412 THE LAND OF THE LION 
himself. Such work as is at present accomplished is prac- 
tically accomplished only by forcing the native.* The 
district commissioner applies to the chief for so many 
men, to mend a road, cut firewood for the railway, build 
an embankment, or break up so much land. The chief 
sees that these labourers are forthcoming. When such 
labour is honestly paid and justly treated, very soon the 
native himself falls into line. He sings at his work, when 
the sun goes down he (as I have often seen him) dances far 
on into the night, and will in numberless instances volunteer 
to continue his contract or take another job under the 
white master he has learned to trust. The fact remains, 
however, that had he not been forced in the first instance 
to leave his lazy life and his half-tilled shamba, he never 
would have been found carrying the burden or wielding 
the hoe. This is true of him even when cash down is 
paid for labour done. How much truer is it then, when, 
for his own salvation he must be made to work without 
remuneration, in an industrial school for months or years, 
while he learns a trade. 
To make any real progress in the matter of industrial 
education, then, the pupil, the capable but ignorant and 
unwilling pupil, must be held to his job. And partly 
because the missionaries have had no such authority vested 
in them so to indenture the natives, little in this way has 
been accomplished. 
A promising beginning is made; the young men learn 
quickly, but just as real progress is in sight, the nomad 
nature reasserts itself, and under some specious pretext 
the scholar disappears. All is to do over again, and if the 
* Forced labour can be, and has often been, a cruel wrong in his case, but even forced labour is 
far better for him than encouraged idleness. The native on the native reserve will be, must ever be, 
the idle, backward, unprogressive native. No well-informed student of East African conditions 
would advocate a great development of the system of native reserves. It would mean shutting the 
native in, leaving him the victim of his own evil influences.. Not even resident missionaries could 
accomplish for him under such circumstances what the steady education of work done, and new 
needs and wants acquired in contact with more progressive people, could accomplish. 
