112 ECONOMIC CONDITIONS [10.99 > prevented work on the Congolese section of the line, and meanwhile the Beira and Mashonaland Railway Company is making efforts to secure the Katanga trade both as against that route and as against the competition for the trade of northern and central Katanga of the Tanganyika - Dar es Salaam route. From January 1 , 1913, it leased the section of the line from the south lying between Broken Hill and the Congo border, on which the rates had previously been very heavy — often thrice as great as on the rest of the system - and from January 1 , 1914, it announced large reductions in the rates from Beira and Port Elizabeth to the Congo frontier ; thus the rate on limbo (coloured cotton prints) , blankets, and beads for natives was re duced from £l 4s. 3d. to 17s . 10d. per 100 lb. , in order to enable the merchants in Katanga to attract rubber cara vans to Elisabethville to buy, the rubber thus being sent to Europe by the Beira route instead of by the Kongolo Boma route. If Ayrshire, in southern Rhodesia, were connected by railway with Broken Hill in northern Rhodesia, Salisbury would for the time being replace Buluwayo as the base of the foreign trade of Katanga, and with the shortening of the route the position of Beira as the chief port of entry for the province would be temporarily strengthened .

(4) INDUSTRY (a) Labour Conditions. — Most of the arrangements for the recruiting and repatriating of native labourers are in the hands of the Bourse du Travail du Katanga. In 1916 over 2,000 passed through the compound of the Bourse at Elisabeth ville . In 1914 the Union Minière employed 2,670 natives in the copper mines and smelting works. Most of the labour has hitherto been recruited from Rhodesia and Portuguese territory, some also from Northern Nigeria. The food supplied