COTTON-GROWING IN AFRICA

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 124, 26 May 1923, Page 24

COTTON-GROWING IN AFRICA

Speaking at" a meeting in Manchester recently, states the "Guardian," Mr. E. M. Ginders said that in the comparatively virgin area jof .the Sudan an opportunity occurred not only of securing cheap and abundant supplies of high-grade cotton, but_ of increasing tho prosperity of the native community, and so stimulating the demand for cotton products. A conspicuous defect of our African policy hitherto had bean in depriving the native of his rights to land, partly for the purpose of making it over to concessionaires, but mainly with the set purpose of destroying the economic status of.the native and so forcing him to Bell his labour for subsistence' wages. This policy, relentlessly and consistently pursued, had the natural effect of driving peaceably disposed tribes into open rebellion. Lowpriced labour obtained by this means increased the land values of the district and enabled the _ concessionaries to "off load" to later arrivals at handsome profits; in no case did it permanently reduce tho cost of local products. Such a policy, was fundamentally opposed to the. interests of Lancashire, to say nothing of the native, and should be challenged and relentlessly opposed. It was satisfactory to know that the British Cotton-growing Association, after watching and 'participating in experiments of both characters, was definitely convinced that the successful cultivation of cotton in Africa _ lay with the native holding his land direct from his chief or the central Government, and not through the agency of a speculative land company.