Administrations to favour the European planter rather than to promote the far more healthy and potentially promising system of encouraging the native communities to develop their own land. This has been the marked characteristic both of German and of British policy in East Africa. It continues to be that of British policy with consequences which are making for disaster. One visible result can be seen in the economic situation of the European dependencies in West Africa and in East Africa respectively. The export of natural produce from the whole of East Africa—British, German and Portuguese—does not exceed the output of the small West African Protectorates of the Gold Coast and Sierra Leone combined. It would fall below it but for the export of cotton from Uganda, and this, the most considerable of the articles of export from Eastern Africa is a native and not a European industry—i.e., the cotton is grown by the Baganda themselves on their own land, and for their own profit. For in Uganda proper the British Administration has, up to the present, wisely assisted the native population to grow economic products for sale for its own account, although it is constantly pressed to adopt the European plantation system existing in British East Africa proper.
In this connection it is advisable to touch upon a subject on which there is much popular misconception. The idea that tropical Africa can be developed more rapidly by creating a population of thriftless labourers in European employ, instead of keen farmers benefiting from the fruits of their enterprise is altogether unsound.[1] It is unsound, apart from the very doubtful proposition which assumes "rapidity" of development to be synonymous with lasting prosperity. Those who favour the development of tropical Africa by white overseers commanding native labour, can never in the nature of the case be impartial. Unhappily they have the ear of the Government and access to the Press. A far larger material output under the system of native industries is certain, and that policy does undoubtedly coincide with the permanent interest of
- ↑ It is even beginning to be seen to be unsound in certain Southern States of the American Union among a negro population, over whom the taint of slavery still lingers. In those States where the better class labour is beginning to acquire land, the plantation system is going downhill fast. Experience is showing that where the negro works his own land better results are being obtained, even from poor soil, than from plantation labour on good soil.
