Читать книгу Around the Black Sea. Asia Minor, Armenia, Caucasus, Circassia, Daghestan, the Crimea, Roumania онлайн

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The experimental plantations on the west coast of Africa have also been a disappointment for similar reasons. In the British possessions on both coasts of Africa are millions of available acres for planting cotton, but they lie idle because there are no hands to cultivate them. The native African will not work. He and his ancestors have managed to survive until the present day without labour, and it is difficult to persuade him that the curse pronounced upon our common father applies to him as it does to other human beings. Nature has supplied him with sufficient food thus far and he cannot be induced to go into the cotton fields to earn money that he has no use for.

These facts, which have given the manufacturers of Manchester great concern, are the reasons for the interest they are taking in the development of Mesopotamia, and several schemes have been proposed for colonizing there the excess of human life in Italy that has been going to the United States and the Argentine Republic. It has also been suggested that the Jews, who are not wanted in Russia and Roumania, might also be induced to settle in Mesopotamia. These plans, however, will not be realized for the present. The members of the Turkish cabinet are so timid about granting concessions for more necessary public works that it seems scarcely worth while to seek their approval of such a comprehensive plan as Sir William Willcocks has offered. So long as they cannot be induced to give concessions for telephones, electric lights, electric cars, and other public conveniences in their own capital, it is not likely that they would authorize the expenditure of $40,000,000 in reclaiming an uninhabited desert.