2 24 



JV.-J TUKE 



[December 23, 1909 



as it goes, only reveals the enterprise and sagacity of 

 a far-seeing man of business ; but his subsequent work 

 for the West Indies shows a different side to his 

 character. 



The sugar-bounty system had crippled the sugar- 

 industry in the West Indies, and there was much dis- 

 tress amongst the planters and population. In 1S96 

 Mr. Chamberlain sent out a Royal Commission to 

 report on the position, and I willingly assented to the 

 .Assistant Director, now Sir Daniel Morris, accom- 

 panying it as scientific adviser. I sat one evening 

 under the gallery of the House of Commons to hear 

 Mr. Chamberlain make an eloquent appeal for a sub- 

 sidy in aid of the distressed colonies. It was passed 

 without demur. But something more than temporary 

 aid was needed, and in 1898 Morris left Kew on his 

 appointment as Imperial (Commissioner of Agricul- 

 ture in the West Indies. On the eve of his departure, 

 happening to be at the Colonial Office, I was told 

 that it was desired to get in touch with Alfred Jones. 

 At that time I had never even seen him, but I invited 

 him by telegraph to meet Morris and the Colonial 

 Office men at dinner. That night the Direct Line 

 was virtually agreed upon. As Jones left he remarked 

 to me that the dinner had only cost him a quarter 

 of a million. Later on he wrote that he was having 

 steamers built in every available yard in the king- 

 dom. At a semi-official gathering this year, the 

 last time I saw him, Jones remarked that the dinner 

 was still not paid for. But throughout his object was 

 not limited to commercial success. He wanted to do 

 for the West Indies what he had done for the Canaries. 

 Morris, by botanical stations and agricultural instruc- 

 tors, sought to turn the negroes into peasant culti- 

 vators ; Jones to provide an outlet for the produce. 

 But he did much more, and in order to attract tourists 

 he took the defunct hotel industr}- in Jamaica into his 

 own hands. 



Jones was, of course, a man of business, but in no 

 ordinary sense. Commercial success was necessary 

 to him as a justification of his plans, but I think still 

 more as supplying means for extending them. It is 

 no affectation to say that he, of all men, thought im- 

 perially. To knit the interests of the home country, 

 .ind not least of Liverpool, with those of our colonial 

 possessions was the real aim of his life. He offered 

 the Rhodes scholars a free passage from any port at 

 which his ships were available, and one of his latest 

 schemes was to send out parties of undergraduates 

 to make the personal acquaintance of the West 

 Indies. On his last visit to them he took out a large 

 number of distinguished guests. The event was 

 tragic : in the earthquake Sir James Ferguson was 

 killed in the street, and Jones himself was only extri- 

 cated from the ruins of a falling hotel by little short 

 of a miracle. It may be feared that the strain and 

 shock left effects which were unperceived at the time. 



But two other even greater achievements must be 

 mentioned. In 1890-1 I had succeeded in getting the 

 cultivation of cotton experimentally tested in West 

 Africa, and had had samples grown there valued at 

 Manchester. But there the thing ended; it required 

 a more vigorous impulse than mere demonstration. 

 Jones habitually projected his ideas into the future. 

 He saw that cotton-growing in the LInited States 

 was limited by physical conditions, and could not be 

 extended ; that Indian cotton, for reasons too long to 

 explain, was not available; and that the amount which 

 the United States could spare must be a constantly 

 diminishing quantity. He saw that fresh and inde- 

 pendent supplies must be found. He virtually started 

 the British Cotton-growing .Association, and helped 

 it to raise large funds, amounting to some quarter of 

 a million. Jones possessed the electric power of 

 stimulating more sluegish temperaments. With 

 NO. 2095, VOL. 82] 



Morris's aid, colton-growing was successfully re-estab- 

 lished in the West Indies. Jones pushed it for all he 

 was worth in West Africa, and Northern Nigeria 

 promises to be the greatest cotton-growing area in 

 the world. 



The imoortance of this achievement, however, 

 shrinks before that which was perhaps the most re- 

 markable of all. So far as I know, Jones had no 

 scientific training; but he had a fixed belief in the 

 value of scientific knowledge. There are plenty of 

 business men who are ready, so to speak, to pluck the 

 pear when it is ripe, careless who grew it. But Jones 

 looked confidently to scientific method to help on the 

 solution of unsolved problems. If commerce was to 

 be carried on with tropical countries, it must be pos- 

 sible for Europeans to live in them. From his point 

 of view it was not sufficient to treat the local diseases; 

 it was necessary to trace them to causes which could 

 be obviated. He therefore, in perfectly simple faith, 

 founded and endowed the Liverpool School of Tropical 

 Medicine, and sent out one scientific expedition 

 after another to investigate on the spot. Cattle rear- 

 ing in the West Indies is hampered tjy diseases which 

 are transmitted by " ticks." Jones sent out Prof. 

 Newstead to study their life-history; he saw that if 

 you could control the tick you could master the disease. 

 But you cannot control the tick until you know every- 

 thing about it. I could give a striking illustration 

 of a more futile procedure by our own Board of Agri- 

 culture. 



Jones had, in fact, the true scientific instinct. He 

 knew nothing about science, but he thoroughly be- 

 lieved in the validity of its methods. It is for this 

 reason that he deserves commemoration in these 

 pages. There are probably men like him in .America; 

 thev are certainly rare in this country; Mond may 

 have been one, but then he was not of English birth. 



.As I have said. I did not know Jones intimately, 

 and I have therefore been able to write of what he 

 did only as I saw it from outside. He lived a 

 strenuous life, and was a man of few words. The 

 Times speaks in terms which I can well believe of his 

 private generosity. I wrote to him on behalf of an 

 orphan boy of promise in the village from which I 

 write. Jones would promise nothing; but the boy got 

 the post he desired in the engine-room of one of his 

 ships. 



Jones was a W'elshman, and therefore, I suppose, a 

 Celt. Perhaps to this he owed the buoyant optimism 

 and that quality of imagination which is the primary' 

 element of success in science as in business. The 

 great enterprises which he started probably possess 

 sufficient momentum to continue ; but the resourceful 

 directing spirit is extinguished, and it is a national 

 loss. He was not without honours amongst his own 

 people in Lancashire. In iqoi he was created 

 K.C.M.G. for his colonial services. But the dis- 

 tinction he most deenly prized was his election, with- 

 out academic standing, as an honorary fellow of 

 Tcsus College, Oxford, a recognition whicii scarcely 

 honoured the electors less than the recipient. 



W. T. Thisklton-Dyer. 



NOTES. 



We regret to announce the death, on December 18, at 

 Wex'bridge, of Dr. Shelford Bidwell, F.R.S., in his second- 

 second year. 



The council of the Linnean Society has decided to devote 

 the next meeting, on January 20, to a discussion on the 

 origin of vertebrates, in which it is expected that Dr. . 

 Gaskell, Dr. Gadow, Mr. Goodrich, Prof. Starling, Prof. 

 MacBride, Dr. Smith Woodward, and Prof. Dendy will 

 take part. 



