pulse of the prosperity of each district; similarly, the municipalities should report to him the trade done in the towns under their control.
In addition, the Government, that is to say, the Grand Council, should take over the monopoly of the tobacco import and the timber export. By using tobacco in the same way as European governments use coinage, an immense revenue could be very cheaply obtained. The Grand Council should sell the tobacco to the individual traders who work the West African markets, allowing no other tobacco to be used in the trade; this revenue also could be collected in Europe.
The timber industry should, I think, be under governmental control, both for the sake of providing the Government with revenue and for the sake of protecting the forests from destruction in those districts where forest destruction is a danger to the common weal, by weakening the forest barriers against the Sahara.
The return that the Government should make for these monopolies to the independent trader should be, among other things, transport. In the course of a few years the Government would have in hand a sufficient surplus to build a pier across the Gold Coast surf. It is possible to build piers across the West Coast surf, for the French have done it. I would not advocate one great and mighty pier, that ocean-going steamers could go alongside, for all the Gold Coast ports, but a set of T-headed piers where surf boats or lighters could discharge, and the employment of stout steam tugs to tow surf boats and lighters to and fro between the lighters and the pier.
Then again, every mile of available waterway inland should be utilised, and patrolled by Government cargo
