white Europe was the chief support of that trade in human beings which
first and last robbed black Africa of a hundred million human beings,
transformed the face of her social life, overthrew organized government,
distorted ancient industry, and snuffed out the lights of cultural
development. Today instead of removing laborers from Africa to distant
slavery, industry built on a new slavery approaches Africa to deprive
the natives of their land, to force them to toil, and to reap all the
profit for the white world.

It is scarcely necessary to remind the reader of the essential facts
underlying these broad assertions. A recent law of the Union of South
Africa assigns nearly two hundred and fifty million acres of the best of
natives' land to a million and a half whites and leaves thirty-six
million acres of swamp and marsh for four and a half-million blacks. In
Rhodesia over ninety million acres have been practically confiscated. In
the Belgian Congo all the land was declared the property of the state.

Slavery in all but name has been the foundation of the cocoa industry in
St. Thome and St. Principe and in the mines of the Rand. Gin has been
one of the greatest of European imports, having increased fifty per
cent. in ten years and reaching a total of at least twenty-five million
dollars a year today. Negroes of ability have been carefully gotten rid
of, deposed from authority, kept out of positions of influence, and
discredited in their people's eyes, while a caste of white overseers and
governing officials has appeared everywhere.

Naturally, the picture is not all lurid. David Livingstone has had his
successors and Europe has given Africa something of value in the
beginning of education and industry. Yet the balance of iniquity is
desperately large; but worse than that, it has aroused no world protest.