io Minnie Throop England 



origin. 28 In all the colonies the majority of the population other 

 than native is usually from the mother country. In the tropical 

 colonies especially, while the white population is very small, it 

 is almost entirely from the mother country. For example, of the 

 2,346 white or European inhabitants in Congoland in 1902, 1,465 

 were Belgians. 29 Where the home nationality thus preponderates 

 it is not at all strange if the chief orders for goods for colonial 

 use should be placed with the mother country. 



The English colonies bear testimony to the fact that the colonial 

 is a good customer of the mother country. Taking man for man, 

 the people of the English colonies, exclusive of India, consume 

 British products to a much larger amount than do foreigners. 

 The average annual per capita consumption of British manufac- 

 tures is about 8s. in the United States and Germany, 9s. in 

 France, £1 15s. in Canada, £2 5s. in the West Indies, £3 in South 

 Africa, and nearly £8 in Australasia. " Thus three or four millions 

 of people in Australasia take more of British goods than about 

 fifty millions of people in Germany, and nearly as much as sixty 

 millions of people in the United States. Only an artificial bound- 

 ary separates Canada from the United States, yet an emigrant 

 who goes north of that boundary immediately begins to purchase 

 more than three times as much of British goods as one who goes 

 south of it. As a customer to the British artizan one Australian 

 is worth sixteen Americans; one South African is worth seven 

 or eight Germans." 30 



One of the best illustrations of the manner in which trade 

 follows the citizen comes from the Cape of Good Hope. While 

 American locomotives and trucks are eminently suited to the 

 railway service between Cape Town and Pretoria- — a distance of 

 one thousand miles — the prejudice of English railway employees 

 against anything except the English machinery to which they had 

 been accustomed, proved to be an insurmountable obstacle to any 



28 Cf. Speck von Sternburg, " The Phantom Peril of German Emigration 

 to South American Settlements," in North American Review, 182 : 644. 



29 Bourne, Civilisation in Congoland, 281. 



30 Parkin, Imperial Federation, 289. 



186 



