The Montgomery advertiser., 1903-08-02
THE HOME or THE
 NEGRO QUESTION
BY SAMUEL PHILLIPS WERNER, in Central Africa, The Cape Cairo Railway. Afrca

thickiy settled for comfort, and the world must begin to look to the tropics for three great things-for food, for room. and for commerce.
 The enormous capacities of tine tropical parts of the world to grow foodstuffs is not at all realized in the less favored lands. In Africa a yield of a hundred bushels of corn to the acre is the rule and not the exception. There can be made four distinct crops in one year on the same soil. Thirty thousand pounds of plantains. or twenty tons of cassava con stitute an ordinary yield. A whole vil- lage subsists on a few acres. If this is the condition under the lax and primitive methods prevalent among the natives, what might not the modern scientific agri- culturist do? Egypt once fed the Roman Empire. Now under British rule, and with the Nile harnassed like mountain mill-race, 1t bids fair to feed all Europe.
 The capacity of Africa to grow cotton has been frequently mooted in American papers. I made several experiments, all of which tended to show that cotton can be successfully grown there. The plant is a perennial does not die down after each yield, but continues to blossom, and to open, and two pickings can be easily made per year. But if any American planter should ever entertain any fears of African competition. let him dismiss his fears, for the native African will increase the price of cotton far beyond what his land or labor will ever tend to decrease it. As fast as the increasing civilization agen- cies spring up over Africa, the Africans themselves will demand more and more cloth, and so their demands will long outstrip their production of cotton even under the most energetic and expert su- perintendence. Put one shirt on each African now without one and the whole cotton crop of Texas could not supply the cloth. Moreover, the Africans are clam orous for cloth whenever they are where they can get it, and will work hard whole month for two yards.
 What use the tropics will ever be to those races which have hitherto been oc- cupying the colder regions is still mat ter of considerable disputation among the authorities Some claim that the white man can never live there. Some, on the other hand, say that he will adapt him. self to any environment in time, and that he is destined to overrun the hot coun- tries and to occupy them also. Neither of these extreme views seem to me the full truth about the subject. That the white man is now not as we'll adapted to live and work in the tropics as those who for ages have already lived there, appears to mo to be too plain to require any argu- ment. But that he may not in time De- come acclimated. and so adapt himself to the conditions of his tropical environment as to be at home there is also very ques- tionabie proposition. The fact that the great bulk of the population of Aslatic In- dia is undoubtedly of Aryan ancestry, that they and their English conquerors are col laterally descended from the same original stock, is admitted by all anthropologists, with rare exceptions. The Hindoos are clearly a case of Northern race which has undergone variation by which 1t has become suited to its local conditions. and has become the principal occupant of a climate originally entirely different from their own antecedent habitat. The truth is that any pure-blooded race Is likely to supplant an inferior pure race, or any mixed people anywhere. For example, the people who endure the tropical climate in Central Africa better than any other Flu ropeans, are the pure Scandinavians, Swedes and Norwegians who are the most typical Northern people on earth. The best seamen running the steamboats on the Kongo now are these men from extreme Northern Europe. The question, then, is whether the pure Aryans or the pure Africans will ultimately inhabit Africa, and the other tropical countries. One fact, not at all fully appreciated. must be borne in mind in this connection. This is that the tropical territories contain | vast areas to which the Caucasian is as well adapted at present as in his own lands. I refer to the elevated parts of the torrid zone. There are many mountain summits in Africa and South America and tropical Asia which, although almost di- rectly under the equatorial sun, are cov- cred with perpetual snow. The slopes of these mountains. the valleys in between, the plateaus beneath, are all white mans s | land. In Africa there is more territory suited to the permanent residence of the white man than in North America.
 The first step. then. fin the great tropical migration of the Caucasian will be the occupation of these suitable regions. An other curious and interesting fact is that these cool regions in the tropics are scat | tered over the whole country in such a
 way that they afford vantage points for the control of all the rest. For example. | from Cairo to Cape Town, traversing the whole of the continent, there is an elevat- ed ridge. along whose base the great rail-
 way project by Cecil Rhodes is to run. upon whose slopes Caucasian population
 equal in numbers to the whole of Europe
 can live in perfect comfort. This fact,
 realized by few, is the key to the ardent
 advocacy of that great line by the mighty I
 statesmen. who know these facts, are de-
 termined to possess that territory at any cost.
 From these elevated regions 1t will be an
 easy matter for the resident Caucasians
 to control and direct operations in all the
 contiguous regions below and around
 them. The white men will sit on the
 mountains and control the blacks in the plains, somewhat as the Southern white
 men have been humorously accused oi | sitting on the fence and bossing the nig- ger in the field" The whites will have the
 telegraph, the telephone, the railway, and
 all the means of rapid communication and
 transportation at his command to bring
 into instant touch with his gigantic plan
 tations, and enormous industrial opera tions going on in the tropical territories
 in the valleys of the great rivers on l whose sources he will dwell. Thus, 1t is
 not more than one days ride by rail from
 any point along that elevated ridge from
 the Cape to Alexandria, to the hottest
 tropical regions in the whole continent. A
 white Captain of Industry" residing un-
 der the snow-capped heights of Mount
 Gordon Bennett, could run down to his ! centre of industry in the Kongo Valley,