SLAVE-GROWN,

Evening Post, Volume LXXX, Issue 4, 5 July 1910, Page 5

SLAVE-GROWN,

Cocoa is grown by slave labour on the islands of Principe and San Thome (belonging to Portugal), located off the coast of tropical West Africa, and recently the product lost its market in Great Britain owing to the refusal of the large British firms to buy it. Their action was due to an agitation against slave-grown cocoa, and, viewed as a boycott, it served as a protest that may yet force the abolition of what is virtually slave labour in the Portuguese islands. But a correspondent of the London Spectator, who is thoroughly familiar with the subject by reason of a two-year's residence in West Africa, has pointed out that the British boycott alone may accomplish nothing. He says : — "Thanks to the refusal of large firms in England and elsewhere to buy slave-grown produce, we can now drink clean cocoa. This is satisfactory, and this action of business firms is a moral protest that- will appeal to all. But the suffering natives will not benefit unless slavery is actually stopped, «and there is little prospeot of this at present, for, as the Economists. pointed out some months ago, the only economic result of the boycott is that the cocoa goes to another market. As a proof that there is no difficulty in disposing of the San Thome cocoa, the Jornal das Colonias states that wnile in January, 1908, the Lisbon stock of cocoa was 120,015 sacks, by March, 1909, it had been reduced to 82,765, and at the time of writing the stock was as low as 60,000 sacks, nearly all of which was sold to America. I a-sk, How does the native benefit by the action of these isolated firms? It is nothing to him where the produce is sold. The slave-grown product that the British refuse to buy is being dumped upon the United States.