3 21 



in the quantity of raw material consumed and a corresponding- 

 decrease in the number of operatives employed in the manu- 

 facture. Nor can we assume that we can gr.ow any variety 

 of cotton everywhere. Nature is conservative, resistant, 

 reactionary I do not mean that those terms are always 

 synonymous but if you were to sow Sea Island seed in 

 Nyasaland or Uganda it does not follow that it will come up 

 as Sea Island, but probably as a variety of its own. Every 

 country seems to have, or to produce, its own type, and one 

 of the principal problems of modern cotton growing in new 

 lands is to fix and to select the type and to get a standardized 

 product which the markets will know, will look for and will 

 buy. But it takes a long time to get a regular market with a 

 good steady price for new varieties, and I should like to say 

 that no one has done more in this direction for us than Mr. 

 Wolstenholme of Liverpool, who has spared no pains to 

 familiarize new and strange types to the Lancashire cotton 

 industry. We owe and I am glad to have this opportunity 

 of saying it a deep debt of gratitude to the British Cotton 

 Growing Association for the care, the money and the labour 

 which they have devoted to the inauguration and the control 

 of cotton production in many of our Colonies, I know that 

 you have had an illuminating address from their admirable and 

 indefatigable Chairman, Mr. Hutton, and I do not propose to 

 traverse the ground he has already covered; but I may remind 

 you that the British Government itself has been contributing- 

 10,000 a year to this Association, a grant which will have 

 lasted for six years when it comes to an end in 1916; and the 

 local Colonial Governments have also mad'e large, though 

 more indirect, contributions to cotton growing both by 

 facilities for transport, by their Agricultural Departments, by 

 their botanical stations, and by their campaigns against insect 

 pests. Nothing is so vital to the cheapness of cotton as quick 

 and economic transport. I am at this moment making great 

 efforts to improve the railway communications of Nyasaland, 

 the East African Protectorate and Uganda by a loan of 

 3,000,000 sterling, for which I am asking the authority and 

 the credit of the Imperial Parliament. 



From Uganda the export of cotton has increased five fold 

 in the last fifteen years. In Nyasaland tobacco looks as if it 

 might be a serious rival; but in the northern districts of 

 Nyasaland the industry has become firmly established amongst 

 the natives, and in East Africa, the Kaverondo tribe in the 

 Kisumu Province have taken up cotton growing with 

 avidity; but we must always remember that the untutored 

 African is at first averse from growing anything which he 

 cannot eat. 



But there is one portion of our East African Protectorate to 

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