THE NATIVES IN THE LARGER TOWNS. 595 



Town Councils in the Transvaal and Orange Free State can 

 only grant a right of occupation to Natives in locations. In the 

 Cape and Natal there is nothing to prevent the local authority 

 from leasing or selling land to Natives in such areas. 



Factors for Civilisation. 



Among the miscellaneous matters which Town Councils are 

 authorised to regulate are the use by Natives of side-walks, streets, 

 and open places, and the carrying of sticks and lethal weapons, the 

 licensing of ricksha haulers and "togt" men, or day labourers, and 

 in Natal the administration of the monopoly system for the sale 

 of Native beer. 



The various laws, which empower Town Councils, present 

 some divergence not only in the powers conferred, but in the pro- 

 cedure prescribed. But if we bear in mind the different origin 

 of the four sets of laws, the points of agreement and not the 

 divergence will appear remarkable. 



In each of the four Provinces of the Union the laws referred 

 to emphasise the necessity of three things : — Clothes, houses, and 

 work — factors for civilisation which, as we shall see. were in 

 America among the first things which the negroes — without much 

 alternative it is true — adopted to their ultimate benefit. 



In speaking of the economic development of the negro, the 

 late Booker T. Washington, who had himself been a slave, says :^— 



No one, willing to be frank and fair, can fail to see that the negro did 

 get certain benefits out of slavery. 



The economic element not only made it necessary that the negro slave 

 should be clothed for the sake of decency, and in order to preserve his 

 health, but the same considerations made it necessary that he be housed 

 and taught the comforts to be found in a home. Within a few months, 

 then, after the arrival of the negro in America he was wearing clothes and 

 living in a house — no inconsiderable step in the direction of morality and 

 Christianity. 



And again: 



The American negro had, under the regime of slavery, his first lesson 

 in anjrthing like continuous, progressive systematic labour. I have said 

 that two of the signs of Christianity are clothes and houses, and now I 

 add a third, work. 



Clothes, houses, and work are here referred to as three signs 

 of Christianity. And if the Natives can be taught that with these 

 signs must co-exist cleanliness, thrift, morality, sobriety and 

 honesty, we shall have provided for them a regimen that will be 

 more than the Law and the Prophets, and a programme which no 

 Town Council or community has yet carried out. 



With regard to the South African Native it has been stated 



trulv that : — 



European clothing, which is coming more and more into general use, 

 has not been an unmixed blessing. . . . The use of cotton shirts by the 

 men, and the habit of allowing wet clothing to dry on the person, have 

 been particularly harmful. . . . A marked- increase in consumption, 

 pleurisv, inPammation of the lungs, and rheumatism has been the result. 

 European clothes, too, require much more frequent cleansing than their 

 ancestral garb, a fact which unfortunately is not sufficiently realised by 



