PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
Reference :-
PLEC.O. 885
ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC- COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH—NOT TO
20 PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
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No. 47.
EAST AFRICA PROTECTORATÉ.
THE GOVERNOR to THE SECRETARY OF STATE.
(No. 505.)
SIR,
*
(Received 7 October, 1911.)
Government House, Nairobi, British East Africa,
September 8th, 1911.
I HAVE the honour to acknowledge the receipt of your despatch, No. 376, of the 12th of July, enclosing a letter from Captain Warwick setting forth his views on various questions connected with big game shooting in this Protectorate.
2. I enclose herewith a memorandum by the Game Warden, in which the points raised by Captain Warwick are categorically dealt with, and with which I am in complete accord.
3. I would venture to suggest that it is open to Captain Warwick to ventilate his opinions through the usual channels, if he so desires, and I submit that such incursions into the realm of official correspondence are to be deprecated.
I have, &c.,
E. P. C. GIROUARD,
Governor.
Enclosure in No. 47.
MEMORANDUM.
I have read Captain Warwick's letter with astonishment, as it is a useless compilation of impracticable theories by a pessimist who is evidently lamentably inexperienced in the conditions obtaining in Africa, especially British East Africa, and who is unable to deal with natives. I treat with suspicion these spontaneous outbursts of administrative genius founded upon two or three short shooting expeditions.
2. With regard to Captain Warwick's preliminary statements :-
(a) There can be no doubt of the genuineness of his intentions, and the denial
seems rather unnecessary.
(b and c) It would appear to the ordinary reader that the greater part of this letter is devoted to decreasing the worry and expenses and increasing the comfort of the visiting sportsman, thus entailing direct additional expense and trouble to the Government, as is suggested on the second page of his letter.
3. I will now deal seriatim with the other points raised in the letter.
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arrang-
4. The highest figure derived from the issue of game licences in this Protec torate is last year's total of £10,666, and not £50,000, as is stated by Captain Warwick; and although this sum forms a very acceptable addition to the revenue, it is not of such importance as Captain Warwick imagines. It is worthy of remark that he himself inconsistently points this out very clearly in the last paragraph of his letter. Nevertheless, the Government is fully alive to the desirability of conserving this valuable asset, and a special Game Department has been organised for this purpose, but it not unreasonably declines to take upon itself the burden of ing matters for shooters" thereby withdrawing from the public, for whose welfare Captain Warwick is so much concerned, a considerable and legitimate trade, and at the same time lowering itself to the level of a trading organisation. I consider that it is doing an injustice to the agents who fit out shooting parties to say that they fleece visiting sportsmen. A shooting expedition de luxe is necessarily an expensive amusement, and it must be borne in mind that visitors who have no experi- ence of the country, and who cannot speak the native language, are bound to pay for these services. It is my experience that most of the visiting sportsmen who come to British East Africa are very well satisfied with the results of their expedi- tions, and with the way in which they have been treated. This is borne out by the
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• Transmitter of No. 38.
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numbers who revisit the Protectorate, or become residents, and by the steady increase of revenue from licences.
5. I am given to understand that the personal attention given by officials to Captain Warwick during his visit would necessitate almost a duplicate staff being engaged if the same assistance were to be bestowed upon all visiting sportsmen. Even this was apparently not sufficient to relieve Captain Warwick of the troubles and extortions of his boys, as he himself admits.
6. The petty details connected with the transport of porters, and the engage- ment of personal servants of a shooting expedition, are very considerable, and, indeed, far greater than can be carried out profitably under the routine of practical govern- ment, and would not only necessitate a special staff, but cause great ill-feeling. The comparison with Portuguese East Africa is not a very happy one, as the methods adopted by the Portuguese in their treatment of the natives are neither worthy of imitation nor likely to find favour with Englishmen, and are diametrically opposed to the ideas of British Colonial policy. I consider that any form of State-controlled labour which attempts to fix a maximum wage, which I understand Captain Warwick to mean, is greatly to be deprecated.
7. In the next three paragraphs Captain Warwick describes the failure of the very system, namely, the engagement of boys by Government, which he has previously advocated, and that, too, from no fault of the Government, but because he was him- self unable to resist the temptation of paying " for the sake of peace, and to avoid loss of time." From this confession it is easy to see the real impracticability of his pro- posed regulations for recruiting labour. We may picture the arrival at Mombasa of a steamer with half a dozen shooting parties on board all frantically hurrying to catch the first train up country to escape the so-called deadly coast belt. We need not picture these six shooting parties all trying to make " arrangements with regard to boys and porters through the Chief Transport Officer at Mombasa," as suggested by Captain Warwick. We will take a more likely and favourable view, and presume that such transport arrangements were soon found to be impossible at the coast, and that they have been transferred to Nairobi, whence most of the shooting parties make a start. Even here the most efficient labour office could not supply single-handed the number of porters required by six shooting parties (all of whom, of course, wish to start at once), unless some 500 porters were kept permanently on hand at a cost which would be absolutely prohibitive. Now, it is hardly necessary to ask whether these six shooting parties would wait patiently in Nairobi for several weeks, or accept the slightly higher terms for porters which would probably be offered by the various local agents. It is obvious that they would pay " for the sake of peace, and to avoid loss of time." This has a reflex action, and means, shortly, that the agents could offer higher wages than the Government Transport Office, and could, therefore, obtain more labour. Such would be the state of affairs under Captain Warwick's regula- tions, and the only means of avoiding it would be to pass two laws one prohibiting sportsmen from engaging boys except through the Government, and the other making it illegal for agents to offer higher wages than the Government. Both regulations would be considered highly tyrannical by sportsmen and agents respectively, and I do not think could be approved by Government.
8. Captain Warwick does not tell us if the settlers are to engage their labour through the same Transport Office or privately, paying wages in proportion to the demand and supply of labour as at present. A Government Transport Office, from which alone all labour could be engaged at a fixed maximum wage, appears highly satisfactory at first sight, and is so in theory. In actual practice it would inevitably lead to the chaos which Captain Warwick warns us the present freedom in the labour market will produce. The unavoidable delays and congestion in such a Transport Office would probably lead to something approaching a revolution.
As it is, under present conditions the several agents who fit out shooting parties are able to cope with the situation, and visiting sportsmen will never be so well or quickly served under any other system, while the settler who treats his natives properly can obtain all the labour he requires except in a few isolated districts. In criticising the conditions of labour in this Protectorate, and assuming that the higher wages paid by shooting parties will eventually rob the settlers of their labour supply, Captain Warwick displays complete ignorance of the true state of affairs. The shooting parties and the settlers draw their labour supplies from quite different sources, and there is no question of competition between them.
The shooting parties employ as porters almost entirely Wanyamwezi, and a few
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