Maech 30, 1906.] 



SCIENCE. 



495 



communities are under direct missionary in- 

 fluence, others are almost untouched by 

 foreign teachings. Questions of present 

 importance are : To what extent shall these 

 natives be educated? How can they best 

 be made to contribute to the industrial de- 

 velopment _ of the countiy ? How much 

 should they contribute to the revenue? 

 What is to be their social status? Are 

 they to have representation in Parliament, 

 or are native councils to be instituted, and, . 

 if so, on what basis? or Are they to have 

 no representation at all ? The government, 

 capitalist, missionary and colonist have 

 usually very diverse opinions upon most of 

 these points and we shall await with interest 

 the compromises that will have to be made. 

 A factor that complicates some of these 

 problems is the spread of the Ethiopian 

 Church, the socio-religious propaganda of 

 which is largely directed by emissaries of 

 the African Methodist Episcopal Church of 

 America, and this movement may readily 

 take political aspects which would require 

 careful handling. 



The older colonies of Cape Colony or 

 Natal contain a large oriental population, 

 'Malays' and Indians. As a rule these 

 communities keep largely to themselves and 

 do not intermarry with other nationalities. 

 The Indian element seems to be increasing 

 in Natal and is going to prove a serious 

 problem as the coolies and traders can un- 

 dersell white men. From information ob- 

 tained in Natal, it would seem that the 

 Indian coolies who were introduced to 

 labor on the sugar estates start market- 

 gardening on their own account and they 

 can afford to give a higher rent for land 

 than its value for growing sugar cane; if 

 this spreads land-owners will let the land 

 to the Indians and the sugar industry will 

 suffer; thus there is a danger that the In- 

 dians may destroy that very industry they 

 were introduced to foster. 



The experiment of the introduction of 



Chinese labor into the mines of the Trans- 

 vaal is being watched very carefully, and 

 already a diversity of opinion is being ex- 

 pi-essed by those who are most interested 

 in the problem; the two main issues being 

 economic and social, (1) is it economical 

 from the point of view of wages and out- 

 put? and (2) is it desirable to introduce a 

 new alien element into the colony ? 



Besides these sociological problems that 

 are more immediately concerned with 

 colored men, there are others confined to 

 the white races. The last word has not 

 yet been said on the relations between the 

 Boers and the Britons, or between the 

 transitory agents of capitalists and the 

 colonial who makes the country his home. 

 We were able to see something of the social 

 effects of mining centers, of distributing 

 and agricultural communities, as well as 

 of frontier townlets, recent towns of great 

 size, and long-established towns. Wher- 

 ever we went we were confronted with 

 insistent social problems of very varied 

 character which ranged from the native 

 savagery to the latest phase of civilization. 



With such a field it does seem a pity 

 that there is no central bureau or institu- 

 tion where information could be amassed 

 and the multifarious problems studied. 

 There is practically no systematic study of 

 the natives anywhere in South Africa, so 

 the great amount of individual knowledge 

 which undoubtedly exists among many local 

 persons is either unrecorded or uncoordi- 

 nated when recorded. Thus South Africa 

 affords a most favorable field for the study 

 of the ethnology of the lower races and 

 the sociology of the higher. 



Local ethnology is inadequately repre- 

 sented in all the South African museums, 

 and if the museimi authorities do not bestir 

 themselves it will soon be very difScult, if 

 not impossible, to make exhaustive collec- 

 tions, for changes are taking place with 

 great rapidity. Museums are expensive 



