In the Gold Coast the German Basel Mission leads the way with engaging vigour in the matter of industrial missions. The commercial section of the Mission includes industrial training institutes, and nothing could be more pleasing than the interest and energy with which the natives devote themselves to cabinet work, coach-building, and agricultural pursuits; but the main activities of this department are those of the ordinary African merchant with the exception that the agents are forbidden to sell spirituous liquors. This branch of the work, which is conducted by twenty-three “mercantile” missionaries, is in every respect admirable. One of the leading railway managers remarked to me that, “The most business-like commercial house in the colony is the Basel Mission; their men always know how many trucks they will require, their trolleys are to time, their goods properly bagged and labelled, and their whole organization so smart and up-to-date that they never dislocate the traffic.” There can be little doubt that the attention given to business by the representatives of the Mission is due to the type of white men they can command—none are accepted unless they agree to make their employment a matter of conscience, and develop their commercial undertakings with the same motive as that which animates their spiritual brethren, with whom they share all things in common, with the exception of salaries, those of the mercantile brethren being considerably higher and based, to some extent, upon returns. The white agents are assisted by coloured men in charge of branches, many of whom can show a record of service extending from 12 to 15 years, and some of them are now drawing salaries—including commission—of £500 per annum. These men are to be found on Sundays teaching in the Sunday schools, and preaching at the out-stations of the Mission. [Illustration: INTERIOR OF MISSIONARIES’ HOUSE. BASEL INDUSTRIAL MISSION. FURNITURE MADE BY GOLD COAST MISSION SCHOLARS.] The capital for these operations is derived, in the main, from three sources: (1) the Basel Mission itself; (2) shareholders connected with the Mission, whose dividends are limited to 5 per cent. per annum; (3) from funds in the Mission’s Savings Bank, into which the natives of the colony have placed for security considerably over £20,000 at interest varying from 3½ to 5 per cent. The results of the Mission’s work can be seen all over the colony; the polite native clerks, the managers of stores, the English-speaking planters, the coloured Government officials have nearly all of them received their training at the Basel Mission schools, and the Acting Governor does not hesitate to recognize that his best officials have been produced by the Mission. Testimony of this nature is unhappily seldom forthcoming from other colonies.