Section E.— ANTHROPOLOGY, ETHNOLOGY, NATIVE 

 EDUCATION, PHILOLOGY, AND NATIVE SOCI- 

 OLOGY. 



President of the Section. — Rev. Noel Roberts. 



THURSDAY, JULY 6. 



The President delivered the following address : — 



NATIVE EDUCATION, FROM AN ECONOMIC POINT 



OF VIEW. 



Twenty years ago IXidley Kidd prophesied that " When the 

 gold mines have been worked out at Johannesburg, it may be 

 found that our chief asset in South Africa consists of the Native 

 population."* Two decades have passed, and the gold mines 

 :.re still being worked ; but, whatever Kidd meant when he wrote 

 those words, there can be no doubt in the minds of thinking men 

 and women that the Native iwpulation is one of the greatest 

 assets of South Africa to-day. We are almost entirely depen- 

 dent upon the Bantu races for unskilled and domestic labour. 

 Banish the Bantu ,from South Africa, and we should be faced 

 with the alternative of importing cheap labour from India, 

 China, or elsewhere, or of closing down our mines — gold, 

 copper, tin and coal — our wattle, tea, and sugar plantations, 

 our tobacco and other industries, all of which depend, more or 

 less, upon the cheap lalwur provided l)y the Bantu races of this 

 count ry.f 



The economic value of the Native, however, is not to be 

 gauged merely by his utility as a cheap form of unskilled labour. 

 The South African Natives undoubtedly possess many talents, 

 which, if rightly developed, might prove of inestimable value to 

 our country by increasing its production. They possess wonder- 

 ful gifts in the management of animals, and if scientifically 

 trained, should prove to be most successful breeders of cattle, 

 sheep, goats and poultry. If their natural g'ifts for husbandry 

 were directed into right channels, our export trade of beef and 

 mutton, of hides and wool, of cotton and tobacco, of cereals and 

 fruit, might be increased an hundredfold ; but South Africa, to- 

 day, is in danger of stagnation because South Africans persist 

 in the narrow view and allow the fear of competition to stifle 

 progress. 



* " The Essential Kaffir," p. 408. 



t All efforts to supplant native labour on the mines, in agriculture, 

 and in domestic service by the introduction of European unskilled 

 labourers, are doomed to failure since F.uropean immigrants soon become 

 conscious of their own superiority and their relation to the labour market, 

 and refuse to remain in mt-nial positions. 



