RUBBER FROM THE CONGO STATE.
[To TIM ED/T0111 01' TIll "SPROTATOM".1 SIR,—Since the Congo Reform Association issued in pamphlet form the Report of the Hon. W. Thesiger, our Consul in the Congo, on the enslavement and destruction of the Bak uba- which pamphlet you were good enough to notice in the
Spectator of May 8th—two more rubber-laden steamers have arrived at Antwerp from the Congo. The last one to arrive,- the 'Albertville,' had two hundred and sixty-nine tons of rubber on board, of which a hundred and forty-five tons came from the Kasai. These arrivals bring the total imports of rubber for account of the Kasai Company since December last to seven hundred and forty-two tons in seven steamers, the quantities brought by the last four being very much in excess of those brought by the first three. The percentage which the total of these Kasai rubber returns bears to the total rubber imported from, the whole of the Congo under.,Belgian rule during the period under review is forty-two per ce,nt. Forty-two per cent. of the total rubber exported from the Congo is therefore coming at the present moment front the region which Mr. Thesiger described last September as groaning under the most intolerable system of scientifically systematised slavery the world has ever known, for the benefit of the so-called " Company " whose "entire abolition" the Consul declared to be indispensable, for "any method of reform or change" to be of any" real benefit" to the persecuted natives of the district,—one of the finest races, as I pointed out in my introductory note to the reproduction of the Consul's Report, in the whole of Africa, As an earnest of its reforming tendencies the Belgian Government, which controls the Company and half of whose stock it bolds, has been grinding the wretched natives still further since the Report appeared. The Company's shares—" without designation of value," in reality £10 shares—are now quoted on the Antwerp Bourse in hundredth-parts (centames), for there is a brisk business in them, and each hundredth-part of a 210 share stands to-day at a few shillings over 24. The Kasai "Company" is rivalling the " A.B.I.R.," whose 220 shares once stood at over 21,000! Sir, we are constantly being reminded, and with truth, that this Congo question is for the British people a national question. We were told so last year, in so many words, in a very noble utterance of the Archbishop of Canterbury's. Is the nation doing its whole duty in this matter P Putting aside for the moment the diplomatic negotiations between the Belgian Government and ourselves (which only serve to show the absolute contempt with which the Belgian Government, in power to-day with the narrowest of majorities, is treating the British representations), let me recall the fact that these steamers, laden with the product of an atrocious slavery which month by month and day by day is exacting its toll of human lives and human misery, are British owned, and that they call for coal and take and land passengers at British ports.—I am, Sir, &c.,
Previous page
