But Still Their View
Is Full Of Error As Regards Africa, For One Thing I Am Glad To Say
The
African does not die off as do those weaker races under white
control, but increases; and herein lies the impossibility
Of
accepting this plan as within the sphere of practical politics, most
certainly in regard to all districts under white control, for the
Bountiful Earth does not amount to much in Africa with native
methods of agriculture. It sufficed when a percentage of the
population were shipped to America as slaves; now it suffices only
to help to keep the natives in their low state of culture - a state
that is only kept up even to its present level by trade. The
condition of the African native will be a very dreadful one if this
trade is not maintained; indeed, I may say if it is not increased
proportionately to the increase of white Government control - for
this governmental control does many things that are good in
themselves, and glorious on paper. It prevents the export slave
trade; it suppresses human sacrifice; it stops internecine war among
the natives - in short, it does everything save suppress the terrible
infant mortality (why it does not do this I need not discuss) to
increase the native population, without in itself doing anything to
increase the means of supporting this population; nay, it even wants
to decrease these by importing Asiatics to do its work, in making
roads, etc.
It may be said there is no fear of the trade, which keeps the
native, disappearing from the West Coast, but it is well to remember
that the stuff that this trade is dependent on, the stuff brought
into the traders' factory by the native, is mainly - indeed, save for
the South-West Coast coffee and cacao, we may say, entirely - bush
stuff, uncultivated, merely collected and roughly prepared, and it
is so wastefully collected by the native that it cannot last
indefinitely. Take rubber, for example, one of the main exports.
Owing to the wasteful methods employed in its collection it gets
stamped out of districts. The trade in it starts on a bit of coast;
for some years so rich is the supply, that it can be collected
almost at the native's back door, but owing to his cutting down the
vine, he clears it off, and every year he has to go further and
further afield for a load. But his ability to go further than a
certain point is prevented by the savage interior tribes not under
white control; and also on its paying him to go on these long
journeys, for the price at home takes little notice of his
difficulties because of the more carefully collected supply of
rubber sent into the home markets by South America and India;
therefore the native loses, and when he has cleared the districts
reachable by him, the trade is finished there, and he has no longer
the wherewithal to buy those things which in the days of his
prosperity he has acquired a taste for.
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