Birch, Treasurer; Directors Gilchrist Stewart, Emmett J. Scott, D. W. Roberts, M. D., George W. Robber, and R. R. Jackson) Additional funding came from minerals such as silver, tin (and other commodities such as mahogany found on the leased African lands) that were exported to the US and Europe. In 1914 the company announced its intention to buy the Charles W. Chappelle Company, said to have a large mahogany concession in the Gold Coast. The land leases usually encompassed about 120 square miles, and were time generous, some offering a 90-plus years contract. This was during a time period when the natural environment was not a main concern. Some leaders on the African continent did not favor the export arrangement as questioning it as depleting Africa of resources and the use of an African American to do so, but overall, Chappelle was received favorably by Africa's black population and leaders. After Chappelle moved back to Pittsburgh in the 1920s, he was still an active president of the African Union Company, and its Chairman of the Board was Dr. Jay Emmett Scott of the USA's Howard University, Washington, D.C. It was reported in the Savannah Tribune in 1922 that "Charles W. Chappelle has made connections with the U.S. Steel Corporation [year 1922] to the extent of a contract of 100,000 tons of manganese a year for use in their extensive plants. $8,000,000 worth of the finest grades of mahogany [year 1922] are now awaiting shipment to the United States and Europe" and that business was thriving requiring two steamships. Later, while Jay Emmett Scott was chairman of the board of the African Union Company, it was "unable to arrange for shipment of the cocoa to the United States. The loss of this big deal sealed the company's fate. As the company teetered on the edge of bankruptcy in early 1923, Scott struggled to save it. He managed to keep the African Union Company afloat for a few more years, even attracting Robert Lee Vann, the Pittsburgh attorney and newspaper owner, to assume control of the company's legal affairs. By 1930, though, the African Union Company was defunct." The exact circumstances of why the African Union Company had problems in the shipment of cocoa (cocoa bean) from Africa to the United States in the late 1920s seems to be so far unknown, and the African Union Company going out of business does