ver the part of trustee and became the Arab raider he could not
waste his time, which, he had good reason to fear, might be short,
upon products that, if fostered, would be of value only in later
years. Still less time had he to give to improvements that cost
money and that would be of benefit to his successors. He wanted only
rubber; he wanted it at once, and he cared not at all how he
obtained it. So he spun, and still spins, the greatest of all
"get-rich-quick" schemes; one of gigantic proportions, full of
tragic, monstrous, nauseous details.

The only possible way to obtain rubber is through the native; as
yet, in teeming forests, the white man can not work and live. Of
even Chinese coolies imported here to build a railroad ninety per
cent. died. So, with a stroke of the pen, Leopold declared all the
rubber in the country the property of the "State," and then, to make
sure that the natives would work it, ordered that taxes be paid in
rubber. If, once a month (in order to keep the natives steadily at
work the taxes were ordered to be paid each month instead of once a
year), each village did not bring in so many baskets of rubber the
King's cannibal soldiers raided it, carried off the women as
hostages, and made prisoners of the men, or killed and ate them. For
every kilo of rubber brought in in excess of the quota the King's
agent, who received the collected rubber and forwarded it down the
river, was paid a commission. Or was "paid by results." Another
bonus was given him based on the price at which he obtained the
rubber. If he paid the native only six cents for every two pounds,
he received a bonus of three cents, the cost to the State being but
nine cents per kilo, but, if he paid the natives twelve cents for
every two pounds, he received as a bonus less than one cent. In a
word, the more rubber the agent collected the more he personally
benefited, and if he obtained it "cheaply" or for nothing--that is,
by taking hostages, making prisoners, by the whip of hippopotamus
hide, by torture--so much greater his fortune, so much richer
Leopold.

[Illustration: A Village on the Kasai River.]

Few schemes devised have been more cynical, more devilish, more
cunningly designed to incite a man to cruelty and abuse. To
dishonesty it was an invitation and a reward. It was this system of
"payment by results," evolved by Leopold sooner than allow his
agents a fixed and sufficient wage, that led to the atrocities.

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