Trade and the Flag 45 



petus to the commercial development of the tropical colonies. 

 The practical question then is, Will the native peoples, taking 

 them as we now find them, prove good customers for American 

 and European goods in particular? Ireland says: 



"A moment's reflection serves to satisfy us that whatever in- 

 crease may be looked for in the trade of the European countries, 

 of North America, and of non-tropical Australasia, a vastly 

 greater proportional development may be expected in the trade 

 of tropical and sub-tropical countries. The white man at home 

 has reached such a high degree of efficiency as a producer and 

 as a consumer that it cannot be foreseen that the rate of progress 

 to be observed during the past century will be maintained during 

 the century upon which we have just entered. The people of the 

 tropics, on the other hand, are still in a very low stage of pro- 

 ductive efficiency ; and their value as consumers is proportionately 

 small. I have shown elsewhere (Trop. Col., no, in) that in 

 the British Empire the productive efficiency of the tropical as 

 compared with the non-tropical man is as I to 23, and that the 

 value of the former as a consumer is as 1 to 17 compared with 

 the value of the latter. It is certain, moreover, that in the tropics 

 outside the British Empire — under less efficient forms of govern- 

 ment, and with less protection for the products of industry — the 

 economic value of the tropical man is even less than this. 



" Concisely, the formula which I would deduce from the above 

 facts is this : that the difference between actual and normally 

 potential economic efficiency is so much greater in the tropical 

 man than in the non-tropical man that it is reasonable to antici- 

 pate that the trade of the former could be doubled in the time 

 which would be required to raise the trade of the latter by thirty 

 per cent." 153 



Tucker 154 gives an interesting account of the effects of the con- 

 struction of the Uganda Railway and the establishing of steamship 

 lines on Victoria Nyanza, chief of which was " the way in which 

 the whole of the Lake region of Central Africa has been aroused 



153 Ireland, China and the Powers, 8-9. 



151 Tucker, Eighteen Years in Uganda and East Africa, 2 : 292. 



221 



