The last frontier : $b The white man's war for civilisation in AfricaPowell, E. Alexander (Edward Alexander)
History
The last frontier : $b The white man's war for civilisation in Africa
Powell, E. Alexander (Edward Alexander)
Africa; Africa -- Colonization
but I might have expected just what I found, for wherever the flag
of England flies, whether over the gold-miners of the Yukon, the
ivory-traders of Uganda, or the settlers of Rhodesia, there will be
found the deep-seated respect of the Englishman for English order and
English law.
In my opinion the country club, more than any other single factor, has
contributed most to the making, socially and morally, of Rhodesia.
Though the American West is dotted with just such towns as Salisbury,
Bulawayo, Gwelo, and Umtali, with the same limitations, pitfalls,
and possibilities, the men's centre of interest, after the day's
work is over, is the saloon, the dance-hall, or the barber-shop
with a pool-room in the rear. They do things differently in central
Africa. In every Rhodesian town large enough to support one—and the
same is true of all Britain's colonial possessions—I found that a
“sports club” had been established on the edge of the town. Often
it was nothing but a ramshackle shed or cottage that had been given
a coat of paint and had a veranda added, but files of the English
newspapers and illustrated weeklies were to be found inside, while
from the tea tables on the veranda one overlooked half a dozen tennis
courts, a cricket ground, and a foot-ball field. It is here that
the settlers—men, women, and children—congregate toward evening,
to discuss the crop prospects, the local taxes, the latest gold
discoveries, and, above all else, the news contained in the weekly
mail from home. Why have not our own progressive prairie towns some
simple social system like this? It was in speaking of this very thing
that the mayor of Salisbury—himself an American-remarked: “In the
little, every-day things which make for successful colonisation of a
new country, you fellows in the States are twenty years behind us.”
Living is expensive in Rhodesia, the prices of necessaries usually
being high and of luxuries ofttimes fantastic. To counterbalance
this, however, wages are extraordinarily high. It is useless to
attempt to quote wages, for the farther up-country a man gets the
higher pay he can command, so I will content myself with the bare
statement that for the skilled workman, be he carpenter, blacksmith,
mason, or wheelwright, larger wages are to be earned than in any part
of the world that I know. The same is true of the man who has had
practical experience in agriculture or stock-raising, there being a
steady demand for men conversant with dairying, cattle-breeding, and
irrigation. Let me drive home and copper-rivet the fact, however,
that in Rhodesia, as in nearly all new countries, where there is a
considerable native population to draw upon, there is no place for the
unskilled labourer.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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