PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 511 



wide interests that are involved in the proper sokition of the problem of colonial 

 development. 



It is all-important that the wage-earning community of this country 

 should have an adequate supply of tea, coffee, cocoa, rice, tobacco, and other 

 commodities, and that our manufacturers should be able to count upon a regular 

 supply of cotton, jute, rubber, and other raw materials as far as possible 

 under their own control. All these products are derived almost exclusively 

 from the tropics, and experience shows that it is a great disadvantage to the 

 manufacturer not to be able to exercise control in the direction of securing the 

 regular production of these materials, and especially not to be able to avoid 

 the great and sudden fluctuations in their price, which are often the result of 

 financial speculation on the part of a foreign capitalist who has secured the 

 control of the output of a foreign country. 



The almost entire dependence of the great textile industries of Lancashire 

 upon the cotton crop of the Southern States of America has placed this industry 

 at the mercy of American speculators, whose tactics may lead, as in 1903, to such 

 a rise in the price of the raw material as to render it imperative for the manu- 

 facturer to close his mills, and by throwing large numbers out of employment to 

 bring poverty and misery to many thousands of people. 



The great principle which must now necessarily guide our system of adminis- 

 tration and expenditure in our tropical Colonies and Protectorates has as its 

 purpose the utilisation of natural resources and the creation and development 

 of native industries with the aid of European supervision and advice. Adequate 

 supplies of produce, natural and agricultural, will thus be ensured to British 

 manufacturers and consumers from territories within the administration of the 

 British Crown. Tiiis principle of employing our ' undeveloped estates ' for the 

 advantage of our manufacturers and consumers, and at the same time for the 

 benefit of the natives who inhabit these countries, was put into action by Mr. 

 Chamberlain during his long tenure of office as Secretary of State for the 

 Colonies, and this recognition of a vitally important principle must always be 

 associated with his name. 



Excepting India and the self-governing Colonies, the Crown Colonies and 

 Protectorates, for which alone the Imperial Government is directly responsible, 

 include an area of about two and a half million square miles and a population of 

 about forty millions. The value of these possessions to us at the present time 

 may be judged from the value of their import and export trade with the United 

 Kingdom. The value of the exports of these countries in 1904 was estimated at 

 about four and a half million pounds sterling, and the imports from the United 

 Kingdom at about twelve and a half million pounds sterling. In gauging the 

 importance to this country of the development of these Possessions, the export 

 trade of which is only in its infancy, it should be remembered that the profits 

 arising from the export as well as from the import trade are chiefly domiciled in 

 this country ; since practically the whole of this trade is in the hands of British 

 merchants, and the entire profits; including those of shipping, &c., are therefore 

 subject to our national system of taxation, and represent a very substantial 

 annual contribution to the British Exchequer. 



It is therefore only reasonable that a certain sum should be expended from 

 British funds to aid the applications of science to the commercial development 

 of these Possessions. Such an expenditure in the light of the facts to which 

 I have drawn attention may be regarded as an investment with the certainty of 

 a profitable return. 



I have thought it necessary to give this brief account of the position of our 

 still undeveloped Crown Colonies and Protectorates and the national importance 

 to us of thoir systematic development before proceeding to the principal subject of 

 this Address, which is to emphasise the aid which science in several of its branches 

 can render to this work of development, and especially the science of chemistry, 

 the capacities of which in this connection have so far not been sufficiently recog- 

 nised. 



Tlie importance of utilising our own tropical Possessions as sources of the raw 



