THE ROMANCE OF WEST AFRICAN INDUSTRY.

Dunstan Times, Issue 2480, 10 May 1909, Page 8

THE ROMANCE OF WEST AFRICAN INDUSTRY.

(By E. D. Morel, in the Daily Chronicle.)

“The work which the British have accomplished' in introducing the cultivation of cocoa among the natives of the Gold Coast is worthy of the utmost admiration of civilised peoples.” —Mr Auguste Chevalier, Doctor in Natural Science, specially attached to the staff of the French Government in West Africa.

The first sod of the Accra-Akwapim Railway, in the Gold! Coast, was cut by the Governor, Sir John Rodger, on January 7. It is being built to develop the agricultural wealth of the colony, especially the cocoa industry. We have heard something about “Slavegrown cocoa’ ’ recently, and we shall hear a good deal more when Mr William Cadburv and Mr Joseph Burt return from their mission of investigation in Angola and San Thome. But how many Englishmen are acquainted with the romance of “free-grown cocoa” in one of their own West African dependencies Yet the story is one which should be known, just now especially. In 1879 Tettey Quassie, a Fanti of Accra, on the Gold Coast, hired himself out as a laborer with others of his countrymen for a term of service on the Spanish island of Fernando Po. Then he worked on a cocoa plantation. When his term expired Tettey Quassie returned to “Wecountry,” as his cousin the Ivroo-boy puts it, but did not return empty handed. He brought with him a few plants and pods of cocoa, and he put them in the ground at a village called Mampong. Four years later the plants began to bear fruits which Tettey Quassie sold to the neighboring villages at £1 a pod. Seeing that there was money to bo made, the natives eagerly bought the pods at this price, and Tettey Quassie, full of his Fernando Po experiences, gave his countrymen some rudimentary tips in the" art of fermenting and drying the cocoa. In 1883 the first consignment of native-grown cocoa was exported from the Gold Coast to Europe. It weighed 121b, and was valued at £6 Is.

I do not know what became of Tettey Quassie after that; probably he died, and with his death his acquired knowledge. In 1890 the Basel Mission imported some cocoa pods from the West Indies and sold them to natives at 2s a-piece, and some years later a botanical station was established at Ahuri. By 1894 20,321 ib were exported by native growers, valued at £547.

Since thou the industry has advanced, literally, by leaps and bounds. With no expenditure of European capital, with only some technical help from the Government —and very little of that until comparatively recently—but with its good will and sympathetic encouragement, the native of the Gold Coast has built up a purely native industry on.his own land, as his own landlord, farmer, and vendor. This man, reputed to be lazy by the superficial globe-trotter or the exponent of the ‘’damned nigger” school, has carved from the virgin forest an enormous clearing, which he has covered with flourishing cocoa farms. Armed with nothing better than an imported axe and machete, and a native-made hoe, he has cut down the forest giant, cleared the tropical undergrowth, and kent it cleared. With no means of animal transport, no railways, and few roads, he has conveyed his product to the sea, rolling it down in casks for miles on miles, or carrying it on his own sturdy cranium. So industrious has he shown himself that in fourteen years his output has risen from 20,3121b, ‘valued at £547, to 20,956,4001b, valued at £515,089. Here is a result to make some of us pause in our estimate of the negro race. a people that can do this under these circumstances will not he a negligible factor in the economic development of the world, when science and the white man’s arts and crafts have given them the technical knowledge which they still lack, together with adequate means of transport. The cocoa nlantations now extend to the western side of the Ahuri hills through Akim and Kwahu until they reach, and even cross, the borders of Ashanti; while in Ashanti proper, the Ashanti liimsoll is taking to the industry with such zest that few are now the natives who cannot boast of at least one cocoa farm, while many if them own three, four and even more plantations. Neither in the Colony proper nor in Ashanti has the cultivation attained anything like its full development, and in many parts of Southern Nigeria climatic conditions are equally favorable to tho growth of theo hroma, “the food of the gods.” as old Liniucus used to call it.

In recent years the Gobi Coast Government has to its credit realised all the potentialities of this native enterprise. European and native instructors have been appointed; technical classes are regularly given—for the native producer has yet much to learn in the scientific treatment oi the bean after picking, fermenting, etc., and his product often fetches much lower prices than it would under a more careful system of production. Tho Government has even gone the length of printing and distributing in large quantities pamphlets on the cultivation and preparation of cocoa in mo Fanti and Ashanti languages, one of which hears the euphonious title of “Koko adow ne ne nsicsioe (vehea) ho nsem tia hi.” And, last, hut not least, the much demanded railway from Accra to Mangaose, in tho heart of the Gold Coast cocoa fields, has at length been started. In tho matter of a railway the Ashanti is better off, for ho has a Hue from Kumasi to the coast.

Now, if the uprising of this purely native industry is an object lesson as regards the character and tho future of the negro when left undisturbed in the possession of his soil and encouraged by an honest Government to make the most of it for his own benefit as well as for tho benefit of the outer world, it is also a magnificent opportunity for really constructive work on the part of the powerful and honorable men who control the cocoa manufacturing industry in Great Britain. On the one hand, in Portuguese San Thome, we, have an industry, marvellously equipped mechanically, wonderfully organised, in itself a model of up-to-date scientific methods, and in which very large sums of money have been sunk; but run by slave labor. The African’s connection with it is a shameful and a degrading connection. The undertaking flourishes, hut the African dies t the European alone nrofits. On the other hand, in tho Gold Coast, wc see the African himself building up an industry of his own; a free man enjoying the fruits of his land and the reward of his own labor; producing a class of cocoa very similar to the San Thome article, and which only requires a little more experience and instruction on the part of the native planter to he equally excellent in quality. In the one case, an industry carrying within it the seeds of death and human misery; in the other an industry carrying within it the seeds of life and human "progress. There is good reason, happily, to believe that the British manufacturing firms are not indifferent to all the lessons, moral and material, which may bo drawn from West African native cocoa production. Messrs Cadbury have already sent a buyer to the Gold Coast, and it is in their power and in the power of their colleagues, to give an immense impetus to what is assuredly one of tho most interesting and promising features of modern economic development in the African tropics, one which blows the “arrested development theory to smithereens. _ They will not, i feel assured, fail to rise to the opportunity, and it is encouraging to know Mr William Cadbury is now paying a visit to the Gold Coast cocoa fields on his way home.

“Father, what are wrinkles ”• “Fretwork, my son, fretwork!”