COMMERCIAL PllOSPECTS 285 



ment. The term of service should be at 'first limited to one vear, with 

 obligatory re})atriation at the expense of the employer; all wages to be 

 paid in Jiritish money, in cash, not in trade goods : medical attendance 

 to be furnished by the employer; and lastly a " Protector of Negro Immi- 

 grants" to be appointed at the headciuarters of each important district to 

 hear and redress grievances. Sunday should be insisted on as an ai)solute 

 day of rest, on which the immigrants, if of the Christian religion, mav 

 be able to attend to their religious exercises, and missionaries of the faith 

 to which they belong should not be discouraged in communicating with 

 them. For ^Muhammadans the day of rest might be Friday. It must 

 be remembered that natives from most of the districts of the I'ganda 

 Protectorate and East Africa, and from all l^ritish Central Africa, would 

 not find themselves in a very strange country when crossing the Zandiezi, 

 for the Negroes native to all that ])art of Africa would sjjeak languages 

 so closely akin to those spoken by the people who had come from these 

 northern regions that in a few weeks they would be able to imderstand 

 one another. 



No compulsion should be exercised in tlie Protectorates to oblige 

 Negroes to go so far afield for employment, but on the other hand the local 

 Administrations need do nothing to discour<i<)e the natives of the country 

 they administer from proceeding to British South Africa vmder proper 

 guarantees and for reasonably short spaces of time. It is, of coui'se, to the 

 interests of these Protectorates that repatriation should be insisted on, so 

 that the native of Uganda, of Nyasa, or of East Africa may duly return 

 to his home and the su})port of his family and his (xovernment. 



Perhaps capitalists in South Africa may be ])ermitted imder proper 

 guarantees to make preliminary experiments, to recruit small bands of 

 labourers in the Protectorates mentioned for a period of service not more 

 than one year south of the Zambezi. I am convinced that if the men thus 

 recruited returned in good health to their homes with their wages honestly 

 paid them in good money, and with tales of all the wonderful things they 

 had seen, the difficulty henceforth would be to restrain and not to encourage 

 the emigration of Negro labourers to the South African dominions for 

 temporary employment. 



In the early days of the P^ast African Protectorates regulations were 

 drawn up — and very properly so — to control and even to hinder the 

 expatriation of the natives of these Protectorates, since the administrative 

 authorities were dissatisfied with the way in which the subjects of these 

 Protectorates were treated in adjoining African countries. These regulations 

 would have to be modified to some degree to permit of the recruiting of 

 the natives of Eastern and Central Africa for work in Ihitish South Africa; 

 but I assume that these facilities for the transfer of labour from tro[)ical 



