Little more than a dozen years ago no railways at all had been constructed there, and most of the colonies were in a more or less disturbed condition, even if they had not been the scene of successive massacres, of sanguinary wars, of much expenditure thereon, and of human sacrifices in districts steeped in slavery, barbarism and superstition.
This was especially the case on the Gold Coast, where the Ashantis waged wars against us in 1875, 1896 and 1901. Two years after the last of these wars the Gold Coast main line of railway was taken up to Coomassie, the capital of Ashanti. To-day the Ashantis carry on strife with us no longer. They work in the gold mines instead; and the railway that brings the gold down to the coast has paid a five-per-cent dividend from the day it was opened.[[60]]
Of "Sierra Leone and Its Commercial Expansion" Mr T. J. Alldridge said, in a paper he read before the Royal Colonial Institute on March 21, 1911 (reported in "United Empire," May, 1911):—
"The extraordinary increase in the revenue of Sierra Leone during the last few years fills one who knows the circumstances of the Colony with amazement. It could never have been achieved had communication by railway into oil-palm belts, formerly quite unworked, not been introduced by the Government. The results have been extraordinary, although as yet hardly more than the fringe of these rich forests has been reached.... Only since the putting down of railways into our Protectorate has the Colony of Sierra Leone made such noticeable or commercial progress. The extension in the volume of imported merchandise, the expansion in its export products, and the greatly increased revenue, stand out to-day as an extraordinary revelation of what railway communication is capable of effecting in places that were not long since un-get-at-able, but which Nature has lavishly filled with a never-failing store of indigenous wealth."
Southern Nigeria and Northern Nigeria—the former having an area of 77,000 square miles and a population of 6,500,000 Africans, and the latter an area of 256,400 square miles and an estimated population of 8,000,000—are both of them countries of enormous natural resources which are being steadily developed by railways already built or in course of construction. A writer in "United Empire" for July, 1911, says of South Nigeria: "The trade returns of 1910 have surpassed even the most optimistic expectations, but there is good reason to look forward to further considerable increases in view of railway developments, harbour improvements, road construction, river clearing," etc., while of Northern Nigeria he says: "When we remember that a densely-populated area, twice as large as the United Kingdom, and little more than a decade removed from the horrors of slavery, savage warfare and wholesale human sacrifices, is run by about 300 Europeans on £500,000 a year, and is rapidly arriving at conditions favourable to a great development of commerce"—such conditions including the fact that a trader can now travel from Lagos to Zaria in three days by rail, instead of taking three weeks, as before—"it is, perhaps, a record in the annals of British expansion."
As for the civilising effects of railways in West Africa, Mr P. A. Renner, an educated native, said at a Royal Colonial Institute meeting on May 24, 1910: "In the few years I have lived on the coast I have seen an improvement which has so astonished us as to make us almost worship the white man. Previously to the introduction of railways the clan feeling and tribal strifes and feuds were very rife, and the people of one village would scarcely visit those of another. Now all this is changed."
When one looks back from the work the railway is doing to-day, in all these different directions, to those very primitive beginnings of which I have told in earlier chapters, the whole story appears to be far more suggestive of romance than of sober fact and reality. From the colliery rail-way along which John Buddie's "waggon-man" led his horse, encouraging it to greater exertion with a handful of hay, to the railway that conveys, not only passengers, but goods, at express speed, that has revolutionised our industrial, our commercial and our social conditions, and is now consolidating our Imperial interests and effecting the civilisation of once barbarian lands, it is, indeed, a far cry; yet the sequence of events can readily be traced, while all has been done within a century and a half of the world's history.
CHAPTER XXVIII
RAILWAYS A NATIONAL INDUSTRY
Having seen the part that railways have played in helping to develop the industrial interests of the country in general, we may now consider (1) to what extent the railways themselves constitute a national industry, and (2) various conditions relating thereto.