321 
in the quantity of raw material’ consumed and a corresponding 
decrease in the number of operatives employed in the manu- 
facture. Nor can we assume that we can grow any variety 
of cotton everywhere. Nature is conservative, resistant, 
reactionary—I do not mean that those terms are always 
synonymous—but if you were to sow Sea Island seed in 
Nyasaland or Uganda it does not follow that it will come up 
as Sea Island, but probably as a variety of its own. Every 
country seems to have, or to produce, its own type, and one 
of the principal problems of modern cotton growing in new 
lands is to fix and to select the type and to get a standardized 
product which the markets will know, will look for and will 
buy. But it takes a long time to get a regular market with a 
good steady price for new varieties, and I should like to say 
that no one has done more in this direction for us than Mr. 
Wolstenholme of Liverpool, who has spared no pains to 
familiarize new and strange types to the Lancashire cotton 
industry. We owe—and I am glad to have this opportunity 
of saying it—a deep debt of gratitude to the British Cotton 
Growing Association for the care, the money and the labour 
which they have devoted to the inauguration and the control 
of cotton production in many of our Colonies. I know that 
you have had an illuminating address from their admirable and 
indefatigable Chairman, Mr. Hutton, and I do not propose to 
traverse the ground he has already covered; but I may remind 
you that the British Government itself has been contributing 
£10,000 a year to this Association, a grant which will have 
lasted for six years when it comes to an end in 1916; and the 
local Colonial Governments have also made large, though 
more indirect, contributions to cotton growing both by 
facilities for transport, by their Agricultural Departments, by 
their botanical stations, and by their campaigns against insect 
pests. Nothing is so vital to the cheapness of cotton as quick 
and economic transport. I am at this moment making great 
efforts to improve the railway communications of Nyasaland, 
the East African Protectorate and Uganda by a loan of 
£3,000,000 sterling, for which I am asking the authority and 
the credit of the Imperial Parliament. 
From Uganda the export of cotton has increased five fold 
in the last fifteen years. In Nyasaland tobacco looks as if it 
might be a serious rival; but in the northern districts of 
Nyasaland the industry has become firmly established amongst 
the natives, and in East Africa, the Kaverondo tribe in the 
Kisumu Province have taken up cotton growing with 
avidity; but we must always remember that the untutored 
African is at first averse from growing anything which he 
cannot eat. 
But there is one portion of our East African Protectorate to 
21 
