l-TTUEE OF NATIVE RACES OF S. RHODESIA. 145 



Ehodesia and the north is vastly greater than the corresponding 

 flow to and from the south, and will increase proportionately as 

 the years go on. We and the north will gradually assemble in 

 native affairs; we and the south will gradually diverge. At the 

 risk even of bordering upon politics, I will say that this state of 

 affairs would not be altered even if we became part of the Union. 

 We shall alwa3's be part of the Black North. We must face our 

 problem in native sociology without assistance from the south. 



Our problem, then, is twofold. Firstly, to ensure a social 

 environment favourable to the growth of the moral side, which 

 without assistance may not grow at all. 



Secondly, to ensure a social environment favovu'able to the 

 harmonious growth of the intellectual side, which without assist- 

 ance will grow, but may grow ii:iharmoniously, that is, unevenly. 



There are three phases of native life to be considered. Firstly, 

 the native artisans and labourers in towns and villages. 



Secondly', the native labourers on farms and mines. 



Thirdly, native life in reserves. 



I am not pretending that there is any hard and fast line to 

 be drav.'n between these existences, but they represent sufficiently 

 different phases to be considered separately. 



Taking the question of native labourers on mines and farms 

 first, and coupling with them natives residing on farms under the 

 Private Location Ordinance, very little can be done. jNIine 

 labourers are a very shifting class, and the real interest of their 

 lives centres nearly always in their kraals, to which they return 

 after a more or less extended stay at the mines. Farm labourers 

 are partly birds of passage, like mine labourers, and partly 

 pemianent residents on the farms at which they work. In the 

 latter case the.v are in a back-water. They are not a class which 

 lends itself readily to any development, nor, if the}' were the 

 only natives in the country, would the native problem be so •« itally 

 insistent. Our duty towards the native races would remain, but 

 as the sanction for its enforcement would merely be our own 

 disapproval, it might be considered with a great deal less anxiety, 

 and the natives left to remain, as these particular natives probably 

 will remain, in thair helotage. The natives on farms are out of 

 the main current of native life. 



In towns we have a very different state of affairs. There is 

 gradually growing up a distinct class of town " boy." The lead 

 in the life of town natives is, of course, taken by the r^atives 

 working in stores, offices, workshops, and factories. The number 

 of natives taking to this life permanently is increasing each year. 

 Their aptitude for many of the positions they fill is undoubted, 

 and grows yearly. Their general intelligence grows. Their wages 

 certainly grow. We have here probably the most suitable class for 

 our efforts in mass elevation. Working systematically, we could 

 almost certainly effect a greater improvement in the intellectual 

 and moral spheres in a given time with this class than v/ith any 

 other section of the native community. But at present every- 

 thing is against their development, especially in moral virtues 

 (meaning by moral virtues what I have previously so desei'ibed : 

 in tlie matter of what- are more commonly reckoned as moral 

 virtues, they are obviously very lacking, and their -invironment 



