4 i2 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. 



