284 COMMERCIAL PROSPECTS 



and to aiiv step> which might result in the Central Africans leaving their 

 homes to go far afield for employment. This type of thinker, narrow if 

 earnest, would have preferred that the Central African native should 

 remain in modified savagery, without any wants or tastes than those 

 which could be met hy the simple instruction and pleasures of the 

 mission station. This class of missionary did not realise that his work, 

 his noble calling, was a preparatory one ; that the pupils he had taught 

 must take certain risks and go far afield if the race he was teaching w^ere 

 really to benefit by the introduction of Christian civilisation. These 

 missionaries, if anv of them still survive with unchanged views, would 

 have been opposed to the people of British Central Africa going to 

 Ehodesia, to the natives of Uganda visiting the East African coast or 

 Zanzibar. They would have preferred their converts to attain old age 

 in the natal village with no knowledge of the outer world, in the fear 

 lest by travel thev should escape the influence of the particular mission 

 which had reared them. But the work of the Lovedale College in South 

 Africa, of the Universities' Mission, the Free Church Mission, and the 

 Church Missionary Society, all of which bodies send their pu}»ils far and 

 wide, is probably overcoming such prejudices. Adherents of the Church 

 Missionary Society who may have been taught at Sierra Leone or in the 

 Niger Delta are now at «-ork on Lake Chad. Men of Lovedale College 

 have made their mark as teachers of fellow-negroes on Lake Nyasa. 



What possible objection can the real philanthropist — the man who is 

 no faddist, but genuinely desires the upraising of the black races— find in 

 the intercourse between South and Central Africa ? Provided that the 

 native of Central Africa be ensured absolutely good and fair treatment, 

 and a short term of service is rigidly adhered to, what reasonable objection 

 can be taken to this interchange of laliour and capital ? In the days 

 when the journey from Uganda to the hidian Ocean was three months' 

 trani}) over unhealthy countrv and sterile desert, it would have been 

 undoubtedly absurd to advocate Baganda workers proceeding to South 

 Africa ; and in like manner, wlien the lands north and south of the 

 Kiver Zambezi were ravaged by Arab, Goanese, and Zulu slave-raiders, it 

 would have been criminal to suggest that a body of unarmed men should 

 have left the west coast of Lake Xyasa to march to Euluwayo. But since 

 all these journeys now can be made with safety and celerity and under 

 good health conditions, provided that absolute security exists for the fair 

 and humane treatment of Negro workers in South Africa, I can only see 

 that real good would result by this filling up of the labour market in 

 South Africa from the Protectorates north of the Zambezi. 



A minimum rate of wages should be fixed which shall ensure to the 

 native of Central Africa a reasonable return for his trouble and displace- 



