200,000 Slaves

Extracting palm kernels, picking kola nuts, pressing out palm oil and tending ginger plants are still the toilsome daily occupations of some 200,000 slaves who were legally made free, last week, in the British protectorate of Sierra Leone, West Africa.

Apathetic to mere law, the onetime slaves were glad to continue toiling for their former masters, last week, because Sierra Leone is so impoverished and undeveloped that many a free man cannot earn a slave's adequate "board and keep." Commenting, the British Governor of Sierra Leone, Brig. Gen. Sir Joseph Byrne, said: "Although the freeing of the slaves is a step of great importance, it marks what is only a beginning toward the ultimate ideal of abolition of unpaid communal labor."

The slaves were freed, chiefly due to parlor agitation in London, by decree of the Legislative Council of Sierra Leone, an appointive body chairmaned by the British Governor and containing a minority of native chiefs. The anti-slavery decree allows no compensation to onetime slave owners, gives to each freed slave the right to claim a plot of the now too plenteous waste Government land.