor of all kinds in the moderate tropics, if their health and economic conditions are satisfactory, but the conquest of disease is too recent and the regional environments are too varied for dogmatic conclusions on the subject. Home