FRENCH COLONIAL EXPANSION 147 
ization.! The central Government receives the customs and 
consumption duties, cares for certain functions such as pro- 
fessional education, grants subsidies for public improve- 
ments, and, in respect to functions exercised by the various 
colonies, supervises and coordinates, but does not directly 
control. 
The Governor-General is advised by a Superior Council, 
which since 1920 has included 18 French and native notables 
and 21 officials. This body controls the budget and gives 
advice on legislation. The separate colonies have some- 
what similar councils. The cooperation of the natives in 
the administration is carefully fostered, and French West 
Africa is at present represented in the French Parliament 
by a negro deputy. 
By the use of native troops and methods the French have 
succeeded in establishing a high degree of order and security. 
Excellent roads have been built between the important 
centers, and a large program of road and railway building is 
under way. Railways run from Dakar to St. Louis, and 
across to the Senegal at Kayes, and so eastward to the Niger 
at Bamaku and Koulikoro — 415 miles — with a small 
branch to Kaolak. The road to the interior was long a 
water and rail system requiring several transshipments, but 
on January 1, 1924, the whole was opened as one through rail 
system. French Guinea has its railroad extending 412 miles 
from Konakry and destined eventually to reach the Niger 
River. The Ivory Coast also has its railroad now open to 
Katiola, 230 miles inland, covering what was a thirty-days 
march when the line was begun in 1903. It has pierced the 
tropical forest and reached the drier and more open plateau. 
But it still has 480 miles to go to reach Wagadugu in the 
Upper Volta, the center of the most thickly populated region 
1 See L’ Afrique Frangaise, 1917, p. 852 (Governor-General Van Vollen- 
hoven), and 1923, pp. 416 and 599 (Governor-General Carde).