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Besides these workers, the "coolies" must be particularly mentioned. This kind of work is not classed as compulsory work by the Labour Office in Geneva though it is one of the most terrible kinds of labour enforced by capitalism. The natives are compelled to carry extremely heavy loads from the stores to the ships, and even to transport them on their bare backs from the interior to the coast; even women and children are made to do this kind of work. Whole villages are deserted when a capitalist merchant closes a good bargain in the interior of Cameroon and wants to have the goods brought to the coast.

The workers are terrorized to an unheard of extent. Whenever they endeavor to organize they are simply hanged as rebels. Whenever they complain against their bosses or against the foremen they are mercilessly whipped. The officials of the concession companies are, according to law, considered to be civil servants and, as such are entitled to mete out punishment: even if they kill a native they are not called to account as they acted in the interests of humanity and ind fence of European culture. Among the 1,800,000 inhabitants of Cameroon only about

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[[caption]] Children carrying water in Duala in order to help their over worked parents [[/caption]]

7,000 children attend school. Neither the foreign contracted workers nor the natives are given any housing accommodations on the plantations in the European sense of the word where they might take a rest after their inhuman labour! The workers from Liberia are forbidden to bring their families with them; whenever exceptions were granted, the married are compelled to live in the same room with the single. It is no wonder that diseases like typhus, swellings, etc. take a heavy toll among the workers.

The missionaries, the preachers of Christian "love" and "peace", not only fully approve of this system but are, frequently partners in the business.

The time has come for us, in Cameroon, to do away with slavery and exploitation. Negro comrades of the world! White workers of Europe and America! Workers of the whole world! We call upon you to help the Negro workers in Cameroon in their struggle for emancipation; help us to win the rights and the independence that belongs to us and to all oppressed peoples in the colonies and to the working class throughout the world.

Revolutionary Poems

An Open Letter to the South
By Langston Hughes.

White workers of the South:
Miners,
Farmers,
Mechanics,
Mill hands,
Shop girls,
Railway men,
Servants,
Tobacco workers,
Share croppers,
GREETINGS!

I am the black worker.
Listen:
That the land might be ours.
And the mines and the factories and the office towers
At Harlan, Richmond, Gastonia, Atlanta, New Orleans;
That the plants and the roads and the tools of power
Be ours:

Let us forget what Booker T. (2) said,
"Separate as the fingers,"
He knew he lied.

Let us become instead, you and I,
One single hand
can united rise
To smash the old dead dogmas of the past —
To kill the lies of color
That keep the rich enthroned
And drive us to the time-clock and the plow
Helpless, stupid, scattered, and alone — as now —
Race against race,
Because one is black,
Another white of face.

Let us new lessons learn.
All workers,
New life-ways make,
One union form:
Until the future burns out
Every past mistake
Let us get together, say:
"You are my brother, black or white.
You my sister — now — today!

(1) Hughes is a young Negro revolutionary poet, the author of several volumes of poems, describing various phases of Negro working class life in America. He has recently written a play on the famous Ala. case, called the "Scottsboro Express".

(2) Booker T. Washington, a Negro reformist leader who preached the policy of submission and segregation to the Negro masses, especially in the South.