To me, the fact of greatest interest about the Congo is that it is
owned, and the twenty millions of people who inhabit it are owned by
one man. The land and its people are his private property. I am not
trying to say that he governs the Congo. He does govern it, but that in
itself would not be of interest. His claim is that he owns it. Though
backed by all the mailed fists in the German Empire, and all the
Dreadnoughts of the seas, no other modern monarch would make such a
claim. It does not sound like anything we have heard since the days and
the ways of Pharaoh. And the most remarkable feature of it is, that the
man who makes this claim is the man who was placed over the Congo as a
guardian, to keep it open to the trade of the world, to suppress
slavery. That, in the Congo, he has killed trade and made the products
of the land his own, that of the natives he did not kill he has made
slaves, is what to-day gives the Congo its chief interest. It is well
to emphasize how this one man stole a march on fourteen Powers,
including the United States, and stole also an empire of one million
square miles.
Twenty-five years ago all of Africa was divided into many parts. The
part which still remained to be distributed among the Powers was that
which was watered by the Congo River and its tributaries.
Along the north bank of the Congo River ran the French Congo; the
Portuguese owned the lands to the south, and on the east it was shut in
by protectorates and colonies of Germany and England. It was, and is, a
territory as large, were Spain and Russia omitted, as Europe. Were a
map of the Congo laid upon a map of Europe, with the mouth of the Congo
River where France and Spain meet at Biarritz, the boundaries of the
Congo would reach south to the heel of Italy, to Greece, to Smyrna;
east to Constantinople and Odessa; northeast to St. Petersburg and
Finland, and northwest to the extreme limits of Scotland. Distances in
this country are so enormous, the means of progress so primitive, that
many of the Belgian officers with whom I came south and who already had
travelled nineteen days from Antwerp, had still, before they reached
their posts, to steam, paddle, and walk for three months.
In 1844 to dispose amicably of this great territory, which was much
desired by several of the Powers, a conference was held at Berlin.
There it was decided to make of the Congo Basin an Independent State, a
“free-for-all” country, where every flag could trade with equal right,
and with no special tariff or restriction.
The General Act of this conference agreed: “The trade of ALL nations
shall enjoy complete freedom.” “No Power which exercises or shall
exercise Sovereign rights in the above-mentioned regions shall be
allowed to grant therein a monopoly or favor of any kind in matters
of trade.” “ALL the Powers exercising Sovereign rights or influence
in the afore-said territories bind themselves to watch over the
preservation of the native tribes, and to care for the improvement of
the condition of their moral and material welfare, and to help
in suppressing slavery.” The italics are mine. These quotations
from the act are still binding upon the fourteen Powers, including the
United States.
For several years previous to the Conference of Berlin, Leopold of
Belgium, as a private individual, had shown much interest in the
development of the Congo. The opening up of that territory was
apparently his hobby. Out of his own pocket he paid for expeditions
into the Congo Basin, employed German and English explorers, and
protested against the then existing iniquities of the Arabs, who for
ivory and slaves raided the Upper Congo. Finally, assisted by many
geographical societies, he founded the International Association, to
promote “civilization and trade” in Central Africa; and enlisted Henry
M. Stanley in this service.
That, in the early years, Leopold's interest in the Congo was
unselfish may or may not be granted, but, knowing him, as we now know
him, as one of the shrewdest and, of speculators, the most
unscrupulous, at the time of the Berlin Conference, his self-seeking
may safely be accepted. Quietly, unostentatiously, he presented himself
to its individual members as a candidate for the post of administrator
of this new territory.
On the face of it he seemed an admirable choice. He was a sovereign
of a kingdom too unimportant to be feared; of the newly created State
he undoubtedly possessed an intimate knowledge. He promised to give to
the Dutch, English, and Portuguese traders, already for many years
established on the Congo, his heartiest aid, and, for those traders
still to come, to maintain the “open door.” His professions of a desire
to help the natives were profuse. He became the unanimous choice of the
conference.
Later he announced to the Powers signing the act, that from Belgium
he had received the right to assume the title of King of the
Independent State of the Congo. The Powers recognized his new title.
The fact that Leopold, King of Belgium, was king also of the Etat
Independant du Congo confused many into thinking that the Free State
was a colony, or under the protection, of Belgium. As we have seen, it
is not. A Belgian may serve in the army of the Free State, or in a
civil capacity, as may a man of any nation, but, although with few
exceptions only Belgians are employed in the Free State, and although
to help the King in the Congo, the Belgian Government has loaned him
great sums of money, politically and constitutionally the two
governments are as independent of each other as France and Spain.
And so, in 1885, Leopold, by the grace of fourteen governments, was
appointed their steward over a great estate in which each of the
governments still holds an equal right; a trustee and keeper over
twenty millions of “black brothers” whose “moral and material welfare"
each government had promised to protect.
There is only one thing more remarkable than the fact that Leopold
was able to turn this public market into a private park, and that is,
that he has been permitted to do so. It is true he is a man of
wonderful ability. For his own ends he is a magnificent organizer. But
in the fourteen governments that created him there have been, and
to-day there are, men, if less unscrupulous, of quite as great ability;
statesmen, jealous and quick to guard the rights of the people they
represent, people who since the twelfth century have been traders, who
since 1808 have declared slavery abolished.
And yet, for twenty-five years these statesmen have watched Leopold
disobey every provision in the act of the conference. Were they to
visit the Congo, they could see for themselves the jungle creeping in
and burying their trading posts, their great factories turned into
barracks. They know that the blacks they mutually agreed to protect
have been reduced to slavery worse than that they suffered from the
Arabs, that hundreds of thousands of them have fled from the Congo, and
that those that remain have been mutilated, maimed, or, what was more
merciful, murdered. And yet the fourteen governments, including the
United States, have done nothing.
Some tell you they do not interfere because they are jealous one of
the other; others say that it is because they believe the Congo will
soon be taken over by Belgium, and with Belgium in control, they argue,
they would be dealing with a responsible government, instead of with a
pirate. But so long as Leopold is King of Belgium one doubts if
Belgians in the Congo would rise above the level of their King. The
English, when asked why they do not assert their rights, granted not
only to them, but to thirteen other governments, reply that if they did
they would be accused of “ulterior motives.” What ulterior motives? If
you pursue a pickpocket and recover your watch from him, are your
motives in doing so open to suspicion?
Personally, although this is looking some way ahead, I would like to
see the English take over and administrate the Congo. Wherever I visit
a colony governed by Englishmen I find under their administration, in
spite of opium in China and gin on the West Coast, that three people
are benefited: the Englishman, the native, and the foreign trader from
any other part of the world. Of the colonies of what other country can
one say the same?
As a rule our present governments are not loath to protect their
rights. But toward asserting them in the Congo they have been moved
neither by the protests of traders, chambers of commerce, missionaries,
the public press, nor by the cry of the black man to “let my people
go.” By only those in high places can it be explained. We will leave it
as a curious fact, and return to the “Unjust Steward.”
His first act was to wage wars upon the Arabs. From the Soudan and
from the East Coast they were raiding the Congo for slaves and ivory,
and he drove them from it. By these wars he accomplished two things. As
the defender of the slave, he gained much public credit, and he kept
the ivory. But war is expensive, and soon he pointed out to the Powers
that to ask him out of his own pocket to maintain armies in the field
and to administer a great estate was unfair. He humbly sought their
permission to levy a few taxes. It seemed a reasonable request. To
clear roads, to keep boats upon the great rivers, to mark it with
buoys, to maintain wood stations for the steamers, to improve the
“moral and material welfare of the natives,” would cost money, and to
allow Leopold to bring about these improvements, which would be for the
good of all, he was permitted to levy the few taxes. That was twenty
years ago; to-day I saw none of these improvements, and the taxes have
increased.
From the first they were so heavy that the great trade houses, which
for one hundred years in peace and mutual goodwill bartered with the
natives, found themselves ruined. It was not alone the export taxes,
lighterage dues, port dues, and personal taxes that drove them out of
the Congo; it was the King appearing against them as a rival trader,
the man appointed to maintain the “open door.” And a trader with
methods they could not or would not imitate. Leopold, or the “State,”
saw for the existence of the Congo only two reasons: Rubber and Ivory.
And the collecting of this rubber and ivory was, as he saw it, the sole
duty of the State and its officers. When he threw over the part of
trustee and became the Arab raider he could not waste his time, which,
he had good reason to fear, might be short, upon products that, if
fostered, would be of value only in later years. Still less time had he
to give to improvements that cost money and that would be of benefit to
his successors. He wanted only rubber; he wanted it at once, and he
cared not at all how he obtained it. So he spun, and still spins, the
greatest of all “get-rich-quick” schemes; one of gigantic proportions,
full of tragic, monstrous, nauseous details.
The only possible way to obtain rubber is through the native; as
yet, in teeming forests, the white man can not work and live. Of even
Chinese coolies imported here to build a railroad ninety per cent.
died. So, with a stroke of the pen, Leopold declared all the rubber in
the country the property of the “State,” and then, to make sure that
the natives would work it, ordered that taxes be paid in rubber. If,
once a month (in order to keep the natives steadily at work the taxes
were ordered to be paid each month instead of once a year), each
village did not bring in so many baskets of rubber the King's cannibal
soldiers raided it, carried off the women as hostages, and made
prisoners of the men, or killed and ate them. For every kilo of rubber
brought in in excess of the quota the King's agent, who received the
collected rubber and forwarded it down the river, was paid a
commission. Or was “paid by results.” Another bonus was given him based
on the price at which he obtained the rubber. If he paid the native
only six cents for every two pounds, he received a bonus of three
cents, the cost to the State being but nine cents per kilo, but, if he
paid the natives twelve cents for every two pounds, he received as a
bonus less than one cent. In a word, the more rubber the agent
collected the more he personally benefited, and if he obtained it
“cheaply” or for nothing—that is, by taking hostages, making
prisoners, by the whip of hippopotamus hide, by torture—so much
greater his fortune, so much richer Leopold.
[Illustration: A Village on the Kasai River.]
Few schemes devised have been more cynical, more devilish, more
cunningly designed to incite a man to cruelty and abuse. To dishonesty
it was an invitation and a reward. It was this system of “payment by
results,” evolved by Leopold sooner than allow his agents a fixed and
sufficient wage, that led to the atrocities.
One result of this system was that in seven years the natives
condemned to slavery in the rubber forests brought in rubber to the
amount of fifty-five millions of dollars. But its chief results were
the destruction of entire villages, the flight from their homes in the
Congo of hundreds of thousands of natives, and for those that remained
misery, death, the most brutal tortures and degradations, unprintable,
unthinkable.
I am not going to enter into the question of the atrocities. In the
Congo the tip has been given out from those higher up at Brussels to
“close up” the atrocities; and for the present the evil places in the
Tenderloin and along the Broadway of the Congo are tightly shut. But at
those lonely posts, distant a month to three months' march from the
capital, the cruelties still continue. I did not see them. Neither,
last year, did a great many people in the United States see the
massacre of blacks in Atlanta. But they have reason to believe it
occurred. And after one has talked with the men and women who have seen
the atrocities, has seen in the official reports that those accused of
the atrocities do not deny having committed them, but point out that
they were merely obeying orders, and after one has seen that even at
the capital of Boma all the conditions of slavery exist, one is assured
that in the jungle, away from the sight of men, all things are
possible. Merchants, missionaries, and officials even in Leopold's
service told me that if one could spare a year and a half, or a year,
to the work in the hinterland he would be an eye-witness of as cruel
treatment of the natives as any that has gone before, and if I can
trust myself to weigh testimony and can believe my eyes and ears I have
reason to know that what they say is true. I am convinced that to-day a
man, who feels that a year and a half is little enough to give to the
aid of twenty millions of human beings, can accomplish in the Congo as
great and good work as that of the Abolitionists.
Three years ago atrocities here were open and above-board. For
instance. In the opinion of the State the soldiers, in killing game for
food, wasted the State cartridges, and in consequence the soldiers, to
show their officers that they did not expend the cartridges
extravagantly on antelope and wild boar, for each empty cartridge
brought in a human hand, the hand of a man, woman, or child. These
hands, drying in the sun, could be seen at the posts along the river.
They are no longer in evidence. Neither is the flower-bed of Lieutenant
Dom, which was bordered with human skulls. A quaint conceit.
The man to blame for the atrocities, for each separate atrocity, is
Leopold. Had he shaken his head they would have ceased. When the hue
and cry in Europe grew too hot for him and he held up his hand they did
cease. At least along the main waterways. Years before he could have
stopped them. But these were the seven fallow years, when millions of
tons of red rubber were being dumped upon the wharf at Antwerp; little,
roughly rolled red balls, like pellets of coagulated blood, which had
cost their weight in blood, which would pay Leopold their weight in
gold.
He can not plead ignorance. Of all that goes on in his big
plantation no man has a better knowledge. Without their personal
honesty, he follows every detail of the “business” of his rubber farm
with the same diligence that made rich men of George Boldt and Marshall
Field. Leopold's knowledge is gained through many spies, by voluminous
reports, by following up the expenditure of each centime, of each
arm's-length of blue cloth. Of every Belgian employed on his farm, and
ninety-five per cent. are Belgians, he holds the dossier; he
knows how many kilos a month the agent whips out of his villages, how
many bottles of absinthe he smuggles from the French side, whether he
lives with one black woman or five, why his white wife in Belgium left
him, why he left Belgium, why he dare not return. The agent knows that
Leopold, King of the Belgians, knows, and that he has shared that
knowledge with the agent's employer, the man who by bribes of rich
bonuses incites him to crime, the man who could throw him into a
Belgian jail, Leopold, King of the Congo.
The agent decides for him it is best to please both Leopolds, and
Leopold makes no secret of what best pleases him. For not only is he
responsible for the atrocities, in that he does not try to suppress
them, but he is doubly guilty in that he has encouraged them. This he
has done with cynical, callous publicity, without effort at
concealment, without shame. Men who, in obtaining rubber, committed
unspeakable crimes, the memory of which makes other men uncomfortable
in their presence, Leopold rewarded with rich bonuses, pensions, higher
office, gilt badges of shame, and rapid advancement. To those whom even
his own judges sentenced to many years' imprisonment he promptly
granted the royal pardon, promoted, and sent back to work in the
vineyard.
“That is the sort of man for me,” his action seemed to say.
“See how I value that good and faithful servant. That man collected
much rubber. You observe I do not ask how he got it. I will not ask
you. All you need do is to collect rubber. Use our improved methods.
Gum copal rubbed in the kinky hair of the chief and then set on fire
burns, so my agents tell me, like vitriol. For collecting rubber the
chief is no longer valuable, but to his successor it is an
object-lesson. Let me recommend also the chicotte, the torture
tower, the 'hostage' house, and the crucifix. Many other stimulants to
labor will no doubt suggest themselves to you and to your cannibal
'sentries.' Help to make me rich, and don't fear the 'State.' '
L'Etat, c'est moi!' Go as far as you like!”
I said the degradations and tortures practised by the men “working
on commission” for Leopold are unprintable, but they have been printed,
and those who wish to read a calmly compiled, careful, and correct
record of their deeds will find it in the “Red Rubber” of Mr. E.R.
Morel. An even better book by the same authority, on the whole history
of the State, is his “King Leopold's Rule in the Congo.” Mr. Morel has
many enemies. So, early in the nineteenth century, had the English
Abolitionists, Wilberforce and Granville Sharp. After they were dead
they were buried in the Abbey, and their portraits were placed in the
National Gallery. People who wish to assist in freeing twenty millions
of human beings should to-day support Mr. Morel. It will be of more
service to the blacks than, after he is dead, burying him in
Westminster Abbey.
Mr. Morel, the American and English missionaries, and the English
Consul, Roger Casement, and other men, in Belgium, have made a
magnificent fight against Leopold; but the Powers to whom they have
appealed have been silent. Taking courage of this silence, Leopold has
divided the Congo into several great territories in which the sole
right to work rubber is conceded to certain persons. To those who
protested that no one in the Congo “Free” State but the King could
trade in rubber, Leopold, as an answer, pointed with pride at the
preserves of these foreigners. And he may well point at them with
pride, for in some of those companies he owns a third, and in most of
them he holds a half, or a controlling interest. The directors of the
foreign companies are his cronies, members of his royal household, his
brokers, bankers. You have only to read the names published in the
lists of the Brussels Stock Exchange to see that these “trading
companies,” under different aliases, are Leopold. Having, then,
“conceded” the greater part of the Congo to himself, Leopold set aside
the best part of it, so far as rubber is concerned, as a Domaine
Prive. Officially the receipts of this pay for running the
government, and for schools, roads and wharfs, for which taxes were
levied, but for which, after twenty years, one looks in vain. Leopold
claims that through the Congo he is out of pocket; that this carrying
the banner of civilization in Africa does not pay. Through his press
bureaus he tells that his sympathy for his black brother, his desire to
see the commerce of the world busy along the Congo, alone prevents him
giving up what is for him a losing business. There are several answers
to this. One is that in the Kasai Company alone Leopold owns 2,010
shares of stock. Worth originally $50 a share, the value of each share
rose to $3,100, making at one time his total shares worth $5,421,000.
In the A.B.I.R. Concession he owns 1,000 shares, originally worth $100
each, later worth $940. In the “vintage year” of 1900 each of these
shares was worth $5,050, and the 1,000 shares thus rose to the value of
$5,050,000.
These are only two companies. In most of the others half the shares
are owned by the King.
As published in the “State Bulletin,” the money received in eight
years for rubber and ivory gathered in the Domaine Prive differs
from the amount given for it in the market at Antwerp. The official
estimates show a loss to the government. The actual sales show that the
government, over and above its own estimate of its expenses, instead of
losing, made from the Domaine Prive alone $10,000,000. We are
left wondering to whom went that unaccounted-for $10,000,000. Certainly
the King would not take it, for, to reimburse himself for his efforts,
he early in the game reserved for himself another tract of territory
known as the Domaine de la Couronne. For years he denied that
this existed. He knew nothing of Crown Lands. But, at last, in the
Belgian Chamber, it was publicly charged that for years from this
private source, which he had said did not exist, Leopold had been
drawing an income of $15,000,000. Since then the truth of this
statement has been denied, but at the time in the Chamber it was not
contradicted.
To-day, grown insolent by the apathy of the Powers, Leopold finds
disguising himself as a company, as a laborer worthy of his hire,
irksome. He now decrees that as “Sovereign” over the Congo all of the
Congo belongs to him. It is as much his property as is a pheasant
drive, as is a staked-out mining claim, as your hat is your property.
And the twenty millions of people who inhabit it are there only on his
sufferance. They are his “tenants.” He permits each the hut in which he
lives, and the garden adjoining that hut, but his work must be for
Leopold, and everything else, animal, mineral, or vegetable, belongs to
Leopold. The natives not only may not sell ivory or rubber to
independent traders, but if it is found in their possession it is
seized; and if you and I bought a tusk of ivory here it would be taken
from us and we could be prosecuted. This is the law. Other men rule
over territories more vast even than the Congo. The King of England
rules an empire upon which the sun never sets. But he makes no claim to
own it. Against the wishes of even the humblest crofter, the King would
not, because he knows he could not, enter his cottage. Nor can we
imagine even Kaiser William going into the palm-leaf hut of a
charcoal-burner in German East Africa and saying: “This is my palm-leaf
hut. This is my charcoal. You must not sell it to the English, or the
French, or the American. If they buy from you they are 'receivers of
stolen goods.' To feed my soldiers you must drag my river for my fish.
For me, in my swamp and in my jungle, you must toil twenty-four days of
each month to gather my rubber. You must not hunt the elephants, for
they are my elephants. Those tusks that fifty years ago your
grandfather, with his naked spear, cut from an elephant, and which you
have tried to hide from me under the floor of this hut, are my ivory.
Because that elephant, running wild through the jungle fifty years ago,
belonged to me. And you yourself are mine, your time is mine, your
labor is mine, your wife, your children, all are mine. They belong to
me.”
[Illustration: “Tenants” of Leopold, Who Claims that the Congo
Belongs to Him, and that These Native People Are There Only as His
Tenants.]
This, then, is the “open door” as I find it to-day in the Congo. It
is an incredible state of affairs, so insolent, so magnificent in its
impertinence, that it would be humorous, were it not for its background
of misery and suffering, for its hostage houses, its chain gangs, its
chicottes, its nameless crimes against the human body, its baskets
of dried hands held up in tribute to the Belgian blackguard.