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Title: John Chinaman on the Rand
Author: Anonymous
Release Date: December 18, 2019 [eBook #60959]
Language: English
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***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JOHN CHINAMAN ON THE RAND***
| Note: | Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See https://archive.org/details/cu31924083851547 |
A NEW FORM OF TORTURE.
Frontispiece
JOHN CHINAMAN
ON THE RAND
BY AN ENGLISH EYE WITNESS
WITH INTRODUCTION BY
DR. JOHN CLIFFORD, M.A., LL.B.
AND FRONTISPIECE AND FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS
LONDON
R. A. EVERETT & SON
10 & 12 GARRICK STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C.
1905
[All rights reserved]
Richard Clay & Sons, Limited,
BREAD STREET HILL, E.C., AND
BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.
BY
DR. JOHN CLIFFORD, M.A., LL.B.
I have read the following account of the importation of Chinese coolies into South Africa with the keenest pain and sorrow. It is an authentic story of one of the foulest tragedies in our British annals; the witness of one who has seen the facts for himself.
It is an indictment packed with sifted evidence, written with knowledge; but also with the indignation of the patriot and of the humanitarian, against wrongs wantonly inflicted upon our fellow-men and sanctioned by the Parliament of the Empire. The "balance of evil" is overwhelmingly proved. It is an economic blunder. It is another blood-stained page in the history of[Pg viii] the inhumanity of man to man. It violates the domestic and the social ideals. It is a blight upon our Empire; and, chiefest of all, it is inevitably and overwhelmingly immoral; productive of vices and crimes that cannot be named without shame and wrath.
And yet these foreigners who sell men for gold are declaring that this system must remain "undisturbed." Never! It must go. It is building the Empire on the blood of souls. It is not a "necessity." It is a wanton iniquity. It is not "freedom"; and it is shuffling of the meanest kind to say that it is not "slavery." Let Britishers realize their responsibility and bring to a speedy and final end this return to barbarism!
JOHN CLIFFORD.
The Publishers beg to thank the Editor of the 'Morning Leader' for permission to use the Illustrations contained in this volume.
| CHAP. | PAGE | |
| I. | ENSLAVING THE RAND | 13 |
| II. | 'AVE, CRŒSUS, MORITURI TE SALUTANT' | 27 |
| III. | THE YELLOW MEN ON THE RAND | 46 |
| IV. | THE GROWTH OF TERRORISM | 77 |
| V. | THE YELLOW TRAIL | 98 |
| VI. | THE EFFECT OF CHINESE LABOUR. PROMISES AND PERFORMANCES | 110 |
JOHN CHINAMAN
ON THE RAND
In the following pages I have made no reference to the founder of the Christian faith.
There is a particular form of blasphemy current in Great Britain which ascribes to the highest and noblest Christian motives actions which are prompted by the meanest passions of cupidity and self-interest. Any shadow is good enough for the criminal to creep into in the hope of escaping detection; but blasphemy is not too hard a word to express the attitude of those advocates and supporters of Chinese slavery in the Rand who actually creep under the shadow of the Cross itself for moral protection.
With reservations, the Archbishop of Canterbury has blessed the movement, having satisfied himself, with an ease somewhat extraordinary, that it was all above-board and moral. The[Pg 14] Bishop of Bristol has commended it. The Rev. T. J. Darragh, Rector of St. Mary's Church, Johannesburg, saw in it nothing but an opportunity to teach the doctrines of Christianity to the heathen. "I am much attracted by the possibility of evangelistic work among those people under very favourable conditions, and I hope to see many of them sent back to their country good practising Christians. It will be a glorious opportunity for the Church."
Almost it would seem that the logical conclusion of this estimable priest was that all the heathen nations of Asia should be packed into Lord Selborne's loose-boxes and carted over to Johannesburg in order that the evangelistic genius of the Rector of St. Mary's might have full scope, and countless souls be added to the fold of Christ, so long as their duties of digging gold for German Jews at a shilling a day were not interfered with. As these advocates and supporters of Chinese labour have convinced themselves that the Ordinance, so far from being opposed to the principles of Christianity, is likely to be of use in spreading the doctrine of love, I realize that it would be hopeless to attempt to prove to them that the importation of Chinese to the Rand finds no support in the doctrines promulgated in the four Gospels.
Indeed, to expect spiritual ideals on the Rand is too ridiculous for words. The man who searches the Bible for a text to suit his line of argument might perhaps find one for[Pg 15] the Rand lords from the Old Testament, and preaching from the sentence that "silver was counted as naught in the days of Solomon" might argue that all practices were justifiable to bring about a state of affairs which apparently had the Divine approval. The ideal of the Rand is money. All imperial, social and religious considerations have no weight with the masters of the gold mines. Their object is to get gold, and to get it as cheaply as they can, and with this in view they realize that they must obtain two things—1. Political control of the Transvaal; 2. Slave labour. To attain the first, all Englishmen, with their democratic ideas of liberty and freedom, must be kept out of the country. This first object attained, the introduction of slave labour would be extremely simple.
How they achieved their object is the history of South Africa for the last eight years.
As long ago as 1897, when mines were booming and vast fortunes were being made, the leaders of the mining industry suddenly realized by a simple arithmetical calculation that more money could be made if their workmen were paid less.
Representations were made to President Kruger, a Government Commission was appointed, and the possibility of reducing the wages of Kaffir workmen was discussed in all its bearings. Mr. George Albu, who was then the chairman of the Chamber of Mines, pointed out that 2s. 3d. a shift was being paid to the[Pg 16] Kaffirs, and that this could be reduced to 1s. 6d. a shift for skilled labour and 1s. or less for unskilled labour. When he was asked how this could be accomplished, he replied, "By simply telling the boys that their wages are reduced." Mr. Albu, however, declared that a much better state of affairs would be brought about if a law was passed compelling the Kaffir to do a certain amount of work per annum, though he admitted that nowhere in the world was there a law enabling any particular industry to obtain forced labour.
President Kruger's Government—accounted corrupt and irradical in those days, but now regarded by comparison throughout the Transvaal and Orange River Colony by both English and Dutchmen alike as most benevolent and beneficent—refused to sanction a system which would not only have been in opposition to the Conventions with Great Britain of 1852, 1854, and 1884, but would have been opposed to the spirit of humanity that should exist among all civilized communities.
Then came the war. The Boer Government was swept away. Two hundred and fifty millions and 21,000 English lives was the price exacted for planting the Union Jack in Pretoria and Bloemfontein.
During the war the magnates, with a persistence worthy of a better cause, kept before them those objects which I have enumerated. The consulting engineer of the Consolidated Goldfields reported to a meeting of mining[Pg 17] representatives at Cape Town that dividends could be increased by two and a half millions by reducing Kaffir wages, and it was agreed that on the opening of the mines Kaffirs' wages should be reduced by 33 per cent. When peace came it was found that the Kaffirs were not prepared to work on these terms. They had grown rich during the war, and in the independence of their new-found wealth they refused to be treated as so much human machinery. It was bad enough for them to work at their original wages in the Rand mines, without their consenting to such a large reduction in their wages. The rate of mortality in the Rand mines was seventy per thousand per annum; the rate of mortality in the De Beers mines was only thirty per thousand per annum. The De Beers never had any difficulty in obtaining what native labour they required, because they treated their men well, looked after their interests, did not sweat them, and admitted that a black man, although black, was still a man. But even under these circumstances, had the magnates of the Rand offered the scale of wages that pertained before the war, they would have found black labour in abundance. But even with a black man a minimum of 30s. and a maximum of 35s. a month with food is hardly tempting enough to draw him from his kraal.
The alternative of white labour was, of course, never seriously considered. The mere Englishman who had fought for the country was not to be allowed to settle in the country or to[Pg 18] work in the country. The Angots, the Beits, the Ecksteins, the Hanaus, the Kuchenmeisters, the Rosenheims, the Schencks, the Taubs, the Wernhers, and the rest of the gentlemen delighting in similar grand old English names were determined not to permit it. The foolish Englishman would want to vote; would have ideas about personal liberty and personal freedom; would have ridiculous notions about Magna Charta and the Bill of Rights; would, in short, think that the nation that had spilt its blood and spent its money for the Rand was entitled to a vote in its management.
With almost unparalleled insolence the Rand lords frankly declared that the introduction of English labour would place the control of the country in the hands of Englishmen, and would lead to that trail of the serpent, the formation of labour unions. It was to meet with this that two hundred and fifty millions was spent by the English people, 25,000 died, 25,000 were permanently maimed.
That white labour could be used, and be used profitably, was proved beyond a doubt. Even when the higher wages were taken into account, it was found that in the cyanide works of the gold mines the Kaffirs' cost per ton was 5s. 3d., against the Whites' 4s. 9d. In developing and stopping actual work of the mining underground, the Kaffirs cost 4s. 8d. and the Whites 4s. 2d. per ton. It was only in the machine drill work that the Kaffirs proved slightly cheaper than the Whites. There Kaffir labour[Pg 19] worked out at 6s. 4d. per ton, white labour at 6s. 9d.; a difference of 5d. per ton, so small a difference as to be almost a negligible quantity.
It was not until later that any pretence was put forward that white labour could not be employed. The real reason, and the reason frankly admitted, was the fear of the political power they would possess.
Mr. F. H. P. Cresswell, general manager of the Village Main Reef, worked his mine upon a system of joint black and white labour, and the mine returned a dividend of 35 per cent. for the year 1903 and 20 per cent. for the first half of 1904. In the report upon the working of this mine it was declared that the efficiency of the mine was increasing, and the output greater, while the working cost was lower. This was proof conclusive that white labour could be employed in the mines if the magnates wished to employ it. That they did not wish to employ it is proved beyond the shadow of doubt by a letter from the late Mr. Percy Tarbutt, of St. Swithin's Lane, to Mr. Cresswell—
"Dear Mr. Cresswell,—With reference to your trial of white labour for surface work on the mines, I have consulted the Consolidated Goldfields people, and one of the members of the board of the Village Main Reef has consulted Messrs. Wernher, Beit & Co., and the feeling seems to be of fear that, having a large[Pg 20] number of white men employed on the Rand in the position of labourers, the same troubles will arise as are now prevalent in the Australian colonies, viz. that the combination of the labour classes will become so strong as to be able, more or less, to dictate not only on the question of wages, but also on political questions, by the power of their votes when a representative Government is established."
Foiled in their attempt to get cheap black labour, threatened with an inundation of Englishmen, the cosmopolitan Rand lords tried to obtain the slaves they required from Central Africa. This was not a success. It was admitted by a speaker at a commercial meeting in Johannesburg in July 1903 that various experiments had been tried to get native labour, and that the best results had been obtained at the Robinson Deep, which paid 25 per cent. dividend. "They imported 316 natives from Central Africa only three weeks ago. So far only eight had died—(laughter)—but there were 150 in the hospital, and by the end of the month the whole will be in hospital. (Hear, hear.) They were coming in at the rate of thirty a day. These men cost £30 a head, and were not worth a 'bob' a head when they arrived. (Cheers.)"
What were the mine lords to do? If only they were allowed they were quite prepared to employ slaves. Their amazing reduction in wages had not induced the Kaffir to come to[Pg 21] the Rand. In the words of the native chief the natives did not like to go to Johannesburg, "because they went there to die." The majority at the Labour Commission had proved that if good wages and treatment were extended to the Kaffirs, hosts of natives would flock to the mines. But the Rand lords cared nothing about kindness, and they were determined to reduce wages.
It was at this juncture that the question of Chinese indentured labour was seriously mooted. The black men were tired of being carted about in trucks, and herded like cattle, and beaten and maimed for life without any chance of compensation. It was said that the Chinaman was docile and tractable, and would work for practically nothing, with extremely little food, for as many hours as he might be requested. Chinese labour, therefore, it was decided to obtain.
But the Rand lords had to proceed with guile. They did this country the credit to believe that any hasty determination to import thousands of Chinamen would have met with an outburst of popular indignation against which they could not have hoped to have stood firm.
Forming a pretty accurate estimate of the leading passions that guide men's minds they determined to appeal to the cupidity of the Englishman at home. Their press began to pour forth a torrent of sobs over the lamentable decay of the gold industry in the Transvaal. The country was ruined, they said; the industry[Pg 22] had gone to pieces. For ridiculous considerations of hypocritical morality the Rand, for which Great Britain had sacrificed so much, was to be made bankrupt. In a word, it was bankruptcy—or Chinese. They found many powerful supporters in this country. The trail of their wealth was on a section of the press, and that section echoed whatever principles it might please the cosmopolitan gentlemen of Johannesburg to give voice to. Even now one can recall the despairing moans of leader writers over the ruin that had overtaken the Transvaal.
This was in June 1903. Somewhat unexpectedly Lord Milner at this juncture refused to echo the gloomy forebodings of the Witwatersrand Chamber of Mines; in fact, his tone was joyously optimistic. "The production of gold," he said, "even now is greater than in 1895 or 1896, when the Transvaal really was, and had been for some time, the marvel of the world in the matter of gold production. The world progresses; but whatever was fabulous wealth years ago is not abject poverty to-day. Not only that, but the rate of production is steadily increasing."
What he said was quite right. The output of gold in the district of Johannesburg in 1900 was 237,000 ozs., and there were 59,400 Kaffirs employed.
But for six months the agitation continued. It was put forward as a theory that the only chance for the Transvaal was to employ Chinese labour. The supporters of the Rand lords[Pg 23] hailed the theory with delight, as if it was something new, something that they had never imagined before. Clearly this was the direction in which prosperity lay. They must have Chinese labour. Then shares would go up, dividends would become enormous, and everybody would be wealthy and happy. The Transvaal would be something like a Mohammedan heaven, with Great Britain as an annexe. White men were to pour out to the colonies—not to labour on the mines, for that work was only fit for Chinamen; besides, white men it was said could not do it—and the Rand was to be prosperous and life was to be a veritable bed of roses. Was England to be denied the fruits of her victory? For what had the war been waged if the Transvaal was to be left a barren, unproductive corner of the Empire? Were the fruits of victory to be Dead Sea apples?
By such arguments did they appeal to the British public. The dummy figure of despair and ruin that they had set up served a very useful purpose. It frightened the monied classes into the belief that their investments were not secure. It frightened the patriots into thinking that the war had been waged in vain. Few people troubled to make inquiries as to whether the statement of the Rand's impending ruin was true or not. There certainly was a slump in Kaffir shares. This was held to be indicative of the state of the gold industry. It apparently did not occur to anybody that just as Kaffir shares were made to fluctuate during the war—when the mines were not being worked—so [Pg 24]they could be made to slump if only the Rand lords wished.
In six months they convinced the majority of the House of Commons, they convinced the Government, and they even made Lord Milner eat his own words. His dispatches began to take on a garb of gloom. In August they were of the mitigated grief shade; in September the shade darkened; in October it was more than half mourning; in November it had become black; in December it was as black as the Egyptian plague. His lordship talked of crises; of what would happen unless some noble, national sacrifice was made to save the sinking ship. Chinese labour was the only cure for the deplorable condition of the gold industry in the Transvaal!
Meanwhile, a Labour Commission had been appointed, a mission consisting of ten persons, eight of whom were known to be in favour of the introduction of Asiatic labour. This Commission was authorized to find out whether a scarcity of Kaffir or white labour existed, but was forbidden to answer the question which was in the minds of all, whether it would be proper or desirable to introduce Chinese labour.
The agitation proved successful, and it was decided to import Chinese labour. The grave disasters attendant on the impending crisis Lord Milner insisted in his dispatches in December 1903 had to be met.
It is curious, of course, to compare the statement of Lord Milner in December 1903 with his statement in June 1903. In June the [Pg 25]output of gold was 237,000 ozs., and according to Lord Milner everything was satisfactory. The production of gold, in his own words, was greater than in 1895 or 1896. Six months later, in December, the output was 286,000 ozs., an increase of 49,000 ozs. Yet, according to Lord Milner, the prosperity of the gold industry was in inverse proportion to the output of gold! Two hundred and thirty-seven thousand ounces per month was prosperity in June; 286,000 ozs. in December was grave disaster, and the rest of it. Moreover, in those golden days of June 1903 there were 59,400 Kaffir labourers working on the mines. In that dark, cheerless December, when the output of gold had increased 49,000 ozs., and the gold industry was rapidly sinking back into the pit of gloom and disaster, the number of labourers employed was 68,800, being an increase of 9400—or 15 per cent. Moreover, in this terrible, deplorable month the production of gold was greater than it had ever been before, except during that period between the beginning of 1898 and the commencement of the war. As to the question of labour, the production per labourer per month in December 1903 was 4 ozs. of gold. In 1899 it was only 3·4 ozs.; that is to say, it had been increased by the use of machinery by one-seventh, so that six labourers in December 1903 were equal to seven labourers in the golden period before the war. Actually, therefore, those 68,800 labourers were doing the work of 80,262 labourers, and were doing it at wages 33 per cent. less than they were before the war.[Pg 26] But this was not prosperity. The dividends were not large enough.
The report of the consulting engineer of the Consolidated Goldfields still rang in the ear of the Rand lords. "Cut down the wages 33 per cent. and you will add two and a half millions to the dividends."
An unlimited number of Kaffirs would not come to the mines under these conditions; they would not submit to bad wages as well as bad treatment. White men would combine to manage the country and to take the political power out of the hands of the Rand lords. "If we could replace 20,000 workers by 100,000 unskilled whites," said one of the directors, "they would simply hold the government of the country in the hollow of their hand; and without any disparagement to the British labourer, I prefer to see the more intellectual section of the community at the helm."
Hence the gloomy picture painted of the gold industry in that December 1903. Hence the slump in the Kaffir market. Hence that cry that native labour would not come and that whites could not do the work. Hence that more ominous cry that Chinese labourers must be employed. The Transvaal was not to be for Englishmen. It was to be governed by the intellectual genius of Mr. Rudd and his bevy of German Jews and non-British Gentiles. Even if white labour was economically possible the Rand lords did not want it. It was possible—it was economical. But they wanted labour that would be voteless and subservient!
"The problem is a very urgent problem. The necessity of going forward is an urgent and vital necessity in the economical condition of the country. I will tell the House why in a sentence. The mines are 30,000 natives short of the number engaged in the pre-war period."
These were the words subsequently used by Mr. Lyttelton, the Colonial Secretary. The matter was urgent. Already protests were pouring in from every part of the Empire. Imperial meetings, white league meetings, anti-slavery meetings, political meetings—all the machinery, in short, of protest and obstruction was being got under weigh, and to the Rand lords it seemed as if the ideal of slavery for which they had struggled so long and so hard was to be denied them at the last hour. The anguish of Sir Lancelot when a vision of the Holy Grail was denied him after all his trials and tribulations was not greater or more poignant than the trepidation of the mine owners. It became, indeed, a very urgent[Pg 28] problem for them, for unless they could bring the matter to a head, not even the strongest Government of the century could hope to withstand the popular will when once it was organized sufficiently to voice its petition loudly enough.
But of economical necessities there were none.
It was natural after such a devastating war that some time should elapse before the mines could get into full working order and attain that wonderful output of gold which prevailed immediately before the outbreak of hostilities. The progress of the gold industry after the war had to be gradual; but so far from it being depressed or showing signs of being stagnant, it had, as I have already shown, increased enormously. Already it was within measurable distance of the output of the pre-war period. The economical necessity was not the necessity of importing cheap labour, but the necessity of paying a proper wage to the Kaffir and of treating him well.
Already Dr. Jameson, who in no sense was a partisan opponent of the Rand capitalists, had declared in November 1903 that the De Beers Company would not employ Chinamen—that they had plenty of labour, white and black, because they treated their people well.
But the Rand mine owners not only did not pay their Kaffirs a proper wage, but meted out to them such treatment that the death-rate among them had increased since 1902 to an[Pg 29] extent which, to express it in mild terms, was appalling. I quote the figures below—
This was the economical necessity that should have occupied the attention of his Majesty's Government, and not the question of introducing Chinese indentured labour into the colony. That the mine owners have successfully baulked in the past all inquiry as to their treatment of natives is proved conclusively by the fact that even these statistics did not draw forth a commission from the Government to inquire into such a terrible state of affairs. Instead of the question being, "Why is it Kaffirs die at the rate of seventy per thousand per month?" the problem they set themselves was how to provide an alternative to these[Pg 30] quick-dying wage-wanting niggers. Attempts had been made to procure coolie labour from India, and Lord Curzon never did a greater or a nobler thing than when he refused the sanction of his Government to such a step.
Mr. Chamberlain said in the Commons that Lord Curzon should have been overruled; an inexplicable remark from a man who had had the courage to say to the miners that it was better they should be governed from Downing Street than from Park Lane.
In December 1903 General Ben Viljeon informed a labour commissioner that a petty chief had told him recently that if he sent 100 boys to the Rand only 66 returned, and some of them had scurvy. It was not wonderful, therefore, that black labour was scarce; but it was wonderful that his Majesty's Government did not take steps to put an end to a state of things which they must have known to be terrible, instead of merely substituting for the ill-used, underpaid, criminally-treated but free labouring Kaffirs Chinamen who were to be nothing better than slaves.
But the drawing up of the draft Ordinance went forward. It was hurried on at an incredible rate. Until the last minute it was kept back from Parliament, and the Blue-book dealing with the alleged necessities for introducing yellow labour was only placed in the hands of the members of the House of Commons a few days before Mr. Herbert Samuel moved his famous amendment to the[Pg 31] King's Address—"It is highly inexpedient that sanction should be given to any Ordinance permitting the introduction of indentured Chinese labourers into the Transvaal Colony until the approval of the colonists has been formally ascertained."
At one end of the cable sat Lord Milner, pricked on by the Rand lords, at the other end sat the Colonial Secretary, anxious to be fair, anxious to be humane, anxious to do nothing contrary to the historic principles of British rule, but bemused by the clamour of the Transvaal, and seeing in the protests against the Ordinance only party moves and party partisanship. The clamour for the Ordinance increased day by day.
Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman had managed to extract a pledge from the Government, by which Lord Milner was instructed to introduce into the Ordinance a clause suspending its operation pending further instructions from home. But it was pointed out that the matter was of such great urgency that his Majesty's Government could not undertake to postpone their decision longer than the termination of the debate on the Address.
As a matter of fact, they had already made up their minds. It was stated that if a colony desired Chinese labour it was not for the Imperial Parliament to interfere. To have done so would have been contrary to the traditions of Imperial Government. But when Mr. Herbert Samuel asked that the Ordinance[Pg 32] should not be permitted until the approval of the colonists in the Transvaal had been formally obtained by the natural expedient of a referendum, Lord Milner asserted that to hold a referendum was impossible—it would occupy too much time, that at any rate it was an expedient unknown in any part of the British Empire.
As a matter of fact, a referendum has been put in practice in South Australia, in New Zealand, in New South Wales, and was used more recently to decide upon the important question of the Australian Commonwealth. That it would have occupied six months to take such a referendum, during which period the gold of the Transvaal would have vanished, everybody would have refused to work, and the Kaffir market would have been blotted out, was preposterous. Yet, at the moment when Lord Milner made this statement, a census of the colony was taken, which only occupied seven weeks. It is not unreasonable to assume that such a referendum would have occupied more than a month.
All the arguments of the Opposition were in vain against such plausibility. It was useless to point out that while the educated Chinese were good citizens, the bitter experience of Australia, Canada, the United States and New Zealand proved conclusively that the uneducated Chinamen, wherever they went, were vicious, immoral and unclean, hated by the white man, loathed and feared by every decent white woman. The Government admitted the danger[Pg 33] of allowing 50,000 Chinamen to be planted down in a colony without any restrictions. Their introduction was a regrettable necessity; and so it was proposed to keep them in compounds, to round them up every night like sheep, to make them liable to heavy penalties if they wandered abroad without a permit. This was the only way, they declared, in which these necessary evils could be used. Of the necessity of utilizing the evil at all they were convinced, and no argument succeeded in shaking their faith. It was pointed out to them that this would be semi-slavery, if not indeed actual slavery. The Chinaman was not to be employed in any position but that of a miner; he could not improve his position; he could not give notice to one employer and go to another. He could never leave the compound without permission. If he struck work he could be imprisoned. He was bound to reside on the premises of his employer, in charge of a manager appointed for the purpose. Permission to leave these premises might or might not be granted; but in any case he could never be absent for more than forty-eight hours at a time. If he escaped, he could be tracked down, arrested without a warrant and imprisoned by a magistrate, while anybody who harboured or concealed him was fined £50, or imprisoned in default of payment.
The Ordinance was without parallel in the Empire. Because the Chinese were competitors, because they were a moral and social[Pg 34] danger, the supporters of the Ordinance were compelled to devise some system under which it could become law in the Transvaal, and by which they could yet prevent any one of the Chinamen brought in being able at any time to leave his employment and turn to other and more profitable undertakings.
Only a casuist could call this anything else but slavery. One of our most unsuccessful ministers tried to find a parallel between this system and the life of our soldiers—a parallel so bright and so pleasing that no one, I think, has yet attempted to spoil the bloom of this flower of grim humour by disclosing its absurdity. The Transvaal Government had, in fact, gone to the statute books of the slave states of America for a model for their Ordinance.
It was soon seen and realized that any attempt to negative the Ordinance must prove abortive. All that the Opposition could do was to render it as innocuous as possible, and to secure as many guarantees as they could for the proper moral and physical treatment of the unfortunate Chinamen. They extracted pledges and promises galore, most of which have been completely broken.
On March 21, 1904, Mr. Lyttelton, after stating that the average Kaffir wage was 50s. for thirty days' work, made this statement in the House of Commons—"Chinamen would receive in the Transvaal at least 2s. a day. I stand here and give the House my assurance that the[Pg 35] Chinese will receive at least the amount I have specified."
At that time, when this well-meaning pledge was made, the Kaffir was only receiving 33s. per month. But even had he been receiving 50s. a month, which Mr. Lyttelton in his ignorance imagined, was it at all likely that the Rand owner would pay the Chinaman 2s. a day, or 60s. a month, that is to say, 10s. a month more than they were presumably paying the Kaffirs? Of course, the mine magnates were not going to pay the Chinaman more than the 33s. they were paying the Kaffir.
Mr. Lyttelton's pledge was summarily disposed of by Lord Milner and the mine owners.
After at first insisting on a minimum of 1s. a day instead of 2s., Lord Milner finally made this plausible promise, that if within six months the average pay was not more than 50s. for thirty days' work, the minimum should be raised from 1s. to 1s. 6d. a day. Mr. Lyttelton's maximum of 2s. a day was thus reduced to a possible minimum of 1s. 6d. a day.
Another delightful pledge was also given. It seemed almost indeed as if the Transvaal Government were continually advising Lord Milner to cable, saying, "Promise anything in heaven or earth, but let's get this Ordinance through."
With somewhat unusual consideration, the opinion of the Chinese Government had been asked on the subject. Speaking through their[Pg 36] ambassador, the Chinese Government insisted that the immigrant should have free access to the courts of justice to obtain redress for injury to his personal property.
On March 10, 1904, Mr. Lyttelton stated that the Chinese labourers would have the same right of access to the courts as all the other subjects of his Majesty's dominions. Any subject of his Majesty's dominions has the right to appear before a court when he has any grievance. That is the right of all subjects of his Majesty's dominions. The Chinaman, according to Mr. Lyttelton, was to have the same right. As a matter of fact, he has no right of access to the courts, except by leave of an inspector.
Again, Mr. Lyttelton declared, when the Chinese Government raised the point of flogging, that there was no power in the Ordinance to impose flogging. There was not at that time. But four months later, on July 28, an Ordinance was assented to by which the resident magistrate had the right to flog in cases where the conviction was a conviction of robbery, in cases of any statutory offence for which flogging could be only given for the second conviction, in cases of assault of a grave character or intended to do serious bodily harm, or, indeed, to commit any offence.
I shall deal later in detail with the punishments that have been inflicted on the yellow slaves that work in their slavery under the Union Jack. It is at present only my object to[Pg 37] outline the policy of promising anything and making all sorts of preposterous pledges in order that the clamours of the Rand lords might be gratified. In Johannesburg they knew well that if once indentured labour was agreed to in principle, it would be easy to make what alterations they wished in the spirit or the letter of the Ordinance.
In February 1904 Mr. Lyttelton stated with regard to the importation of women with the Chinese—"We are advised in this matter by men of the most experience in the whole Empire on the subject of Chinese labour. We are advised that the coolies would not go without their womenfolk. Manifestly it would be wrong that they should go without their womenfolk if they were desirous of taking them with them."
To quiet the lethargic conscience of that adept courtier, his Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury, it was declared that the interests of public morality demanded that the Chinamen should be accompanied by their wives, and that this was one of the essential conditions of the Ordinance. It was pointed out at the time that once the mine owners had 5000 indentured labourers, they would not take upon themselves the burden of supporting their wives, with an average of three children apiece. It would mean 250,000 women and children. And it is almost inconceivable that even Mr. Lyttelton could have imagined that the cosmopolitan proprietors of the Transvaal would have taken[Pg 38] upon themselves the superintendence of human beings utterly incapable of dragging gold from the earth.
As a matter of fact, Chinese have never taken their wives into foreign countries, and therefore the moral question, which so concerned Dr. Davidson for one brief day, was not settled. As a matter of fact, it was stated at the beginning of this year by the Colonial Secretary that while 4895 wives were registered as accompanying their husbands, only two women and twelve children had actually been brought over!
It was stated by Mr. Lyttelton, at the same time as he satisfied the conscience of the most Reverend Primate, that the Chinaman would be so well fed and so lightly worked that in the interests of morality it was physically necessary that he should be accompanied by his wife. In explaining the fact that only two women and twelve children had accompanied the thirty or forty thousand Chinamen up to the beginning of 1905, the Colonial Secretary remarked in effect that this fact would not lead to immorality, because the Chinaman's food was so frugal and his work was so steady that he would be almost physically incapable of those passions which are a source of so much trouble, of so much crime, of so much happiness, and of so much beneficence to the white man, the black man, the red man, and the brown man. Life under the Rand lords, in short, was practically emasculating, and therefore immorality was impossible.
I shall deal with this subject later on. For the present I will point out that this was the fourth pledge that had been given in the House of Commons, only to be broken, not, I admit, by Mr. Lyttelton and the Government, but by their masters, the mine owners on the Rand.
The Opposition steadily opposed the Government in the House.
Major Seely and Mr. Winston Churchill left the Conservative Party, Major Seely resigning his seat to test the temper of his constituents in the Isle of Wight on this very subject. The electors in the Isle of Wight were of no uncertain temper. They returned Major Seely to the House, thereby proving, as all subsequent by-elections have proved, that the Chinese Labour Ordinance is bitterly opposed by the vast majority of freedom-loving Britons.
It had been the custom during the war to submit very largely to the opinion of the colonies. In fact, the influence of colonial opinion had partly directed the policy of the Government for several years. Mr. Chamberlain constantly submitted to it, before, during, and after the war. He had based his bold venture of Tariff Reform on this very opinion. It was because the colonies would think this or would say that, that the British workman was to submit to a tax upon corn, a tax upon clothes, a tax upon everything else. It was reasonable to expect, therefore, that on such an important Imperial question, touching the welfare of a[Pg 40] colony, to possess which the whole of the Empire had risen in arms, and men had poured from the snows of Canada and the rolling plains of the Bush, the opinions of the Five Nations would have been consulted. But even if the Government did not submit to this recognition of their services, to this acceptance of a common Imperial interest, it was only natural to have supposed that they would have at least taken into account the advice of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, who had experienced the evils of Chinese immigration.
I have travelled all over the Orange River Colony, Natal, Cape Colony, and the Transvaal, and the colonial people and the Dutch were all unanimously against the introduction of the Chinese on the Rand. I have never yet met one person in favour of the Ordinance. And since the Ordinance became law, and the yellow slaves began their work at the mines, nearly every person I have met in South Africa has openly regretted the war, and declared that they preferred the days of Paul Kruger, whose Government may have been corrupt, but was at any rate based on the principle that it is the duty of a white government to look after the moral and social welfare of its white subjects.
Mr. Chamberlain himself declared that there was considerable indignation expressed throughout South Africa at the proposal to introduce Chinese labour, and that a vast majority of the people throughout South Africa were bitterly opposed to the Ordinance.
The colonies were not slow in sending passionate protests to the Colonial Office against the Ordinance. Mr. Seddon wired—"My Government desire to protest against the proposal to introduce Chinese labour into South Africa. They foresee that great dangers, racial, social and political, would inevitably be introduced by Chinese influx, however stringent the conditions of introduction and employment may be."
Mr. Deakin, the Premier of Australia, declared that Australia had been told that the war was a miners' war, but not for Chinese miners; a war for the franchise, but not for Chinese franchise. The truth, if it had been told, would have presented a very different aspect, and would have made a very different appeal to Australia.
Cape Colony, which was more intimately concerned with the welfare of the Transvaal than any other portion of the Empire, passed a resolution in the Cape Parliament, "That this House, taking cognizance of the resolution passed at the recent Conference held at Bloemfontein on the subject of the qualified approval of the importation of Asiatic labour, desires to express its strong opposition to any such importation as prejudicial to the interests of all classes of people in South Africa."
This last resolution had been sent to the Government as long before as July 1903, when the first steps were being taken to pave the way for yellow slavery.
But of all these protests the Government[Pg 42] took no notice whatever. They met all questions with a statement that the Transvaal was to be allowed to decide on its own internal affairs; and when the Opposition demanded that the opinion of the Transvaal should be taken, so that these principles could be carried into effect, they replied that a referendum, the only means of ascertaining this opinion, would take six months, during which time the Transvaal would be ruined.
Never was the logic of any of the characters in Alice in Wonderland so unanswerable.
In the Transvaal itself loud and indignant protests were made against the proposal. But the Rand lords asserted their supremacy with ruthless severity. The Transvaal Leader, the Transvaal Advertiser, and the Johannesburg Star all opposed the introduction of Asiatic labour. Their respective editors, Mr. R. J. Pakeman, Mr. J. Scoble, and Mr. Monypenny, were compelled to resign because they refused to sacrifice their opinions for their proprietors. Some idea of the pressure that was brought to bear, may be seen in the valedictory editorial which Mr. Monypenny wrote on retiring from the editorship of the Johannesburg Star:—
"To the policy of Chinese immigration, to which the Chamber of Mines has decided to devote its energies, the present editor of the Star remains resolutely opposed, and declines in any way to identify himself with such an experiment. To the ideal of a white South Africa, which, to whatever qualifications it[Pg 43] may necessarily be subject, is something very different from the ideal of a Chinese South Africa, he resolutely clings, with perfect faith that whatever its enemies may do to-day that ideal will inevitably prevail. But as the financial houses which control the mining industry of the Transvaal have for the present enrolled themselves among its enemies the present editor of the Star withdraws."
It is not difficult to read between the lines here and see the determination of the mining magnates to crush every opposition to their will.
Mr. Cresswell, who had stood out for white labour on the Village Main Reef mine, and had proved conclusively that white labour could be employed at a profit greater than that at which black labour was employed, was compelled to resign his general managership. Mr. Wybergh, Commissioner of Mines, and for long a distinguished servant of the Government, had dared to protest against Chinese serfdom, and was forced also to resign.
Every day it became more clear that the Transvaal was to be no place for an Englishman. The white man's blood and the white man's treasure may have been spent to win it for the one-time flag of freedom, but the Englishman was not to make his home or earn his living upon the land. "We want no white proletariat," Lord Milner had said.
But the magnates did not stop at merely coercing the press. Indignation meetings were held at Cape Town and Kimberley, and they[Pg 44] employed men to break them up at 15s. per head.
At a meeting at Johannesburg, held by the African Labour League, it was arranged that a proposal should be put to the vote deploring the importation of Asiatics, and protesting against the action of the Government, and demanding a referendum in the colony. At this meeting several men were present, paid by a certain Mr. B. of Johannesburg to create a disturbance. Their efforts were so successful, they shouted so long "You want the Chinese," that the meeting became an uproar, and the speakers were unable to be heard.
But all protests were unavailing and futile. All opposition was considered as a party move. The cry of "Yellow slavery" was attributed to shameless Radical tactics. The Liberal Party, it was said, would stoop to anything with which to besmirch the fair name of the Conservative Party. The Ordinance passed the House after having been debated at length. It has since been altered in some of its most important details, thereby emphasizing the fact that in permitting the question to be debated in the House the Government only regarded the discussion as a sham.
But even in the Conservative Party there were men whose consciences pricked them over the Ordinance. One old respected member, who has recently died, declared privately on the day that the vote was taken that for the first time in his life he had voted against his[Pg 45] conscience, at the urgent instance of the Conservative whips. He for one realized, when it was too late, that the introduction of the Chinese on the Rand was—as Mr. Asquith lately remarked at Leven—"a most gigantic and short-sighted blunder."
"It must be admitted that the lot of the Chinese labourer does not promise to be very gay or very happy from our point of view" (extract from The Times).
Experience has shown that it is not economical to employ Chinese under the only conditions in which public opinion will allow them to be used, that is, under semi-servile conditions. This was the experience of all other parts of the Empire, but it was the last thing to have any weight with the mine owners. Their one idea of economy was to get labour cheap.
If you deduct 33 to 40 per cent. from the money that has to be paid in wages, that 33 to 40 per cent. is money saved—is money which will go to swell the dividends to an amount, so it had been estimated, of two and a half millions.
The simplicity of this calculation should have given them pause. Financiers, at least, should be aware that nothing is so untrustworthy as the abstract profit and loss account. Men who had used figures to such good advantage should[Pg 47] have understood that while on paper the difference between the price paid to the Chinese and the price paid to the white or black labourer was profit, in actual practice it would prove nothing of the sort.
The mine owners have learnt this lesson by now. They have discovered that Chinese labour is an economical failure.
But in the summer of 1904 they were all eagerness for the coming of the yellow man. To their imaginations these men were to be nothing better than slaves. They were to work as long as they wanted them to work at prices which they would settle themselves. Craftily-concocted laws enabled them to bring the same sort of brutal pressure to bear upon the yellow man as the slave owner of old brought upon the black man. He could be fined, flogged, driven, coerced by all means to tear the gold from the bowels of the earth at whatever rate the masters might wish. They had treated the black men pretty much as they liked. But the black men had the knack of dying in thousands under such treatment (thereby, as I have already noted, affording hearty amusement for gatherings of the Chamber of Mines), or of throwing up their work and going back to their native kraals.
The Rand lord had not had complete control of the black man. Foolish people at home, influenced by what Lord Milner once called Exeter Hall sentiments, had insisted that the black man must possess those personal rights of liberty and freedom which, until recently, were[Pg 48] given to all races who paid allegiance to the Sovereign of the British Dominions beyond the Seas.
For the first time the mine owner was to have forty to fifty thousand men who were to live under strict surveillance in a sort of prison yard, who were to be absolutely at his mercy and at his will, who were to work every day of the week, Sundays included—the evangelizing enterprise of the Rector of St. Mary's, Johannesburg, did not seem to have run to indoctrinating the Rand lords or their slaves with the principles of the Fourth Commandment—who were to be forced into doing whatsoever their masters wished by all sorts of ingenious punishments and penalties.
They of course forgot the all-important factor in this dream of theirs that a Chinaman will willingly consent to an arrangement which, as The Times admitted, would make their lot neither very gay nor very happy.
But none the less this was the spirit in which the Chinaman was recruited in China and first treated on his arrival.
Quite the most frivolous of all the pledges given by Mr. Lyttelton on behalf of the Rand lords, was one in which he solemnly declared that to every Chinese labourer recruited from his native land the Ordinance would be carefully explained by the recruiting officer.
I do not recollect that the House of Commons was moved to an outburst of Olympian mirth at this most ridiculous statement. If I recollect[Pg 49] aright, the statement was received with that solemn British expression of approval, "Hear, hear!"
"The Ordinance," said Mr. Lyttelton, "will be explained carefully to each labourer before he consents to embark for South Africa."
Now, the Ordinance is a long and complicated document. It would be impossible to explain it to the most intelligent Chinaman in under an hour. Actually, it would probably take him a whole day to completely understand the sort of life he was going to lead on the Rand. For one man to explain the Ordinance to 40,000 of them would have taken about nine years. At the recruiting offices established in China for the purpose of obtaining these yellow slaves, it would have taken at least three years to make all the forty to fifty thousand Chinamen still working on the Rand to thoroughly understand the Ordinance.
This was a reductio ad absurdum argument, which one would have thought must have occurred to the minds of the Government, but if it did occur to them they kept it in the background with due solemnity.
Seeing that the recruiting and sending over to South Africa of more than 40,000 Chinamen occupied less than a year, it is clear that this pretence of allowing the Chinaman to enter upon his engagement with the Rand lords with his eyes open was a pretence, and nothing else. But even if the simplest arithmetical calculation failed to convince the Government, their[Pg 50] knowledge of human nature should have made them realize the absurdity of imagining that the recruiting of these men would be carried out on such principles. The recruiter, whether for the Army, or for any other purpose, is very much like a barrister with a brief. He has only to see one side of the argument; he has to close his mind firmly to all considerations other than the fact that it is his duty to get men for the particular purpose for which he is recruiting. Whoever found the recruiting-sergeant telling an embryo Tommy Atkins about the hardships of a life in the Army, of the punishments to which he renders himself liable, of the powers of a court-martial, and the like? He only tells him of the splendid chance he has of serving his King and country; of his handsome uniform; of the influence of that uniform on the female breast, and the like. I have met men who have recruited in South Africa for the Philippines, who have recruited in England for revolutionary committees for some of the South American republics, and I know that the one picture that these men do not paint to their recruits is the picture of their possible hardships. If the white recruiter acts like this to men of his own colour, how was he likely to act towards men of a different colour whom centuries of traditional prejudice led him to regard with contempt and dislike?
I am convinced that ninety-nine out of every hundred of the Chinamen at present working on the Rand neither knew then nor know now the[Pg 51] exact terms on which they were brought from their homes. Again, it is well known that the Chinaman has a hereditary dislike to forfeiting his freedom of action. However bad his Government may be, he has the same instinct for freedom as the white man in Great Britain. All the best authorities on China agree that he would never of his own free-will have consented to bind himself to the Rand lords on the terms set forth in the Ordinance.
What happened, of course, was that the Chinese local authorities, when asked to assist in the recruiting of men for the Rand, made out a list of all the wastrels, semi-criminals and hooligans who kept their Governments in a state of anarchy and unrest, and forced these men to indenture themselves. In fact, the situation on the Rand is very much as if we had emptied our prisons and turned out all our thieves, murderers and hooligans loose on the veld.
One cannot blame the Chinese Government for so acting. It is a proof rather that that ancient empire still retains, amidst a great deal that is bad and corrupt, a spirit of elementary justice.
It would have been criminal to have sent Chinese citizens to the Transvaal. It was quite another matter to send batches of criminals.
The ease with which men were recruited and shipped to the Transvaal seemed to confirm the Rand lords in their delusion that at last they had got hold of people who would increase[Pg 52] their dividends for them without demanding rights and privileges.
The Times had called them masculine machinery. Lord Selborne had said that they would be crammed in loose-boxes and taken over. When at first the long procession of pigtails and blue shirts appeared at Johannesburg they certainly seemed to be so much masculine machinery, so much cattle to be crammed into cattle-trucks at one port and unshipped at another.
But all delusions or illusions were soon destroyed.
It was found that the Chinaman actually thought for himself; that he had a sense of fair play, and that he was not prepared to work like a horse for a shilling or so a day.
The compounds in which these yellow slaves were herded together are pieces of land in close proximity to the mine, surrounded by a high fence, guarded by armed police. They look exactly what in fact they are—prisons, and nothing else. Hospitals have been erected in each of the compounds, and an ample supply of gods have been procured for the Chinamen, possibly as a set-off to the evangelistical zeal of the Rector of St. Mary's, for there is no knowing what a Chinaman might do if he became thoroughly inculcated with the doctrines of love and mercy which were preached in the Sermon on the Mount.
The compound in other respects is very like a village. No one can go into this village[Pg 53] unless he has got some special business or has obtained a permit. These restrictions serve a double purpose. They prevent the possibility of a white man or a white woman being insulted by the slaves, and also put a check upon that inquiry into the treatment of the yellow men which the Rand lords are moving heaven and earth to baulk.
The huts in which labourers live are identical with those made for Kaffirs. They hold one or two, as the case may be.
The labourers have to work day and night in shifts of eight hours. When it is time for a batch of labourers to begin their shift, they are herded together and marched off to the mine, care being taken to keep them quite apart from the Kaffirs and whites.
At the pit mouth they are driven into the cage and dropped down into the bowels of the earth. When the cage is opened the Chinaman is driven out, and if he show some hesitation about leaving the cage, he is kicked out as if he were an animal. At least, that is the treatment to which they were at first subjected. Now, however, their treatment in the mine is hardly so severe. Indeed, it would not be too much to say that the Chinaman now does his share of the "kicking." For example, on September 23 last, the Chinese at the Lancaster Mine attempted to murder the skipman by placing a beam in the path of the descending skip—a collision with which, as a writer in the Daily Mail lately pointed out, "would have sent the skip a[Pg 54] drop of a thousand feet." The obstruction was noticed. When the skipman got out he was assaulted, but managed to escape.
The white overseer at first felt that instinctive fear of and dislike for the Chinaman that is peculiar to all Englishmen. He was one man against hundreds. In the majority of cases he had been bitterly opposed to the introduction of Chinese labour. He realized by the restrictions that had been placed by the Ordinance on the Chinamen that they were feared, and, in turn, he feared them himself. It was his duty to see that they worked. It was his duty to make them work. Unable to speak their language, instinctively disliking them, he used the only means of asserting his authority which came to his hands: that was generally a boot or a crowbar. Physical fear is the power by which nearly all primitive communities are ruled. The white races look upon the Chinamen as belonging to a primitive community, forgetting that they are the children of a civilization thousands of years older than any that exists in Europe.
The white man soon dropped trying to rule by force. The Chinaman showed him that he feared blows as little as he feared death. If he didn't want to work he wouldn't work, and showed that fear was not the basis of Chinese morals. Once in the mine the docile, tractable Chinaman of the Rand lords' dream did just as he liked, and continues to do just as he likes.
When he leaves the compound he, perhaps,[Pg 55] takes with him half a loaf of bread. When he feels hungry, he stops work, coils himself upon the ground, and takes his meal. Let the language of the white man be as terrible as he is capable of, let him rain blows upon the Chinaman's back, the Chinaman takes no notice, but continues his meal. When he has finished his bread he rolls a cigarette, and smokes in calm and indifferent quietness. If the Englishman remonstrates with him, John Chinaman replies, "Me get one little shilling. Me do plenttee work for me pay."
And he speaks the truth. He does quite enough work for a shilling a day. There is a wide difference between what he considers sufficient work and what the Rand lords consider sufficient. There is the increase of two and a half millions which the cosmopolitan mine owner hopes to make by using the Chinaman as a slave, and which he never will make either with the Chinaman or the black man. He does his best, however.
The idea that this heathen, whom he has brought over with so much difficulty, in the face of so much opposition, should actually refuse to work like a machine, but should have ideas about the time when he wants to eat, and should even demand a few minutes' quiet smoke after eating, drives him almost to the point of insanity. It is almost as bad as those white workmen, who have a mania for forming trade unions and require fair wages for fair work.
In the face of this Chinese intractableness[Pg 56] while working in the mines, the Rand lords have urged on the white overseers to force the Chinese to do their work. When the overseer points out that if he resorts to violence his life will not be worth a moment's purchase, he is met with the reply that it is his duty to see that the Chinaman does his work, and if he cannot do that they must find somebody else to take his place. Under this threat of dismissal, the overseer has had only one resource. He has had to raise up a race feud, from which he stands apart.
The Kaffirs already hate the yellow man, realizing that they have deprived them of their work. The white overseer has fomented this racial animosity. When the Chinaman has proved recalcitrant and disobedient, when he has refused to do more than a certain quantity of work, the overseer turns the black man on to him to force him once again to his task.
The result is bloodshed and murder of black men and Chinamen.
It is the old problem of leading a horse to the water and trying to make him drink.
The Chinaman has been dragged from his native land in the face of the opposition of the whole Empire to increase the dividend paying. But he won't hurry, he won't work too hard, and in the mine he will do, as I have said, exactly as he pleases. All illusions as to the Chinaman's capacity for hard work have vanished. Even Mr. S. B. Joel—one of the Rand lords—practically admitted as much in his speech at the annual meeting of the Johannesburg[Pg 57] Consolidated Investment Company on November 23. With much reluctance, as may be imagined, the light-hearted "Solly" admitted that "the Chinese had not yet proved quite so suitable for underground work as natives"—but, lest this statement might affect the market price of the shares, the chairman of "Johnnies" expressed the hope that they would attain greater efficiency. No—the Chinaman does not work hard. It is true that he takes his employment seriously, and that what he does he will do well and with a certain efficiency. But he is not the masculine machinery or the cattle of Lord Selborne's imagination. He has enough intelligence to realize that he is the man who is wanted, and acts accordingly. If he works for a shilling a day he will only do a shilling's worth of work. He knows that he must be employed; nobody else can be got to do his job, and he acts, in fact, just as the Rand lords feared the white labourer would act. He won't be bullied into doing any more work than he wants to do. True, he forms no trade unions such as the white men form, but there is among all the Chinese a much more powerful weapon of opposition than the trade unions. Every Chinaman has his secret society, and these societies act together as one man. If the society decides to stop work, they stop work, and neither the fear of death nor the most callous or brutal treatment can move them from their purpose. He hates the white man with the same intensity as the white man hates him. If[Pg 58] he can get the white man into any difficulty he will do so. His ingenuity for creating trouble is worthy of a better cause. With a sort of diabolical foresight he realizes exactly the complaints that will be showered upon the overseer's head by the masters of the mines. If the output falls, he knows that there will be trouble for the white man, so he stops work. He squats down and smokes cigarettes, realizing that by so doing he will be laying up a store of trouble for the overseer.
To show how much the Chinaman is now the master of the situation on the Rand I may quote the following instance—On the night of October 24, the Chinese at the Jumpers Deep Mine refused to work until two of their compatriots, who had been arrested for an infringement of the mining regulations, were released. Every artifice was resorted to to get the stubborn Chinamen to resume their toil, but in vain. Eventually, the Government superintendent of the Chinese, acting under recently-extended powers, had forty of the head men arrested. Twenty of these were afterwards sentenced, some to two and others to three months' hard labour—sentences which probably moved to quiet mirth the parties most concerned, who could do that sort of punishment "on their head," so to speak.
It has been said, of course, that the miners along the reef have always worked against the Chinese. It is not to be wondered at if they have. Nobody could reasonably blame them—except [Pg 59]the Rand lords. But so far from this being true, the white miners have done their best to work with them. Even the chairman of the Chamber of Mines has confessed that the innumerable riots that have occurred down in the mines were not the result of the white men's machinations. The white man does his best, but under circumstances without parallel in the history of labour. He works always with the certain knowledge that at any moment he may be killed. To him the yellow terror is not a myth or the dream of fiction writers. He knows what it means. It is present with him every hour of his work. Down the mine in the stopes a white man has under him thirty or forty Chinese. If any grievance, real or imaginary, arose, the Chinese could turn round and take his life. He has no protection whatever. He has to stand by and listen as best he can to the insults heaped upon him by the children of the Celestial Empire; and insults heaped not only upon him but upon his womenfolk. He has to see that the work is done efficiently, or he is dismissed from his employment. But there is little wonder that his anger or fear gets the better of his discretion. It is bad enough that Chinamen are doing the work that should be done by white men, but it becomes even a greater scandal when the white men, who sacrificed so much blood and treasure for the Transvaal, should be insulted by these yellow slaves.
The low-class Chinaman is probably the most[Pg 60] bestial and degrading brute on this earth. He is intelligent enough, but his mind is as vile and unwholesome as a sewer. The bestial insults which he heaps upon the white overseers, and, indeed, upon every white man that he comes across, three years ago would not have been tolerated in any quarter of the British Empire. It is tolerated to-day in the Transvaal by the sanction of German Jews and un-British Gentiles.
Lord Selborne, when the matter was brought to his notice, declared—"No wonder a white miner who has had such language said to him would fail to have roused within him feelings which would take a certain natural direction of satisfying themselves. But where has the Chinaman learnt this kind of language? he did not come here knowing it."
Lord Selborne's implication was, of course, that the Englishmen, in their conversation in the presence of Chinamen, were accustomed to use this bestial talk.
I don't pretend that the conversation of miners is always savoury. I am sure that the method of conversation in vogue in some of the Yorkshire and Lancashire factories would scandalize decent, quiet-living people, but such language on the part of the British workman is the result of his inability to express himself properly. What he says is said for emphasis. He does not, like a more educated man, add vigour to his conversation by making use of the endless variations of his mother tongue; he[Pg 61] simply peppers his talk with epithets which in no way are used in their original meaning. If they were used in their original meaning, if the British workman really meant what he said, all the deadly sins in thought or in practice would be committed millions and millions of times a day. But the Chinaman is noted for his taste for all the most bestial vices which the imagination of man has ever conceived. What the miner may say in a coarse moment the Chinaman will commit without any hesitation.
Lord Selborne asked where the Chinamen learnt this kind of language, and added that they did not come to the Transvaal knowing it. If Lord Selborne visited some of the treaty ports in China he would soon become aware that the Chinaman has added to his taste for committing all the vile and bestial vices, a knowledge of how to express these vices in all the vile and bestial language of Europe. As most of the criminal classes are to be found within the fringe of European civilization, and as, moreover, the Chinese Government has drafted, with a certain grim humour, a large number of the criminal classes into the Transvaal, I think the question as to where the Chinaman learnt his bestial language is answered equally as well as the statement, that he did not come to the Transvaal knowing it, is contradicted.
This is the state of affairs in the mines themselves. But if these yellow slaves are [Pg 62]intractable in the mines, they are even more intractable in the compounds.
What they want to do that they will do, and not all the prisons and ingeniously-compiled penal laws can prevent them. They soon realized that if they wished they could be masters of the Rand. They foresaw that the Rand lord would be chary of using force, would hesitate to put into execution his slave-owning ideals, for fear of public opinion at home; that is to say, to put them into full force.
But the Rand lords were not the type of men who would be chary of impressing upon the Chinamen in secret the full meaning of their position on the Rand.
As it is the case in the mines, so is it the case in the compounds.
The white man not only hates the yellow man, but fears him. He knows that at any moment he may be murdered, and with this fear in his heart has resorted to all sorts of brutality.
The Chinamen can be flogged by law for almost any act. The Ordinance says that a Chinaman cannot leave the compound without a permit, and prescribes his life for him on absolute machine-like lines. The amended Ordinance of July 1904 says that he can be flogged in cases of assault with intent to commit any offence. Of course, an assault with intent to commit any offence might consist in hustling his neighbours in an attempt to escape from his compound, in pushing against the[Pg 63] white overseer, in refusing to work. In short, the law was so ingeniously amended that the Chinaman could be flogged for anything.
But the law was really not needed. The manager of the Crœsus Mine admitted that when he considered a Chinaman wrong he had flogged him; that it might be against the law to flog him, but he had done so, and would continue to do so.
And he was not only flogged for disobeying the regulations under which—knowingly, it is said—he had indentured himself, but for refusing to work. An Ordinance might substitute corporal punishment for imprisonment in the case of misdemeanours on the part of the Chinaman and so escape the title of slavery; but to force a man to work by corporal punishment is nothing but the essence of slavery. And yet these yellow men have been whipped to their work again and again.
But flogging is no new thing on the Rand, nor is it confined to the Chinaman. The native knows the sjambok of the Rand lord well enough. "I well recollect," says Mr. Douglas Blackburn (lately assistant editor of the defunct Johannesburg Daily Express), writing to The Times on November 4,—"I well recollect seventy-two boys being flogged before breakfast one morning in Krugersdorp gaol for the crime of refusing to work for £2 per month, after being promised £5 by the labour agent."
While these facts are well known in Johannesburg, while there are many people who openly[Pg 64] admit that they have thrashed the coolie, or ordered him to be thrashed for refusing to do sufficient work, the Rand papers, which are absolutely under the control of the mine owners, denied again and again that flogging took place. It was only Mr. Lyttelton's announcement that flogging must cease that at last compelled them to admit that flogging had taken place. Mr. Lyttelton had himself denied on several occasions that the Chinaman was flogged, and his command therefore that flogging must cease was quite as amazing to the members of the House of Commons as it was to the Rand lords.
To anybody who has witnessed the development of Chinese slavery on the Rand, it is almost incomprehensible that there should be any people at home who deliberately refuse to believe that the Chinaman has been treated otherwise than as a human being, made in the image of God, with the rights that belong to all men of justice and freedom. The subject is as openly discussed, and regarded as a matter of fact on the Rand, as the Lord Mayor's Show.
I cannot do better than quote from the now famous letters of Mr. Frank C. Boland to the Morning Leader. These letters show the development of yellow slavery in a nutshell, show how from flogging the yellow man to his work the Rand lords finally resorted to torture:—
"At the Nourse Deep severe punishment[Pg 65] was meted out. Every boy who did not drill his thirty-six inches per shift was liable to be, and actually was, whipped, unless he were ill, and could show that it was a physical impossibility for him to do a day's work. A sjambok was used; it was laid on relentlessly by Chinese policemen, the part of the body selected being the muscles and tendons at the back of the thighs. Even the sight of blood did not matter. The policeman would go right on to the last stroke. Having been thus punished, the coolie would walk away; but after sitting down for a time the bruised tendons would refuse to work. Many of the coolies were sent to hospital to recover.
"At a later date at this mine strips of rubber were substituted for a sjambok. This rubber, while causing very sharp pain, does not cut.
"After a time the mine officials found that the coolies were not maintaining the monthly increase, and the management urged the Chinese controller to 'do something.' He refused to thrash the coolies unless they had committed some crime; and being informed by the manager that his policy would not suit, he gave two months' notice of his resignation.
"Meanwhile, the management issued instructions, because of advice from England, that flogging should be stopped as far as possible, but asking that other forms of punishment should be substituted.
"Thereupon certain forms of torture well known in the Far East were adopted. One of[Pg 66] these was to strip erring coolies absolutely naked, and leave them tied by their pigtails to a stake in the compound for two or three hours. The other coolies would gather round and laugh and jeer at their countrymen, who stood shivering in the intense cold.
"A more refined form of torture was to bind a coolie's left wrist with a piece of fine rope, which was then put through a ring in a beam about nine feet from the ground. This rope was then made taut, so that the unhappy coolie, with his left arm pulled up perpendicularly, had to stand on his tip-toes. In this position he was kept, as a rule, for two hours, during which time, if he tried to get down on his heels, he must dangle in the air, hanging from the left wrist.
"Every mine has its lock-up for malingerers, deserters, and others. At the Witwatersrand the coolies are handcuffed over a horizontal beam.
"The floor is of concrete, and they may sit down, but the beam is so far from the floor that it is impossible for any but exceptionally tall men to sit while handcuffed. They must therefore squat, and for a change raise themselves in a semi-standing posture.
INSTEAD OF FLOGGING.
"When released, these prisoners stagger about until they regain the use of their legs; then they take their skoff and go below to work.
"With the abolition of flogging, compound managers are now inventing other forms of[Pg 69] punishment. In future, also, there will be an extensive system of fines, and food will be withheld.
"Meanwhile, with all these methods of punishment, the coolies are still turbulent. Last Monday practically every boy on the Nourse Deep—seventy-five in all—was sent to gaol for seven days. This step is certain to foment trouble in the near future."
It was this sort of inquisition that Great Britain had set up at the point of her bayonets.
Well might the Australian Government say in their letter of protest—"Australia has been told that the war was a miners' war but not for Chinese miners, a war for the franchise but not for Chinese franchise. The truth, if it had to be told, would have presented a very different aspect, and would have made a very different appeal to Australia."
It would, indeed, have made a very different appeal to the British public. Would there have been so much killing of Kruger with our mouths had we known that a white proletariat would not be wanted—in Lord Milner's words—that the white labourer was not to be allowed into the Transvaal because his trade unions would shackle the enterprise of the Rand lords; that yellow slaves would have to be introduced in the disguise of indentured labour; that these labourers would be whipped and tortured into doing their work? Had they known that on the Witwatersrand the average number of Chinamen flogged daily for one month was forty-two—Sundays [Pg 70]included—would there have been so much Rule Britannia and music-hall Jingoism?
It is quite true, of course, that had the British people accepted the principle of importing Chinese labour into the Transvaal it would be quite fair to blame, as Lord Salisbury was always so fond of blaming, the system for the cruelty that inevitably followed. But the British public have never accepted the principle of importing Chinese labourers into the Transvaal. They have always been deliberately opposed to it, as has every part of the British Empire. They are not to blame, therefore, for the state of affairs on the Rand.
As to the insane flogging administered for an offence, it cannot be better described than by giving another quotation from Mr. Boland's letter to the Morning Leader. Here is the method of procedure:—
"A coolie is reported either by a white shift boss or by a head-man for an offence. He is called into the compound manager's office, charged, and given a fair trial (except where the compound manager does not know the Chinese language, and has to trust to his yellow interpreter). Then the sentence is passed by the compound manager—ten, fifteen, or twenty strokes, according to the crime. The coolie, with a Chinese policeman on either side of him, is taken away about ten paces. Then he stops, and at the word of a policeman drops his pantaloons, and falls flat on his face and at full length on the floor. One policeman holds his feet together; another, with both hands pressed firmly on the back of his head, looks after that end of his body. Then the flagellator, with a strip of thick leather on the end of a three-foot wooden handle, lays on the punishment, severely or lightly, as instructed. Should the prisoner struggle after the first few strokes, another policeman plants a foot in the middle of his back until the full dose has been administered.
LAYING ON THE PUNISHMENT.
"In another form of flogging practised, a short bamboo was used. The coolie would strip to the waist and go down on his knees with his head on the floor. His castigator would then squat beside him, and strike him across the shoulders with lightning rapidity. The blows, though apparently light, always fell on the one spot, and raised a large red weal before cutting the flesh. During the first quarter of this year no fewer than fifty-six coolies were whipped, after 8 p.m. one evening, at the Witwatersrand Mine, the dose varying from five to fifteen strokes."
In Mr. Douglas Blackburn's letter to The Times, from which I quoted just now, we are told that much of the resultant mischief was due to the incompetence and mismanagement of the men in charge of the compound. "I assert unequivocally," he says, "that most of the white interpreters and compound managers had not a working acquaintance with the Chinese language, and, therefore, frequently misunderstood the complaints and requests[Pg 74] made to them by the coolies.... This is no place for detail, but the following incident, which occurred in my presence, may be accepted as typical and illustrative. A compound manager was examining the passes of a number of coolies. When we left the compound we were followed by two Chinamen who shouted and gesticulated violently, and clutched at the arm of the manager. I could see that he failed to understand them, for he shouted wildly in return, exhibited signs of great alarm, and eventually knocked them both down, called the guard, had the pair locked up, and later in the day he flogged them for insubordination. Next day he confided to me that he was in fault. He had inadvertently put the passes into his pocket and misinterpreted the clamouring request for their return into threats against himself. That manager is now seeking another engagement."
The twenty thousand soldiers who went to their death fighting what they imagined was for their country, might well, instead of singing "God save the King" and the like, have marched to the battle-fields of the Transvaal and the Orange River Colony crying, like the old gladiators, "Ave, Crœsus, morituri te salutant."
CUTTING THE FLESH.
When Mr. Lyttelton said that flogging must cease, flogging ceased on the Rand, and the Oriental methods of torture were adopted instead.
But even this penal system—reminding one so strongly of the days of Stephen, when the wretched, tortured peasantry openly said that Christ and His saints slept, for Pity had veiled her face and Mercy had forgotten—had to be practised with great secrecy owing to the force of public opinion at home.
These methods were, however, unavailing to check the growing insolence and insubordination of the Chinese slaves. No better idea of the condition of the Rand during the last few months can be gathered than from the new Ordinance, which was drafted at the beginning of last October. This Ordinance took the power of punishing the Chinese coolies from the hands of the resident magistrates and placed it in the hands of the inspectors, thereby giving the welfare of the Chinese slaves solely and entirely into the mercy of the Rand lords. Before, an attempt had been made[Pg 78] to cloak the slave Ordinance with a pretence of law and justice as conceived by the British public. But the draft Ordinance of August put an end to this piece of hypocrisy. The superintendents and the inspectors of the Chinese, for all practical purposes the servants of the mine owners, were to be not only the judge and the jury, but the plaintiff. It conferred on the superintendents and inspectors jurisdiction, in respect of offences against the Ordinance, of a resident magistrate.
Clause I states—"This power will be granted provided such offences are committed under the Ordinance and within the area of any mine or mine compound where such labourer resides. The fines to be inflicted in the case of conviction will be the same as those imposed by the magistrates under the existing laws, and on conviction the labourer's employer will be notified, and the amount of the fine will be deducted from the labourer's wages and paid over for the benefit of the Colonial Treasury."
Another clause states that—"For the purpose of confining prisoners awaiting trial, it is provided that the employers of labourers shall erect a lock-up on their properties, which lock-up shall be deemed to be a jail."
Again, in the event of labourers on the mines organizing a conspiracy, refusing to work, creating a disturbance, intimidating or molesting any person on the mine, the superintendent or inspector is empowered to impose a collective fine on the labourers.
Insomuch as this new Ordinance once and for all destroys the myth with which Rand lords endeavoured to surround their slave-owning ideals, I consider it to be a decided improvement upon the original Ordinance, with its innumerable pleasures and pretences for the moral and spiritual welfare of the Chinamen.
That unfortunate and much-deluded man the Colonial Secretary, once declared in the House of Commons that the Chinaman would have just as free access to a court of justice as any British subject. He certainly now-a-days possesses free access to a court, if not to a court of justice. Access is so easy to it that the court actually follows him wherever he goes, watches him while he works in the mine, watches him while he is in the compound, and is ready to punish and fine him, or to lock him up in the compound prison, without any of those old-fashioned formalities which, while they may embody the machinery of justice, are at least guarantees of its purity and disinterestedness.
It would of course be very interesting to know how many of these fines have ever reached the Colonial Treasury. Armed with such extraordinary powers as these, it is highly probable that the Rand lords imposed through their superintendents and inspectors unlimited fines which, instead of benefiting the Colonial Revenue, merely reduced the wage bill.
The last clause which I have quoted contains the phrase "organizing a conspiracy." A conspiracy, of course, is anything in the nature of a trade union.
I don't say that this new Ordinance was not justified. I think it was fully justified. No efficiency can be obtained by half measures. The ablest political trimmers are incapable of serving both God and Mammon. If God is out of the question, a whole-hearted worship of Mammon is really better. In short, it would have been far more in the interests of the Transvaal if the Rand lords had from the first gone the whole hog and insisted on having Chinese slaves in name as well as in fact.
The state of affairs in August last wanted extraordinary legislation. But, of course, this must not be held to justify Chinese labour. That was criminal. But once the principle of Chinese labour had been accepted by the Government on behalf of an unwilling and protesting nation, I fail to see how the unfortunate remnants of British subjects in the Transvaal could be properly protected without these measures. I don't see how, when once the Chinese had been brought into the country, the brutalities that have been committed could have been avoided. I think the superintendent and the inspector and the overseer should have the right to shoot men down in cold blood. I think the compounds should be surrounded by artillery. I think all the ideals of Russian autocratic rule should be brought to bear upon these men. The awful brutality with which they have been treated is justified. The superintendent, the inspector and the overseer should be forced to make a special study of the methods adopted by Hawkins[Pg 81] and Magree. The British Government wanted Chinese labour to be introduced into the Transvaal, and if they had been efficient and sensible they should have accumulated in their Ordinance the wisdom of all the slave-owning traditions of centuries.
But from an unbiassed perusal of the Rand press one would have imagined that all these extraordinary measures were unjustified.
The statements that the Chinese were committing outrages, were insolent, were bestial, which have from time to time appeared in the British press, were referred to by the Rand press as "more Chinese lies," "Chinese canards," and such headings. They persistently impressed upon their readers that the Chinese were leading an industrious, idyllic life, that they were treated with kindness and humanity by the overseers, that no happier community ever existed on the face of the earth than the 40,000 odd Chinamen in their compounds on the Rand.
Of course, they only kept up this pretence for a time. It was impossible for long to pretend to be a newspaper at all and yet deny facts which were personally known to the majority of their readers.
The object of this extraordinary legislation was, of course, that the Chinese preferred to go to prison rather than pay fines.
At the beginning of August there were more than one thousand Chinamen in jail undergoing various terms of imprisonment, rather than[Pg 82] deduct from their shilling a day, the amounts they were called upon to pay for disobeying the laws laid down in the Ordinance.
The amended Ordinance now forced them to pay by withholding from them a portion of their wage equal to the amount of the fine. It has been found useless, in fact, to pretend that other than a reign of terror pertains in the Transvaal. The Chinamen have broken loose, and only their prompt deportation can prevent a very grave crisis. Neither fines nor floggings have any terror for them, and from their earliest years they have been accustomed to regard death without a semblance of fear.
I will relate some of the more notorious instances in which these yellow slaves have figured in the last year. The list includes, murder, rape, robbery with violence, and that class of criminal assault with which we deal in England under the Criminal Law Amendment Act.
While working in the mines the Chinaman does exactly what he pleases. The overseers dare not interfere. Their policy of putting the black man on to the yellow man has resulted in murder. The Chinaman has a short way with any white or black man who tries to interfere with his sense of liberty. He kills the man. Every Chinaman belongs to a secret society, and when he has determined to kill a white or a black man he reports his decision to the society. He knows that the deed which he meditates will be rewarded by his own death:[Pg 83] but for this he cares nothing. All his preparations are made beforehand. His secret society probably consists of from four to five thousand members. All these members contribute something like sixpence a-piece to make up a sum, say of £100. When this amount is collected, it is sent over to his wife and family in China. Having thus made all the necessary provision for his wife and children, the Chinaman perpetrates the deed. He is then arrested, sentenced and hanged. And he meets his end with a stoical indifference, quite content that he has secured his revenge and set his worldly affairs in order.
In the face of such sentiments compulsion is futile.
On Wednesday, September 13, a gang of Chinese coolies working at the Geldenhuis Deep Mine decided to take a holiday. The management of the mine were instructed to offer them extra pay if they would work. They refused, and took their holiday. They promised, however, that they would start their first shift at midnight on the following Sunday, September 17. When midnight on Sunday, September 17, arrived, they determined to keep their holiday up. The compound manager endeavoured to use force. The Chinese met force by force. The police were called in. The riot at that juncture had reached a most alarming state. The police were ordered to fire: they obeyed, killing one Chinaman and wounding another; but not before the [Pg 84]compound manager had been attacked and somewhat seriously injured. Finally the Chinamen were driven to their work.
On the same Sunday the utter uselessness of the compound system was proved. One hundred Chinamen bolted from the French Rand Mine. Somebody, it is supposed, had spread among them the report that the Boers were enlisting coolies at £4 a month to fight the English. In vain has the number of police in the Witwatersrand district been increased. Gangs of deserters are wandering about the country murdering and looting.
"Last night," wrote a young South African policeman to his parents in England, "I captured six Chinamen who had run away from the mines. They are giving a lot of trouble—5000 of them started rioting last week, and 100 foot police and 200 South African Constabulary had to go to stop them, and a nice old job we had. They threw broken bottles and stones when we charged them. Some of our fellows were very badly cut. The Chinamen also made dynamite bombs and threw them at us, and we had to shoot into the crowd to drive them back. We aimed low and wounded a good many of them. They are nasty devils to tackle, and always show fight when there are a lot of them together. The six I captured were trekking across the veld. I chased them on horseback and they ran on top of a kopje and commenced to roll rocks down. I managed to get a shot at one with my revolver: the bullet[Pg 85] struck him on the wrist. Then they all put up their hands and surrendered. I managed to get some niggers working in the mealie patch to escort them back to our camp. The niggers were very proud of themselves. When they passed through the other native kraals I think if I had not been there the Kaffirs would have assegaied them. They hate the Chinamen like poison."
These are the sort of incidents that occur daily. All the measures taken by the Government and the mine owners to prevent desertion have proved ineffective. The country around the Witwatersrand Mines has taken upon itself the aspect of the whole of the colony during the late war. Mounted constables with loaded revolvers organize drives. The whole district is patrolled, and every effort is made to bring back the deserters to the compounds. But as soon as one lot has returned another escapes. Every day you may see a mounted policeman riding down towards the law courts, followed by a string of Chinese deserters.
The Johannesburger lives in a daily state of terror. He rarely meets a Chinaman without immediately seeking the protection of the police and insisting on an inquiry being held then and there, as to whether the man has a permit to be at large in the Golden City.
Writing on October 2, the Johannesburg correspondent—one L. E. N.—of a London morning paper gives a graphic account of the wonderful City of Gold at that date. "Gold of[Pg 86] the value of over £20,000,000 a year," he says, "is extracted from that stretch of dusty upland called The Reef.... But look closer. The white workers on the mines carry revolvers; the police are armed with ball cartridge and bayonet; camped yonder at Auckland Park is a mobile column of mounted men ready to move against an enemy at a moment's notice; the country folk on the other side of the swelling rise are armed to the teeth, and live at night in barricaded and fortified houses." What a beautiful commentary on life as it is lived—under the British flag—in the commercial and political hub of the great sub-continent!
The Boers, who through their political organization the Het Volk have refused to take any active part in the management of the country, determined with a sort of grim humour, since the British sought to destroy the corrupt Government of their late President, they shall be allowed to mismanage the country as they will, have been led to break their political silence to petition the Government for more protection. At a meeting held at Krugersdoorp at the beginning of October, they decided to forward a resolution to the Imperial Government requesting that the importation of Chinese coolies should be discontinued, and those already in the country should be repatriated. Regret was further expressed at the danger to life and property, and it was pointed out that the policy of not allowing the Boers to carry firearms prevented them from properly protecting the lives of their families.
GOOD SPORT.
General Botha did not exaggerate the dangers which resulted from the importation of Chinamen, and he voiced the common sentiment of Boer and Briton when he asked that a Commission should be appointed to investigate the treatment of the Chinese coolies, and ascertain the cause of the disturbances.
The mine owners' press informed the public that there are very few cases of desertion; that when any number of Chinamen do desert the South African Constabulary deal with them efficiently. They are hunted down, rounded up, and brought in by their pigtails for trial. At the trial they are convicted, or were before the amendment of the Ordinance in August last, and locked up.
Any one going through the Transvaal will see hundreds of these Chinese convicts working in large batches on the roads. White men are placed in charge of these convicts, and when the repairing and macadamizing of the roads is not done to their liking, the Chinamen are flogged, and flogged in the open. They are subjected to every kind of brutal treatment; and it is probable that almost as many desert from the convict prisons as desert from the slave compounds.
In "C" Court, Johannesburg, on October 3 (or 4, I am not sure of the exact date), before Mr. Schuurman, several Chinese labourers were prosecuted for wandering from the mines in[Pg 90] which they were employed, without possessing the necessary permission. They all pleaded guilty, and were fined £1 each. When asked what excuse they had to offer, three of them said they were homesick, and were on their way to China; two others stated that they had only gone for a short walk, and were close to the mine when arrested. The policeman, however, declared they were twenty-five miles from the mine. A few of the accused stated that they were ill-treated, and consequently deserted. The magistrate sapiently advised them that in such a case, instead of absconding, they should complain to the representative of the Labour Importation Association when he called at the mine.
Under the new regulations, sixty-five Chinamen, including an alleged professional robber, were arrested on October 18. A Johannesburg correspondent describes them as "a band of 450 coolies of bad character." What has Lieut.-Colonel W. Dalrymple, the Rand mining man who lately at Tunbridge Wells denounced the "infamous lies" which were circulated in this country about the Chinese labour question—what, I repeat, has Lieut.-Colonel Dalrymple to say to that?
From the same telegram I learn that the measures which are now being taken to prevent desertions are proving effective. The roll-call of October 8—I am now quoting the immaculate Reuter—"showed 278 absentees, and during the following week 245 were captured and brought back to work. Last night," adds[Pg 91] the correspondent, meaning the night of October 17, "nine coolies attempted to raid a homestead in the Krugersdoorp district. The farmer fired through a window, and shot one Chinaman dead; the others fled." I commend these statements, together with those quoted hereafter, to the earnest attention of the editor of a certain yellow-covered weekly journal, devoted to the interests of South Africa—the organ of the Rand lords in London—which persistently pooh-poohs the "yellow slavery" cry.
Meanwhile gangs of escaped Chinamen are wandering over the country spreading terror everywhere. The Boer farmer goes to bed at night in his lonely farmhouse on the veld as if he were still at war with Great Britain. Long hidden rifles are brought out from the hay-ricks and other hiding-places and got ready. Windows are boarded up, doors are double locked. Every preparation is made to warn off the ever expected attack of the yellow desperadoes.
At the beginning of October two homesteads in the Boksburg district were attacked by a party of Chinese, who attempted to gain an entrance by breaking in the back doors and windows. In both cases, however, the farmers had made every preparation for such an attack, and fired on the marauders, one of whom was wounded in the chest and another in the abdomen. The remainder made off.
A similar outrage occurred in the middle of November. A lonely farmhouse near [Pg 92]Germiston, occupied by an Englishman and his wife, was attacked by a band of Chinese, who were armed with crowbars and stones. The farmer opened fire, seriously wounding one of the Chinamen in the jaw, and the rest decamped without entering. The injured man was captured, but the whereabouts and identity of the others were not discovered.
In Johannesburg the talk is of nothing but murders and assaults by gangs of ten or fourteen escaped labourers. House after house away on the veld has been broken into and looted, and the inhabitants murdered if they showed any signs of resistance; they have indeed in some cases been murdered without showing any sign of resistance at all.
Quite recently the Legislative Council of the Transvaal has re-amended for about the tenth time the Ordinance. It has proposed to offer £1 a head for the recapture of these yellow hooligans, an amendment which would have placed the very much-bepatched Ordinance on a level with the laws that prevailed in the Southern States of America before the abolition of slavery. It is charged, however, with that strange spirit of hypocrisy which has characterized all the proceedings of the Rand lords into a reimbursement to the capturer of his out-of-pocket expenses. This of course is only another way of offering £1 for every recaptured Chinaman, for it may be taken for granted that the capturer's expenses will always include the wear and tear of horseflesh and[Pg 93] moral damages and other matters which can only be estimated in the abstract. According to the schedule of fees payable in respect of the capture of Chinese deserters, which was published early in October, they ranged from 1s. per mile for one or two arrests to 3s. for eight or more.
Here is a letter from another member of the South African Constabulary to his people at home which emphasizes the state of affairs which exist at present on the Rand.
"The Chinese have been causing a lot of trouble. There was a whole family murdered about a month ago. Several places have been broken into. Last Sunday there was a storekeeper murdered about ten miles from where I am staying. We have orders on no account to go out on patrol without a revolver. The people are seeking police protection, and are frightened out of their wits. I believe it is as much as a South African Constabulary man's life is worth to be seen at some places on the Rand in uniform. I am determined that if I meet any Chinamen, and they show fight, I will shoot the first one dead."
This is the spirit abroad—a spirit which every right-minded man must regard as the inevitable result of the criminal action of the Government in sanctioning the Chinese Labour Ordinance.
Here is another case which has never been reported in the press:—
At Germiston railway station twelve [Pg 94]Chinamen were waiting on the platform for a train. A white woman happened to pass by, and as she passed the Chinamen hurled some bestial insult at her. One of the railway officials immediately called a policeman, who tried to take the offending Chinaman into custody. He was promptly knocked down. Three more policemen were hurried to the scene. These met with like treatment, and even when two other comrades came to their assistance they were utterly unable to effect the arrest. After twenty minutes' violent fighting, during which the gang of Chinamen were absolutely unhurt, six policemen were taken on stretchers to the hospital.
Here are two or three more instances taken at random from the "Butcher's Bill" of a Johannesburg correspondent, whose letter appeared in the Daily Mail a few weeks ago:—
"Sept. 5.—Chinese attack Kaffirs in the Lancaster Mine. They throw one Kaffir in front of a train of ore, so that he is cut to pieces. A second Kaffir dies of his injuries.
"Sept. 8.—Homestead at Rand Klipfontein attacked and looted, and £150 in money taken. The Chinese try to fire the house by throwing a fire-ball through the window.
"Sept. 16.—Band of Chinese rush a Kaffir kraal at Wilgespruit, on the West Rand. Native woman's head nearly severed. Chinese armed with knives 2 feet 6 inches long, made by a Sheffield firm.
"Sept. 18.—Riot Geldenhuis Deep. Compound manager assaulted. Mounted police attacked by 1500 coolies armed with drills, stones, bottles, etc., and forced to fire their revolvers. One Chinaman killed and a number wounded."
And so on and so forth. One more instance to show to what length the Chinamen will go. A gang of the breed employed at the Van Ryn Mine, where there had previously been a number of disturbances, struck work and attacked the whites underground. A white man pulled the signal cord, and police, galloping up, descended the shaft and saved the whites. The ringleaders were arrested, and, adds the correspondent somewhat ingenuously—"This phase of attacks underground is disquieting." From the adjacent colony of Natal, too, come words of complaint about Chinese stragglers; and it is significant in this connection that "over a thousand rifles" were issued to the farmers in the Transvaal at the end of September last. These are facts which Mr. Reyersbach, of Messrs. H. Eckstein & Co., would be well advised to put in his pipe and ponder.
Of course the immediate cause which leads to the Chinese committing the above-recorded acts of violence is the result of bad treatment.
The murder of Mr. Joubert in the Bronkhorst Spruit Mine—for which, on November 20, four Chinamen were executed in Pretoria jail—who received some fifty stabs before[Pg 96] succumbing, was due to starvation. The men wanted to find food. They were not allowed to eat apparently, and so, maddened by ill-treatment, overwork, and starvation, they committed murder. Perhaps the most tragic part of the whole business is that one cannot completely blame them for such an awful act. They have grown to hate the white man. It is small wonder.
There are now nearly 50,000 Chinamen on the Rand, and in the breasts of all these men there seems to have been imbued a hatred and detestation of the white man. It seems almost as if these slaves considered it fair game to commit any outrage, however brutal, on white men and white women whenever the opportunity occurs. They are treated outrageously themselves. They get little justice from magistrates, so it is small wonder that they are indulging themselves in a sort of blood carnival of revenge.
Discussing this question the other day with a representative of the London journal South Africa, Dr. Corstorphine seriously declared that the difficulties attendant on the Chinese labour question had been magnified out of all proportion to the main facts. "We must expect to find a few black sheep amongst the Chinese," sagely observed the doctor. Ye gods!—a few. It would be interesting to know what constitutes a "few" in the mind of the worthy geologist. Dr. Corstorphine would probably indignantly deny the existence of yellow slavery[Pg 97] on the Rand. But possibly he would admit its existence under another name, just as Sir Edward Grey did at Alnwick the other night. Addressing his constituents, Sir Edward said he had never said that the working of the mines by the Chinese in South Africa was slavery; but the question he would put to those who said it was not, would be—"Was it Freedom?" That is a question that I would put to Dr. Corstorphine, Mr. Fricker, Mr. E. P. Mathers, and others of their kidney. If Chinese labour on the Rand isn't slavery, what is it—is it Freedom? I pause for a reply.
The mark of the yellow man is upon the Rand. He has set his seal upon the country, and it is to be seen in a hundred things.
Johannesburg was never an exactly heavenly place. A gold centre attracts all the evil passions of men—draws to it, like the lodestone draws the needle—every species of adventurer and world vagabond.
President Kruger knew how to deal with the cosmopolitan hordes that thronged the streets of the "Gold-Reef City." He put a check upon the importation of undesirables, and always remembered before all things that the Transvaal belonged to the Boer people and not to the cosmopolitan. The British Government might well have taken a leaf from his book. But they have failed to do so. Instead of making the interests of the Briton paramount, they have deliberately allowed the Rand to be overrun by every type of Continental adventurer.
So Johannesburg, up to the summer of 1904, was never exactly peopled by a moral, law-abiding population.
The fierceness of competition, the keenness to make money rapidly, seems to electrify the sunny atmosphere of the Rand, and to produce a community that knows no law.
But since the summer of 1904 the Rand has suffered a change which at one time was thought impossible; it has changed for the worse. To the wild life in the mining city has been added the degrading vices of the Orient. The Chinaman has brought with him all the worst vices of life in a treaty port. Opium dens and gambling hells, in spite of the most careful police surveillance, have sprung up. The yellow man has made his name a terror. He has murdered, raped, robbed, and committed every offence against law and morality. He has literally terrorized—and still terrorizes—the Rand. The plutocrat Jew walks the familiar streets in a state of trepidation; the Boer farmer sleeps with a rifle by his side, and his farm house is surrounded by spring guns and alarums. The life of no white man is safe, and the honour of no white woman.
"The Chinese reign of terror continues on the Rand," cabled the Durban correspondent of the Daily Chronicle on November 1. "The latest outrage is that perpetrated by a gang of coolies, who attacked a house at Benoni, injuring its occupant, Mr. Vaughan, and wounding his wife with a razor. They ransacked the house and stole the plate." These are some of the men whose praises were sung by Sir George Farrar at a political meeting at the[Pg 100] Nigel—and whose work as miners, he declared, had proved "a great success." A "great success," perhaps, for the Rand lords, but at what a terrible cost to the community of the Witwatersrand!
The South African News of Cape Town has rendered yeoman service to the cause of those who are opposed—and their name is legion!—to the Chinese labour question. The ridiculous contentions of the Rand lords have been exposed again and again by the Cape Town journal, whose fearlessness in grappling with the subject has been in marked contrast to the majority of its contemporaries in the sub-continent, and has earned, as it has deserved, the thanks of the thinking portion of the community. Commenting on October 4 on the continuance of the reign of terror on the Rand, "as it was bound to continue," the South African News puts the case with unmistakable plainness;—"Unless the Chinese are confined in such a way as the mine-owners themselves consider fairly describable as slavery, they are a menace to the public. Probably slavery would mean further outrages; it is clear that torture of various kinds has been allowed on the Rand, and it is far less clear that this is not the real cause of some of the excesses which have shocked South Africa. Either we must have slavery and exasperation, or we must have our people exposed to the danger of murder, outrage and robbery; or we must demand the expulsion of the Chinese, and the turning down[Pg 101] of a disgraceful page in South African and English history which has brought good to no one, and only serves as another indication of the strength to which avarice will lead men in attempting to bend nature into the service of their own greed."
It was understood that the only conditions under which Chinese labour could be introduced to the Rand was a system by which they were kept apart, under lock and key, from the rest of the population. But this system has broken down. Hordes of Chinese, as I have shown, are running over the country. The utter futility of the compound system is proved by the fact that as many as thirteen Chinese laundries have been broken up by the police in one week, only for others to take their place.
It was recognized by the Government that the Chinaman must not be allowed to be a competitor. This was one of the reasons of herding him with his fellows like cattle in a pen.
But the Chinaman broke loose. With Asiatic unconcern he sets all the rules of the Ordinance at defiance, and calmly sets up a laundry in the town, caters for custom, carries on his business just as if he were a free man and not a yellow serf, until some frightened cosmopolitan sees him in the streets, and in a state of fear demands that the nearest policeman shall see whether the creature has a permit or not.
John Chinaman, who, of course, has no[Pg 102] permit, is thereupon arrested, his laundry business comes to an abrupt close, and he starts once again his task of gold grubbing for a shilling a day.
The amended Ordinance of August last contained this clause—
"It is provided that labourers being in possession of gum, opium, extract of opium, poppies, etc., shall be liable to a fine on conviction of £20, or in lieu thereof of imprisonment for three months, with or without hard labour."
This ominous clause was rendered necessary by the steadily increasing growth of opium dens.
Twelve months before, some few weeks after the arrival of the first batch of Chinamen, the Government had passed what was known as the Poison Ordinance. The object of this Ordinance was to regulate the sale of opium. It provided that only registered chemists and druggists might sell opium, and that every package of the drug must be labelled with the word "Poison."
Of course, this was ridiculously inadequate, and it was soon found that more stringent measures must be taken. It was decreed, therefore, that opium could only be sold to persons known to the seller, and on an entry being made in the poison-book. These further restrictions were found perfectly futile. The sale of opium increased enormously.
At a meeting of the Transvaal Pharmacy Board, the secretary of the board read his[Pg 103] report on the poison-books of the chemists in Johannesburg. It transpired that an examination of the books of one chemist had disclosed the following sales of opium on various dates in July and August last—336 lbs., 18 lbs., 28 lbs., 7 lbs., 31 lbs., 48 lbs. All this had been sold to Chinamen for smoking purposes.
One lot was said to have been sold under a medical certificate, but the doctor concerned denied all knowledge of such certificate. The chairman of the board said, that while it was gratifying to know that only three out of sixty-eight pharmacies along the Rand carried on traffic in opium, the ugly fact remained that two of these chemists had imported during August two tons of Persian opium for smoking purposes, and an examination of their books disclosed that only a few pounds were unsold.
In vain have the authorities attempted to put an end to this drug habit. Recommendations have been made by the Pharmacy Board that any chemist secretly supplying the Chinese with drugs should be sent to prison, without the option of a fine. As if one evil were producing another evil, it has been proved that not only are the Chinamen demoralizing the Rand, but the Rand is demoralizing the Chinamen. The majority of the Chinese labourers have been drawn from the north of the Celestial Empire, where very little opium is used, on account of the poverty of the people. The comparatively large salaries which these labourers are now receiving enables them to[Pg 104] indulge their inherited taste for the drug to their hearts' content.
But in addition to this sale of opium by chemists on the Rand, opium dens have sprung up all over the place. As soon as the police stamp them out in one quarter they reappear in another. They are accompanied, of course, by the usual gambling hells. These, too, the police endeavour to suppress. All the money that they find is impounded; heavy fines are exacted. But instead of decreasing they increase. The most dangerous vice of the Orient is thus thriving luxuriantly upon the favourable soil of the Rand.
One cannot blame the Chinaman for drugging himself. It is difficult even to blame him for the outrages that he commits. The opium habit, of course, is a step towards other habits. If the Chinaman merely went to the opium dens in his off hours, drugged himself, slept his celestial sleep, and then returned to his labours prepared to work as hard as any cart-horse, the Rand lords would be the last persons to forbid him these indulgences. But the opium habit is demoralizing and degrading. It excites passions almost beyond control.
I have already pointed out that Mr. Lyttelton promised in the House of Commons that the Chinaman should be allowed to take his womenfolk with him if he wished, and a great point was made of the fact that the morality of the Chinamen would be well looked after. No risks were to be taken. The Archbishop of[Pg 105] Canterbury had to be satisfied upon the point before he made his regrettable necessity speech—"Show me that it brings about or implies the encouragement of immorality in the sense in which we ordinarily use the word, and, I am almost ashamed to say anything so obvious, I should not call the so-called necessity worth a single moment's consideration. In such a case there could be but one answer given by any honest man. The thing is wrong, and please God it shall not take place."
The Most Reverend Primate should be satisfied by now that the system deliberately set up in the Transvaal has brought about and encouraged immorality.
The Chinaman is always a frugal feeder, yet the strength of his passions is notorious. There is no necessity to go back into the past moral history of the Chinese race to contradict this statement.
Gangs of escaped labourers have attacked farm houses on the veld, and where they have found no men, or where the men have been overpowered, they have committed all the most bestial assaults known upon the women and children. One white woman was known to have been found raped, and dead. It is not safe for any decent or respectable white woman to go near a Chinaman. The way he looks at her is sufficient to raise the most murderous thoughts in the mind of any white man present.
A deputation of miners asked Lord Selborne for protection against the Chinamen, stating[Pg 106] that the way in which they spoke to and looked at white women was intolerable, and pointed out further that, unless steps were taken to protect the white population, the most horrible crimes would be committed.
That warning has proved true.
Lord Milner has called the sentiment, which has arisen in the breasts of nearly all Britons, of loathing for the introduction of Chinamen into the Rand, Exeter Hall sentiment. It possibly is the sentiment of Exeter Hall, but it is to be hoped it is the sentiment also of all decent people who believe in virtue and morality, and who still cherish a fine chivalrous ideal of woman.
The Government have again and again declared that the protest of the Opposition in the House of Commons was dictated purely by party considerations—that Chinese labour was a good stalking horse. That people really were concerned about the welfare of Chinamen on the Rand they refused to believe. As a matter of fact it is really the Government that are blinded by partisanship; they see everything through a false medium. What they do not see falsely in the Transvaal they do not see at all. For it cannot be that they really are in favour of retaining on the Rand 50,000 Chinamen who commit the most loathsome outrages on the white population. It is almost passing belief that they should blind themselves to the fact that the womenfolk of the Transvaal are absolutely unprovided with any adequate protection against these hordes of Chinamen.
Every day, as has been shown, desertions grow more numerous, and with every Chinaman that escapes the terror increases. No steps have been taken for the protection of his morals. Not even the most human elementary step of letting him bring with him his wife has been taken. And but few steps have been taken to protect the white population. The most ordinary commonplace foresight has been wanting. The carnival of lust and blood now going on in the Transvaal could have been prevented. It was bad enough to introduce Chinese labour at all into the Transvaal. The case becomes more damnable when they are introduced without those restrictions which had been promised.
"I am opposed," said Herbert Spencer, "to the importation of Chinese labour, because if it occurs one of two things must happen. Either the Chinese must mix with the nation, in which case you get a bad hybrid, and yet if they do not mix they must occupy a position of slavery."
The British Government, at the dictation of the Rand lords, attempted to make the Chinaman occupy a position of slavery, failed to completely establish this system, and is allowing the Chinamen to mix with the population. Thus we shall have in the Transvaal the two evils which Herbert Spencer raised his voice against. We have already slavery; we shall certainly have a bad hybrid population. The degrading influence of the Chinaman is shown in Johannesburg. White women are actually marrying them. They are even mixing with the black races.[Pg 108] The Transvaal was bad enough before, when merely thronged with the scouring of Europe. But it will be a thousand times worse before the last Chinaman is repatriated.
In a morning paper of November 2 I read that Mr. Lyttelton, the Colonial Secretary, in a letter to Mr. George Renwick, M.P., defends the action of the Government in regard to the employment of Chinese labour. He refers to the demand for it in the South African colonies, and says—"The opinion to which we came was based upon evidence taken from many sources. That it was correct is borne out by the fact that we have received not a single petition from the Transvaal for the revocation of the Ordinance."
Let not Mr. Lyttelton lay such flattering unction to his soul. If it be true, as he states, that the Imperial Government have so far not received a single petition from the other side against the Chinamen, he need only wacht een beitje—wait a bit—as they say in South Africa. The petitions will follow. By and by they will be thick as leaves in Vallombrosa. Does Mr. Lyttelton never read the daily papers? Is he unaware, for instance, that at a special meeting held at Krugersdoorp on October 10, a resolution was carried praying that an end might be put to the importation of Chinese, and that the Chinamen now on the Rand might be sent back immediately after the expiration of their contracts? Does he pretend to be ignorant of the fact that it was announced at the time that this resolution would be sent to the Imperial Government[Pg 109] through Lord Selborne? I cannot believe it. Let Mr. Lyttelton note that the correspondent from whose message I quote, significantly added—"If this way of protesting has no result, it is intended to send a deputation to England to discuss matters regarding the Chinese question."
Verily, it would seem that nothing short of a measure of the kind will stir the conscience of Christian England to an appreciation of the intolerable state of affairs now being endured in South Africa by those whose lot is cast in proximity to the yellow man!
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:—
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.
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.
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 are thousands of absolutely destitute men, women, and children who have to be provided for weekly out of funds now almost exhausted. Night after night these unfortunate wretches are compelled to sleep on the mountain slopes, whether it be winter or summer, and quite recently a man was found on one of the seats in the Public Gardens in such a state of starvation—for he had tasted nothing for five[Pg 120] whole days—that he died an hour and a half after.
This is the boasted prosperity which was to have come to the country through the introduction of Chinese labour. And yet Mr. Balfour writes to Mr. Herbert Samuel on November 22—vide the correspondence in The Times—that he can see "nothing in the condition of things to induce the Government to reverse a policy which was recommended by an overwhelming majority in the Transvaal Legislative Council, with the approval of the great bulk of the white population."(!)
Many attempts have been made to justify the pledge made by Lord Milner, that for every 10,000 introduced, 10,000 white men would find employment. This is a side of the question which was admirably put by Lord Coleridge in May last:—
The Government's policy seems to be that of the mine owner, or rather to serve that of the mine owner—to get labour as cheaply as possible, and, above all, to keep out the white man for fear he should grow independent. Mr. Lyttelton, speaking at Exeter on May 5, said:—
"The result of the introduction of Chinamen has been that 3000 white men are employed on the mines in addition to those that were employed before the introduction of that labour, and the result is that, in round figures, £500,000 has been received by British artisans."
And so on. That is a completely misleading statement. I say, and I think I shall show, that the employment of Chinese has led to a decrease in the amount of white labour employed. Take the year from June 1903 to June 1904. The proportion of white men to Kaffirs during those twelve months remained practically stationary, at one in six, in[Pg 121] round figures. On March 31, 1905, which is the date of the last Return we have, there were 105,184 Kaffirs working in the mines, and at the proportion of one-sixth there would have been 17,530 white men. But the number of white men employed at that date was only 16,235. Following that proportion, if the Chinese had not arrived we should have had at least 1300 or 1400 more white men employed than there are now. In addition to that there are over 34,000 Chinese employed not represented by a single white man, and Lord Milner does not hold out any hope that the proportion of white men to coloured labourers will in future be greater than one in fourteen.
Crime and outrage are all that this degrading policy of Chinese slavery has brought to the country. There is an old text that says, "Be sure your sins will find you out." But rarely does it happen within the space of a year and a half, that a national crime meets with its reward.
Immediately after the war one could not say that the Transvaal was peopled by a happy, industrious community, but it was a veritable heaven compared with the Transvaal of 1905; a veritable paradise of plenty. This has been the social effect of the importation of Chinese labour. The political effect is quite as serious.
It has been said that the ultimate object of our rule in South Africa is the federation of all the states of South Africa into one commonwealth. It was the dream of Cecil Rhodes that South Africa should take her place among the commonwealths of the Empire. A constitution, such as exists in Australia at the[Pg 122] present moment, was to be given to South Africa. The states of Cape Colony, Natal, the Orange River Colony and the Transvaal—all free, self-governing units—were to be welded together into one great self-governing Imperial unit. The introduction of Chinese labour in the Transvaal has rendered this impossible. Until these Chinamen are repatriated there will be no commonwealth for South Africa.
In the first place, one of the essentials for such a federation would be that each state should be a self-governing colony. The mine owner knows, and the Government of Great Britain must know by now, that once self-government is given to the Transvaal, Chinese slavery would be at an end. Therefore the mine owners, who really "boss" the Transvaal, would take care to suppress any agitation in favour of self-government. As they refused the referendum so will they refuse the Boer and the Briton the right of free constitution. Hence the granting of responsible government to the Transvaal is deferred, and hence the federation of South Africa is postponed indefinitely.
Again, Cape Colony would never consent to the federation of the Transvaal unless the Chinese labourers were repatriated. They have stated their opinion in no uncertain language. They would have no desire to enter into a partnership arrangement with a community which was hampered with such a grave social problem as Chinese labour. The[Pg 123] Transvaal has done harm enough to Cape Colony, without adding this last straw to the load of evil which the gold mines of the Rand have bred for her.
This is one of the Imperial political disasters resulting immediately from the importation of Chinese labour.
There is another Imperial consideration even more serious.
No one can read the protests sent to the Colonial Office by the great self-governing colonies that fought in the war, without realizing the gravity with which such a breaking away from the traditions of the Empire has been received by these colonies. Had we known it was to be war for the Chinese miners, the appeal made to Australia for men and arms would have had a very different effect. This is the substance of Australia's protest. Sentiment is a thing easily destroyed. Not even the Government, I think, can realize the indignation felt in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand by the Indentured Labour Ordinance. It should have been the policy of the Imperial Government to foster the tie that binds all the units of the Empire together. Mr. Chamberlain has voiced this opinion times out of number; our Imperial bards have sung it. The Government, which has always boasted that it was more Imperial than the Opposition, more wrapped up in the honour and the greatness of the Empire, has made this sentiment a commonplace in every election speech. And yet they have done[Pg 124] more to destroy this bond than any other party in the state.
Again, some attention should have been paid to the Dutch problem in the Transvaal. No attention was paid to it. We hear little now of the war. The Transvaal might have been ruled from the beginning by the British Government. Now and again the English papers mention casually the once familiar name of General Botha as having addressed the Het Volk. But the Dutch problem is never considered at all in England by the great men of the people. And yet it is a very vital and important question. Next to the native question it is, perhaps, the most vital question with which South Africa has to deal.
Throughout South Africa the Boers are to-day the most thrifty, the most industrious, and almost the most agricultural section of the community. Of their ability in war we have had a long experience. Of their courage and patriotism we gained a knowledge at a great cost. They outnumber the English population in the Transvaal and Cape Colony. And South Africa will never be absolutely secured to the British Empire until the proportion of Boers to the total white population is reduced.
It should have been the object of the Government, immediately after the war, to pack the Transvaal with Englishmen, to act as a counterbalance to the Boer population. This would have been a dangerous experience if[Pg 125] there was no excuse for introducing such a large number of Englishmen. But the excuse was to hand. A splendid opportunity of reducing the population of the Boers to the total white population occurred at the re-opening of the mines. Increased use of white labour in the mines would have given to the Transvaal that preponderating majority of Britons which the safety of the Empire demands. The home Government did not take that opportunity, and South Africa has been left in exactly the same dangerous condition as she was after the war.
Instead of performing this obvious duty to the country, the Government listened to the objections of the mine owners to swarming the country with white labour, upon the grounds that they would prove a disturbing element socially and politically, and agreed to the importation of the Chinamen.
There is yet another grave political aspect of this deplorable problem. As the British people are apt to forget that the Boers outnumber the Britons in the Transvaal, so they forget, when considering the problem of South Africa, that there is a vast population of natives within our territory.
These black tribes are utterly demoralized, and, it is recognized, by the war of the white man against the white man, and certain causes which could not have been foreseen, have increased the unrest and lawlessness.
From Lagos to the Cape the same story has[Pg 126] been told for the last two years: that the black man is growing restive under the white man's rule, that the white man is losing rapidly that superstitious authority which up till then he had always carried with him. The cause of this is the utter failure of the Germans to bring the war in Damaraland to a successful conclusion. The continued successes scored by the Hereroes have undoubtedly set aflame the ambitions of the black tribes throughout the south-west coast and inland. In some cases it has been fomented and worked up by Mahommedan and Ethiopian missionaries. In addition to these disturbing elements the death of Lerothodi, the paramount chief of Basutoland, has increased the natives' restlessness. The spectacle of Chinese bands roaming the country, looting farms, killing white men and raping white women has added to these symptoms of native disaffection.
A rising among the Basutos—which more likely than not would be followed by a general rising of natives throughout Swaziland, Zululand and the Transvaal—would engage all our strength to suppress. We should have to make use of the constabulary which is now with great difficulty keeping under control the Chinese labourers. It is not hard to imagine the terrible state of affairs that would result from such a rising. While we suppress the black man the Chinaman would be left unguarded and unpoliced free to desert and to commit outrages. Indeed, should the Chinaman rise with the black[Pg 127] man the safety of both Briton and Boer would be in the gravest jeopardy.
These are the deplorable risks which are being run by maintaining in the Transvaal some 50,000 Chinamen.
Financially the Chinamen have been a failure, a very grave failure. Socially their importation has proved disastrous. Instead of bringing wealth they have brought stagnation. Instead of bringing employment for the white man they have brought destitution and abject poverty. In introducing them it was recognized that some system must be devised by which they could be prevented from mixing with the population. That system has failed utterly and completely. They were to have brought wealth; they were to have brought employment for the white man. All they have brought is chaos. All they have done is to increase the output of gold at a cost which has decreased instead of increasing the mining companies' dividends. They have spread a terror throughout the length and breadth of the Transvaal. Economically and socially the policy proposed by the mine owners and forced upon the Government has proved deplorable. Their introduction has been a grave Imperial error which has aroused in the great self-governing Colonies anger and indignation. It has already loosened the bonds which the common danger of war had tightened.
Their continued stay in South Africa, and the continued introduction of more coolies has given rise to the possibility of danger that[Pg 128] is awful to contemplate. The rising of the black man would leave the policing of nearly 50,000 Chinamen in the hands of a few white men.
It is not too much to say that no greater sin against the ideals of the British people, no more vicious and ruinous policy, has ever been adopted.
THE END
Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, London and Bungay.
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