This page has been validated.
BRITISH SOUTH AFRICA COMPANY
573

modern and scientific methods of drying and curing the leaf be acquired by the settler who proposes to make of his industry a good thing for himself and the country. Cooperation must here, again, come into play, for the provision of necessary plant would entail very heavy outlay on the individual if he had to bear it alone. Moreover, no new settler is likely to cultivate on a sufficiently large scale to make effective sole use of such plant, even if he were able to provide it. A settlers' Government might very profitably to itself establish public tobacco factories, to which growers would resort; and this possibility goes still further in recommending Rhodesia for Imperial land settlement.

Cotton, easily cultivated, and providing by its 'residue' admirable winter forage for stock, would form a specialized crop peculiarly suitable for the pastoralist with some arable land, and the cotton planter would enjoy the further knowledge that his labour, profitable to himself and advantageous to his new Homeland, was also actively sustaining a great British industry, entailing the employment of thousands of his kith and kin in England. The British South Africa Company last year took a step calculated greatly to help the establishment of cotton culture in Rhodesia. Up to mid-December (the latest date for sowing cotton seed in this Colony) the Company supplied to every bona fide applicant cotton seed at the rate of 6 pounds to 1 acre, for as large an acreage as the settler was prepared to cultivate in accordance with the directions sent for that purpose. It further promised to purchase any resultant crop at the rate of ½d. per pound, carrying all such cotton free of charge to Salisbury, where it is to be ginned, packed, and despatched to England. The above rate would yield a profit of £1 17s. 6d. per acre.

Other specialized crops, on which there is not here space to dilate, offer equally favourable returns, and there is little doubt that for the Englishman of small capital, unable to prosper in the crowded Homeland, yet properly unwilling to go out from the British family,