ings in forest products. As British, French, and American. capitalists were largely interested in these new concessions, Belgian opinion became more than ever excited, and the Belgian Parliament determined to insist on the transfer of the Congo from Leopold to Belgium. Recognizing the inevitability of such a transfer, the monarch shrewdly endeavored to secure a guarantee of the profitable Crown Domain and of the concessions he had granted. Such a solution, the British foreign minister, Sir Edward Grey, declared, would be regarded by Great Britain as a violation of the Berlin Act. And Leopold was compelled to abandon the Crown Domain, in return for 50,000,000 francs (which he promised to spend in ways "beneficial to the Congo"), an additional 45,000,000 francs to be spent on his projected "works of embellishment" in Belgium, and a guarantee of annuities to the royal family. Moreover, the concessions of the American Congo Company and the Compagnie forestière et minière were to be respected. On such terms Belgium took possession Nov. 15, 1908, and the Congo Free State became Belgian Congo, a Belgian colony.1

BELGIUM'S FUTURE-IN CONGO

With admirable sincerity the Belgian government endeavored to substitute a better régime for the grasping autocracy which Leopold had practised. Belgian Congo was placed under a governor-general responsible to a colonial minister, who in turn must answer to the Belgian Parliament for his acts. The first colonial minister, Jules Renkin, visited the Congo, which Leopold had never seen. The natives were given the right to sell their labor freely; native chiefs were recognized and given local autonomy, many of the old monopolies were abolished, though not all the concessions could be cancelled. The difference between the new government and the old may be illustrated by one The report of the Belgian parliamentary commission, April 1, 1908, giving a lengthy survey of the Congo question, and the law of Oct. 18, 1908, are reprinted in Staatsarchiv, vol. 79, pp. 131 ff., 167 ff. The report gives the typical economic arguments for imperialism, and points out that of the 85 commercial companies operating in Congo, 57 with a capital of 143 million franes were Belgian, and 28 with a capital of 40 millions were foreign: Belgium supplied (in 1905) about two-thirds of the total imports (20 million francs) of Congo, and absorbed over nine-tenths of the exports (53 million francs). "C'est un fait constant, et presque une formule économique, que la marchandise suit ie pavillon,”

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instance: in 1912 a Congo official was sentenced to ten years in jail for his cruelty in arbitrarily executing seven native men, four women, and a child; in the old days such executions would have passed without notice. Humanitarianism of the new type was less profitable, however, than Leopoldian methods. Throwing the colony open to international trade, abolishing forced labor, relinquishing the profitable Leopoldian monopolies, and assuming the debts of the Free State, left the Belgian government with a colony whose revenues were inadequate to defray current expenditures. The annual deficit has averaged 16 million francs in recent years (1920-4) and the colony's debt was 543 million francs in 1924.

Yet King Albert, on New Year's Day, 1924, declared that Belgium's chief hope for the future lay in the development of her Congo colony.

The Congo, says a Belgian publicist, is "overflowing with riches of every sort"; it is "the vastest reservoir that a country can have at its disposal"; without it, Belgium would "stifle." This point of view is characteristic. Present burdens are to be shouldered cheerfully in anticipation of future profits. What prospect of profit does the future offer? Trade, certainly, is increasing with some rapidity, as the following figures show.

In these figures rubber is a dwindling element. The rubber vines ruthlessly hacked to pieces under Leopold's régime now yield but a small fraction of the colony's exports; the rubber trees-twenty or thirty millions of them-planted by the natives. under Leopold's supervision proved a disappointment. The Congo rubber industry to-day is a negligible factor in competition with the rubber plantations of the East. The Belgian Congo's rubber output has actually declined at a startling rate, as the figures show:

More important now is the mining of copper (and to a less extent, of gold and diamonds) in the Katanga district of southern Congo. A chart exhibited in 1925 by the Union Minière du Haut Katanga shows how rapidly copper production has developed :

This Union Minière, by the way, was formed in 1906 as a stock company with ten million francs capital, half Belgian and half British, and obtained the right to exploit all copper mines in a zone about half as large as Belgium, until the year 1990, as well as to build railways and roads and to exploit certain coal, mica, iron, and gold mines. As the business of the Union expanded, Robert Williams, of the Tanganyika Concessions, Ltd., and the group of British capitalists he represented, was unable to take fifty per cent of new stock issues, and soon found itself a minority holder. The Union is now controlled by a Belgian engineer, Jules Cousin. It is now one of the greatest copper concerns in the world. Copper has become the chief export of Belgian Congo and has made Katanga the most prosperous and highly developed part of the colony. Indeed, the great mining plants there, and the neat white-washed, thatched-roofed huts. of the black miners present a quite "civilized"-an almost European appearance.

As for diamonds, the so-called Forminière (Société Internationale Forestière et Minière du Congo), founded in 1906, with a capital of 3,500,000 francs, with a concession to prospect over nine-tenths of the colony, made important discoveries in 1912 and soon became an important producer. Its capital was increased by jumps, to eight million, then sixteen million francs. The output of diamonds in ten years from 1913 to 1922 was 1,390,500 carats; it will be more than twice that in the next decade, if the production remains at its present figure. The actual mining is done by seventeen thousand negroes working at a wage of from six to eight francs a month besides food and lodging-both very simple, to use a euphemism.

Another infant industry, almost entirely a post-Leopoldian development, is the production of coconuts, palm kernels and palm oil-used chiefly in making soap, candles, and margarine. This industry, by the way, is in the hands of British soapmakers, the Lever Brothers, who obtained concessions in 1911 giving them vast areas in which they have a monopoly of oilpalms. Although the Lever interests operate through a Belgian company, La Société des Huileries du Congo belge, Belgian publicists are prone to lament the predominantly British character of the enterprise, for imperialism tends to monopoly. However, these British soapmakers have built up a great industry in Congo; they have established plants, with hospitals, model native dwellings, and even football and tennis grounds, at Kinshasha and other places. And palm-nuts and palm-oil now occupy second place in the Congo's exports. The fertile, well-watered soil of the Congo can also bear cotton,1 cocoa and rice, but these require the development of plantations, large-scale organization, railways and waterways and industrious but cheap and plentiful labor. The railways Belgium is building; waterways exist; plantations can be created; but labor is the problem.

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In the last analysis, the economic future of Congo depends upon the employment of native labor in copper mines and on plantations, and perhaps in exploitation of the immense timber resources. In Belgian Congo there are now about eight and one-half million Bantu negroes, thinly spread over an area eighty times as large as Belgium. Of whites there are only ten thousand, almost all officials, business agents, missionaries. Nor is it

1The Compagnie Cotonnière Congolaise (Cotonco.), with six million francs capital, has established a number of cotton farms and hopes some day to supply Belgium with raw cotton.

2 There were 1,268 miles of railway open in 1924. The greatest interest has focussed in projects for a trunk line to provide an outlet for the Katanga mining region, which cannot conveniently use the Congo waterway. A line has been constructed which links Elisabethville and Bukama, in Katanga, with the Rhodesian and South African lines. But plans for a shorter line, reaching the sea at Benguela, in Portuguese Angolia, were backed by Belgian interests in agreement with Robert Williams, the British promoter so prominent in Katanga's development. Williams, however, ran short of capital, and appealed to the British Government for aid, which was refused at the instance of General Smuts, perhaps to prevent competition with the South African railways. Accordingly, in 1922 the Belgian government adopted a substitute plan, to construct and run a railroad entirely through Belgian territory from Katanga via Bukama, Ilebo, and Leopoldville, to the Matadi, near the mouth of the Congo. Small sections of the line are already in operation. Cf. article by G. Van der Kerken in Congo, Dec., 1924, p. 719.

probable that European immigrants will ever be numerous, even in the mountain areas, much less in the sweltering heat of feverinfested lowlands.1

I have before me an attractive illustrated booklet entitled "Allez-y et Faites comme eux!" which urges ambitious Belgians to colonize in the Congo, where they can "create very fine estates for themselves where they will lead a large life, free from the cares of Europe." The pictures are attractive, and so are the

biographies of successful colonists. The Goethals brothers, for example, have concessions covering 20,000 hectares, part cultivated, and boast possession of "une auto Ford"; they employ 170 negroes; and each acre cultivated becomes worth about 1000 francs. But there are not many Belgians willing to emigrate who have the 50,000 francs of capital considered necessary for the prospective colonist in Congo.

The negro population is the all-important element in the situa

1 The white population, according to the Annuaire statistique de la Belgique et du Congo Belge, vol. 48 (Brussels, 1924), has increased from 1958 in 1900 to 10,037 in 1923. The average annual increase since 1918 has been 910. Slightly over half the whites are Belgians. There are 365 Americans.