Though we are on the threshold of the Twentieth Century, with its tremendous possibilities, there are indications that white men still exist who would gladly revert to the iniquitous system of a bygone age, and enslave the African in his own land. If anything in this book should help to awaken the public conscience to jealously watch that under no specious pretext shall the bodies and souls of ‘African labourers’ be again handed over to the tender mercies of greedy and unscrupulous adventurers, the author will rejoice. Gomer William, from the original introduction, 1897