at work in their gardens. In the Congo native villages I saw but one
old person, of chickens or goats that were not to be given to the
government as taxes I saw none, and the vegetable gardens, when
there were any such, were cultivated for the benefit of the _chef de
poste_, and the huts were small, temporary, and filthy. The dogs in
the kennels on my farm are better housed, better fed, and much
better cared for, whether ill or well, than are the twenty millions
of blacks along the Congo River. And that these human beings are so
ill-treated is due absolutely to the cupidity of one man, and to the
apathy of the rest of the world. And it is due as much to the apathy
and indifference of whoever may read this as to the silence of Elihu
Root or Sir Edward Grey. No one can shirk his responsibility by
sneering, "Am I my brother's keeper?" The Government of the United
States and the thirteen other countries have promised to protect
these people, to care for their "material and moral welfare," and
that promise is morally binding upon the people of those countries.
How much Leopold cares for the material welfare of the natives is
illustrated by the prices he pays the "boys" who worked on the
government steamer in which I went up the Kasai. They were bound on
a three months' voyage, and for each month's work on this trip they
were given in payment their rice and eighty cents. That is, at the
end of the trip they received what in our money would be equivalent
to two dollars and forty cents. And that they did not receive in
money, but in "trade goods," which are worth about ten per cent less
than their money value. So that of the two dollars and eighty cents
that is due them, these black boys, who for three months sweated in
the dark jungle cutting wood, are robbed by this King of twenty-four
cents. One would dislike to grow rich at that price.

[Illustration: English Missionaries, and Some of Their Charges.]

In the French Congo I asked the traders at Libreville what they paid
their boys for cutting mahogany. I found the price was four francs a
day without "chop," or three and a half francs with "chop." That
is, on one side of the river the French pay in cash for one day's
work what Leopold pays in trade goods for the work of a month. As a
result the natives run away to the French side, and often, I might
almost say invariably, when at the _poste de bois_ on the Congo side
we would find two cords of wood, on the other bank at th