[...] Drawing from the work of w. Arthur Lewis, a comrade and friend of Prebisch, the Jamaican government pursued the policy of "industrialization by invitation." A system of leases permitted the government to channel industrial investment into those areas of the economy that allowed for social development. Economic policy generally drew from the import-substitution theory, and the government relied on targeted direct foreign investment, notably in the bauxite sector. The latter provided Jamaica with most of its foreign exchange earnings. Discovered in the 1940s, the bauxite reserves fell prey to Canadian and U.S. firms starting in 1 952. These firms have since dominated the extraction of the mineral, with Jamaica becoming the largest exporter to North America in the 1960s. But as with sugar and tourism, the Jamaican people did not benefit from their natural resources. The only return to Jamaica came in the way of modest taxes to the government, meager wages to the working class, and a small tribute to the Jamaican managers at the mines and plantations - for this reason, what Jamaica exported despite its fabulous resources was cheap labor, and what it gained for that was a pittance toward its grandiose development aims.