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In the Lagos Province we had an output of 13,000 bales last 
year; and with the rapid progress of railway extension we 
hope for even larger results from the north of Nigeria, though 
there, of course, at present a great deal of the cotton is locally 
consumed in making the very fine Hausa cloth which is some- 
times a formidable competitor with the looms of Europe. 
Even Australia has caught the infection and experiments are 
now to be tried in Queensland, though there the element of 
the cost of labour forms a serious and what may prove to be 
an insuperable obstacle. 
Meeting as we do in this building I cannot omit to pay my 
humble and admiring tribute to the excellent work which has 
been done by the Imperial Institute and its capable staff under 
Professor Dunstan. No one who has not been like myself in 
constant touch with their work can realize how wide is the 
range of their work, experiments and inquiries. It is not 
cotton alone but every product of our tropical lands which 
comes under their inquisitive, I might almost say, acquisitive, 
observation. From cotton to coal, oil to timber, butter to 
metals—nothing comes amiss to their retorts, test tubes and 
microscopes. The merchants of England, the commerce of 
our Colonies, the prosperity of our Protectorates owe more 
than they know and far more than they are ever likely to repay 
to the work and the wisdom of those who are labouring within 
these walls. 
The position of a Secretary of State for the Colonies in these 
latter days is as fascinating in its variety as it is overwhelming 
in its labours, but it is made endurable by the knowledge that 
the almost autocratic powers it possesses may be, and I hope 
always is, exercised for the collective and the individual benefit 
of the millions over whom it rules. In these days the Colonial 
Office has more of the attributes of an immense trading concern 
than in the earlier days when it was a mere machinery of 
Government. Our days and nights are spent in the study of 
medicine which is daily becoming more abstruse in the 
diseases which it tackles, and happily more curative and more 
preventive in its results. Our time is devoted to railway 
construction, with a desire that the smallest sum of money may 
lay the largest number of miles of track in the fewest possible 
number of days. I am a coal and a tin miner in Nigeria, a 
gold miner in Guiana; timber in one Colony, oil and nuts in 
another, cocoa ina third; copra and copper, sisal hemp, cotton, 
coffee and tobacco are common objects of my daily care. All 
this has been done by wise and generous expenditure by the 
people of Great Britain, and to-day nearly every Colony and 
Protectorate is self-supporting and requires no grant in aid. 
But in return for all that has been done in the past the 
Motherland exacts no tribute from her prospering sons. She 
