Mr. Creswick has a high opinion of Krumen working in the mines, and has found sundry of them to develop into excellent mechanics. The men want only good management. Under six Europeans, himself included, he employs a hundred hands, and from eight to ten mechanics. The first headman draws 37s. 6d., the second 22s., full-grown labourers 18s., and 'small boys' from 4s. to 6s. and 9s.
Mechanics' wages range between 1l. 5s. and 4l. All have rations or 'subsistence,' which here means 3d. a day.
Mr. MacLennan has a few Fanti miners, whom he pays at the rate of 6d. per half-day. His full muster of Krumen is 120; the headmen receive 27s. 6d., rising, after six months, to 35s. The first class of common boys get 20s.; the second from 13s. 6d. to 15s.; and the third, mostly 'small boys,' between 5s. and 10s. His carpenters and blacksmiths, who are Gold Coasters and Sierra Leonites, draw from 2l. 10s. to 3l. The rations are, as usual, 1-1/2 lb. of rice per day, with 1 lb. of 'Sunday beef,' whose brine is converted into salt.
Mr. A. Bowden, manager of the Tákwá and Abosu Mines, also employs a 'mixed multitude.' His Sierra Leone carpenters and blacksmiths draw 3l. 10s. to 4l. 10s. per month without rations, and his native mechanics 3l. to 3l. 10s. The Fanti labourers are paid, as usual, a shilling per diem and find themselves. The Kruboys, besides being lodged and fed (1-1/2 lb. rice per day and 1 lb. beef or fish per week), draw in money as follows: headman, 2l.; second ditto, 1l. 7s. to 1l. 12s.; miners, 18s. to 20s. and labourers 9s. to 16s.
This state of the labour-market is, I have said, purely provisional. It will not outlast the time when the present concessions are in full exploitation; and this condition of things I hope soon to see. We can then draw from the neighbouring countries, from Yoruba to the north-east, and perhaps, but this is doubtful, from the Baasás [Footnote: A manly and powerful race, who call themselves Americans and will have nothing to do with the English.] and the Drewins to the west. But we must come, sooner or later, and the sooner the better, to a regular coolie-immigration, East African, Indian, and Chinese.
The benefit of such an influx must not be measured merely by the additional work of a few thousand hands. It will at once create jealousy, competition, rivalry. It will teach by example—the only way of teaching Africans—that work is not ignoble, but that it is ignoble to earn a shilling and to live idle on three-pence a day till the pence are exhausted. Its advantages will presently be felt along the whole western coast, and men will wonder why it was not thought of before. The French, as they are wont to do in these days, have set us an example. Already in early 1882 the papers announced that a first cargo of 178 Chinese—probably from Cochin-China—had been landed at Saint-Louis de Senegal for the proposed Senegambian railway.
The details of such an immigration and the measures which it will require do not belong to this place. Suffice it to say that we can draw freely upon the labour-banks of Macáo, Bombay, and Zanzibar. The intelligent, thrifty, and industrious Chinese will learn mining here, as they have learnt it elsewhere, with the utmost readiness. The 'East Indian' will be well adapted for lighter work of the garden and the mines. Finally, the sturdy Wásawahili of the East African coast will do, as carriers and labourers, three times the work of Pantis and Apollonians.
I need hardly say that Captain Cameron and I would like nothing better than to organise a movement of this kind; we would willingly do more good to the West African coast than the whole tribe of its so-called benefactors.