Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1910-01-30

OUT r1Cn III Drawn ana PLUCK the SOrt VINO come
with wife and string of tow headed children,
all workers at something down to the baby in
arms-that can be relied on to push out north
and south from the Uganda Railway into the
wilds, the best possible advance guard for the
peace loving plodders who quickly follow them
and for whom they promptly make way as soon
as the country is permanently pacifed.
The man family with a few thousands
should not go there; for such are usually un-
suited to life in the wilds. too often unframed
in labor or business. The country has too
many such areadv who almost invaria bly, fall
hopelessly before the temptation of acquiring
ten times more land than they have the means
to develop and hundred times more than
they know anything about the profitable han
ding of.
And even the worker who goes there will
need to be pioneer in double sense, in his
system as well as his practice; for there to-day
no white man turns his hand to any form of
manual labor, once he has instructed the blacks
he EMPLOYS in their tasks. But such NAV 60
there with the will and spirit of the men of the
West and North may live in ease and plenty at
the cost of no more than a fifth of the hard
work our own early pioneers had to expend in
order to save their young from hunger and
shelter them from cold.
To capitalists equatorial Africa offers rich
opportunities; but they can afford and always,
properly, prefer, to investigate for themselves.
l may say, however, that, the laws now
stand, for operations on large scale one must,
to be safe, figure on indentured foreign labor.
East Indian or off the Arabian coast for any
form of enforced native labor the laws rigidly
forbid in British East and in Uganda.
The Labor Problem
THEIR shdmbas (arms) planted and titled by
their women for the few weeks necessary to
furnish the family seasons food supply, few
of the native black men know harder job than
idling about their grazing herds throughout the
day, weapons in hand, guarding them from at
tack by lion leopard Richer as they are
than any equally savage races of history. pos
sessed of all they need, incentive remains to
engage themselves voluntarily laborers ex-
cept as they become seized with greed for the
gauds the Indian bazaars display-tempted.
but not to point to lead them to part from
their cattle. Thus comparatively few are ever
available for farm other services, and fewer
still stay long enough to become fairly adept at
idle as they do, thleve as they may, no settler
owns power effectively to correct or restrain
them.
Indeed, it seemed to me the humanitarians
of Exeter Hall have been sowing the wind as
they never would dream of doing if they them
selves were personally familiar with local ma
tive life and conditions, and themselves had to
toss helpless settlers on the tide of native
arrogance their silly clamor for larger license
for the blacks has raised, tide that one day
may easily break into a smother of open revolt
that will take a good bit of quelling.
To-day white man, except while on safari
remote from any Government boma may
punish a rebellious or lazy black. instead, the
culprit must be brought to the nearest bona
ment he gets-in the Nairobi Jail or the Nom
hasa prison, according to the degree of his of
Tense either about as welcome and wholly en-
jovabe to the black as IS her two weeks vaca-