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EUROPE AND AFRICA
use the same compartments in the trains, the same buses,
the same hotels, and the servants address Europeans as
“thou.”
Morocco is eminently fitted for agricultural colonization.
It has been called an “Algeria where it rains.” Its pop-
ulation is relatively small and it would offer a by no means
negligible outlet for a country with a surplus population
and the lack of scruple in making room for colonists. But
the French, in spite of their desire to infuse a strong French
element, have been introducing their colonists very slowly.
Native land titles, chiefly tribal and often in dispute, must
be respected, and the settlement of individual titles (im-
matriculation) according to the Torrens system and the
making of lands available for colonists proceed but slowly.
The agricultural colonists number only a little over one thou-
sand and occupy about 750,000 acres. It is estimated that
some 10,000,000 acres additional may eventually be made
available from the Government domain, tribal commons,
uncleared and undrained land.? In the towns there has
been a greater influx. Casa Blanca has had a tremendous
boom and now has a European population of over 35,000.
A census of July, 1921, showed 268 industrial establishments
in the French zone (an increase of 44 per cent over 1918)
with an invested capital of 173,000,000 francs (say $13,000,-
000). A considerable part of this new capital has been put
into Casa Blanca where a fine modern city is growing up
within and beside the old city. “The post-office is, without
any exception at all (bearing always in mind the superbities
of Central Europe), the finest and most cheerful thing of the
kind I have ever seen.”>® The trade balances of French
1 The difficulty of buying land in Morocco was discussed in the London
Times, March 15, 1920.
2 I Afrique Frangaise, February, 1924, p. 111.
3 Motoring correspondent of The Times (London), February 15, 1921.