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employed. The large majority are employed more or less for two to three months of the year. How can this majority subsist for the remaining nine months of the year? It becomes perfectly clear that these workers are faced by the most serious question of a living wage.

The workers and peasants in Gambia are in the most pitiable plight. There are no big farmers in the Colony, nor is there individual ownership of cultivable land; all such land is cultivated by a primitive custom of joint ownership. The peasant is employed during the lean months of wet season. During this part, there is a dearth of foodstuffs, and the conditions of life are the most miserable. The area on which food crops — rice, maize, etc., could be grown is severely restricted, and improved methods of cultivation are beyond the peasants' means. To obtain money for his other requirements, therefore, they have to supplement the rising of a limited supply of foodstuffs by growing groundnuts so greedily hunted by the European capitalist.

The Government realises the extreme poverty of the peasant. But instead of relief advances are made to the peasants in the shape of a yearly supply of imported rice and seed-nuts. After harvest when he peasants try to hold out for better prices round goes the Government collector to demand the payment of the taxes and debts for rice and seed-nuts.

The poor peasants are thus forced to part with their produce at any price. They begin work each with a debt of £4 to £5. The peasant can reckon on an income of £7. Deducting from this the debt he had incurred of £4 to £5, he is left barely with about £3, on which to subsist with his family all the year round. Can you imagine the degradation to which he is reduced by such circumstances? Can you imagine how population could increase, or how the problems of disease and infantile mortality could be solved so long as the peasants' hard toil is exploited to its utmost limit for the benefit of foreign capital?

It is important to note that in this state of affairs local merchants in Gambia have gradually diverted their attention from their primary interest — the profits realisable on the sale of capital goods, and are now concentrating upon making big profits from trade in raw material which they contrive to purchase at the lowest possible prices. In spite of the inevitable set-back this entails in goods trade, huge mergers, combines, trusts pools and participations, local and foreign are being formed to grind down the peasants and corner their produce. These pools are formed to exploit cheap labor and effect economies at the expense of the worker and peasant. Their natural consequences are large overstocks of goods and unemployment. The part the state machine is made to play in the crisis is the most remarkable. By the present regulation of the trade season you have seen how the interest of the peasants are played into the hands of the merchants.

While thousands of workers are being constantly thrown out of work there is no effort made to protect the worker or to relieve the unemployed; nor are the benefits of the Workmen's Compensation Acts extended to workers in Gambia.

From the brief report you can see that Gambia is smarting from the effect of the economic and industrial condition that is sweeping the face of the world. The workers and peasants have experienced the needs for active resistance against capitalist and imperialist exploitation.

The workers of Gambia responded with great enthusiasm to the call of the International Conference of Negro Workers and Peasants. It is our hope that this Conference will go a long way to consolidate the forces of economic and industrial resistance against all forms of capitalist oppression not only among Negroes but among peasants of the world.

OUR STUDY CORNER

(The aim of this corner is to help Negro workers along the line of self-education on trade union questions; to help them with the theories and practices of the International revolutionary labour movement, and the history of its developement; to place Negro workers in direct contact with the Red International of Labour Unions; to bring labour questions and information to the widest number of Negro workers in shops and factories — in order to help develop leading cadres of Negro organizers, agitators and trade union leaders and to stimulate the class consciousness of masses of Negro workers. We shall also from time to time carry Book Reviews and comments. We therefore suggest, (in order to make this corner useful and practical), that study circles, groups or corners be organized amongst Negro workers to discuss the questions raised here as well as questions arising at their work; that correspondence be established with this corner; that all workers desiring direct contact with the school and the Correspondence Courses of the RILU make it known to this corner.)

The Rise and History
of the Trade Union Movement

The Trade Union movement is a mass movement of the proletariat. Its aim is to improve the position of the working class, and (as we shall see later), at various stages of its development, different methods have been used to achieve this purpose. But when the unions reach their highest stage of development the realization is forced on them that the only way out, is the overthrow of capitalism and establishment of a Socialist Society. The trade unions have their roots in the capitalist system and are born of the conflicting interests of the workers and the capitalists.

The capitalist system of production began to develop at the end of the 18th century, with the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in England (1765-1825) and the Great French Revolution (1789). This system is now dominant in every part of the world with the exception of the USSR where it has been displaced by a more efficient form of Socialist production. Instead of a primitive economy where all necessities were satisfied on the spot, as was observed during feudalism, we now have a commodity economy — an economy that produces goods for a market, turning labour power into a commodity also.

The indispensible condition for the existence of the capitalist system of production is to prevent the producer from controlling the means of production, for the buildings, machines and equipment, the means of production belong to the capitalists and not to the workers who are the producers. Since the workers have no means of production they are compelled to sell the only commodity in their possesion, namely, their labour power. When the capitalists hire and exploit labour power capitalist accumulation commences. This accumulation, coupled with the competition between the capitalists, gives rise to a concentration of capital, all means of production being concentrated into the hands of a few capitalists.

As a result of the concentration and centralization of production, small enterprises are either ruined or simply become auxilliary enterprises of the big plants,

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