28 COCOA 



drivers, the boys perched aloft on cocoa bags and 

 singing themselves hoarse the whole populace, in short 

 consists of natives. 



Outstanding among the buildings are the factories. 



Let us make sure that we clearly understand the 

 meaning of " factory " in the Gold Coast sense of the 

 word. 



A factory in this part of the world is a trading estab- 

 lishment, not a place fitted up with machinery and 

 devoted to manufacturing according to the meaning 

 we have been accustomed to associate with the name. 

 The business of many of the factories is of a twofold 

 nature the purchase of produce and the sale of 

 goods. For produce buying, the essentials of factory 

 premises are a compound to serve as buying ground, 

 office, warehouse, or as it is commonly called store, 

 and residential quarters for the European staff; if the 

 business includes the sale of goods, the premises must 

 include a shop. 



There are some old-style factory premises left 

 even in the main street of Accra, as you see; they are 

 the barn and loft type of building. The barns are 

 still used as shops. You are not interested in such 

 poor-looking shops ? If you passed an hour or two 

 in any one of them any day of the week, early morning 

 time for preference, and counted up the amount of 

 money that is spent by the natives, 1 fancy you would 

 jump at the chance of having an interest in the business. 

 The lofts now serve as quarters for black clerks or 

 as extra stores ; the white men who used to be the top- 

 story inhabitants now go off in their firms' staff-car to 

 their home on the Ridge when the shop is closed in the 

 middle of the day, and when their day's work is done. 

 Some of the modern shops have windows, and one of 



