Part 17 (1/2)

Clearly to understand the scope and purpose of the Forminiere you must know that it is one of the three coo I encountered the first--the Union Miniere--the a The second is the Huileries du Congo Belge, the palo and Kwilu Rivers Noe coency, so far as American interest is affected, in the Forminiere, whose empire is the immense section watered by the Kasai River and which extends across the border into Angola In the Union Miniere you got the initial hint of Ao That part, however, was entirely technical With the Forminiere you have the co in an achievement that is, to say the least, unusual

The o business history I touched the For Leopold, and the last and favorite corporate child of his econoian capitalists interested were men who had been Stanley's comrades and who had helped to blaze the path of civilization through the wilds King Albert spoke of it to me in terms of appreciation and more especially of the Ae and physical hardihood of one so far afield I deter at first hand

My experience with it proved to be theof one was like a springtih the jungle that lurks beyond I saw the war-like savage on his native heath; I travelled with h the forest primeval; I employed every conceivable kind of transport fro on a pole and carried on the shoulders of husky natives, to the autoe of the trip which proved to be first cousin to a thriller fro to end Heretofore I had been under the spell of the Congo River Noas to catch thebefore the Forminiere broke out its banner, Aenerally known that Henry M

Stanley, as born John Rowlands, achieved all the feats which ure under the name of his American benefactor who adopted him in New Orleans after he had run away to sea from a Welsh workhouse He was for years to all intents and purposes an A on two of his famous expeditions

President Cleveland was the first chief dignitary of a nation to recognize the Congo Free State in the eighties, and his name is perpetuated in Mount Cleveland, near the headwaters of the Congo River

An Aium, General H S Sanford, had a conspicuous part in all the first International African associations foro situation This contact, however, save Stanley's share, was diplo phase It was the prelude to the constructive and permanent part played by the American capitalists in the For world associates Ryan with the whirlpool of Big Finance He ruled New York traction and he recast the tobacco world Yet nothing appealed to his io He saw it in very reat American master of capital has had his particular pet There is always soan, for exaarded the United States Steel Corporation as his prize perfor father speaks of a successful son The Union Pacific System was the apple of E H Harriman's eye, and the New York Central was a Vanderbilt fetish for decades So with Ryan and the Congo Other powerful Americans have become associated with him, as you will see later on, but it was the tall, alert, clear-eyed Virginian, who rose fro, who first had the vision on this side of the Atlantic, and backed it with his o earlier and had not been engrossed in his American interests, he would probably have done for the whole of Central Africa what Rhodes did for South Africa

We can now get at the beginnings of the Fore corporations radiate from a lawyer's office With the Forminiere it was otherwise The center of inspiration was the stone palace at Brussels where King Leopold II, King of the Belgians, held forth The year 1906 was not a particularly happy one for hiht abroad and the Socialists were pounding hied about hilooo Free State, of which he was also sovereign, before it was ceded to Belgium

[Illustration: THOMAS F RYAN]

Between 1879 and 1890 Leopold personally supported the cost of creating andthe Free State It represented an outlay of more than 2,500,000 Afterwards he had adequate return in the revenues from rubber and ivory But Leopold was a royal spender in the fullest sense

He had a variety of fads that ranged fro of palaces and the beautifying of his own country He lavishedBrussels a sumptuous capital and Ostend an elaborate seaside resort With his private life we are not concerned Leopold the pleasure-seeker was one person; Leopold the businessthe rulers of Europe

Leopold contradicted every known tradition of royalty The king business is usually the business of spending unearned ure than the royal miser

Moreover, nobody ever associates productive poith a king save in the big family line His task is inherited and with it a bank account sufficient to meet all needs This ie price to pay for lack of liberty in speech and action The principal job of s, as we all know, is to be a noble and acquiescent figure-head, to pin decorations on worthy persons, and to open public exhibitions

Leopold did all of these things but they were incidental to his larger task He was an insurgent froa a vision and aa keen coraphy was his hobby at school Like Rhodes, he was forever looking at ium economically lay in colonization In 1860 he made a journey to the Far East, whence he returned deeply impressed with trade opportunities in China Afterwards he was the prime mover in the construction of the Pekin-Hankow Railway I do not think most persons know that Leopold at one tiian colony in Ethiopia Another act in his life that has escaped the casual biographer was his effort to purchase the Philippines froo as a colonizing possibility the moment he read Henry M Stanley's first article about it in the London Telegraph

There was a vital reason why Belgiu and prosperous colony Her extraordinary internal develophty little country so aptly called ”The cockpit of Europe,” and which bore the brunt of the first German advance in the Great War, is the most densely populated in the world It has two hundred and forty-seven inhabitants for each square kiloland only counts one hundred and forty-six, Germany one hundred and twenty-five, France seventy-two, and the United States thirteen The Belgians had to have economic elbow room and Leopold was detero Free State was just one evidence of his shrewdness and diploreat powers had their eye on this untouched garden spot in Central Africa and would have risked rab it Leopold, through a series of International associations, engineered the faress of 1884 and with Bismarck's help put the Free State on the o in Gerh-placed German statesman admitted to me that one of the few fundamental mistakes that the Iron Chancellor ever o from under the very eyes and hands of Germany I quote this episode to show that when it ca in Europe look like an office boy Even so masterful a manipulator of ht his aid in his trans-African telegraph scheme but Leopold was too shrewd for hi Rhodes said to Robert Williaht I was clever but I was nointerested in business was the forh he has no business sense in the way that Leopold had it, he always had a keen appreciation of big business as an iested country and realized that pernates of Germany used him for their own ends but their teamwork advanced the whole empire Wilhel, and electric-machinery trusts He earned whatever he received because he was in every sense an exalted press-agent,--a sort of glorified publicity pro the merits of German wares and he always made it a point to scatter samples On a visit to Italy he left behind a considerable quantity of soap There was a great rush to get these royal left-overs

Teeks later a small ar this identical product

Whateveris certain He was not small

Wilhelm used the brains of other men; Leopold eainst hio back to 1906, the year that was to o Leopold knew that the days of the Congo as a Free State were numbered His personally-conducted stewardshi+p of the Colony was being assailed by the Socialists on one hand and the atrocity proclaimers on the other Leopold was undoubtedly sincere in his desire to econouard the African possession before it passed out of his control In any event, during the su him to confer with him at Brussels The summons came out of a clear sky and at first the American financier paid no attention to it He was then on a holiday in Switzerland When a second invitation caan a series of anization of the Forminiere and with it the dawn of a real international epoch in Aht of our immense riches the timidity of American capital in actual constructive enterprise overseas is astonishi+ng Scrutinize the world business map and you see how shy it has been We own rubber plantations in Suold interests in Ecuador, and have dabbled in Russian and Siberian ht, however, compared with the scope of the world field and our oealth Mexico, where we have extensive sricultural investments, is so close at hand that it scarcely seeh our capital there has suffered lobe The spectacle of Ao therefore takes on a peculiar significance

There are two reasons why our capital has not wandered far afield One is that we have a great country with enormous resources and consequently almost unlimited opportunities for the employment of cash at home The other lies in the fact that Aranted the money of other countries Take British capital It is probably the land is a so elsewhere Moreover, Britain zealously safeguards her Nationals and their investret to say, have not always done likewise Theis insulted a warshi+p speeds to the spot and John Bull wants to know the reason why

Why did Leopold seek American capital and why did he pick out Thomas F

Ryan? There are several motives and I will deal with them in order In the first place American capital is about the only non-political lish pound, for exahly sensitive coland puts n Office an accessory

German overseas enterprise is even more meddlesome It has always been the first aid to poisonous and pernicious penetration Even French capital is flavoured with imperialism despite the fact that it is the product of a democracy Our dollars are not hitched to the star of empire We have no dreams of world conquest It is the safest politically to deal with, and Leopold recognized this fact