OIL PALM 25 



work. Messrs. Lever Brothers' factory was one designed 

 to be equipped both from a mechanical and research 

 standpoint, and a special shunting yard on the railway was 

 leased to the firm by the Government to deal with the 

 anticipated work. The project seemed so promising that 

 local firms were contemplating following Messrs. Lever 

 Brothers' example in other localities. The whole scheme 

 was, however, abandoned after a short trial ; Messrs. 

 Lever Brothers having probably discovered two facts in 

 connection with the oil palm industry in Sierra Leone 

 which had been lost sight of. The first is that the peri- 

 carp of the common type of palm fruit found in Sierra 

 Leone, as pointed out in the first edition of this book, is 

 very thin and therefore contains very little oil, and that 

 the shell of the nuts in this thin-pericarped fruit is 

 extremely thick. The common Sierra Leone kind is 

 therefore of less economic value both in respect to peri- 

 carp oil and kernel contents than the common kind found 

 in the Gold Coast, Nigeria and Kamerun. The second 

 point is that the Mendis and Timanis occupying this part 

 of the Protectorate are a lower type and generally poorer 

 workers by comparison with the JFanti tribes of the Gold 

 Coast or the Yorubas of Nigeria. 



One explanation given for the failure of Messrs. Lever 

 Brothers' effort in Sierra Leone was that they did not 

 offer a sufficiently high price for the oil palm fruit heads 

 to induce the natives to collect and carry them to tlie 

 factory. As the chiefs and villagers saw that by selling 

 the fruits to the factory the main occupation of their 

 wives (the preparation of palm oil and the cracking of 

 nuts for the extraction of palm kernels) would be 

 taken away, they were said to be averse to the establish- 

 ment of a new condition of enforced idleness, which 

 would impose greater difficulties on them of keeping 

 their wives in order. The offer by the factory to return 

 the nuts for cracking in the villages, did not dispose of 

 this difficulty, as the villagers only saw in it an arrange- 

 ment involving them in extra transport. Messrs. Lever 

 Brothers have now transferred their work to the Belgian 

 Congo, where, by reason of the better type of palm fruit 

 commonly obtainable, the conditions are more satisfactory 

 for the development of the mechanical extraction of palm 

 oil on a commercial scale, and where the inhabitants are 



