There was, however, this difficulty, that scarcely any outside attention was given to the subject. No notice seemed to be taken of what was being done. The Company was, therefore, faced with the alternative of itself working the mineral deposits or abandoning them. The latter course would have been a criminal one—speaking in a figurative sense—against the shareholders, to whom the discoveries belonged, and steps were taken for Mr Laws to demonstrate what was in the ground; in other words, for the mining staff to indefinitely work the centres where tin had been found in payable conditions. Still, scant notice was taken by outside bodies, notwithstanding the results. In March, 1907, Lord Scarbrough, Chairman of the Niger Company, told the shareholders that during the previous 15 months 240 tons of tin oxide, of £30,000 value, had been obtained from the Naraguta property, and the following year a corresponding amount was won. It was effected without machinery, by the antiquated methods of ground sluicing and calabashing.
Not until 1910 did the possibilities of the tin fields attract the consideration which has since given them so much prominence. At this point the wider question is left for future treatment, as I do not purpose now writing a full account of the short history of tin-mining in Northern Nigeria.
The policy of the Niger Company appears to have been only to develop a mine until other people saw the thing “good enough” to take up. That is the rôle of its mining staff, which have headquarters at Jos, quite distinct and some little distance from the trading store. I believe that all the earlier properties have been disposed of, but the further potentialities of the country are still being tested in various directions.
It may be asked why the Niger Company gives to second parties, even by sale, the opportunity of making a profit which it might itself reap. Whilst I am no more empowered than any other investigator to speak for the Company, I should say that the reason is the one stated above. No doubt the Company is only on the threshold of the advance to be made in trading development—trading in agricultural, sylvan, and other produce—in Southern and Northern Nigeria, and to do that adequately is, to use an inelegant but expressive term, to bite off as much as it can chew. The fact should be remembered that it gains by everyone’s prosperity.
On surrendering the Charter, the Government agreed to give the Company half of its 5 per cent. royalty on the export of all minerals. Besides the river and road transport, prosperous communities, white and black, mean increased trade for the stores, for although there are a number of such new arrivals in Northern Nigeria the Niger Company maintains an incalculably premier position.
Present regulations for mining are explained in the next chapter.
The health of every white man on a mine in Northern Nigeria is a serious matter for each owning company. Flesh and blood is not as cheap as in some parts of industrial Britain; it cannot be replaced at a day’s notice and to an illimitable extent. A man, whether he be manager or in any intermediate grade to the most junior rank, is brought out at no little expense. If he becomes altogether incapacitated at an early stage of his service the persons in whose engagement he is lose what the double journey costs, for he will probably not have rendered sufficient work to recoup them; whilst if he goes temporarily on the sick list as long as he remains there he, of course, is not earning anything for the firm which has paid his expenses. Men of use in Northern Nigeria are therefore valuable, as horses are where it costs money to replace them, though perhaps in the same place there is so great a supply of human animals that their living or dying is of no economic consequence.
The question is put at its lowest commercial basis so that the importance of health may be seen from every point of view, and in setting the position in that light I rely on my meaning not being misinterpreted to read that men in the service of mines are only rated as horses. I desire to show that a mine—or, for the matter of that, any other employing concern—in most cases loses by the breakdown of a member of the staff. Here the mines’ employees are alone being dealt with.
Were the tin fields camps clustered in one or two small areas the problem would be easy of solution. They are not. They are scattered over the country, in some instances more than a week’s journey by road from one another. Special medical provision for the mining staff is therefore not an easy programme to carry out unless a fairly large number of doctors were appointed, and at present the quantity of men who might require their attention is too few to justify that course. There are the Government medical officers, but they are stationed where they can be of most use to officials, and that may be 30 miles or more from a mine camp.