144 COTTON 



very soon discovered. Owing to the climate the European 

 cannot work in the open in West Africa, and he also has 

 to return on leave at frequent intervals to recover his 

 health. Our first term of service was twenty months 

 in Africa and 4 months on leave, with full pay. We soon 

 found this was too long, and the service was subsequently 

 altered to 15 months in Africa with three months' leave, 

 and in certain districts our employees remain 10 months 

 in Africa with 2 months' leave. The cost of passages on 

 the steamer to and from Africa is in consequence very 

 heavy, and this coupled with comparatively large salaries 

 renders it necessary to keep the number of white employ- 

 ees as low as possible. For this reason it is extremely diffi- 

 cult to work a large plantation in Tropical Africa economic- 

 ally. Further, the native will do better work when farming 

 for himself than when employed as a hireling. The Council 

 therefore decided to devote their principal energies to 

 establishing cotton growing as a native industry, and it is 

 almost a truism to state that, generally speaking, cotton 

 is a black-man's crop. 



In 1904 an agreement was entered into with the Gov- 

 ernment that model farms should be established in various 

 centres for carrying on experiments with different varieties 

 of seed, etc., which should ultimately become seed farms 

 for the distribution of seed. The cost of these farms was 

 to be borne by the local Governments. The reason for 

 this agreement was that we had discovered that cotton 

 growing was not merely a question of shipping out so 

 many hundred tons of American and Egyptian seed, and 

 expecting that the natives would sow it and reap good 

 crops. Judging from our experience, one requires at 

 least three or four years' patient work before one can de- 

 cide that any exotic seed will do well in any particular 

 district. One might go further, and state that it by no 

 means follows that a variety which does well in one district 

 will do equally well in another part of the same Colony. 



The Association on their side undertook for a period 

 of three years to purchase all seed-cotton offered at a 

 minimum price of id. per lb., and to establish buying and 

 ginning centres where required. They further undertook 

 to provide experts who would travel round the country 

 preaching the gospel of cotton growing. 



This agreement was subsequently modified, and it was 

 arranged that the Association should take over the experi- 

 mental work at the plantations, and that the Governments of 

 Sierra Leone, Lagos, and Southern Nigeria should pay 



