SOUTH AFRICA. 



609 



cheated out of it on the way. The sale of liquor 

 to Kaffirs was forbidden by the Transvaal law, 

 yet enough of it was sold to make many Johan- 

 nesburgers millionaires and hundreds of them 

 wealthy. European clothing, gay belts, caps, cra- 

 vats, and other wares of flimsy make, largely 

 imported from Germany, were a source of riches 

 to other traders. The stores which catered to the 

 whites did a large aggregate business also. The 

 wages of the white laborers averaged 30 a 

 month. When the republican Government re- 

 stricted mining to 12 mines the business of Jo- 

 hannesburg proportionally diminished, and it 

 ceased altogether when the British took the city. 

 The merchants fear that the English will intro- 

 duce the compound system as it exists at Kim- 

 berley, where the blacks are confined in their 

 quarters and purchase everything from the com- 

 pany's stores. The pass and labor laws which 

 the Volksraad made in 1898 and 1899 at the re- 

 quest of the mining companies of the Rand pre- 

 scribed flogging for being found without a pass 

 and for every offense that a Kaffir could commit, 

 and made the penalty for breaking their labor 

 contract and running away specially severe. Lord 

 Kitchener, acting High Commissioner, in June, 

 1901, ordered that lashes should no longer be in- 

 flicted without a magistrate's order, and abol- 

 ished flogging for slight offenses, yet for being at 

 large without a pass the penalty was increased 

 from 5 fine or two months' imprisonment to 

 10 fine or three months' imprisonment and 25 

 lashes. The difficulty of obtaining labor is the 

 principal one that mine owners have to contend 

 with in South Africa. Before the war wages 

 were so high that low-grade ores could not be 

 worked, so high even for high-grade ores that the 

 mine owners determined to reduce them 33J per 

 cent., which could not be done unless they had 

 power to compel laborers to work for less than 

 they were willing to take. The great majority 

 of black men, even when willing to work above 

 ground, have an insuperable objection to going 

 below ground. Latterly the main supply of labor 

 was obtained from certain tribes in Mozambique 

 and other Portuguese territories. The Transvaal 

 Government refused to coerce the natives in its 

 own dominions to work in the mines $s the mine 

 owners endeavored to get it to do. 



Diamonds have since 1897 been found in the 

 Transvaal in formations similar to those of Kim- 

 berley. Silver, copper, lead, tin, and other min- 

 erals have been discovered in promising deposits. 

 Iron is found in proximity to coal-beds, and these 

 are, next to gold, the most important resource 

 of the country, as they are estimated to contain 

 within reach 60,000,000,000 tons of coal. 



The agricultural possibilities of the Transvaal 

 are great excepting in some barren regions. The 

 strip extending from Pretoria westward to Zee- 

 rust contains 10,000 square miles of well-watered 

 land of inexhaustible fertility, growing wheat, 

 tobacco, oranges, and fruit of every kind. There 

 -are other districts similar to this in climate and 

 productive capacity. Northeast of Pietersburg, 

 in a semitropical climate, German settlers have 

 had flourishing plantations of sugar-cane, tobac- 

 co, coffee, bananas, pineapples, and oranges. 

 Maize is a common product throughout South 

 Africa. Sheep and cattle have been the main 

 reliance of the Boers, and ostriches and goats 

 have been raised. Agriculture has been carried 

 on principally by the Kaffirs. The Transvaal has 

 always been obliged to import foodstuffs. 



The length of railroads in the Transvaal is 774 

 miles; of telegraphs, 2,200 miles, with 5,650 miles 

 of wire. A dependency of the Transvaal is the 

 VOL. XLI. 39 A 



native district of Swaziland, inhabited by about 

 50,000 natives of the Zulu rare, governed by their 

 own paramount chief, while a commissioner of 

 the South African Republic was at the head of 

 the general administration, collecting a revenue of 

 35,000 and having a police force' of 110 men. 

 There were about 1,200 white settlers who had 

 obtained grazing farms from the S\v;i/.i chief's. 

 The Swazis number about 60,000. In the i niris- 

 vaal proper there are believed to be actually 

 more than 1,000,000 Kaffirs and in the Oran^'o 

 River Colony 150,000. Of the Transvaal native 

 about 750,000 live under their own chiefs in the 

 bush veld and the low country of the Zoutpans- 

 berg, the Lydenburg district, and other parts in 

 the northeast and north of the Transvaal, and 

 in recent times they have been little interfered 

 with except by military expeditions to compel 

 them to pay the hut tax or when they have 

 been dispossessed of land wanted by the whites. 

 About 140,000 have settled on Boer farms through- 

 out the Transvaal, where they cultivate their 

 gardens and keep their own cattle, and in lieu of 

 rent perform the farm labor for their masters. 

 The domestic servants are held under the ap- 

 prenticeship laws which no longer exist in the 

 Cape Colony, where whites and blacks are legally 

 equal, though as a matter of fact the Transvaal 

 natives, and still more those of the Orange Free 

 State, whose legal status is not quite as servile 

 as in the Transvaal, have had more practical 

 freedom and better chances of prosperity than the 

 Cape and Natal natives, and the Boers have been 

 kinder masters to the natives employed in their 

 houses and have dealt more justly with the great 

 body of the natives than the Cape Colonists or 

 the newcomers from Europe. All the special and 

 oppressive legislation introduced in the Transvaal 

 since 1884 has been at the bidding of the Uit- 

 landers, and avowedly designed for the mine own- 

 ers and other employers who came in search of 

 wealth after the opening of the Rand in 1885. 

 About 100,000 natives are employed as domestic 

 servants in the towns of the Transvaal by Uit- 

 landers as well as Boers. Very few are willing 

 to work in the gold-mines, which formerly drew 

 their supply of labor from Cape Colony, Natal, 

 and Zululand, and subsequently from Portuguese 

 territory. The contract labor laws passed in 

 Cape Colony at the behest of the Kimberley mine 

 owners and other capitalists are more oppressive 

 than the labor acts that the Rand capitalists 

 were able to obtain from the Volksraad, and in 

 modifying these, the British Government, while 

 reducing the flogging penalties, added some of 

 the compulsory features of the Cape legislation. 



The revenue of the South African Republic 

 from customs was 1,289,000 in 1897 and 1,- 

 067,000 in 1898. Sir David Barbour's plan is to 

 reduce the heavy duties on beer, jam, and other 

 British products; to increase those on wine, tea, 

 and coffee; and to make the duty on spirits im- 

 ported from South African colonies 10s. a gallon, 

 the same as on spirits from over sea, to impose 

 an excise duty of the same amount on spirits 

 distilled in the Transvaal, and to allow spirits 

 to be sold to natives. The hut and poll taxes, 

 which yield but little, should be made lower and 

 strictly collected, and the poll-tax of 10,s. on male 

 adult whites abolished. The share of the Trans- 

 vaal Government in the National Bank and the 

 Netherlands Railroad produced 254,000 a year, 

 and 85 per cent, of the surplus receipts of the 

 railroad 668,000, including 316,000 of customs 

 duties collected by the company. The true rev- 

 enue of the Transvaal for 1898 was found to be 

 3,341,920, and the true expenditure 3,476,845. 



