273 



A Native of Congo climbing 

 up an Elaeis. 

 After a photograph taken in the 

 Lusango District (Congo). 



labour, for they cannot climb. 



shown in the accompanying 

 woodcut; to choppino; olf the 

 bunches, and carrying them 

 whole to the factory. That is 

 to say carrying also a mass of 

 useless matter, 100 kilos of 

 bunches containing only from 

 50 to 60 kilos of fruit, equi- 

 valent to a quantity of (16%) 

 8 to 9 kilos of oil and 12 kilos 

 of kernels. 



That the work is irksome, 

 we have shown, that the clim- 

 bers dislike it, is a known fact. 

 We are therefore not surprised 

 to read that climbers are getting 

 more scarce every year, and 

 that the gaps thus made in the 

 available labour of the country 

 cannot be filled by imported 



Turn which way we like, we find these two initial difficulties 

 confronting us, viz : the climbing, and the collecting of the nuts, 

 not to mention their transportation to the factory — and that in a 

 greatly aggravated degree, in the case of the exploitation of the 

 West African " Palmeries " owing to the uncared-for state of the 

 trees — to their dispartly of growth and the absence of ways of com- 

 munication with the factory. So great are these difficulties that 

 writing from Porto-Novo in 1919, a correspondent of the Bulletin 

 des Matieres Grasses No. 5, gives it as his opinion that only trees 

 which can conveniently be reached with a ladder should be kept 

 standing, all older trees which require climbing being cut down. 



It would be an idle "waste of the reader's time to labour further 

 this question of " Wild versus Cultivated Elaeis " and we should 

 have left it untouched, had it not been put to us with some insis- 

 tence. 



'The following w^ords taken from the Bulletin des Matieres 

 Grasses No. 4 throw more light on the subject than we could ever 

 hope to do. 



" For a long time, the possibility of the successful establish- 

 "ment of an industrial exploitation (of the oil-palm) in West 

 " Africa has simply been denied. Even now, the majority of the 

 "heads of the great Commercial Firms, and of their Agents are 

 "convinced that any undertaking of that description is doomed to 

 "assured failure, for the reason that the times have not yet come 

 "when it will be possible to find the necessary labour among the 

 " native population." 



And the commentator, himself, an advocate of industrial ex- 

 ploitation clinches the matter with the following remark : 



