100 years ago: Cotton production in Kenya

FROM the Report of the Commission appointed to consider the problem of native labour in Kenya Colony it is clear that the natives are not over anxious to work on the plantations owned by white settlers. There are in the colony over 400,000 males between the ages of fifteen and forty. The total demanded for labour is under 150,000, but this number cannot be regularly obtained, and the Commission suggests, among other things, that children should be trained to pick coffee during the harvest, and that administrative pressure should be employed to compel the natives to work for white employers. We trust that the Colonial Office will sanction neither of these suggestions. Child labour is never to be encouraged, and it is against all the best traditions of the British Government to allow official machinery to be used to further private interests. Mr. John Harris, in a letter to the Nation, says that Kenya and the adjoining territories have enormous potentialities for the production of cotton. He says that the only sound method for cotton production is by peasant proprietorship. If this be so, instead of compelling the African to work for the white settler, he should surely be encouraged to work for himself. In any case, the menace of the colour war must grow greater with any attempt to compel the black man back into a condition of forced labour, hardly to be distinguished from slavery.