I am persuaded that the British Cotton-growing Association is in every way worthy of support, that its ideal is a fine one and a patriotic one, and that the West African dependencies of Southern and Northern Nigeria are very much indebted to it. At the same time I should not be giving honest expression to the views I have rightly or wrongly formed if I did not enter a _caveat_ against any Government action calculated to undermine or destroy the weaving industry of the Kano province. That industry may disappear as the result of natural causes. But nothing should be done by the Administration to assist its decay. Frankly, I am compelled to state that from the standpoint of the happiness and welfare of these Hausa people, our wards, the disappearance of their national industry would be deplorable. It would lower their outlook and stunt their development, and send them down in the scale of civilization. Their intelligence is of an order which would enable them under tuition to advance their methods of production beyond the hand-loom. While the duty of the Administration to lend its moral support, as it is doing, from the Governor, Sir Henry Hesketh Bell (who is most interested in this question) downwards, to any legitimate effort directed at increasing the area of cotton under cultivation, increasing the yield per acre by improving the fertility of the soil, facilitating communication and the accessibility of markets, is unquestioned, I submit that there is an equally clear call of duty on its part to encourage rather than discourage an indigenous industry of great antiquity, of wonderful promise, which is at once a source of profit to, and an elevating influence in, the life of the people of the land. I have now endeavoured to sketch the chief factors to be considered in estimating the possibilities of a substantial export trade in raw cotton from Northern Nigeria. There remains to be examined the question of price and of competing articles of production. The British Cotton-growers Association’s _début_ at Zaria has been attended with no little success. They bought this season, I believe, something like 60,000 lbs. of cotton, a considerable proportion of which, I am informed, came from the Katsina division of Kano. Whilst the Association’s buyers, lent to its representative by the authorities, could not compete in price with the Kano and Zinder buyers in the big markets, they competed successfully with them in the remoter small markets of the province which buyers from the native weaving interest do not usually visit.