Liberia - Africa's Only Republic, 1949

[Music] this is the story of Liberia Africa's only Republic it is a story story of many chapters and moods a story of people and the land that sustains them it is also a story of American Enterprise in the lush tropical jungles of West Africa the story of Liberia is first a story of l a segment of land framed by the immensity of the Earth's second largest continent in 1822 a group of free American Negroes set out to colonize this land it was not easy in 1847 after a quarter Century of struggle sacrifice and hardship these colonizers and their children founded a new nation for free men its name Liberia means Liberty it did not take the colonizers long to discover that the land which they had chosen to settle was abundantly fertile plentiful sunlight and rainfall combined to create a climate that encourages growth food crops Timber fibers luscious fruits and dense tropical vegetation another Testament to the rich soil is the Abundant floral growth buganvilia African moonflower potius hibiscus and the host of others the story of Liberia is also a story of people including 23 long established tribes most of Liberia's tribes people live in villages which are centers of community-owned farms self-sufficiency Remains the keynote of tribal living which is a way of life as well as a means of livelihood seems like this housewife pounding and winnowing rice are everyday occurrences rice is the basic grain of the Liberian [Music] diet most liberians are farmers their pattern of living is shaped by the land these farmers are planting cassaba whose starchy roots are to liberians what potatoes are to [Music] us the African oil P of the most important crops in the world today supplies fats and gravy for the native diet and provides a valuable export [Music] fish are a delicacy they abound in the coastal Waters and the tribal fishermen who catch them enjoy considerable [Music] Prestige sing or trapping in freshwater pools for smaller fish and Minnows is wom's work handicraft such as weaving and mat making are done almost entirely by men the cloth they weave has a wide variet itive uses and is an important item of [Music] barter mat makers find the jungle an inexhaustible source of Rafia and other fibers a tribesman of outstanding importance is the blacksmith whose portable Anvil and goat in Billows can be carried from Village to [Music] Village a highly necessary application of native skills is house building this is a community project with many villagers lending a hand the materials for these circular Huts small logs Vines mug fch are plentiful the single allpurpose building tool is the cutless with the family and neighbors helping these houses can be built in a single day at a cost of as little as $5 and now this house built in a day becomes a home carrying their possessions with them the family moves in and moving is very simple you just walk in put your belongings down come out act natural and immediately feel very much at [Music] home Community Living working and living together comes quite naturally to Liberian tribes people whose traditional tribal pav is the African equivalent of the American town meeting or public hearing strong young men are firsthand bearers of gifts and friendly Commerce here tribes people have long realized that little can be accomplished unless one is able to get along with his neighbors and to share their problems and interests this Elemental Spirit of democracy is colorfully in evidence in the native Market where daily many of the tribes people gather to gossip Exchange News and sell the products of their Farms looms and workbenches an attractive array of African [Music] Peppers the fruit of the African oil palm Liberian Citrus and sugar cane dried minals and carved ivory [Music] and the golden leopard Pelt displays at the native Market are skillfully arranged to present such typical native products as country cloth home woven of wool or cotton and used for clothing bedding and draperies next door to this Market is the US Trading Company operated by Firestone to supply American-made products and brands at prices well below United States averages [Music] Liberia is a land of contrast only a few miles from the Native Market is a seen as modern as tomorrow a mighty airliner is landing at Robert's Field built by Firestone during World War II this is one of the largest most strategic land plane bases in the world it is within 30 flight hours of New York the energy of the age-old Farmington River has been harnessed to provide the power needed for Firestone widespread industrial operations in Liberia modern homes on Firestone plantations with a change of foliage these might be seen in the better suburbs of any American city the base Hospital which serves one area of the far spreading plantations This Modern Clinic would do credit to any community almost with an earshot of messages being sent by jungle drums are these Firestone radio towers Beam for North America this Firestone Golf Course is enjoyed alike by the plantation staff and travelers and servicemen but Recreation must consider all tastes native Rugby teams play a spirited game on a plantation's Playfield in workers villages on the plantations native music games and dances hold sway a Liberian stilt dance this is one of the more interesting of the acrobatic dances inherent to a great continent that is peopled with great dancers Rhythm balance and Poise are superbly proed this traditional Warriors dance is another of Liberia's ever colorful folk Arts it is an arduous Recreation dedicated to the enjoyment of all regardless of Ages or skills and it is as African as Africa itself here as elsewhere good Recreation is companion to good work Liberian workers in many fields are convincing proof of how far the nation has advanced the basic reason for Liberia's advancement is a Milky liquid called latex the initial Harvest of natural rubber by means of this white liquid Liberia has achieved a significant place in World Commerce the story of rubber in Liberia begins with a clearing of thousands of Acres of tall forests and dense jungles to F these giant trees requires an army of men with axes The jungle's Cry of surrender is the deepthroated rumbling of big trees crashing to Earth by the thousands the forest Giants fall so that space may be provided for valuable and orderly forests of rubber trees elsewhere men with strong arms and sharp cutlasses are forcing the dense wiy matted undergrowth to give up its long hold on the LA the clearing operation is both vast and noisy the work is paced by the beat of native rums clearing is completed during the dry season when the fell jungle growth is burned often thousands of acres are cleared by a single fire armed with long bamboo torches workmen set the fire systematically without careful planning and great caution the fire could become a serious menace to life and property yet Through The Years there have been almost no accidents impressive testimony to the knoow of these [Music] men smoke in the Tropic sky comes to mean more land being made ready for more [Music] rubber the seeds of rubber trees are planted in nurseries to provide stock for later transplanting to clear areas there's one nursery for each rubber growing division within a few months the seeds become young trees in the nurseries the seedlings are changed to high yielding rubber trees by means of a scientific process called Bud grafting this means grafting the living Bud of a high yielding strain of rubber onto the root system of a Hardy seedling successful Bud grafting requires outstanding manual skill first a window or opening is cut bark of the seedling [Music] then a living bud is cut from a tree that is known to be a high producer of latex the bud is trimmed with considerable care then placed into the [Music] window then it is bound securely the w is taped and sealed with wax as a double protection against weather and [Music] insects several weeks later after it has been determined that the bud graft is successful the seedling top is cut away in time grafted shoot from the new Bud becomes the trunk and top of a superior rubber tree that grows from healthy roots in the newly cleared areas workers are busy lining and holing aligning the rows and digging the holes that will anchor the young trees in prominent and symmetrical Groves a Liberian technician uses a transit to make certain that the rows are straight and evenly spaced the tree locations are carefully measured and marked with Stakes most of the soil is a rich red clay LOM or Lite it is deep and [Music] fertile the entire operation is geared to exacting standards even so simple a task as digging a hole is governed by predetermined measurements next the holes are refilled with Rich humus top soil then a deep hole is punched into the loose Earth [Music] then the bud grafted rubber tree after being severely pruned is transplanted from the nursery and painstakingly anchored with all the Care exercised by an experienced orchardist in planting a young fruit tree [Music] in Rich Earth under equatorial rains and Sun they grow rapidly this one is 15 months old these 2 years old and these three years after five or six years the Liberian rubber tree is sufficiently mature to be tapped the first tapping cut is measured carefully opening the tapping panel requires a sharp knife and a trained and steady hand and there begins to ooze forth the first drops of the hundreds of gallons of latex that the tree will produce during its long life rubber tapping begins with the day itself First Dawn at The Villages that dot the plantations sees long lines of tappers setting forth Liberia's millions of rubber trees now require the services of more than 30,000 workers all the these men are tribe members and all are [Music] liberians on a large rubber Plantation the Tapper is the Aristocrat among all the workmen each man has had individual instruction and has served Apprentice training in this exacting craft for rubber tapping demands Tre surgery of a high degree of skill thus a Tapper takes real pride in is [Music] work each Tapper is assigned to about 250 trees and is equipped with a specially designed tapping knife two latex buckets that hold a total of 12 gallons and a bottle of chemical which delays the coagulation of the latex first the Tapper removes the thin string of latex which has coagulated from a prev previous morning's tapping he cuts with precise care since the latex oozes from cells located between the outer and inner [Music] Mark when the first panel is exhausted cutting begins at the top of the second that finished the bark on the first panel has renewed itself a dash of anti-coagulant and on to the next tree the desperate need for rubber during World War II prompted Firestone to introduce the Harvest routine to increase the yield of a single tree the usual one level tapping was supplemented by a second tapping at a higher level this intensive Harvest called high panel tapping produced thousands of tons of rubber which were of life or death importance to our fighting Forces high panel tapping made shock troops of millions of Liberian rubber [Music] trees let gong means that it is time to collect the latex tapping is done in the early hours because the lat morning heat slows the flow of latex roughly oneir of the weight of the latex that flows from the tree will be dry rubber rubber is in these buckets thousands of pounds of rubber in these thousands of gallons of Milky latex latex is an unstable compound from now on men chemistry and bacteriology will be fighting for time to convert this valuable white liquid into use rubber the pace is slower now the buckets are heavy with a liquid harvest the latex is collected at a division station each station serves many hundreds of tappers on the Firestone plantations in Liberia there are dozens of these stations inside the division station the crop of each tap is weighed recorded and poured into a receiving tank each station receives several thousand gallons of latex every day from the division latex station the latex is hauled in 18800 gallon tank trucks to the Cent processing Factory and there is emptied into a receiving tank at the Firestone processing Factory at Harville the largest of its kind in the world the fresh latex is converted into several commcial commercial grades of [Music] rubber the cream of the latex crop goes into centrifuges that work like cream separators after centrifuging the concentrated latex is shipped in bulk or in drums or making FX latex mattresses elastic thread surgical goods and other valuable and specialized items other latex is processed as dry rubber the addition of an acid helps it to coagulate in big Vats when partly solidified the blubber as it is called at this stage its appearance is similar to that of cled milk is chopped into big slices [Music] these hunks of blubber are sent down shoots to a line of power operated mangles and washers the rollers squeeze out most of the water content and shape the rubber into white pads these pads presently become sheets of rubber and are hung up to dry in enclosed rooms where the temperature is precisely controlled after drying the rubber is squeezed by hydraulic presses into solid bouncy Bales each weighing 224 lb or 10 Bales to the long ton the bailed rubber is loaded aboard lighters which carry it down Liberia's Farmington River to the Atlantic the caros originate at a River pier near the Inland processing Factory the heavily lighters travel down river into an ocean front cluttered with sandbars to span over these the lighters are built to have shallow drafts their destination is a freighter anchored a short way out at Sea here the rubber leaves its birthplace and begins a journey to a world that depends on it to do a thousand vital jobs in a million places the fact that a rubber production Enterprise of international importance exists in Liberia today is the result of the vision and courage have a prominent American who in the early 1920s became convinced that Americans should produce their own rubber this in order to assure supplies of this vital material and to safeguard American consumers from the tyrannies of alien rubber cartels this industrial Pioneer was Harvey s Firestone the founder of the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company a worldwide or ation which required ever increasing quantities of rubber a worldwide survey of rubber producing areas was actively directed by Harve s Firestone Jr who after a study of many tropical lands selected Liberia for the Firestone rubber plantations under his Direction the Firestone plantations company has changed what was a massive jungle to some 75,000 Acres of orderly plantations the caliber of industrial statesmanship which has developed the Firestone organization Trac proposes a never- ending Improvement of product research is Paramount at Firestone whose watch word is best today still better tomorrow at the plantations laboratory Americans and liberians work together to contribute in many ways to General scientific [Music] knowledge the byproduct of rubber in terms of human and social values are tremendous importance since so many of the resources of Liberia do not yield economic returns yet are of great and Lasting human values schools churches and hospitals are among these resources it has always been the desire of Firestone to contribute to the Social and human as well as the economic progress of Liberia this is one of several free schools on the Firestone plantations supported by Firestone and supervised by the Liberian government these schools are for the free use of children of [Music] employees maintaining a high standard of health and sanitation in the tropics requires a large and varied medical staff here native medical technicians perform Mass vaccination against small parts [Music] here is the preliminary Examination for African sleeping sickness local clinics supplement the service of the field medical personnel all serious cases are attended at a central base Hospital which is at par with a well-qualified and well equipped Hospital in any medium-sized American city firestone's comprehensive program for health and sanitation in Liberia employs American Physicians and surgeons who are ay assisted by native nurses and technicians needs for modern surgery as well as for immunization and other Medical Services both preventive and Curative are ever urgent and ever varying native technicians and nurses trained by the American medical staff serve devotedly and well opportunities for beneficial research are among the greatest anywhere the advantages in research like the many other widely beneficial resources of Liberia are in enhanced by the sincere democracy at work which is one of the foremost resources of this or any other [Music] Nation the close Bond of democracy that exists between Liberia and the United States is exemplified by the capital city Monrovia which was named for James Monroe an American president the motto of Liberia's early settlers the love of Liberty brought us here still has living meaning Monrovia is dotted with government buildings which offer tangible evidence of the nation's interest in education culture and democratic government among them is the legation of the United States this is Liberia's legislative Hall where the nation's lawmakers meet here they are assembled to hear an address by President William BS Tubman who delivers his state of the nation address to a newly convened legislature by Constitution and tradition the government of Liberia is similar to the government of the United States this impressive Harbor was completed in 1947 one century after the founding of the Republic it marks Monrovia as one of the important ports of Africa this then is the story of Liberia an heroic story of resources and progress of a Nation founded by free men a nation that stands as a Beacon Light of Freedom On The Fringe of what was once called The Dark Continent the story of Liberia is without beginning and Without End for here the past and the present are but steps to the inspirational promise of the future