The introduction of Chinese indentured labour to the Transvaal has been a complete failure—(1) Financially, (2) Socially, (3) Politically.  
The slave-owning ideals of the Rand lords has made the Transvaal a hell. It has not even made it a paying hell. Every security connected with the Rand industry has decreased enormously. It is estimated that the loss of capital runs to many millions of pounds sterling. It cannot be said in excuse that this is the result of general commercial depression throughout the Empire, for almost every other kind of security, except Consols, has considerably appreciated in value.
 
Certainly the record monthly output of gold has long been passed. More gold has been produced each month than was ever produced before, even during the pre-war period. But these record outputs mean nothing. Even at 1s. 6d. a day the Chinese labourer has been[Pg 111] proved to be an expensive luxury. He costs nearly 50 per cent. more than the Kaffir. The expenses of nearly every mine where Chinese labour has been employed have gone up; the expenses of every mine where Kaffir labour is employed have gone down.
 
Mr. F. H. P. Cresswell had something pertinent to say on this topic in the admirable address on the Chinese labour question which he delivered the other day at Potchefstroom. Dealing with the argument that white labour was prohibitively expensive, and that in order to work low-grade mines coolies must be employed, the indefatigable fighter of the yellow man observed—
 
"I have picked out at random a number of mines, and I find that the mine showing the best results, the only one showing other than very bad results with coolies, is the Van Ryn Mine. This mine in the June quarter of 1904 was working at a cost of 24s. 5d. per ton, and milled 30,000 tons in that quarter; they were then using native and, I believe, no unskilled whites at all. A year before that they were milling 24,500 tons, at a cost of 28s. 2d. per ton, with 1,000 natives. In the June quarter of 1905 it worked at a cost of 21s. per ton, and milled 60,000 tons. In that quarter it was using some 2,000 coolies."
 
Here is an instructive list which was compiled by the Pall Mall Gazette on September 8 last:—
 
[Pg 112]
 
MINE EXPENSES
Ever since the beginning of the war, we seem to have been watching in a bewitched trance for the coming of the boom. Some people described Johannesburg as the enchanted city waiting for the spell to be removed for the boom to come. It has never come; and it never will come as long as Chinamen are employed to do the work that can be done by Kaffirs or white men.
 
When the incurable idleness of the Chinaman and his cost of keep is added to that 1s. 6d. a day, he is dearer than the black man or the white man.
 
The Rand lord was anxious to procure cheap[Pg 113] labour and subservient labour. The white man could not be employed because he would have held the management of the country in the hollow of his hand, have formed trade unions, and insisted on proper wages and proper treatment. Enough black men, if time had been given, would have worked at the mines even at the reduced wages paid by the Rand lords.
 
On this point, too, Mr. Cresswell, from whose Potchefstroom speech I quoted just now, had something instructive to say. In dissecting the official records, he observed—
 
"They show that between June 1904 and the end of last August—the last month for which statistics are available—the number of natives on the producing mines of the Rand had increased by 19,000, or an average increase of 1,355 a month. Does any man here for a minute really believe that if no Chinese had come here at all the gentlemen controlling the mines would not have done exactly the same from June 1904 to August 1905, as they did from June 1903 to June 1904? Does any one believe that in the latter period, as in the former period, they would not have managed to bring an average of a hundred more stamps into operation, and into the producing mines, for every 1,085 natives at least that they added to their force of native labour? If they had merely added on 100 stamps for every 1,085 natives, as they did up to June 1904, do you know how many stamps would have been working in August 1905?[Pg 114] They would have had 6,503 stamps at work. Do you know how many they actually had at work? They had 6,845 stamps at work, or a paltry 342 stamps more than if no Chinese had ever been imported!"
 
But the Kaffir could not be forced to work. There was nothing to prevent him from throwing up his employment when he had earned sufficient money and was returning to his kraal. The only chance, therefore, so the Rand lords argued, of acquiring the voteless and subservient labour that they wanted, was to get Chinese labour. The Chinaman is certainly voteless, but he has proved far from subservient—far less subservient than a Kaffir.
 
Belonging to a more intelligent race, the child of an old though dormant civilization, he has known exactly how to deal with his masters. Of the gold extracted from the mines so much goes to wages and so much goes to dividends; the wages are spent in the country, the dividends are spent in Europe. Raise wages and you will render South Africa prosperous; lower wages and you will denude South Africa.
 
The Chinese policy of so-called economy has ruined the small trader, and turned the main stream of South African gold to Park Lane, Paris and Berlin, with a thin stream to China. This country, which has given so much for the Transvaal, has benefited least by the gold mines.
 
The Kaffir does nearly 50 per cent. more work[Pg 115] than the Chinese coolie, and Mr. Cresswell has proved that for the actual work of mining it is better to employ a white man than a Kaffir. These are not fanciful deductions, but indisputable facts proved finally and conclusively.
 
For almost two decades now the gold fields of South Africa have been the most potent force in English society, a force more for evil than for good. It is probable that we have lost more money in wars which are the direct result of the gold fever than we have ever made from the gold mines. If we were to estimate the cost of maintaining a large military force in South Africa, the financial effect of the unrest which existed in the pre-war period, the serious effect of the Jameson Raid on the money market, the ￡250,000,000 that we spent on the war, the millions that we have spent since in the work of repatriation, if we were to compare these figures with the amount of wealth extracted from the Rand, and made a simple profit and loss account, it is highly probable that we should find ourselves very considerably out of pocket.
 
And yet, as if hypnotized by the glamour of gold, we continue to treat the mine owners as if they were some particularly favoured class. We continue to submit to their dictation, which has proved so ruinous in the past, and we deliberately disregard the voices of the whole Empire in their favour. Such a policy is neither good sense nor good business.
 
[Pg 116]
 
The introduction of Chinese labour into the Rand on the top of all these grave financial and economical failures cannot be distinguished for a moment from madness. It would seem, indeed, that we were deliberately bent on destroying the Empire for the sake of the Jewish and un-British houses in Johannesburg. "He whom the gods intend to destroy they first make mad," is an ancient proverb, which seems strangely applicable to those gentlemen who are responsible for the management of our vast Empire.
 
They say here in Britain that the stories of gangs of murderers roaming over the Transvaal are so many political fairy-tales, the result of party feeling, the usual bait for the hustings, the stalking-horse to bring into office one set of men and to throw out of office the other. They say that the objection of the British public to Chinese labour is a matter of hypocritical sentiment; that they really have none of those fine ideals which they pretend to; that they have no passion for liberty and freedom and the rights of man. Is not the Chinaman better off than he is in his own country?
 
Such casuistry would justify the beating to death with the knout in this country of a black criminal, because in his own country capital punishment was carried out by the more cruel process of burying him alive in an ant-heap to be eaten by the ants in the heat of the African sun.
 
It has brought terror and fear into the [Pg 117]Transvaal. And terror and fear breed passions and vices which are a danger to every social community. It emphasizes the cruelty and cunning in a man's nature. It destroys in him that kindliness and sympathy—those "virtues of the heart," as Dickens used to call them—which in spite of all are still noble and fine sentiments to cherish.
 
Professor James Simpson, of New College, Edinburgh, who lately visited South Africa with the British Association, takes the view, I see, that ere long the more evilly-disposed among the Chinese will have been worked out of their ranks, and the whole body will settle down to "strenuous, if automatic, labour." It is devoutly to be hoped that such will be the case, but up to the present there is nothing to indicate that it will be so. On the contrary, everything points to the fact that the Chinaman, emboldened by his successful efforts at checkmating the representatives of law and order, will perpetrate fresh outrages with increased impunity, and that the last phase of the yellow terror will be worse than the first.
 
I had just written the foregoing when, happening to pick up an evening paper, the following Reuter message from Johannesburg, dated November 3, caught my eye:—
 
"Chinese Secret Society on the Rand.
 
"Johannesburg, November 3.
 
"Evidence given at the trial here of some Chinamen charged with being concerned in the[Pg 118] disturbance at the New Modderfontein Mine, disclosed the existence of an organized secret society among the Chinese called the 'Red Door,' the object of which is the committal of crime. The members, who are all of bad character, are sworn to render each other assistance. The authorities are breaking up the society and repatriating the ringleaders."
 
What has His Grace of Canterbury to say to this?
 
I have seen in a recent election in England a poster evidently intended as a counterblast to the posters issued by the Opposition. It is a poster, in which Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman is addressing an English miner, while in the distance two happy Chinamen grin pleasantly in the clean, well-laid-out mine. Says Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman in effect, "My dear man, these men are robbing you of your labour." "Not at all," replies the white miner, "for every batch of these yellow men one white man is employed."
 
This is intended as a defence of the statement made by Lord Milner on March 20, 1904, who then stated that he was prepared to stake his reputation on the estimate that for every 10,000 coloured labourers introduced there would be in three years' time 10,000 more whites in the country. In effect, the implication underlying this statement was, of course, that for every yellow man introduced, one white man would come into the country and find employment.
 
[Pg 119]
 
Six months later—on September 5, 1904—the Colonial Secretary replied as follows, to a correspondent who wrote asking him whether it would be now advisable for a man to go out to the Transvaal.
 
"Mr. Lyttelton," so ran the answer, "would certainly not advise any one to go out without a definite prospect of employment."
 
So far from 50,000 white men finding employment in the Transvaal since the introduction of 50,000 Chinamen, the proportion is thousands below this number, and not even the poverty-stricken state of Poplar or West Ham can compare with the impecuniosity to be met with at every street corner of the Gold Reef City. There are thousands of men in South Africa who have been lured there by the prospects of the Rand in a daily state of destitution. The streets of Johannesburg are crowded with unemployed. The evil seeds of poverty and destitution have been scattered throughout the length and breadth of South Africa. Business in Durban is in a parlous condition. In Cape Town there ............