It may be asked why the Niger Company gives to second parties, even by sale, the opportunity of making a profit which it might itself reap. Whilst I am no more empowered than any other investigator to speak for the Company, I should say that the reason is the one stated above. No doubt the Company is only on the threshold of the advance to be made in trading development—trading in agricultural, sylvan, and other produce—in Southern and Northern Nigeria, and to do that adequately is, to use an inelegant but expressive term, to bite off as much as it can chew. The fact should be remembered that it gains by everyone’s prosperity. On surrendering the Charter, the Government agreed to give the Company half of its 5 per cent. royalty on the export of all minerals. Besides the river and road transport, prosperous communities, white and black, mean increased trade for the stores, for although there are a number of such new arrivals in Northern Nigeria the Niger Company maintains an incalculably premier position. Present regulations for mining are explained in the next chapter. * * * * * The health of every white man on a mine in Northern Nigeria is a serious matter for each owning company. Flesh and blood is not as cheap as in some parts of industrial Britain; it cannot be replaced at a day’s notice and to an illimitable extent. A man, whether he be manager or in any intermediate grade to the most junior rank, is brought out at no little expense. If he becomes altogether incapacitated at an early stage of his service the persons in whose engagement he is lose what the double journey costs, for he will probably not have rendered sufficient work to recoup them; whilst if he goes temporarily on the sick list as long as he remains there he, of course, is not earning anything for the firm which has paid his expenses. Men of use in Northern Nigeria are therefore valuable, as horses are where it costs money to replace them, though perhaps in the same place there is so great a supply of human animals that _their_ living or dying is of no economic consequence. The question is put at its lowest commercial basis so that the importance of health may be seen from every point of view, and in setting the position in that light I rely on my meaning not being misinterpreted to read that men in the service of mines are only rated as horses. I desire to show that a mine—or, for the matter of that, any other employing concern—in most cases loses by the breakdown of a member of the staff. Here the mines’ employees are alone being dealt with.