Chapter II: The Cotton Industry

Is Nigeria a cotton-growing country? Is an export trade in cotton, of any large dimensions, a possibility—early or remote? I will endeavour to answer these questions to the best of my ability. I am not, however, an expert on cotton-growing, and I am in general sympathy with the work the British Cotton-growing Association is trying to carry out, although, as will be seen, I am not entirely in agreement with all its methods, either here or in Nigeria. To that extent it will be possible for any one who wants to do so to discount the views here expressed.

One of the earliest impressions one forms out there is the contrast between the presentation of the case at home and conditions on the spot. The view at home—somewhat modified by recent events—has seemed to be inspired by the idea that if the number of square miles which Nigeria covers is totted up in one column and the number of inhabitants it supposedly contains in another and these totals compared with conditions in the cotton belt of North America, then you arrive at a conclusion which enables you to speak of the “huge possibilities” of Nigeria, and even to forecast that Northern Nigeria alone “at some future date” will be able “to supply the whole of the requirements of Great Britain and to leave an equal quantity over for the other cotton-consuming countries.” Four years ago a prominent British statesman declared publicly that “once the fly belt near the river was passed ... cotton would be grown under exactly the same conditions as it was grown under on such a great scale in America.” He went so far as to say that the native of Northern Nigeria was “beginning to cease to grow cotton” because he could get British manufactured goods in lieu of his home-grown article. Well, between these statements and actualities there is a “huge” gulf fixed. In the first place it can be said of Nigeria that in a part of it only is cotton now grown, and that in a part of it only will cotton ever be grown. To talk of Nigeria, as a whole, being a cotton-growing country _par excellence_, either now or potentially, is absurd. Three-fourths of Southern Nigeria and a third, probably more, of Northern Nigeria are quite unsuitable for cotton-growing, and this for many reasons. To talk of Nigeria supplying the whole requirements of Great Britain (to say nothing of the promised surplus) is tantamount to saying that some day “Pleasant Sunday Afternoon” excursions to the moon will be a regular feature of the national life. Both may become possible “at some future date,” but there is so much future about the date that such flights of rhetoric might well be left to the compilers of gold-mining prospectuses. These extravagances have not helped the Association. The sincere and sober persons connected with that body are merely hindered by them. As to cotton being produced in Northern Nigeria under the “same conditions” as in the States, and the natives of the country “beginning to cease” to grow cotton, one can only remark that they are too silly to deal with.

In Southern Nigeria, the deltaic region, the Eastern Province, virtually the whole of the Central Province, and a considerable portion of the Western Province—_i.e._, four-fifths of the whole Protectorate—may be ruled out of account as a cotton field. The deltaic region will not produce cotton. The forest belt behind it, passing (with occasional breaks) from dense to secondary growth and fading away into open country, no doubt would. But only if you cut down the forest first. To destroy the West African forest to any extent in order to grow cotton would be economic madness. Indeed, the Administration is working hard to preserve the forests from the ignorance and improvidence of primitive man, and to build up for the native communities, and in the public interest, a source of future revenue from the methodical exploitation of its inexhaustible wealth. With trifling exceptions the whole of this region is the home of the oil-palm, the most beneficent tree in the world, and such activities as the inhabitants can spare from their own requirements are given over, in the main, to the palm oil and kernel trades. It is the home of valuable cabinet woods, of vegetable oils, gums, and rubbers, and in time is likely to become a great natural nursery for the cultivation of plantation rubber and such a moisture-loving plant as the cocoa; never, I think, of cotton.

In the Western Province large areas of forest have been destroyed; the population is, in a certain measure, more enterprising, and a fair amount of cotton for export may reasonably be expected, especially, I venture to suggest, if certain methods now prevalent are modified. The Egba district (1869 square miles, with a population of 260,000), the capital of which is Abeokuta, a town of about 100,000 inhabitants, is the principal but not the only centre for cotton-growing in the Western Province, and here the Association has a large and well-equipped ginnery, as it has at Ibadan and Oshogbo. Out of 2,237,370 lbs. of lint cotton exported from Southern Nigeria in 1908, Abeokuta and neighbourhood was responsible for 722,893 lbs. The Egbas are good farmers and not strangers to cotton-growing for export. The industry owes its origin there to a Manchester man, Mr. Clegg, who introduced it at the time of the American Civil War. In 1862 the export amounted to 1810 lbs., rising in 1868 to over 200,000 lbs., and continuing, I believe, at that figure or thereabouts for some years. Cotton then began to fall heavily in price, and the Egba farmer, finding no profit in growing it, turned his attention to other crops. The industry was revived on a much larger scale by the Association in 1905. The exports of cotton lint from Southern Nigeria from 1906 to 1910—_i.e._ since the Association came upon the scene—have been as follows:—

1906 2,695,923
1907 4,089,530
1908 2,237,370
1909 4,929,646
1910 2,399,857

The total value of these five years’ output amounts to something like £350,000. It is entirely creditable to the Association that it should have been instrumental in reviving a decayed industry in one district and creating one in others, and in five years to have fathered an export of cotton to so considerable an amount. I found the best-informed opinion in Southern Nigeria imbued with the belief that the 1911 crop will be a poor one, though better than last year’s, but that the prospects for the crop of 1912 are good. The newly opened ginnery at Oshogbo is said to be doing well. The ginnery at Oyo, however, is apparently lying idle. At any rate, it had done nothing, I was there informed, ever since it was put up, some four years ago. A good deal seems to have been spent upon the experimental plantation at Ibadan, with indifferent results. It has now been taken over by the Government, whose officers, I was informed, found it in a very neglected condition.

Personally, I do not attach, in a sense unfavourable to the growth of the industry, much importance to the drop in the output. The field, it must always be remembered, is small, the entire Western Province being only 27,640 miles square, and much of it, as already stated, covered with forest. In West Africa new industries are always liable to violent fluctuations. The drop in the maize export is much more considerable than the falling off in cotton. Unfavourable seasons, too much rain or too little, late sowing, and other considerations play a determining part in these matters. Things move very slowly in West Africa as a rule. The cotton crop is not the easiest to handle. Compared with ground nuts, for instance, it entails a great deal more time and trouble. All kinds of obstacles have to be encountered and overcome which people at home have difficulty in fully appreciating. The experimental stage of any enterprise, especially in a place like West Africa, is bound to leave openings for error, and error in West Africa is a costly luxury. The Protectorate is under considerable obligations to the Association for the good work it has done and is doing.

It seems to me that the British Cotton-growing Association may perhaps find it advisable, so far as the Western Province of Southern Nigeria is concerned, to reconsider two aspects of its policy. Fundamentally that policy is without question sound—viz. the recognition that agricultural development in West Africa can only be possible on any scale worth mentioning when undertaken by the natives themselves. A policy of large plantations run under white supervision by hired native labour will not pay in West Africa, and, politically speaking, is virtually impossible. The Association should receive public support in resisting any pressure which might be placed upon it to alter its fundamental policy by those of its supporters who may be impatient of a comparatively slow advance—slow, _i.e._, in comparison with the unwise optimism displayed by some of the Association’s friends upon public platforms. I doubt, however, if an export trade in cotton will ever reach substantial proportions—let us say 100,000 bales per annum twenty years hence—in the Western Province unless the element of competition is introduced. Hitherto, by combining with the merchants, the Association has established a fixed buying price. In the initial stages this was a good thing. The native farmer wanted the certainty that his crop would be purchased if he were induced to grow it. Now that the industry is well on in its stride it may be seriously questioned whether the Yoruba farmer, the certainty of sale notwithstanding, will be content with the prices offered him under the monopoly agreement now obtaining. He has always the oil palm to fall back upon; but he has, in addition, cocoa and maize. Cocoa is rapidly increasing, and the profit realized by the cultivator is a good one. The timber trade, too, is growing slowly, and the forest is always yielding fresh elements of trade. The bulk of the cotton produced in the Western Province to-day is roughly similar to “middling American,” which is now quoted, I believe, at 8_d._ a pound, but some of the Yoruba cotton fetches up to 3_d._ above “middling American.” It is asserted by the Association that 4 lbs. of seed cotton are required in the Western Province to produce 1 lb. of lint. The native cultivator is (now) supposed to get from the combine—_i.e._ from the Association and the merchants, as the case may be—from 1d. to 1⅛_d._ per lb. of seed cotton. I say “supposed,” because I was informed that the actual producer had not always got the amount which he was understood to be getting. As regards Northern Nigeria, until the close of last year the native had never been paid 1_d._ a lb. cash, and I was given to understand that conditions had been much the same in the Southern Protectorate, except at Ilushi, where it was proved to my satisfaction that the amount of 1_d._ cash had actually been paid.

The Association reckons, I understand, that at this rate every pound of lint landed in Liverpool costs the Association 6½_d._ I cannot check that figure. I merely quote it. But one may point out that in addition to the profit at the present price of “middling American” disclosed by this estimate, there must be a considerable profit to the Association on the seed, which, upon arrival in England, is worth, I believe, between £5 and £6 per ton. Moreover, as already stated, some of this Yoruba cotton is fetching a higher price than “middling American,” and I do not think it is beyond the mark to say that, but for the fact that the Association’s ginneries are not continuously employed, the Association’s profits on Southern Nigerian cotton to-day would be substantial. It must be fairly obvious from what precedes that if the industry were placed upon an ordinary commercial footing like any other, with merchants competing on the spot for the raw material, the Yoruba farmer would have no difficulty in obtaining very much more than he gets at present for his crop. Cultivation, under those circumstances, would become proportionately more profitable and a greater acreage would be laid out in cotton. No doubt it would cut both ways, the native restricting his acreage when the price fell, but it may be fairly argued that no special reason now exists for treating the cotton industry on an artificial basis, that it must take its chance like any other, and like any other become subject to ordinary economic ups and downs. We cannot expect the native farmer to concentrate upon one particular crop if he can make a greater profit in cultivating another. No industry can develop healthily on artificial lines. If this suggestion were thought worthy of consideration, the Association’s _rôle_ could be confined to ginning, and, if asked to do so, selling on commission, or that _rôle_ might be combined with buying and selling in cases where the producers preferred to deal with the Association, or found it more convenient to carry the cotton direct to the various ginneries. That, no doubt, would force the Association into competition with the merchants, and the merchants, bringing out their own gins (if it paid them to do so), might cause the Association’s position to become precarious. The first alternative would, therefore, appear the most desirable, the merchants being the buyers and the Association, the ginners, and, if necessary, sellers on commission. Each force would then be operating within its natural orbit, and an unnatural alliance would cease, unnatural in the sense that one price means one market, and that one market is not an inducement to economic expansion, especially when the price of other tropical products produced by the Yoruba farmer with an open free market to deal in has been steadily rising during the last few years. The Association has always contended that its primary object is not money making, but the establishment in our oversea dependencies of an Imperial cotton industry calculated in the course of time to relieve Lancashire, in whole or in part, of her dangerous dependence on American speculators.

The other point which those responsible for the management of the Association might conceivably think over, is one that impressed me in Northern Nigeria when inspecting the beautifully kept cotton plantations in the Kano and Zaria provinces. I was later on to find that it was one upon which very strong, though not unanimous, opinions were held by persons of experience and judgment in the Southern Protectorate. A great deal of energy, and doubtless money too, is apparently expended by the Association in experimenting with and distributing seeds of non-indigenous varieties of cotton. Now, although one cannot say without careful cultivation, speaking of the north, one can at least say without perpetually improving scientific cultivation extending over a century, Nigeria is able to produce indigenous cotton, fetching to-day 1¼_d._, 2_d._, and even 3_d._ per lb. above “middling American.” Does not this fact constitute the strongest of pleas for concentrating upon the improvement of the indigenous varieties instead of distributing effort by worrying about the introduction of exotics? If these indigenous plants, without a century’s scientific care, can produce cotton superior in value to “middling American,” what could they not do with a tithe of the attention which has been lavished upon the industry in the States? I know the experts will argue that the indigenous varieties make a lot more wood, and that an acre planted with American varieties will yield much more lint than an acre planted with a Nigerian variety. Not being an expert I would not venture to dispute this. All that I would make bold to query would be whether experiments tending to prove it have in Nigeria been sufficiently continuous and carried out under conditions of fairness to the indigenous cotton sufficiently conclusive to place the matter beyond the pale of discussion. Even if this were so, I am not sure that it could be taken as an irrefutable reply to the contention I have ventured to put forward. For, on the other side, must be reckoned the diseases which invariably attack all exotics, animal, vegetable, and human, introduced into the West African forest region. At every halt on my trek from Riga-Chikum to Kano, a matter of twelve days, wherever I saw cotton plantations, and often enough at points on the road, I made it my business whenever practicable to put a number of questions to the Sarikis (chiefs) and to individual farmers on the subject of cotton-growing. I always prefaced these questions with an assurance that I did not belong to the Government and that I was not a commercial man, but merely a Mallam (I believe my interpreter sometimes inserted on his own account the word “wise” before Mallam), who travelled about and wrote “books,” and that my friends could therefore feel satisfied that they would not be causing me any pleasure at all by answering my questions in any particular manner—that, in short, I did not care a row of yams what their answer might be. One question I never failed to ask was whether the Government had distributed seed to that particular village or in that particular area, and if so, what result had followed the sowing of it? Sometimes the answer was in the negative. When it was in the affirmative it was invariably the same. The Government seed had come. It had been sown. But it was “no good.” Now, I disclaim all attributes of wisdom in this matter of cotton. But I beg you to believe me when I say that the Hausa farmer is no fool.[14]