[...] Leopold II set up the operations to extract the maximum profit, and over the course of the decades the Free State altered its policies several times to ensure its basic objective. The many different policies were united by a premise: as a 1 923 manual put it, " The laziness of the col­ored races is a kind of genetic burden." Violence was necessary to overcome this natural indolence. Therefore, the Free State's officials brutalized the people of the Congo, killing them mercilessly, and torturing those who could not or would not work. Leopold II's Free State set up the Force Publique, a militia designed to strike terror in the heart of the workforce. If a worker did not work hard, the officer would cut off their hand; one district official received 1,308 hands in one day from his subordinates. [...]