318 



sciujsrcu. 



[YoL. VI., No. 140. 



the hands of the French government by confisca- 

 tion, which the tribe suffers as the penalty of a 

 revolt. This is practically the only land available 

 for colonization, and it is easy enough to see that, 

 in the presence of the revengeful Arabs, the colo- 

 nies must be strong enough from the outset to 

 protect themselves. This plan has always been 

 expensive for the government, but a considerable 

 number of colonies had, in some degree, succeeded 

 during the first eight years. 



In 1848, an attempt was made to settle at once 

 some 13,500 of the unemployed workmen of Paris 

 in Algeria. Each family received a house with a 

 certain amount of land, stock, tools and seeds, and 

 rations for two years. But the material was the 

 worst possible for an agriculturarcolony; the work- 

 men lived in idleness, consumed their rations, and 

 as soon as these ceased, went back to Paris, as 

 soon as possible. An almost identical plan was 

 tried in 1871, with 10,000 of the discontented Alsa- 

 tians, and the result was the same ; in 1875 every 

 village stood empty. From 1848 to 1871 all sorts 

 of experiments were tried, the details of which 

 would be tedious ; the result of all was nearly or 

 quite failure. 



In 1873 a private society, the Association pro- 

 tective des Alsaciens-Lorrains, succeeded in found- 

 ing three villages, which are now in a very flourish- 

 ing condition. The government undertook, as usual, 

 the works of common utility ; members of the so- 

 ciety went to Algeria and chose the sites for the 

 villages. They required from each colonist a con- 

 siderable deposit toward the general expenses of 

 the society, and thus secured a much more thrifty 

 class of emigrants than had figured in any former 

 undertaking. 



Besides the Alsatians, and some other Germans, a 

 large number of Spaniards and Italians have settled 

 in Algeria. With the increasing exportation of 

 halfagrass from the province of Oran, there is a 

 great demand for laborers ; Kabyles enough can- 

 not be obtained, the Arabs will do no regular 

 work, and the French and Germans cannot endure 

 the climate. And so natives of the south of Spain, 

 who are accustomed to a similar climate at home, 

 were imported. And they came to stay. They 

 are a hard-working, sober, thrifty class of people, 

 and after a little they usually accumulate enough 

 to buy out some shiftless French colonist. In this 

 way Oran and some other provinces have become 

 almost entirely Spanish. These southern Spaniards 

 are historically much more nearly related to the 

 Kabyles than to the French ; they do not readily 

 assimilate with the latter ; they five by themselves, 

 and are looked on by the French with jealousy, 

 and not without reason ; for if Spain should ever 

 get possession of Morocco, the Spanish population 



of Oran would probably lead to unpleasant political 

 complications. 



The French also look with a jealous eye upon 

 the ItaUans, who are mostly in the eastern coast- 

 district, where they at first came on account of 

 the fisheries. They are not so numerous as the 

 Spaniards ; in 1881 they numbered 31,000 against 

 112,000 Spaniards, but many of them become 

 naturalized and are then reckoned as French. 



As to the French themselves, many of them 

 have been successful colonists, both individually 

 and in societies ; but there is a continual drawback 

 upon their success in the shape of the worthless 

 character of many of the emigrants. There seems 

 to be a general mistrust of foreigners among all 

 the French in Algeria, from the Governor-general 

 down to the poorest emigrant ; and in the distri- 

 bution of the colonial privileges, they proceed on 

 the principle that the worst kind of a Frenchman 

 is to be preferred to the best man of any other 

 nation. The result is that not only all the public 

 offices — and in the usual French fashion, their 

 name is legion — are occupied by Frenchmen, but 

 the best lands are often assigned to people who 

 have no intention of thoroughly working them ; 

 they fulfil the letter of the conditions with as little 

 labor as possible, let the land on shares to a na- 

 tive who works it in his own primitive way, and 

 as soon as they have acquired a clear title, sell the 

 land immediately, and go and repeat the experi- 

 ment in another place. As in our own western 

 states, an unscrupulous ' colonist ' can often ' pre- 

 empt ' in several places at the same time. Of course 

 the officials are aware of this state of things, but in 

 the lack of good French colonists they have felt 

 themselves often <?ompelled to wiak at it, even if 

 it should happen to go against their easy French 

 consciences. But they are only putting off the 

 question ; at the sale of the above-mentioned land, 

 it goes, sometimes directly, sometimes after some 

 handling by speculators, to men who intend to 

 make good use of it, whatever their nationahty ; and 

 these are quite likely to be either other Europeans 

 or Kabyles. The latter are not to be confounded 

 with the Arabs, who are born nomads and yield 

 before civilization ; they are accustomed to town 

 life, take kindly to improvements, send their 

 children to school with great eagerness, work 

 hard and save their earnings. The great objec- 

 tion to them on the part of the French is that they 

 have a too well-defined sense of their own personal 

 and pohtical rights, look upon the French as usur- 

 pers, and win have nothing to do with them unless 

 it is absolutely necessary. They are constantly 

 learning better to know their own strength, and 

 may, not far iu the future, give the French a seri- 

 ous problem to handle. 



