The Labour Question. 283 
enquiry on the subject to the Governments of all British tropical posses- 
sions possessing large populations. These letters need only contain an 
enquiry as to whether a supply of surplus labourers existed who would 
be willing to seek to better themselves by immigrating, and would give 
the terms the British Guiana Government were prepared to offer to such 
immigrants, and an estimate of possible earnings in a great number of 
unskilled occupations, such as would be suited to new-comers. As to the 
result of such enquiries I think they should give us a knowledge of all 
possible supplies of tropical labour. For while the information gained 
would not be of so complete a character as that obtained by Mr. Ireland 
by travelling and personally investigating conditions on the spot, it 
would obviously cover a great deal more ground in very much less time. 
1 think too it would be successful as regards unearthing new sources of 
supply. My reason for this hope is that although I am only a private 
individual who happens to be interested in the labour question, and al- 
though I have not been outside the lightship for three years I believe 
that I have been able to add another place to the five Mr. Ireland 
mentions as possessine sufficient labour for their full economic 
development. 
A year or two ago Mr. Gavin Smith, an engineer on the Lagos 
Railway and son of the late Mr. William Smith, was in the colony, and 
in a conversation [ had with him, he told me of the large labour supply 
they had in Lagos, mentioning as an evidence of this abundance that for 
common labour such as carrying dirt to build a railway embankment the 
pay was five cents per day. I made a note of Lagos as a place in which 
we might get labour, and thought no more about the matter until about 
a year later when Captain Calder, of the British Guiana Police, gave me a 
book called ‘ The White Man in Nigeria” by George Douglas Hazzledine. 
Remembering Lagos and the five cents a day labour, I thought Mr. 
Hazzledine’s book might prove interesting. It did. The second para- 
eraph on the first page started the interest, where the statement is 
made that 
“Tf any one asks he is told the population of Northern Nigeria, or the 
Hausa States, is 10 million or 25 million with a frank ignorance of the 
mere fives of millions which should provide food for thought,” and later we 
read: ‘ We have been in touch with the Hausa States for centuries and 
the Hausa traders have for centuries been in evidence throughout the 
whole of Northern Africa from Lagos to Tripoli, from Fez to the Nile. It 
has been known for centuries that the land was fertile beyond all dreams 
and teemed with people, swarming in vast cities of anything up to a quarter 
of a million souls. . . . It has been known as the great Negro preserve for 
centuries, and therein lies our uncertainty as to how many people up to 
15 million there are up the Niger. We haye known for centuries that the 
innumerable villages swarmed with kiddies, but we do not know how many 
have been left alive,” 
