The case of Cadburys the cocoa and chocolate makers, and the practical
slavery under the Portuguese of the East African negroes who grow the
raw material for Messrs. Cadbury, is an illuminating one in this
connection. The Cadburys, like the Rowntrees, are well known as an
energetic and public-spirited family, their social and industrial
experiments at Bournville and their general social and political
activities are broad and constructive in the best sense. But they find
themselves in the peculiar dilemma that they must either abandon an
important and profitable portion of their great manufacture or continue
to buy produce grown under cruel and even horrible conditions. Their
retirement from the branch of the cocoa and chocolate trade concerned
would, under these circumstances, mean no diminution of the manufacture
or of the horrors of this particular slavery; it would merely mean that
less humanitarian manufacturers would step in to take up the abandoned
trade. The self-righteous individualist would have no doubts about the
question; he would keep his hands clean anyhow, retrench his social
work, abandon the types of cocoa involved, and pass by on the other
side. But indeed I do not believe we came into the mire of life simply
to hold our hands up out of it. Messrs. Cadbury follow a better line;
they keep their business going, and exert themselves in every way to let
light into the secrets of Portuguese East Africa and to organize a
better control of these labour cruelties. That I think is altogether the
right course in this difficulty.

We cannot keep our hands clean in this world as it is. There is no
excuse indeed for a life of fraud or any other positive fruitless
wrong-doing or for a purely parasitic non-productive life, yet all but
the fortunate few who are properly paid and recognized state servants
must in financial and business matters do their best amidst and through