An African Adventure

by Isaac Frederick Marcosson

Clearly to understand the scope and purpose of the Forminiere you must know that it is one of the three companies that have helped to shape the destiny of the Congo. I encountered the first—the Union Miniere—the moment I entered the Katanga. The second is the Huileries du Congo Belge, the palm-oil producers whose bailiwick abuts upon the Congo and Kwilu Rivers. Now we come to the third and the most important agency, so far as American interest is affected, in the Forminiere, whose empire is the immense section watered by the Kasai River and which extends across the border into Angola. In the Union Miniere you got the initial hint of America's part in the development of the Congo. That part, however, was entirely technical. With the Forminiere you have the combination of American capital and American engineering in an achievement that is, to say the least, unusual.

The moment I dipped into Congo business history I touched the Forminiere for the reason that it was the pet project of King Leopold, and the last and favorite corporate child of his economic statesmanship. Moreover, among the leading Belgian capitalists interested were men who had been Stanley's comrades and who had helped to blaze the path of civilization through the wilds. King Albert spoke of it to me in terms of appreciation and more especially of the American end. I felt a sense of pride in the financial courage and physical hardihood of my countrymen who had gone so far afield. I determined to see the undertaking at first hand.

My experience with it proved to be the most exciting of my whole African adventure. All that I had hitherto undergone was like a springtime frolic compared to the journey up the Kasai and through the jungle that lurks beyond. I saw the war-like savage on his native heath; I travelled with my own caravan through the forest primeval; I employed every conceivable kind of transport from the hammock swung on a pole and carried on the shoulders of husky natives, to the automobile. The primitive and modern met at almost every stage of the trip which proved to be first cousin to a thriller from beginning to end. Heretofore I had been under the spell of the Congo River. Now I was to catch the magic of its largest tributary, the Kasai.

Long before the Forminiere broke out its banner, America had been associated with the Congo. It is not generally known that Henry M. Stanley, who was born John Rowlands, achieved all the feats which made him an international figure under the name of his American benefactor who adopted him in New Orleans after he had run away to sea from a Welsh workhouse. He was for years to all intents and purposes an American, and carried the American flag on two of his famous expeditions.

President Cleveland was the first chief dignitary of a nation to recognize the Congo Free State in the eighties, and his name is perpetuated in Mount Cleveland, near the headwaters of the Congo River. An American Minister to Belgium, General H. S. Sanford, had a conspicuous part in all the first International African Associations formed by King Leopold to study the Congo situation. This contact, however, save Stanley's share, was diplomatic and a passing phase. It was the prelude to the constructive and permanent part played by the American capitalists in the Forminiere, chief of whom is Thomas F. Ryan.

The reading world associates Ryan with the whirlpool of Big Finance. He ruled New York traction and he recast the tobacco world. Yet nothing appealed to his imagination and enthusiasm like the Congo. He saw it in very much the same way that Rhodes viewed Rhodesia. Every great American master of capital has had his particular pet. There is always some darling of the financial gods. The late J. P. Morgan, for example, regarded the United States Steel Corporation as his prize performance and talked about it just like a doting father speaks of a successful son. The Union Pacific System was the apple of E. H. Harriman's eye, and the New York Central was a Vanderbilt fetish for decades. So with Ryan and the Congo. Other powerful Americans have become associated with him, as you will see later on, but it was the tall, alert, clear-eyed Virginian, who rose from penniless clerk to be a Wall Street king, who first had the vision on this side of the Atlantic, and backed it with his millions. I am certain that if Ryan had gone into the Congo earlier and had not been engrossed in his American interests, he would probably have done for the whole of Central Africa what Rhodes did for South Africa.

THOMAS F. RYAN

We can now get at the beginnings of the Forminiere. Most large corporations radiate from a lawyer's office. With the Forminiere it was otherwise. The center of inspiration was the stone palace at Brussels where King Leopold II, King of the Belgians, held forth. The year 1906 was not a particularly happy one for him. The atrocity campaign was at its height abroad and the Socialists were pounding him at home. Despite the storm of controversy that raged about him one clear idea shone amid the encircling gloom. That idea was to bulwark the Congo Free State, of which he was also sovereign, before it was ceded to Belgium.

Between 1879 and 1890 Leopold personally supported the cost of creating and maintaining the Free State. It represented an outlay of more than $2,500,000. Afterwards he had adequate return in the revenues from rubber and ivory. But Leopold was a royal spender in the fullest sense. He had a variety of fads that ranged from youthful and beguiling femininity to the building of palaces and the beautifying of his own country. He lavished millions on making Brussels a sumptuous capital and Ostend an elaborate seaside resort. With his private life we are not concerned. Leopold the pleasure-seeker was one person; Leopold the business man was another, and as such he was unique among the rulers of Europe.