the League should be directed farther afield. As you know, the Slavery Convention was put on the stocks five years ago and in 1926 was finally adopted by the Assembly. When the Assembly came to examine the question of slavery under modern conditions, it found itself almost insensibly drawn on to consider the question of forced labour. As a result, Article 5 of the Convention deals with the question of forced labour in general terms. But it was felt that that was not enough, that it was necessary to go further, and lay down very specific conditions dealing with the whole subject. As a consequence, the Assembly passed an additional resolution inviting the International Labour Organisation to study the best means of preventing forced or compulsory labour" from developing into conditions analogous to slavery." In response to that invitation, the Organisation created a special section to deal with native labour, Mr. Grimshaw being at the head of that section. They took the second step, and a very important one, by setting up a Committee of Experts to make a first survey of the field. It was realised that if one was going to embark on a survey of the whole field of native labour, it was going to be a very lengthy, intricate and difficult task, and it was thought that before any attempt was made to draw up a Convention, we should have the benefit of the advice of a Competent body of experts, men who were thoroughly familiar with and had first-hand experience of all problems included under the general term of native labour. Consequently, this Committee was set up. It includes four representatives from the British Empire-Lord, Lugard, Sir Selwyn Fremantle from India, Mr. Taberer from South Africa, and Mr. Joynt from Malaya, and the other Colonial countries of the world, including the United States, are represented on that Commission. They took as the first two items in their programme the examination of forced labour and contract or indentured labour. Last year, at their first meeting, they considered the question of forced labour, and drew up a report which will be the first attempt to set out the facts fully and impartially, not only as they affect one part of the world on one particular territory, but all parts of the world in which forced labour of any kind exists. The Committee go on to make a series of recommendations as to the regulations which should be adopted with a view to limiting the effects of forced labour. But, first, I should like to say a few words as to the reasons which have led these questions to assume so prominent a part in our deliberations and in those of the Assembly. I think that quite apart from the moral aspect of these questions which has always been prominent and which has become more prominent, as your Chairman has told you, in this country and in other countries, there has been another very cogent fact, namely, the realisation of the immense part which Colonial territories are now being called upon to play in the economic life of the world. If you look at the figures of the trade of the British Empire since 1900, you will find that the trade of the African possessions, leaving out the Union of South Africa, with the Mother country, has increased something

like 700 per cent., a far greater percentage than any other part of the Empire, either Dominion or Colony. Again, if you look at the production from Asia of rubber you will find that that has increased by nearly 800 per cent. since 1913, the increase in the production of chemicals 228 per cent., and so on. In other words, countries which before the war, or at any rate until the end of the nineteenth century, were practically insignificant in the economic life of the world are now more and more becoming indispensable, and all the production of those countries is the production of native labour. That raises two very important issues. In the first place it raises what one may call the moral issue, the problem of how you are going to adapt the native to modern conditions, conditions of modern industrial and agricultural enterprise, how you are going to help him to bridge that colossal gap; and on the other side there is the economic problem which is facing the administrations of every African territory, as to how you are. going to reconcile the health and prosperity of the native and his material well-being with the requirements of production, requirements which become more insistent every year, as the resources of Africa are developed or discovered. It is not a dis-similar problem from the problem of industry at the time of the industrial revolution. There too, you had the question. whether you were going to allow the employment of women and children, and if so, under what conditions. There were some forms of employment which were bad in themselves, there were other forms which were found to be unproductive. It was found that it was more economic to have a short working day than a long one, but it took a long time to find that out. Well, you have got a somewhat similar problem in connection with native labour, and I don't think it untrue to say that there was an old idea which is beginning to give way to a new conception. It used to be supposed that the native was constitutionally idle and incapable of work except under compulsion, and that therefore some system of slavery perhaps, but at any rate, of forced labour, was necessary if you were to have any economic development at all. Experience shows, however, that the application of that system led to the most disastrous results, results which I think have been experienced in almost every African territory in greater or less. degree at some time or other. You have got the fact that in French Equatorial Africa the native population dropped from something like 4,500,000 to 3,000,000 in a little more than twenty years. One has statements such as those of the Governor of Madagascar, that the death rate, due to forced labour was something like 50 per cent. For a time the economic significance of these facts was not appreciated. Quite apart from the human suffering and death it caused, it was not realised that by permitting a mortality of that kind the future development of the country was being imperilled. It was not realised that potentially there is a great shortage of labour in many parts of Africa, and that that shortage is becoming intensified by the failure to adopt protective measures in respect of the native as a worker. If you take the British possessions in Africa,

leaving out the Union and West Africa, there are less than 13,000,000 people in the two Rhodesias, Nyasaland, Tanganyika and Kenya,-five territories which are together twice as big as France, Germany and Italy combined, and with resources how great nobody knows, certainly far greater than anyone as yet can fully realise. How is that very small population going to make anything like the best of those resources unless it is carefully husbanded and protected? The realisation of that fact is one of the cogent factors which has led to the international consideration of the problem of native labour. It is not only one country that has urged us to do it. I am very much impressed by the fact that every country that is in the Colonial field feels more and more the necessity of taking some common action towards the solution of this problem, and therefore it is not surprising to find that the Commission which we set up, consisting as it did entirely of men with long Colonial experience, has proposed a series of exceedingly stringent regulations on the subject of forced labour. I am not going into that now, because they are largely of a detailed character, but I think that as compared with the conditions under which forced labour has existed in the past, they will be considered as exceedingly severe. But in addition to that, the Commission passed a unaminous resolution at the conclusion of its work, recommending that all forced labour should cease at the earliest possible moment. They felt that a transition period was necessary, but they were all convinced that forced labour in itself was a bad thing and should be abolished as soon as possible. I think that, coming from an international body, ought to have a considerable effect, and it will, I hope, lay the foundation of a draft Convention which will come before the Conference for the first time next year. The subject of forced labour is on the Agenda of the International Labour Conference of 1929, and under our existing procedure there will be a first discussion as to the limitation of the subject and the general lines of which a Convention should be framed, and then a final discussion in 1930 which will arrive, I hope, at an international treaty drawn up in due legal form, which the countries will be invited to ratify. So that during the next two years there will be a great deal of discussion and consideration of the whole question of forced labour, and it is very important that public opinion in every country should take a keen and lively interest in that discussion. Therefore, one welcomes particularly the existence of a Society such as this, with its long tradition of achievement, because, after all, the abolition of slavery is only the beginning of the problem, and there is a great vista in the future of problems connected with native races which will remain to be solved. But the question of forced labour is only the first question. It will be followed as I have already said, by the question of contract or indentured labour. There are many other subjects to be taken after that,-child labour and so on. We are beginning from next year for the first time to publish regular information every quarter showing what is being done in the different parts of the world in the matter

of native labour, and I believe that by doing that we shall render a modest but necessary service. The first thing that struck us was that administrations themselves were unaware of what was going on in other territories. When I was in South Africa I was very much struck by the constant enquiries that I got from people of all kinds, missionaries, magistrates, administrators, for information as to what was going on in other territories in Africa. I had a letter only three days ago from a Magistrate in the Transkei, who said that they were considering a question relating to health and, seeing that there was some report published on an experiment which had been made in one of the French Colonies, he asked if I would send it. Similar requests are becoming more and more numerous, so I think that by furnishing as much information as possible we shall be rendering service. I may say in that connection that we owe a great debt of gratitude to the Colonial Office here, who have been at very great pains to supply as with all kinds of documentation and information which we ask them for, and seeing the large number of British Colonies there are in the world, I am afraid we ask them for a great deal, but they have never shirked meeting any of our demands.

In conclusion I should just like to say that I am very glad to have had this opportunity of meeting the members of the Society and of impressing on them what a very vital part they can, and I hope will, play in the whole treatment of the native labour question. The little I have seen convinces me that there is no greater or more difficult problem in the world, and no problem which more urgently calls for a solution. No-one imagines that that solution is going to be easily found. It is only by experiment and discussion that it will gradually be worked out. But it is through the support of independent public opinion, well-informed public opinion such as this Society represents, that enormous assistance will be given to us in that task.

The chairman, in thanking Mr. Butler for his speech, said that it opened up an illimitable vista of work for the Society, and a great opportunity. He called upon Lord Olivier to open the discussion.

Lord OLIVIER: We have been immensely interested and are indebted to Mr. Butler for the information, which confirms my opinion that one of the great satisfactory institutions that we have got as a compensation for the war is the International Labour Office, coupled with the League of Nations itself. It is also of great value to the I.L.O. that it has recently had a tour of inspection of these territories by Mr. Butler, but I should rather like to know whether there is any kind of permanent source of information or criticism in the various territories concerned, which will keep the I.L.O. permanently informed on those points which Mr. Butler has observed in the course of his tour of inspection. What has been the practical outcome of the good resolution which the Portuguese Government passed a short time ago, to abolish forced labour in its territories ? Has the I.L.O. established any system of consular or advisory service which may keep it

informed as to what happens in the various territories. There is one general point arising out of the latter part of Mr. Butler's remarks. He pointed out that there are some 13,000,000 natives in East and Central Africa, and there are other millions of natives in other parts of Africa, and that there are immense undeveloped resources. Now there seems to be established in the minds of Statesmen and Colonial Governors a sort of idea that it is a pious duty to develop these territories and to develop them with the utmost possible rapidity. It is because of this idea that these regions must be developed as quickly as possible that we encounter all these tendencies towards forced labour and the doctrine that it is the duty of the native to work. It is a kind of superstition that because there are these undeveloped resources, it is a sacred trust to develop them, but I submit to you, and I wish the public would bear it in mind, that there is no divine necessity making it a moral obligation to develop the resources of Africa. After the question of forced labour, which is being already dealt with, the International Labour Office is going to deal with the question of contract labour. Almost all labour in South Africa and Kenya and elsewhere is contract labour. It is under contract for six months or more. In discussing this question of contract labour the other day I was questioned by a good lady who said, "Don't you think that it is right that there should be severe penalties on a native who breaks his contract?" She gave an example of a man who had a forest concession and whose native employees, after the timber was cut, were so fed up with the job that they all deserted. Ought not they to be punished? I said: "Europeans need not be in such a hurry to cut down African forests. Go slower and the natives will learn, when they see it to their interests to do so. In this case no one was hurt but the contractor, and the natives were probably well advised in their own interest." You will find Secretaries of State, English Colonial Governors and others pushing this idea of rapid development. I want the International Labour Organisation to put an international brake upon that. There is no necessity to be in such a hurry to develop these territories as financial investors and Colonial Governors seem to think. We want to go slow and not develop the resources of the country more rapidly than is consistent with native welfare. The I.L.O. is an immense re-inforcement to all those particular nations and national Societies which have been working individually. I am immensely obliged for what Mr. Butler has told us, and I wish to assure him that we all greatly value that institution.

The Rev. JOHN WHITE was of opinion that the kind of forced labour of which they had been hearing ought to come to an end at once. He said that it first came into being when the natives were not taxed, when there might have been some excuse for asking them to do public work on roads, etc., but now the natives were taxed and a large revenue was drawn from them. He hoped the Society's attitude would be one of entire opposition.

He urged that the natives should have an adequate supply of land