I have frequently asked employers of labour in England whether they were satisfied with the work done for them by their day labourers, and while they readily allowed for exceptions, yet they spoke strongly of such men as “doing as little as possible for their pay.” Every branch of work that it is possible to give out as piece-work is nowadays so arranged. Why? The masters are satisfied, for they get done that for which they pay; the men are better pleased, for they receive what they earn, and the quickest and most industrious man gains the largest pay, and his superior energy is not balanced against the laziest man in the shop. Let us do justice to the black man. He is the only one who in such a climate can work long hours at a time, and for months at a stretch. All the evidences of civilization on the Congo are the results of his energy and endurance directed by his white master. He is, however, no fonder of work than the average white man; but like the latter he is willing to labour to increase his comforts in the house, his prestige in the village, and to meet his obligations as a man, a husband, and a father, for each relationship makes its own demands on his resources. In 1890 we opened our Mission station at Monsembe, but previous to our arrival the natives had not had sufficient intercourse with white people either to increase their arts and industries or even to modify them by the introduction of new methods or new tools. The natives then were as they had been for many a generation, and their manufactures were limited by the materials at their disposal. In judging of the merits or demerits of the manufactures of a tribe, it is necessary to take into consideration the materials to be obtained in their district and the tools with which they are compelled, by force of circumstances, to do their work. Suppose the Lancashire people were restricted in their manufactures to such material as they could obtain from the surface of their county, and the small supplies that filtered through to them from the adjacent counties by laborious and costly transport over the hills, or by canoes on their rushing streams, we should hear nothing of the cotton mills, the weaving, the iron works, etc., of that industrious and hardy folk. It is what has been brought into the county, what has been dug from the bowels of its land, and the machinery and tools that have been imported into it that have given Lancashire the place it rightly holds in the commercial and industrial world. And what has been written of Lancashire can also be said of many another county in Great Britain, and should be recognized when judging of the merits or demerits of the arts and crafts of an African tribe.