The Montgomery advertiser., 1903-07-26
THE HOME or THE
 NEGRO QUESTION
BY sAMUEL PHILLPS WERNER, Africa Pysmies etc

Africans. And these slave-owning Afrt- cans are vastly superior in intelligence. force of character, physical power, and general development. to the slaves. In the second place. to release the slaves without immediately providing for their present support and future employment, would be positive cruelty to the slaves themselves Only by the introduction of large industrial enterprises can this be done. and this requires some time at least, rapid as progress in Africa is be- coming The slave question in extreme South Africa was naturally solved by the gold and diamond industry.
 To show precisely what I would be obliged to do. In order to invoke the arm of the white government. let me illus trate. When see a slave-owner pass ing with his slaves to market, must arrest him by force, and send. or proceed with him one hundred miles on foot to the nearest government post, where c trial must ensue. The slave-owner will probably then be put in the chain gang of the government, and the slaves set free. In few months, unless the slave takes employment under some white man, he will probably be enslaved again. So nothing short of an effective general emancipation will really secure freedom for any individual Moreover, if l thus identify myself with the military govern ment. will surely be regarded by the natives as their enemy and will so suffer In any insurrection which may arise.
 Generally speaking. then, 1t is not wise to appeal to the European government to secure freedom for any slave in which one may be interested.
 In order clearly to grasp this situation. L.. -l- Al -f, xH~.~ into its natural classes.
 The oldest, most widespread, and most deeply rooted part of the system is what may be called the Domestic Slavery. in which one set of native Africans own other Africans. together with the internal trade generated by this condition.
 Another part is the purchase of slaves to be traded to the whites at the coast. This is now practically ended.
 Still another has been the slave-raiding expeditions of the Arabs. This was put down by Dhanis on the Lualaba In 1895, and by Kitchener at omdurman in the late Egyptian-British campaign.
 The last phase of slavery is the trans parts of the continent where industries operated by the whites create c demand for labor. The coffee plantations of Angola and of Nyassa. the mines of the Transvaal. and the railway construction has caused . considerable movement of the slaves toward these industries. Of course the whites do not technically hold their laborers as slaves. but they make contracts with them. and their masters regarded as labor agentsl-receive a commission for bringing them in.
 It Is with the first and last of these | four parts of the African slave trade | Aa lAnI h. | old slavery where the African owns his | fellow, and the new slavery, where the white man holds a labor-contract signed withSa cross mark, are now the Ques- | tions at issue.
 After I saw that neither redemption by purchase nor emancipation by force would accomplish satisfactorily the ends desired, began to enlist the sympathiea of the native chieftains themselves In our crusade.
 Chief among these African potentates was my friend Ndombe. King of tho
 Baschilange. in the country of Lunda, on
 the great Zambesi-Kongo divide. It is | not pertinent here to enter fully into the | narrative of how I became a firm friend
 of this remarkable man. He had
 specially invited me to his capital moi
 long after my arrival at the head of navi
 gation of the great Kasat River. and had lshown me marked kindness. .+
 He was a physical giant of immens. Herculean frame, and he ruled his large
 and heterogeneous kingdom by the force
 of his personal wisdom, physical pro. wess, and hereditary influence.
 His country had been at one time tn, center of the great trans-contlnental slav,
 route from Central Africa to St. Paul d. Loanda, and his tribe were still larR, purchasers and owners of slaves. 1 began to reason with him On the sub | ject of slavery and his interest was lively
 I pointed out the bloodshed. depopuiatior | of rich districts. suffering, internecinc l wars, the laziness of the slave owner,