During the nineteenth century newly invented clayworking machinery offered potential solutions to production problems in the British brickmaking industry. Three different mechanical brickmaking processes were available, but a combination of design imperfections and restrictions imposed by the excise duties on bricks discouraged their adoption in ordinary brickyards for many decades. This posed a serious dilemma for machine inventors. Without an opportunity to test machinery in brickmaking situations, they were unable to correct defects and produce implements that were clearly superior to hand brickmaking methods. For as long as brickmakers rejected mechanisation, the technical development of machinery was effectively halted. A breakthrough occurred in the 1840s when a lucrative new market emerged for machines capable of manufacturing large quantities of drainage pipes and tiles in rural locations. The exhibitions and implement trials at meetings of the Royal Agricultural Society of England were a decisive factor in the continuing technical development of clayworking machinery. Agricultural consumers, through debate, evaluation and negotiation with machine makers, ultimately determined the success of one mechanical clayworking process over others, and established the direction of future technological change in the brickmaking industry.
THIS paper attempts to give a brief account of some of the problems which have arisen in modem Tropical Africa as a result of its occupation by Great Britain, and further to consider the very real contribution which Practical Anthropology can make towards their solution. It is of great importance at the present time that the issues which are at stake should be clearly envisaged by the people of this country, and more especially by settlers and others to whom the questions are of an even more pressing nature. The recent Joint Select Committee on Closer Union in East Africa has reported its strong approval of the arrangements which the Colonial Office has made " for cadets selected for the administrative service in Tropical Africa to receive instmction in Anthropology before taking up their duties," and it lays great emphasis on the necessity for a wider dissemination of this knowledge in the hope that the Imperial Govemment will be able to associate more closely with those who have identified their interests with the prosperity of the country. Let us examine, therefore, some of the features of our occupation of Tropical Africa, and the ways in which a knowledge of Anthropology will facilitate both its moral and its commercial development.GREAT Britain has become committed, by the facts of history and by official promises, to an occupation of certain parts of Tropical Africa,an occupation caused originally as much by an awakening of the mi»sionary spirit in the middle of the last century as by considerations of a strategical or a commercial nature. The latter motive has sinoa been made the more urgent by the realisation that the products of dM country are becoming essential for the needs of civilisation. Popula* tion in Europe has increased rapidly, and larger demands are being made for food, raw materials and niarkets. On the other hand, the missionary interest has now developed into a principle of trusteeship for the bettering and advancement of the native peoples. This double duty of making available the resources of the country and of promoting native interests has now been tacitly accepted by all those Westem Powers who own territory in Africa, and is known under the name of the Dual Mandate. Its two aspects may be regarded as complementary and interdependent, and its slogan is " equality of opportunity for all races." THB working of the system is apt to be fraught with much difficult, for it is obviously a compromise, albeit the best one, as we believe, that circumstances will permit. The tendency to regard economie interests as incompatible with those more immaterial consideratioas whoae object, in the words of the Lei^e of Nations Covenant, ia to make the natives " able to stand by themselves under the strenuotia 287
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