116 



CAPE COLONY AND SOUTH AFRICA. 



fatally wounded another man in a quarrel, by a 

 police constable named Jones, who broke into 

 his house to arrest him on a criminal charge, 

 and shot him because he hit one of the police- 

 men with a stick. The previous trial and ac- 

 quittal of a German named Von Veltheim, who 

 had shot and killed Woolf Joel, a Rand capital- 

 ist, had been regarded in some quarters as an 

 indication of the partiality of Boer courts and 

 juries in dealing with the rights of British sub- 

 jects. Von Veltheim was expelled from the 

 Transvaal under the law passed in consequence 

 of the Jameson raid, giving the President power 

 to expel any alien regarded as dangerous to the 

 peace of the country. This law was repealed at 

 the request of the British Government, but the 

 Raad in 1898 re-enacted its essential provisions. 

 The Uitlanders, who followed the counsels of the 

 South African League and desired British inter- 

 vention, made this and the other acts passed in 

 1890 to protect the state against a recurrence 

 of such disturbances as the Johannesburg revo- 

 lution and the Jameson raid one of their chief 

 grounds of complaint against the Transvaal 

 Government. Von Veltheim returned to the 

 Transvaal without permission in January, 1899, 

 and was sentenced to four months' imprisonment, 

 to be re-expelled on the expiration of the sen- 

 tence. When the public prosecutor reduced the 

 charge against Jones from murder to culpable 

 homicide, and released him from custody on the 

 recognizance of his comrades of the police force, 

 Clement Davies Webb and Thomas Robery Dodd, 

 the vice-president and secretary of the Transvaal 

 section of the South African League, called a 

 public meeting in the public square at Johannes- 

 burg on Dec. 24, 1898, and there a petition to the 

 British Government was signed by over 4,000 

 British subjects. The vice-consul at Pretoria de- 

 clined to forward a petition couched in such 

 terms as this one was, and Webb and Dodd were 

 arrested by the Transvaal authorities on the 

 charge of having violated the public-meetings act 

 of 1894, which forbids the holding of a meeting 

 in a public place without authorization. The 

 political animosity of the Afrikanders in Jo- 

 hannesburg and other parts of the Transvaal 

 against the Rhodes party was aroused by the 

 sudden revival of the demands of the Uitlanders. 

 The editor of one of their papers called for the 

 removal of the acting British agent at Pretoria, 

 and was consequently arrested for malicious slan- 

 der. The Uitlanders, on the arrest of Webb and 

 Dodd, arranged for a meeting on Jan. 14, 1899, 

 in a public building at Johannesburg to protest 

 against this alleged fresh violation of the rights 

 of British subjects and generally to express 

 their grievances and sign a new petition. This 

 meeting was permitted, since there is no law 

 against assembling in a closed place; but when 

 they came together Boers also rushed in, many 

 of them said to be policemen in plain clothes and 

 employees of the Government, and these raised 

 such a tumult that no speeches could be heard. 

 A hand-to-hand conflict took place between the 

 Englishmen and the disturbers, with which the 

 police officials who were present declined to in- 

 terfere, although Englishmen present pointed out 

 some of their antagonists and demanded that 

 they should be arrested. 



On Jan. 13 Mr. Chamberlain sent a dispatch 

 in regard to the dynamite monopoly, which, as 

 carried out in the Transvaal, he held to be a 

 contravention of the article in the convention 

 of 1884 granting equal trading rights to British 

 subjects. A monopoly in explosives was first 

 given to Edward Lippert, a German, in 1887, on 



his undertaking to erect factories and supply the 

 requirements of the Transvaal with dynamite 

 manufactured in the country as far as possible 

 from materials produced in the country, other 

 ingredients to be imported free of duty, while 

 on dynamite itself a heavy duty was laid. The 

 French company to which Lippert transferred . 

 the privilege erected buildings in which cartridges 

 were filled with dynamite imported under an- 

 other name. The British Government objected" 

 to the granting of a monopoly to a private indi- 

 vidual as a breach of the convention, and when 

 the Cape customhouse officials in 1892 stopped 

 consignments of so-called raw materials, and 

 showed them to be fully manufactured dynamite, 

 the Transvaal Government canceled the conces- 

 sion. In September, 1893, the Volksraad adopted 

 regulations reserving to the Government the 

 monopoly of the manufacture and sale of ex- 

 plosives, imposing an import duty of 9d. a pound 

 on dynamite, but giving the Government the 

 right of importation, and providing that the 

 monopoly may be transferred to an agent, who 

 for eight years might charge a maximum price 

 of 5 a case, and was to pay the Government 

 a royalty of 5s. a case of 50 pounds and 20 per 

 cent, of the net profits. The price to the mine 

 operators was fixed at a third less than under 

 the former monopoly. The agent appointed was 

 L. G. Vorstmann. The contract, which ran for 

 fifteen years, bound the concessionaire to erect 

 a factory within two and a half years and manu- 

 facture dynamite, using imported materials only 

 in case they w^ere not produced in the Transvaal, 

 but having in the meantime the right to import 

 all materials. Consumers received the right to 

 import dynamite by paying a heavy duty. The 

 real concessionaire was still Lippert, for Vorst- 

 mann was only a man of straw. Dynamite was 

 still imported under the name of guhr imprcgne. 

 When Nobel, the European manufacturer of 

 dynamite, offered to build a factory in the Trans- 

 vaal the Government made Lippert put down 

 the price to 4 5s. a case. Afterward Nobel and 

 Lippert, with the French company, formed a 

 company together, and on May 24, 1864, a new 

 concession w r as granted, under which the Gov- 

 ernment advanced 400,000 to the company for 

 the purchase of explosives, afterward increasing 

 the loan to 500,000, on which no interest was 

 charged. It was provided that permits to im- 

 port dynamite should not be given to outsiders 

 unless "the stock on hand fell below 10,000 cases. 

 The new contract alloAved to Lippert a royalty 

 of 6s. a case for fifteen years and 2s. more for 

 three years. When the time for beginning manu- 

 facture came no factory had been built. The 

 importation of dynamite went on, contrary to 

 the agreement. The mine owners of the Rand, 

 who in 1893 had offered to build a factory them- 

 selves and give the Government 50 per cent, of 

 the profits, made complaints. German manu- 

 facturers offered to supply good dynamite at 

 40s. a case, and thus save them an expense of 

 500,000 a year, whereas they had to pay 85s. 

 for a quality that was dangerous. The Raad 

 appointed a commission in 1897, which reported 

 that the company had failed to keep its agree- 

 ment in various particulars, and that the ex- 

 cessive price of the explosive was a serious bur- 

 den on the industry. The outcome was that on 

 May 1, 1898, the price of dynamite was reduced 

 to 3 15s. a case, the Government having aban- 

 doned its royalty of 5s. a case and induced Lip- 

 pert to forego 5s. of his. The dynamite factory 

 was completed in 1896, but was only capable 

 of supplying 80,000 cases, a fifth of the demand, 



