When asked:  “Under your concessions are you given similar powers over the native blacks as are enjoyed by other concessionaires?” the answer of the attorney, as reported, was:  “The problem of labor is not mentioned in the concession agreement, neither is the question of local administration.  We are left to solve the labor problem in our own way, on a purely commercial basis, and with the question of government we have absolutely nothing whatever to do.  The labor problem will not be formidable.  Our mills are simple affairs.  One man can manage them, and the question of the labor on the rubber concession is reduced to the minimum.”  This answer of the learned attorney shows an ignorance of “labor” conditions in the Congo which is, unless assumed, absolutely abject.

If the American syndicates are not to police and govern the territories ceded them, but if these territories are to continue to be administered by Leopold, it is not possible for the Americans to have “absolutely nothing to do” with that administration.  Leopold’s sole idea of administration is that every black man is his slave, in other words, the only men the Americans can depend upon for labor are slaves.  Of the profits of these American companies Leopold is to receive one-half.  He will work his rubber with slaves.

Are the Americans going to use slaves also, or do they intend “on commercial lines” to pay those who work for them living wages?  And if they do, at the end of the fiscal year, having paid a fair price for labor, are they prepared to accept a smaller profit than will their partner Leopold, who obtains his labor with the aid of a chain and a whip?

 [Illustration:  The Laboring Man Upon Whom the American
 Concessionaires Must Depend.]

The attorney for the company airily says:  “The labor problem will not be formidable.”

If the man knows what he is talking about, he can mean but one thing.

The motives that led Leopold to grant these concessions are possibly various.  The motives that induced the Americans to take his offer were probably less complicated.  With them it was no question of politics.  They wanted the money; they did not need it, for they all are rich—­they merely wanted it.  But Leopold wants more than the half profits he will obtain from the Americans.  If the Powers should wake from their apathy and try to cast him out of the Congo, he wants, through his American partners, the help of the United States.  Should he be “dethroned,” by granting these concessions now on a share and share alike basis with Belgians, French, and Americans, he still, through them, hopes to draw from the Congo a fair income.  And in the meanwhile he looks to these Americans to kill any action against him that may be taken in our Senate and House of Representatives, even in the White House and Department of State.