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Title: John Chinaman on the Rand
Author: Anonymous
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JOHN CHINAMAN ON THE RAND
* * * * * *
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* * * * * *
[Illustration: A NEW FORM OF TORTURE. _Frontispiece_]
JOHN CHINAMAN ON THE RAND
by an English Eye Witness
With Introduction by Dr. John Clifford, M.A., Ll.B.
And Frontispiece and Four Illustrations
London
R. A. Everett & Son
10 & 12 Garrick Street, Covent Garden, W.C.
1905
[All rights reserved]
Richard Clay & Sons, Limited,
Bread Street Hill, E.C., and
Bungay, Suffolk.
_INTRODUCTION
BY
DR. JOHN CLIFFORD, M.A., LL.B._
_I have read the following account of the importation of Chinese
coolies into South Africa with the keenest pain and sorrow. It is an
authentic story of one of the foulest tragedies in our British annals;
the witness of one who has seen the facts for himself._
_It is an indictment packed with sifted evidence, written with
knowledge; but also with the indignation of the patriot and of the
humanitarian, against wrongs wantonly inflicted upon our fellow-men
and sanctioned by the Parliament of the Empire. The "balance of evil"
is overwhelmingly proved. It is an economic blunder. It is another
blood-stained page in the history of the inhumanity of man to man.
It violates the domestic and the social ideals. It is a blight upon
our Empire; and, chiefest of all, it is inevitably and overwhelmingly
immoral; productive of vices and crimes that cannot be named without
shame and wrath._
_And yet these foreigners who sell men for gold are declaring that this
system must remain "undisturbed." Never! It must go. It is building
the Empire on the blood of souls. It is not a "necessity." It is a
wanton iniquity. It is not "freedom"; and it is shuffling of the
meanest kind to say that it is not "slavery." Let Britishers realize
their responsibility and bring to a speedy and final end this return to
barbarism!_
_JOHN CLIFFORD._
_The Publishers beg to thank the Editor of the 'Morning Leader' for
permission to use the Illustrations contained in this volume._
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. ENSLAVING THE RAND 13
II. 'AVE, CROESUS, MORITURI TE SALUTANT' 27
III. THE YELLOW MEN ON THE RAND 46
IV. THE GROWTH OF TERRORISM 77
V. THE YELLOW TRAIL 98
VI. THE EFFECT OF CHINESE LABOUR. PROMISES AND PERFORMANCES 110
JOHN CHINAMAN ON THE RAND
CHAPTER I
ENSLAVING THE RAND
In the following pages I have made no reference to the founder of the
Christian faith.
There is a particular form of blasphemy current in Great Britain which
ascribes to the highest and noblest Christian motives actions which are
prompted by the meanest passions of cupidity and self-interest. Any
shadow is good enough for the criminal to creep into in the hope of
escaping detection; but blasphemy is not too hard a word to express the
attitude of those advocates and supporters of Chinese slavery in the
Rand who actually creep under the shadow of the Cross itself for moral
protection.
With reservations, the Archbishop of Canterbury has blessed
the movement, having satisfied himself, with an ease somewhat
extraordinary, that it was all above-board and moral. The Bishop of
Bristol has commended it. The Rev. T. J. Darragh, Rector of St. Mary's
Church, Johannesburg, saw in it nothing but an opportunity to teach
the doctrines of Christianity to the heathen. "I am much attracted
by the possibility of evangelistic work among those people under
very favourable conditions, and I hope to see many of them sent back
to their country good practising Christians. It will be a glorious
opportunity for the Church."
Almost it would seem that the logical conclusion of this estimable
priest was that all the heathen nations of Asia should be packed into
Lord Selborne's loose-boxes and carted over to Johannesburg in order
that the evangelistic genius of the Rector of St. Mary's might have
full scope, and countless souls be added to the fold of Christ, so long
as their duties of digging gold for German Jews at a shilling a day
were not interfered with. As these advocates and supporters of Chinese
labour have convinced themselves that the Ordinance, so far from being
opposed to the principles of Christianity, is likely to be of use in
spreading the doctrine of love, I realize that it would be hopeless to
attempt to prove to them that the importation of Chinese to the Rand
finds no support in the doctrines promulgated in the four Gospels.
Indeed, to expect spiritual ideals on the Rand is too ridiculous for
words. The man who searches the Bible for a text to suit his line
of argument might perhaps find one for the Rand lords from the Old
Testament, and preaching from the sentence that "silver was counted
as naught in the days of Solomon" might argue that all practices were
justifiable to bring about a state of affairs which apparently had the
Divine approval. The ideal of the Rand is money. All imperial, social
and religious considerations have no weight with the masters of the
gold mines. Their object is to get gold, and to get it as cheaply as
they can, and with this in view they realize that they must obtain
two things--1. Political control of the Transvaal; 2. Slave labour.
To attain the first, all Englishmen, with their democratic ideas of
liberty and freedom, must be kept out of the country. This first object
attained, the introduction of slave labour would be extremely simple.
How they achieved their object is the history of South Africa for the
last eight years.
As long ago as 1897, when mines were booming and vast fortunes were
being made, the leaders of the mining industry suddenly realized by a
simple arithmetical calculation that more money could be made if their
workmen were paid less.
Representations were made to President Kruger, a Government Commission
was appointed, and the possibility of reducing the wages of Kaffir
workmen was discussed in all its bearings. Mr. George Albu, who was
then the chairman of the Chamber of Mines, pointed out that 2s. 3d. a
shift was being paid to the Kaffirs, and that this could be reduced
to 1s. 6d. a shift for skilled labour and 1s. or less for unskilled
labour. When he was asked how this could be accomplished, he replied,
"By simply telling the boys that their wages are reduced." Mr. Albu,
however, declared that a much better state of affairs would be brought
about if a law was passed compelling the Kaffir to do a certain amount
of work per annum, though he admitted that nowhere in the world was
there a law enabling any particular industry to obtain forced labour.
President Kruger's Government--accounted corrupt and irradical in
those days, but now regarded by comparison throughout the Transvaal
and Orange River Colony by both English and Dutchmen alike as most
benevolent and beneficent--refused to sanction a system which would
not only have been in opposition to the Conventions with Great Britain
of 1852, 1854, and 1884, but would have been opposed to the spirit of
humanity that should exist among all civilized communities.
Then came the war. The Boer Government was swept away. Two hundred
and fifty millions and 21,000 English lives was the price exacted for
planting the Union Jack in Pretoria and Bloemfontein.
During the war the magnates, with a persistence worthy of a better
cause, kept before them those objects which I have enumerated. The
consulting engineer of the Consolidated Goldfields reported to a
meeting of mining representatives at Cape Town that dividends could
be increased by two and a half millions by reducing Kaffir wages, and
it was agreed that on the opening of the mines Kaffirs' wages should
be reduced by 33 per cent. When peace came it was found that the
Kaffirs were not prepared to work on these terms. They had grown rich
during the war, and in the independence of their new-found wealth they
refused to be treated as so much human machinery. It was bad enough
for them to work at their original wages in the Rand mines, without
their consenting to such a large reduction in their wages. The rate of
mortality in the Rand mines was seventy per thousand per annum; the
rate of mortality in the De Beers mines was only thirty per thousand
per annum. The De Beers never had any difficulty in obtaining what
native labour they required, because they treated their men well,
looked after their interests, did not sweat them, and admitted that
a black man, although black, was still a man. But even under these
circumstances, had the magnates of the Rand offered the scale of wages
that pertained before the war, they would have found black labour in
abundance. But even with a black man a minimum of 30s. and a maximum of
35s. a month with food is hardly tempting enough to draw him from his
kraal.
The alternative of white labour was, of course, never seriously
considered. The mere Englishman who had fought for the country was not
to be allowed to settle in the country or to work in the country. The
Angots, the Beits, the Ecksteins, the Hanaus, the Kuchenmeisters, the
Rosenheims, the Schencks, the Taubs, the Wernhers, and the rest of the
gentlemen delighting in similar grand old English names were determined
not to permit it. The foolish Englishman would want to vote; would
have ideas about personal liberty and personal freedom; would have
ridiculous notions about Magna Charta and the Bill of Rights; would,
in short, think that the nation that had spilt its blood and spent its
money for the Rand was entitled to a vote in its management.
With almost unparalleled insolence the Rand lords frankly declared
that the introduction of English labour would place the control of the
country in the hands of Englishmen, and would lead to that trail of the
serpent, the formation of labour unions. It was to meet with this that
two hundred and fifty millions was spent by the English people, 25,000
died, 25,000 were permanently maimed.
That white labour could be used, and be used profitably, was proved
beyond a doubt. Even when the higher wages were taken into account,
it was found that in the cyanide works of the gold mines the Kaffirs'
cost per ton was 5s. 3d., against the Whites' 4s. 9d. In developing and
stopping actual work of the mining underground, the Kaffirs cost 4s.
8d. and the Whites 4s. 2d. per ton. It was only in the machine drill
work that the Kaffirs proved slightly cheaper than the Whites. There
Kaffir labour worked out at 6s. 4d. per ton, white labour at 6s. 9d.;
a difference of 5d. per ton, so small a difference as to be almost a
negligible quantity.
It was not until later that any pretence was put forward that white
labour could not be employed. The real reason, and the reason frankly
admitted, was the fear of the political power they would possess.
Mr. F. H. P. Cresswell, general manager of the Village Main Reef,
worked his mine upon a system of joint black and white labour, and
the mine returned a dividend of 35 per cent. for the year 1903 and 20
per cent. for the first half of 1904. In the report upon the working
of this mine it was declared that the efficiency of the mine was
increasing, and the output greater, while the working cost was lower.
This was proof conclusive that white labour could be employed in the
mines if the magnates wished to employ it. That they did not wish to
employ it is proved beyond the shadow of doubt by a letter from the
late Mr. Percy Tarbutt, of St. Swithin's Lane, to Mr. Cresswell--
"DEAR MR. CRESSWELL,--With reference to your trial of
white labour for surface work on the mines, I have consulted the
Consolidated Goldfields people, and one of the members of the
board of the Village Main Reef has consulted Messrs. Wernher,
Beit & Co., and the feeling seems to be of fear that, having a
large number of white men employed on the Rand in the position of
labourers, the same troubles will arise as are now prevalent in
the Australian colonies, viz. that the combination of the labour
classes will become so strong as to be able, more or less, to
dictate not only on the question of wages, but also on political
questions, by the power of their votes when a representative
Government is established."
Foiled in their attempt to get cheap black labour, threatened with an
inundation of Englishmen, the cosmopolitan Rand lords tried to obtain
the slaves they required from Central Africa. This was not a success.
It was admitted by a speaker at a commercial meeting in Johannesburg
in July 1903 that various experiments had been tried to get native
labour, and that the best results had been obtained at the Robinson
Deep, which paid 25 per cent. dividend. "They imported 316 natives
from Central Africa only three weeks ago. So far only eight had
died--(laughter)--but there were 150 in the hospital, and by the end of
the month the whole will be in hospital. (Hear, hear.) They were coming
in at the rate of thirty a day. These men cost £30 a head, and were not
worth a 'bob' a head when they arrived. (Cheers.)"
What were the mine lords to do? If only they were allowed they were
quite prepared to employ slaves. Their amazing reduction in wages had
not induced the Kaffir to come to the Rand. In the words of the native
chief the natives did not like to go to Johannesburg, "because they
went there to die." The majority at the Labour Commission had proved
that if good wages and treatment were extended to the Kaffirs, hosts
of natives would flock to the mines. But the Rand lords cared nothing
about kindness, and they were determined to reduce wages.
It was at this juncture that the question of Chinese indentured labour
was seriously mooted. The black men were tired of being carted about in
trucks, and herded like cattle, and beaten and maimed for life without
any chance of compensation. It was said that the Chinaman was docile
and tractable, and would work for practically nothing, with extremely
little food, for as many hours as he might be requested. Chinese
labour, therefore, it was decided to obtain.
But the Rand lords had to proceed with guile. They did this country the
credit to believe that any hasty determination to import thousands of
Chinamen would have met with an outburst of popular indignation against
which they could not have hoped to have stood firm.
Forming a pretty accurate estimate of the leading passions that guide
men's minds they determined to appeal to the cupidity of the Englishman
at home. Their press began to pour forth a torrent of sobs over the
lamentable decay of the gold industry in the Transvaal. The country was
ruined, they said; the industry had gone to pieces. For ridiculous
considerations of hypocritical morality the Rand, for which Great
Britain had sacrificed so much, was to be made bankrupt. In a word,
it was bankruptcy--or Chinese. They found many powerful supporters
in this country. The trail of their wealth was on a section of the
press, and that section echoed whatever principles it might please the
cosmopolitan gentlemen of Johannesburg to give voice to. Even now one
can recall the despairing moans of leader writers over the ruin that
had overtaken the Transvaal.
This was in June 1903. Somewhat unexpectedly Lord Milner at this
juncture refused to echo the gloomy forebodings of the Witwatersrand
Chamber of Mines; in fact, his tone was joyously optimistic. "The
production of gold," he said, "even now is greater than in 1895 or
1896, when the Transvaal really was, and had been for some time,
the marvel of the world in the matter of gold production. The world
progresses; but whatever was fabulous wealth years ago is not abject
poverty to-day. Not only that, but the rate of production is steadily
increasing."
What he said was quite right. The output of gold in the district of
Johannesburg in 1900 was 237,000 ozs., and there were 59,400 Kaffirs
employed.
But for six months the agitation continued. It was put forward as a
theory that the only chance for the Transvaal was to employ Chinese
labour. The supporters of the Rand lords hailed the theory with
delight, as if it was something new, something that they had never
imagined before. Clearly this was the direction in which prosperity
lay. They must have Chinese labour. Then shares would go up, dividends
would become enormous, and everybody would be wealthy and happy. The
Transvaal would be something like a Mohammedan heaven, with Great
Britain as an annexe. White men were to pour out to the colonies--not
to labour on the mines, for that work was only fit for Chinamen;
besides, white men it was said could not do it--and the Rand was to be
prosperous and life was to be a veritable bed of roses. Was England to
be denied the fruits of her victory? For what had the war been waged
if the Transvaal was to be left a barren, unproductive corner of the
Empire? Were the fruits of victory to be Dead Sea apples?
By such arguments did they appeal to the British public. The dummy
figure of despair and ruin that they had set up served a very useful
purpose. It frightened the monied classes into the belief that their
investments were not secure. It frightened the patriots into thinking
that the war had been waged in vain. Few people troubled to make
inquiries as to whether the statement of the Rand's impending ruin was
true or not. There certainly was a slump in Kaffir shares. This was
held to be indicative of the state of the gold industry. It apparently
did not occur to anybody that just as Kaffir shares were made to
fluctuate during the war--when the mines were not being worked--so
they could be made to slump if only the Rand lords wished.
In six months they convinced the majority of the House of Commons, they
convinced the Government, and they even made Lord Milner eat his own
words. His dispatches began to take on a garb of gloom. In August they
were of the mitigated grief shade; in September the shade darkened;
in October it was more than half mourning; in November it had become
black; in December it was as black as the Egyptian plague. His lordship
talked of crises; of what would happen unless some noble, national
sacrifice was made to save the sinking ship. Chinese labour was the
only cure for the deplorable condition of the gold industry in the
Transvaal!
Meanwhile, a Labour Commission had been appointed, a mission consisting
of ten persons, eight of whom were known to be in favour of the
introduction of Asiatic labour. This Commission was authorized to find
out whether a scarcity of Kaffir or white labour existed, but was
forbidden to answer the question which was in the minds of all, whether
it would be proper or desirable to introduce Chinese labour.
The agitation proved successful, and it was decided to import Chinese
labour. The grave disasters attendant on the impending crisis Lord
Milner insisted in his dispatches in December 1903 had to be met.
It is curious, of course, to compare the statement of Lord Milner in
December 1903 with his statement in June 1903. In June the output of
gold was 237,000 ozs., and according to Lord Milner everything was
satisfactory. The production of gold, in his own words, was greater
than in 1895 or 1896. Six months later, in December, the output was
286,000 ozs., an increase of 49,000 ozs. Yet, according to Lord
Milner, the prosperity of the gold industry was in inverse proportion
to the output of gold! Two hundred and thirty-seven thousand ounces
per month was prosperity in June; 286,000 ozs. in December was grave
disaster, and the rest of it. Moreover, in those golden days of June
1903 there were 59,400 Kaffir labourers working on the mines. In that
dark, cheerless December, when the output of gold had increased 49,000
ozs., and the gold industry was rapidly sinking back into the pit
of gloom and disaster, the number of labourers employed was 68,800,
being an increase of 9400--or 15 per cent. Moreover, in this terrible,
deplorable month the production of gold was greater than it had ever
been before, except during that period between the beginning of 1898
and the commencement of the war. As to the question of labour, the
production per labourer per month in December 1903 was 4 ozs. of gold.
In 1899 it was only 3·4 ozs.; that is to say, it had been increased by
the use of machinery by one-seventh, so that six labourers in December
1903 were equal to seven labourers in the golden period before the
war. Actually, therefore, those 68,800 labourers were doing the work
of 80,262 labourers, and were doing it at wages 33 per cent. less than
they were before the war. But this was not prosperity. The dividends
were not large enough.
The report of the consulting engineer of the Consolidated Goldfields
still rang in the ear of the Rand lords. "Cut down the wages 33 per
cent. and you will add two and a half millions to the dividends."
An unlimited number of Kaffirs would not come to the mines under
these conditions; they would not submit to bad wages as well as bad
treatment. White men would combine to manage the country and to take
the political power out of the hands of the Rand lords. "If we could
replace 20,000 workers by 100,000 unskilled whites," said one of the
directors, "they would simply hold the government of the country
in the hollow of their hand; and without any disparagement to the
British labourer, I prefer to see the more intellectual section of the
community at the helm."
Hence the gloomy picture painted of the gold industry in that December
1903. Hence the slump in the Kaffir market. Hence that cry that native
labour would not come and that whites could not do the work. Hence that
more ominous cry that Chinese labourers must be employed. The Transvaal
was not to be for Englishmen. It was to be governed by the intellectual
genius of Mr. Rudd and his bevy of German Jews and non-British
Gentiles. Even if white labour was economically possible the Rand lords
did not want it. It _was_ possible--it _was_ economical. But they
wanted labour that would be _voteless_ and _subservient_!
CHAPTER II
'AVE, CROESUS, MORITURI TE SALUTANT'
"The problem is a very urgent problem. The necessity of going forward
is an urgent and vital necessity in the economical condition of the
country. I will tell the House why in a sentence. The mines are 30,000
natives short of the number engaged in the pre-war period."
These were the words subsequently used by Mr. Lyttelton, the Colonial
Secretary. The matter _was_ urgent. Already protests were pouring
in from every part of the Empire. Imperial meetings, white league
meetings, anti-slavery meetings, political meetings--all the machinery,
in short, of protest and obstruction was being got under weigh, and to
the Rand lords it seemed as if the ideal of slavery for which they had
struggled so long and so hard was to be denied them at the last hour.
The anguish of Sir Lancelot when a vision of the Holy Grail was denied
him after all his trials and tribulations was not greater or more
poignant than the trepidation of the mine owners. It became, indeed, a
very urgent problem for them, for unless they could bring the matter
to a head, not even the strongest Government of the century could hope
to withstand the popular will when once it was organized sufficiently
to voice its petition loudly enough.
But of economical necessities there were none.
It was natural after such a devastating war that some time should
elapse before the mines could get into full working order and attain
that wonderful output of gold which prevailed immediately before the
outbreak of hostilities. The progress of the gold industry after the
war had to be gradual; but so far from it being depressed or showing
signs of being stagnant, it had, as I have already shown, increased
enormously. Already it was within measurable distance of the output of
the pre-war period. The economical necessity was not the necessity of
importing cheap labour, but the necessity of paying a proper wage to
the Kaffir and of treating him well.
Already Dr. Jameson, who in no sense was a partisan opponent of the
Rand capitalists, had declared in November 1903 that the De Beers
Company would not employ Chinamen--that they had plenty of labour,
white and black, because they treated their people well.
But the Rand mine owners not only did not pay their Kaffirs a proper
wage, but meted out to them such treatment that the death-rate among
them had increased since 1902 to an extent which, to express it in
mild terms, was appalling. I quote the figures below--
NATIVE MORTALITY ON MINES
IN JOHANNESBURG, KRUGERSDORP, BOKSBURG, GERMISTON, AND SPRINGS.
Period: November 1902--July 1903.
No. of Death-rate
During the Month. Natives No. of per 1000
Employed. Deaths. per annum.
November 1902 46,710 247 63·4
December " 48,542 324 80·90
January 1903 49,761 253 61·01
February " 55,288 207 44·9
March " 57,022 235 49·4
April " 62,265 269 51·8
May " 65,371 431 79·1
June " 68,819 492 85·7
July " 70,474 627 106·7
Average number of natives employed per month 58,250
Average number of deaths per month 343
Average death-rate per 1000 per annum per month 70·6
This was the economical necessity that should have occupied the
attention of his Majesty's Government, and not the question of
introducing Chinese indentured labour into the colony. That the mine
owners have successfully baulked in the past all inquiry as to their
treatment of natives is proved conclusively by the fact that even these
statistics did not draw forth a commission from the Government to
inquire into such a terrible state of affairs. Instead of the question
being, "Why is it Kaffirs die at the rate of seventy per thousand
per month?" the problem they set themselves was how to provide an
alternative to these quick-dying wage-wanting niggers. Attempts had
been made to procure coolie labour from India, and Lord Curzon never
did a greater or a nobler thing than when he refused the sanction of
his Government to such a step.
Mr. Chamberlain said in the Commons that Lord Curzon should have been
overruled; an inexplicable remark from a man who had had the courage
to say to the miners that it was better they should be governed from
Downing Street than from Park Lane.
In December 1903 General Ben Viljeon informed a labour commissioner
that a petty chief had told him recently that if he sent 100 boys
to the Rand only 66 returned, and some of them had scurvy. It was
not wonderful, therefore, that black labour was scarce; but it
was wonderful that his Majesty's Government did not take steps to
put an end to a state of things which they must have known to be
terrible, instead of merely substituting for the ill-used, underpaid,
criminally-treated but free labouring Kaffirs Chinamen who were to be
nothing better than slaves.
But the drawing up of the draft Ordinance went forward. It was hurried
on at an incredible rate. Until the last minute it was kept back from
Parliament, and the Blue-book dealing with the alleged necessities for
introducing yellow labour was only placed in the hands of the members
of the House of Commons a few days before Mr. Herbert Samuel moved his
famous amendment to the King's Address--"It is highly inexpedient that
sanction should be given to any Ordinance permitting the introduction
of indentured Chinese labourers into the Transvaal Colony until the
approval of the colonists has been formally ascertained."
At one end of the cable sat Lord Milner, pricked on by the Rand
lords, at the other end sat the Colonial Secretary, anxious to be
fair, anxious to be humane, anxious to do nothing contrary to the
historic principles of British rule, but bemused by the clamour of the
Transvaal, and seeing in the protests against the Ordinance only party
moves and party partisanship. The clamour for the Ordinance increased
day by day.
Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman had managed to extract a pledge from the
Government, by which Lord Milner was instructed to introduce into
the Ordinance a clause suspending its operation pending further
instructions from home. But it was pointed out that the matter was of
such great urgency that his Majesty's Government could not undertake to
postpone their decision longer than the termination of the debate on
the Address.
As a matter of fact, they had already made up their minds. It was
stated that if a colony desired Chinese labour it was not for the
Imperial Parliament to interfere. To have done so would have been
contrary to the traditions of Imperial Government. But when Mr. Herbert
Samuel asked that the Ordinance should not be permitted until the
approval of the colonists in the Transvaal had been formally obtained
by the natural expedient of a referendum, Lord Milner asserted that to
hold a referendum was impossible--it would occupy too much time, that
at any rate it was an expedient unknown in any part of the British
Empire.
As a matter of fact, a referendum has been put in practice in South
Australia, in New Zealand, in New South Wales, and was used more
recently to decide upon the important question of the Australian
Commonwealth. That it would have occupied six months to take such a
referendum, during which period the gold of the Transvaal would have
vanished, everybody would have refused to work, and the Kaffir market
would have been blotted out, was preposterous. Yet, at the moment when
Lord Milner made this statement, a census of the colony was taken,
which only occupied seven weeks. It is not unreasonable to assume that
such a referendum would have occupied more than a month.
All the arguments of the Opposition were in vain against such
plausibility. It was useless to point out that while the educated
Chinese were good citizens, the bitter experience of Australia,
Canada, the United States and New Zealand proved conclusively that the
uneducated Chinamen, wherever they went, were vicious, immoral and
unclean, hated by the white man, loathed and feared by every decent
white woman. The Government admitted the danger of allowing 50,000
Chinamen to be planted down in a colony without any restrictions. Their
introduction was a regrettable necessity; and so it was proposed to
keep them in compounds, to round them up every night like sheep, to
make them liable to heavy penalties if they wandered abroad without a
permit. This was the only way, they declared, in which these necessary
evils could be used. Of the necessity of utilizing the evil at all they
were convinced, and no argument succeeded in shaking their faith. It
was pointed out to them that this would be semi-slavery, if not indeed
actual slavery. The Chinaman was not to be employed in any position
but that of a miner; he could not improve his position; he could not
give notice to one employer and go to another. He could never leave the
compound without permission. If he struck work he could be imprisoned.
He was bound to reside on the premises of his employer, in charge of a
manager appointed for the purpose. Permission to leave these premises
might or might not be granted; but in any case he could never be
absent for more than forty-eight hours at a time. If he escaped, he
could be tracked down, arrested without a warrant and imprisoned by a
magistrate, while anybody who harboured or concealed him was fined £50,
or imprisoned in default of payment.
The Ordinance was without parallel in the Empire. Because the Chinese
were competitors, because they were a moral and social danger, the
supporters of the Ordinance were compelled to devise some system under
which it could become law in the Transvaal, and by which they could yet
prevent any one of the Chinamen brought in being able at any time to
leave his employment and turn to other and more profitable undertakings.
Only a casuist could call this anything else but slavery. One of our
most unsuccessful ministers tried to find a parallel between this
system and the life of our soldiers--a parallel so bright and so
pleasing that no one, I think, has yet attempted to spoil the bloom of
this flower of grim humour by disclosing its absurdity. The Transvaal
Government had, in fact, gone to the statute books of the slave states
of America for a model for their Ordinance.
It was soon seen and realized that any attempt to negative the
Ordinance must prove abortive. All that the Opposition could do was to
render it as innocuous as possible, and to secure as many guarantees
as they could for the proper moral and physical treatment of the
unfortunate Chinamen. They extracted pledges and promises galore, most
of which have been completely broken.
On March 21, 1904, Mr. Lyttelton, after stating that the average Kaffir
wage was 50s. for thirty days' work, made this statement in the House
of Commons--"Chinamen would receive in the Transvaal at least 2s. a
day. I stand here and give the House my assurance that the Chinese
will receive at least the amount I have specified."
At that time, when this well-meaning pledge was made, the Kaffir was
only receiving 33s. per month. But even had he been receiving 50s. a
month, which Mr. Lyttelton in his ignorance imagined, was it at all
likely that the Rand owner would pay the Chinaman 2s. a day, or 60s.
a month, that is to say, 10s. a month more than they were presumably
paying the Kaffirs? Of course, the mine magnates were not going to pay
the Chinaman more than the 33s. they were paying the Kaffir.
Mr. Lyttelton's pledge was summarily disposed of by Lord Milner and the
mine owners.
After at first insisting on a minimum of 1s. a day instead of 2s.,
Lord Milner finally made this plausible promise, that if within six
months the average pay was not more than 50s. for thirty days' work,
the minimum should be raised from 1s. to 1s. 6d. a day. Mr. Lyttelton's
maximum of 2s. a day was thus reduced to a possible minimum of 1s. 6d.
a day.
Another delightful pledge was also given. It seemed almost indeed as
if the Transvaal Government were continually advising Lord Milner to
cable, saying, "Promise anything in heaven or earth, but let's get this
Ordinance through."
With somewhat unusual consideration, the opinion of the Chinese
Government had been asked on the subject. Speaking through their
ambassador, the Chinese Government insisted that the immigrant should
have free access to the courts of justice to obtain redress for injury
to his personal property.
On March 10, 1904, Mr. Lyttelton stated that the Chinese labourers
would have the same right of access to the courts as all the other
subjects of his Majesty's dominions. Any subject of his Majesty's
dominions has the right to appear before a court when he has any
grievance. That is the right of all subjects of his Majesty's
dominions. The Chinaman, according to Mr. Lyttelton, was to have the
same right. As a matter of fact, he has no right of access to the
courts, except by leave of an inspector.
Again, Mr. Lyttelton declared, when the Chinese Government raised the
point of flogging, that there was no power in the Ordinance to impose
flogging. There was not at that time. But four months later, on July
28, an Ordinance was assented to by which the resident magistrate had
the right to flog in cases where the conviction was a conviction of
robbery, in cases of any statutory offence for which flogging could be
only given for the second conviction, in cases of assault of a grave
character or intended to do serious bodily harm, or, indeed, to commit
any offence.
I shall deal later in detail with the punishments that have been
inflicted on the yellow slaves that work in their slavery under the
Union Jack. It is at present only my object to outline the policy
of promising anything and making all sorts of preposterous pledges
in order that the clamours of the Rand lords might be gratified. In
Johannesburg they knew well that if once indentured labour was agreed
to in principle, it would be easy to make what alterations they wished
in the spirit or the letter of the Ordinance.
In February 1904 Mr. Lyttelton stated with regard to the importation of
women with the Chinese--"We are advised in this matter by men of the
most experience in the whole Empire on the subject of Chinese labour.
We are advised that the coolies would not go without their womenfolk.
Manifestly it would be wrong that they should go without their
womenfolk if they were desirous of taking them with them."
To quiet the lethargic conscience of that adept courtier, his Grace
the Archbishop of Canterbury, it was declared that the interests of
public morality demanded that the Chinamen should be accompanied by
their wives, and that this was one of the essential conditions of the
Ordinance. It was pointed out at the time that once the mine owners
had 5000 indentured labourers, they would not take upon themselves the
burden of supporting their wives, with an average of three children
apiece. It would mean 250,000 women and children. And it is almost
inconceivable that even Mr. Lyttelton could have imagined that the
cosmopolitan proprietors of the Transvaal would have taken upon
themselves the superintendence of human beings utterly incapable of
dragging gold from the earth.
As a matter of fact, Chinese have never taken their wives into foreign
countries, and therefore the moral question, which so concerned Dr.
Davidson for one brief day, was not settled. As a matter of fact, it
was stated at the beginning of this year by the Colonial Secretary that
while 4895 wives were registered as accompanying their husbands, only
two women and twelve children had actually been brought over!
It was stated by Mr. Lyttelton, at the same time as he satisfied the
conscience of the most Reverend Primate, that the Chinaman would be so
well fed and so lightly worked that in the interests of morality it
was physically necessary that he should be accompanied by his wife.
In explaining the fact that only two women and twelve children had
accompanied the thirty or forty thousand Chinamen up to the beginning
of 1905, the Colonial Secretary remarked in effect that this fact would
not lead to immorality, because the Chinaman's food was so frugal and
his work was so steady that he would be almost physically incapable of
those passions which are a source of so much trouble, of so much crime,
of so much happiness, and of so much beneficence to the white man, the
black man, the red man, and the brown man. Life under the Rand lords,
in short, was practically emasculating, and therefore immorality was
impossible.
I shall deal with this subject later on. For the present I will point
out that this was the fourth pledge that had been given in the House
of Commons, only to be broken, not, I admit, by Mr. Lyttelton and the
Government, but by their masters, the mine owners on the Rand.
The Opposition steadily opposed the Government in the House.
Major Seely and Mr. Winston Churchill left the Conservative Party,
Major Seely resigning his seat to test the temper of his constituents
in the Isle of Wight on this very subject. The electors in the Isle of
Wight were of no uncertain temper. They returned Major Seely to the
House, thereby proving, as all subsequent by-elections have proved,
that the Chinese Labour Ordinance is bitterly opposed by the vast
majority of freedom-loving Britons.
It had been the custom during the war to submit very largely to the
opinion of the colonies. In fact, the influence of colonial opinion
had partly directed the policy of the Government for several years.
Mr. Chamberlain constantly submitted to it, before, during, and after
the war. He had based his bold venture of Tariff Reform on this very
opinion. It was because the colonies would think this or would say
that, that the British workman was to submit to a tax upon corn, a tax
upon clothes, a tax upon everything else. It was reasonable to expect,
therefore, that on such an important Imperial question, touching the
welfare of a colony, to possess which the whole of the Empire had
risen in arms, and men had poured from the snows of Canada and the
rolling plains of the Bush, the opinions of the Five Nations would
have been consulted. But even if the Government did not submit to this
recognition of their services, to this acceptance of a common Imperial
interest, it was only natural to have supposed that they would have
at least taken into account the advice of Canada, Australia, and New
Zealand, who had experienced the evils of Chinese immigration.
I have travelled all over the Orange River Colony, Natal, Cape Colony,
and the Transvaal, and the colonial people and the Dutch were all
unanimously against the introduction of the Chinese on the Rand. I
have never yet met one person in favour of the Ordinance. And since
the Ordinance became law, and the yellow slaves began their work at
the mines, nearly every person I have met in South Africa has openly
regretted the war, and declared that they preferred the days of Paul
Kruger, whose Government may have been corrupt, but was at any rate
based on the principle that it is the duty of a white government to
look after the moral and social welfare of its white subjects.
Mr. Chamberlain himself declared that there was considerable
indignation expressed throughout South Africa at the proposal to
introduce Chinese labour, and that a vast majority of the people
throughout South Africa were bitterly opposed to the Ordinance.
The colonies were not slow in sending passionate protests to the
Colonial Office against the Ordinance. Mr. Seddon wired--"My Government
desire to protest against the proposal to introduce Chinese labour
into South Africa. They foresee that great dangers, racial, social and
political, would inevitably be introduced by Chinese influx, however
stringent the conditions of introduction and employment may be."
Mr. Deakin, the Premier of Australia, declared that Australia had been
told that the war was a miners' war, but not for Chinese miners; a war
for the franchise, but not for Chinese franchise. The truth, if it had
been told, would have presented a very different aspect, and would have
made a very different appeal to Australia.
Cape Colony, which was more intimately concerned with the welfare of
the Transvaal than any other portion of the Empire, passed a resolution
in the Cape Parliament, "That this House, taking cognizance of the
resolution passed at the recent Conference held at Bloemfontein on the
subject of the qualified approval of the importation of Asiatic labour,
desires to express its strong opposition to any such importation as
prejudicial to the interests of all classes of people in South Africa."
This last resolution had been sent to the Government as long before as
July 1903, when the first steps were being taken to pave the way for
yellow slavery.
But of all these protests the Government took no notice whatever.
They met all questions with a statement that the Transvaal was to be
allowed to decide on its own internal affairs; and when the Opposition
demanded that the opinion of the Transvaal should be taken, so that
these principles could be carried into effect, they replied that a
referendum, the only means of ascertaining this opinion, would take six
months, during which time the Transvaal would be ruined.
Never was the logic of any of the characters in _Alice in Wonderland_
so unanswerable.
In the Transvaal itself loud and indignant protests were made against
the proposal. But the Rand lords asserted their supremacy with ruthless
severity. The _Transvaal Leader_, the _Transvaal Advertiser_, and the
Johannesburg _Star_ all opposed the introduction of Asiatic labour.
Their respective editors, Mr. R. J. Pakeman, Mr. J. Scoble, and Mr.
Monypenny, were compelled to resign because they refused to sacrifice
their opinions for their proprietors. Some idea of the pressure that
was brought to bear, may be seen in the valedictory editorial which Mr.
Monypenny wrote on retiring from the editorship of the Johannesburg
_Star_:--
"To the policy of Chinese immigration, to which the Chamber of Mines
has decided to devote its energies, the present editor of the _Star_
remains resolutely opposed, and declines in any way to identify himself
with such an experiment. To the ideal of a white South Africa, which,
to whatever qualifications it may necessarily be subject, is something
very different from the ideal of a Chinese South Africa, he resolutely
clings, with perfect faith that whatever its enemies may do to-day
that ideal will inevitably prevail. But as the financial houses which
control the mining industry of the Transvaal have for the present
enrolled themselves among its enemies the present editor of the _Star_
withdraws."
It is not difficult to read between the lines here and see the
determination of the mining magnates to crush every opposition to their
will.
Mr. Cresswell, who had stood out for white labour on the Village
Main Reef mine, and had proved conclusively that white labour could
be employed at a profit greater than that at which black labour was
employed, was compelled to resign his general managership. Mr. Wybergh,
Commissioner of Mines, and for long a distinguished servant of the
Government, had dared to protest against Chinese serfdom, and was
forced also to resign.
Every day it became more clear that the Transvaal was to be no place
for an Englishman. The white man's blood and the white man's treasure
may have been spent to win it for the one-time flag of freedom, but the
Englishman was not to make his home or earn his living upon the land.
"We want no white proletariat," Lord Milner had said.
But the magnates did not stop at merely coercing the press. Indignation
meetings were held at Cape Town and Kimberley, and they employed men
to break them up at 15s. per head.
At a meeting at Johannesburg, held by the African Labour League, it
was arranged that a proposal should be put to the vote deploring the
importation of Asiatics, and protesting against the action of the
Government, and demanding a referendum in the colony. At this meeting
several men were present, paid by a certain Mr. B. of Johannesburg to
create a disturbance. Their efforts were so successful, they shouted so
long "You want the Chinese," that the meeting became an uproar, and the
speakers were unable to be heard.
But all protests were unavailing and futile. All opposition was
considered as a party move. The cry of "Yellow slavery" was attributed
to shameless Radical tactics. The Liberal Party, it was said, would
stoop to anything with which to besmirch the fair name of the
Conservative Party. The Ordinance passed the House after having been
debated at length. It has since been altered in some of its most
important details, thereby emphasizing the fact that in permitting the
question to be debated in the House the Government only regarded the
discussion as a sham.
But even in the Conservative Party there were men whose consciences
pricked them over the Ordinance. One old respected member, who has
recently died, declared privately on the day that the vote was
taken that for the first time in his life he had voted against his
conscience, at the urgent instance of the Conservative whips. He for
one realized, when it was too late, that the introduction of the
Chinese on the Rand was--as Mr. Asquith lately remarked at Leven--"a
most gigantic and short-sighted blunder."
CHAPTER III
THE YELLOW MEN ON THE RAND
"It must be admitted that the lot of the Chinese labourer does not
promise to be very gay or very happy from our point of view" (extract
from _The Times_).
Experience has shown that it is not economical to employ Chinese under
the only conditions in which public opinion will allow them to be used,
that is, under semi-servile conditions. This was the experience of all
other parts of the Empire, but it was the last thing to have any weight
with the mine owners. Their one idea of economy was to get labour cheap.
If you deduct 33 to 40 per cent. from the money that has to be paid in
wages, that 33 to 40 per cent. is money saved--is money which will go
to swell the dividends to an amount, so it had been estimated, of two
and a half millions.
The simplicity of this calculation should have given them pause.
Financiers, at least, should be aware that nothing is so untrustworthy
as the abstract profit and loss account. Men who had used figures to
such good advantage should have understood that while on paper the
difference between the price paid to the Chinese and the price paid to
the white or black labourer was profit, in actual practice it would
prove nothing of the sort.
The mine owners have learnt this lesson by now. They have discovered
that Chinese labour is an economical failure.
But in the summer of 1904 they were all eagerness for the coming of the
yellow man. To their imaginations these men were to be nothing better
than slaves. They were to work as long as they wanted them to work at
prices which they would settle themselves. Craftily-concocted laws
enabled them to bring the same sort of brutal pressure to bear upon the
yellow man as the slave owner of old brought upon the black man. He
could be fined, flogged, driven, coerced by all means to tear the gold
from the bowels of the earth at whatever rate the masters might wish.
They had treated the black men pretty much as they liked. But the black
men had the knack of dying in thousands under such treatment (thereby,
as I have already noted, affording hearty amusement for gatherings of
the Chamber of Mines), or of throwing up their work and going back to
their native kraals.
The Rand lord had not had complete control of the black man. Foolish
people at home, influenced by what Lord Milner once called Exeter Hall
sentiments, had insisted that the black man must possess those personal
rights of liberty and freedom which, until recently, were given to all
races who paid allegiance to the Sovereign of the British Dominions
beyond the Seas.
For the first time the mine owner was to have forty to fifty thousand
men who were to live under strict surveillance in a sort of prison
yard, who were to be absolutely at his mercy and at his will, who were
to work every day of the week, Sundays included--the evangelizing
enterprise of the Rector of St. Mary's, Johannesburg, did not seem to
have run to indoctrinating the Rand lords or their slaves with the
principles of the Fourth Commandment--who were to be forced into doing
whatsoever their masters wished by all sorts of ingenious punishments
and penalties.
They of course forgot the all-important factor in this dream of theirs
that a Chinaman will willingly consent to an arrangement which, as _The
Times_ admitted, would make their lot neither very gay nor very happy.
But none the less this was the spirit in which the Chinaman was
recruited in China and first treated on his arrival.
Quite the most frivolous of all the pledges given by Mr. Lyttelton on
behalf of the Rand lords, was one in which he solemnly declared that
to every Chinese labourer recruited from his native land the Ordinance
would be carefully explained by the recruiting officer.
I do not recollect that the House of Commons was moved to an outburst
of Olympian mirth at this most ridiculous statement. If I recollect
aright, the statement was received with that solemn British expression
of approval, "Hear, hear!"
"The Ordinance," said Mr. Lyttelton, "will be explained carefully to
each labourer before he consents to embark for South Africa."
Now, the Ordinance is a long and complicated document. It would be
impossible to explain it to the most intelligent Chinaman in under an
hour. Actually, it would probably take him a whole day to completely
understand the sort of life he was going to lead on the Rand. For one
man to explain the Ordinance to 40,000 of them would have taken about
nine years. At the recruiting offices established in China for the
purpose of obtaining these yellow slaves, it would have taken at least
three years to make all the forty to fifty thousand Chinamen still
working on the Rand to thoroughly understand the Ordinance.
This was a _reductio ad absurdum_ argument, which one would have
thought must have occurred to the minds of the Government, but if it
did occur to them they kept it in the background with due solemnity.
Seeing that the recruiting and sending over to South Africa of more
than 40,000 Chinamen occupied less than a year, it is clear that this
pretence of allowing the Chinaman to enter upon his engagement with
the Rand lords with his eyes open was a pretence, and nothing else.
But even if the simplest arithmetical calculation failed to convince
the Government, their knowledge of human nature should have made them
realize the absurdity of imagining that the recruiting of these men
would be carried out on such principles. The recruiter, whether for the
Army, or for any other purpose, is very much like a barrister with a
brief. He has only to see one side of the argument; he has to close his
mind firmly to all considerations other than the fact that it is his
duty to get men for the particular purpose for which he is recruiting.
Whoever found the recruiting-sergeant telling an embryo Tommy Atkins
about the hardships of a life in the Army, of the punishments to which
he renders himself liable, of the powers of a court-martial, and the
like? He only tells him of the splendid chance he has of serving his
King and country; of his handsome uniform; of the influence of that
uniform on the female breast, and the like. I have met men who have
recruited in South Africa for the Philippines, who have recruited in
England for revolutionary committees for some of the South American
republics, and I know that the one picture that these men do not paint
to their recruits is the picture of their possible hardships. If the
white recruiter acts like this to men of his own colour, how was he
likely to act towards men of a different colour whom centuries of
traditional prejudice led him to regard with contempt and dislike?
I am convinced that ninety-nine out of every hundred of the Chinamen at
present working on the Rand neither knew then nor know now the exact
terms on which they were brought from their homes. Again, it is well
known that the Chinaman has a hereditary dislike to forfeiting his
freedom of action. However bad his Government may be, he has the same
instinct for freedom as the white man in Great Britain. All the best
authorities on China agree that he would never of his own free-will
have consented to bind himself to the Rand lords on the terms set forth
in the Ordinance.
What happened, of course, was that the Chinese local authorities, when
asked to assist in the recruiting of men for the Rand, made out a
list of all the wastrels, semi-criminals and hooligans who kept their
Governments in a state of anarchy and unrest, and forced these men
to indenture themselves. In fact, the situation on the Rand is very
much as if we had emptied our prisons and turned out all our thieves,
murderers and hooligans loose on the veld.
One cannot blame the Chinese Government for so acting. It is a proof
rather that that ancient empire still retains, amidst a great deal that
is bad and corrupt, a spirit of elementary justice.
It would have been criminal to have sent Chinese citizens to the
Transvaal. It was quite another matter to send batches of criminals.
The ease with which men were recruited and shipped to the Transvaal
seemed to confirm the Rand lords in their delusion that at last they
had got hold of people who would increase their dividends for them
without demanding rights and privileges.
_The Times_ had called them masculine machinery. Lord Selborne had
said that they would be crammed in loose-boxes and taken over. When
at first the long procession of pigtails and blue shirts appeared at
Johannesburg they certainly seemed to be so much masculine machinery,
so much cattle to be crammed into cattle-trucks at one port and
unshipped at another.
But all delusions or illusions were soon destroyed.
It was found that the Chinaman actually thought for himself; that he
had a sense of fair play, and that he was not prepared to work like a
horse for a shilling or so a day.
The compounds in which these yellow slaves were herded together are
pieces of land in close proximity to the mine, surrounded by a high
fence, guarded by armed police. They look exactly what in fact they
are--prisons, and nothing else. Hospitals have been erected in each
of the compounds, and an ample supply of gods have been procured for
the Chinamen, possibly as a set-off to the evangelistical zeal of the
Rector of St. Mary's, for there is no knowing what a Chinaman might do
if he became thoroughly inculcated with the doctrines of love and mercy
which were preached in the Sermon on the Mount.
The compound in other respects is very like a village. No one can
go into this village unless he has got some special business or
has obtained a permit. These restrictions serve a double purpose.
They prevent the possibility of a white man or a white woman being
insulted by the slaves, and also put a check upon that inquiry into the
treatment of the yellow men which the Rand lords are moving heaven and
earth to baulk.
The huts in which labourers live are identical with those made for
Kaffirs. They hold one or two, as the case may be.
The labourers have to work day and night in shifts of eight hours. When
it is time for a batch of labourers to begin their shift, they are
herded together and marched off to the mine, care being taken to keep
them quite apart from the Kaffirs and whites.
At the pit mouth they are driven into the cage and dropped down into
the bowels of the earth. When the cage is opened the Chinaman is driven
out, and if he show some hesitation about leaving the cage, he is
kicked out as if he were an animal. At least, that is the treatment to
which they were at first subjected. Now, however, their treatment in
the mine is hardly so severe. Indeed, it would not be too much to say
that the Chinaman now does his share of the "kicking." For example,
on September 23 last, the Chinese at the Lancaster Mine attempted to
murder the skipman by placing a beam in the path of the descending
skip--a collision with which, as a writer in the _Daily Mail_ lately
pointed out, "would have sent the skip a drop of a thousand feet." The
obstruction was noticed. When the skipman got out he was assaulted, but
managed to escape.
The white overseer at first felt that instinctive fear of and dislike
for the Chinaman that is peculiar to all Englishmen. He was one man
against hundreds. In the majority of cases he had been bitterly opposed
to the introduction of Chinese labour. He realized by the restrictions
that had been placed by the Ordinance on the Chinamen that they were
feared, and, in turn, he feared them himself. It was his duty to see
that they worked. It was his duty to make them work. Unable to speak
their language, instinctively disliking them, he used the only means
of asserting his authority which came to his hands: that was generally
a boot or a crowbar. Physical fear is the power by which nearly all
primitive communities are ruled. The white races look upon the Chinamen
as belonging to a primitive community, forgetting that they are the
children of a civilization thousands of years older than any that
exists in Europe.
The white man soon dropped trying to rule by force. The Chinaman showed
him that he feared blows as little as he feared death. If he didn't
want to work he wouldn't work, and showed that fear was not the basis
of Chinese morals. Once in the mine the docile, tractable Chinaman of
the Rand lords' dream did just as he liked, and continues to do just as
he likes.
When he leaves the compound he, perhaps, takes with him half a loaf
of bread. When he feels hungry, he stops work, coils himself upon the
ground, and takes his meal. Let the language of the white man be as
terrible as he is capable of, let him rain blows upon the Chinaman's
back, the Chinaman takes no notice, but continues his meal. When he
has finished his bread he rolls a cigarette, and smokes in calm and
indifferent quietness. If the Englishman remonstrates with him, John
Chinaman replies, "Me get one little shilling. Me do plenttee work for
me pay."
And he speaks the truth. He does quite enough work for a shilling a
day. There is a wide difference between what he considers sufficient
work and what the Rand lords consider sufficient. There is the increase
of two and a half millions which the cosmopolitan mine owner hopes to
make by using the Chinaman as a slave, and which he never will make
either with the Chinaman or the black man. He does his best, however.
The idea that this heathen, whom he has brought over with so much
difficulty, in the face of so much opposition, should actually refuse
to work like a machine, but should have ideas about the time when he
wants to eat, and should even demand a few minutes' quiet smoke after
eating, drives him almost to the point of insanity. It is almost as bad
as those white workmen, who have a mania for forming trade unions and
require fair wages for fair work.
In the face of this Chinese intractableness while working in the
mines, the Rand lords have urged on the white overseers to force the
Chinese to do their work. When the overseer points out that if he
resorts to violence his life will not be worth a moment's purchase, he
is met with the reply that it is his duty to see that the Chinaman does
his work, and if he cannot do that they must find somebody else to take
his place. Under this threat of dismissal, the overseer has had only
one resource. He has had to raise up a race feud, from which he stands
apart.
The Kaffirs already hate the yellow man, realizing that they have
deprived them of their work. The white overseer has fomented this
racial animosity. When the Chinaman has proved recalcitrant and
disobedient, when he has refused to do more than a certain quantity
of work, the overseer turns the black man on to him to force him once
again to his task.
The result is bloodshed and murder of black men and Chinamen.
It is the old problem of leading a horse to the water and trying to
make him drink.
The Chinaman has been dragged from his native land in the face of
the opposition of the whole Empire to increase the dividend paying.
But he won't hurry, he won't work too hard, and in the mine he will
do, as I have said, exactly as he pleases. All illusions as to the
Chinaman's capacity for hard work have vanished. Even Mr. S. B.
Joel--one of the Rand lords--practically admitted as much in his speech
at the annual meeting of the Johannesburg Consolidated Investment
Company on November 23. With much reluctance, as may be imagined, the
light-hearted "Solly" admitted that "the Chinese had not yet proved
quite so suitable for underground work as natives"--but, lest this
statement might affect the market price of the shares, the chairman
of "Johnnies" expressed the hope that they would attain greater
efficiency. No--the Chinaman does not work hard. It is true that he
takes his employment seriously, and that what he does he will do well
and with a certain efficiency. But he is not the masculine machinery or
the cattle of Lord Selborne's imagination. He has enough intelligence
to realize that he is the man who is wanted, and acts accordingly. If
he works for a shilling a day he will only do a shilling's worth of
work. He knows that he must be employed; nobody else can be got to do
his job, and he acts, in fact, just as the Rand lords feared the white
labourer would act. He won't be bullied into doing any more work than
he wants to do. True, he forms no trade unions such as the white men
form, but there is among all the Chinese a much more powerful weapon
of opposition than the trade unions. Every Chinaman has his secret
society, and these societies act together as one man. If the society
decides to stop work, they stop work, and neither the fear of death nor
the most callous or brutal treatment can move them from their purpose.
He hates the white man with the same intensity as the white man hates
him. If he can get the white man into any difficulty he will do so.
His ingenuity for creating trouble is worthy of a better cause. With a
sort of diabolical foresight he realizes exactly the complaints that
will be showered upon the overseer's head by the masters of the mines.
If the output falls, he knows that there will be trouble for the white
man, so he stops work. He squats down and smokes cigarettes, realizing
that by so doing he will be laying up a store of trouble for the
overseer.
To show how much the Chinaman is now the master of the situation on
the Rand I may quote the following instance--On the night of October
24, the Chinese at the Jumpers Deep Mine refused to work until two
of their compatriots, who had been arrested for an infringement of
the mining regulations, were released. Every artifice was resorted
to to get the stubborn Chinamen to resume their toil, but in vain.
Eventually, the Government superintendent of the Chinese, acting under
recently-extended powers, had forty of the head men arrested. Twenty
of these were afterwards sentenced, some to two and others to three
months' hard labour--sentences which probably moved to quiet mirth the
parties most concerned, who could do that sort of punishment "on their
head," so to speak.
It has been said, of course, that the miners along the reef have always
worked against the Chinese. It is not to be wondered at if they have.
Nobody could reasonably blame them--except the Rand lords. But so far
from this being true, the white miners have done their best to work
with them. Even the chairman of the Chamber of Mines has confessed that
the innumerable riots that have occurred down in the mines were not the
result of the white men's machinations. The white man does his best,
but under circumstances without parallel in the history of labour. He
works always with the certain knowledge that at any moment he may be
killed. To him the yellow terror is not a myth or the dream of fiction
writers. He knows what it means. It is present with him every hour
of his work. Down the mine in the stopes a white man has under him
thirty or forty Chinese. If any grievance, real or imaginary, arose,
the Chinese could turn round and take his life. He has no protection
whatever. He has to stand by and listen as best he can to the insults
heaped upon him by the children of the Celestial Empire; and insults
heaped not only upon him but upon his womenfolk. He has to see that
the work is done efficiently, or he is dismissed from his employment.
But there is little wonder that his anger or fear gets the better of
his discretion. It is bad enough that Chinamen are doing the work that
should be done by white men, but it becomes even a greater scandal
when the white men, who sacrificed so much blood and treasure for the
Transvaal, should be insulted by these yellow slaves.
The low-class Chinaman is probably the most bestial and degrading
brute on this earth. He is intelligent enough, but his mind is as vile
and unwholesome as a sewer. The bestial insults which he heaps upon
the white overseers, and, indeed, upon every white man that he comes
across, three years ago would not have been tolerated in any quarter
of the British Empire. It is tolerated to-day in the Transvaal by the
sanction of German Jews and un-British Gentiles.
Lord Selborne, when the matter was brought to his notice, declared--"No
wonder a white miner who has had such language said to him would fail
to have roused within him feelings which would take a certain natural
direction of satisfying themselves. But where has the Chinaman learnt
this kind of language? he did not come here knowing it."
Lord Selborne's implication was, of course, that the Englishmen, in
their conversation in the presence of Chinamen, were accustomed to use
this bestial talk.
I don't pretend that the conversation of miners is always savoury. I am
sure that the method of conversation in vogue in some of the Yorkshire
and Lancashire factories would scandalize decent, quiet-living people,
but such language on the part of the British workman is the result of
his inability to express himself properly. What he says is said for
emphasis. He does not, like a more educated man, add vigour to his
conversation by making use of the endless variations of his mother
tongue; he simply peppers his talk with epithets which in no way are
used in their original meaning. If they were used in their original
meaning, if the British workman really meant what he said, all the
deadly sins in thought or in practice would be committed millions
and millions of times a day. But the Chinaman is noted for his taste
for all the most bestial vices which the imagination of man has ever
conceived. What the miner may say in a coarse moment the Chinaman will
commit without any hesitation.
Lord Selborne asked where the Chinamen learnt this kind of language,
and added that they did not come to the Transvaal knowing it. If Lord
Selborne visited some of the treaty ports in China he would soon become
aware that the Chinaman has added to his taste for committing all the
vile and bestial vices, a knowledge of how to express these vices in
all the vile and bestial language of Europe. As most of the criminal
classes are to be found within the fringe of European civilization, and
as, moreover, the Chinese Government has drafted, with a certain grim
humour, a large number of the criminal classes into the Transvaal, I
think the question as to where the Chinaman learnt his bestial language
is answered equally as well as the statement, that he did not come to
the Transvaal knowing it, is contradicted.
This is the state of affairs in the mines themselves. But if these
yellow slaves are intractable in the mines, they are even more
intractable in the compounds.
What they want to do that they will do, and not all the prisons and
ingeniously-compiled penal laws can prevent them. They soon realized
that if they wished they could be masters of the Rand. They foresaw
that the Rand lord would be chary of using force, would hesitate to put
into execution his slave-owning ideals, for fear of public opinion at
home; that is to say, to put them into full force.
But the Rand lords were not the type of men who would be chary of
impressing upon the Chinamen in secret the full meaning of their
position on the Rand.
As it is the case in the mines, so is it the case in the compounds.
The white man not only hates the yellow man, but fears him. He knows
that at any moment he may be murdered, and with this fear in his heart
has resorted to all sorts of brutality.
The Chinamen can be flogged by law for almost any act. The Ordinance
says that a Chinaman cannot leave the compound without a permit, and
prescribes his life for him on absolute machine-like lines. The amended
Ordinance of July 1904 says that he can be flogged in cases of assault
with intent to commit any offence. Of course, an assault with intent
to commit any offence might consist in hustling his neighbours in an
attempt to escape from his compound, in pushing against the white
overseer, in refusing to work. In short, the law was so ingeniously
amended that the Chinaman could be flogged for anything.
But the law was really not needed. The manager of the Croesus Mine
admitted that when he considered a Chinaman wrong he had flogged him;
that it might be against the law to flog him, but he had done so, and
would continue to do so.
And he was not only flogged for disobeying the regulations under
which--knowingly, it is said--he had indentured himself, but for
refusing to work. An Ordinance might substitute corporal punishment for
imprisonment in the case of misdemeanours on the part of the Chinaman
and so escape the title of slavery; but to force a man to work by
corporal punishment is nothing but the essence of slavery. And yet
these yellow men have been whipped to their work again and again.
But flogging is no new thing on the Rand, nor is it confined to the
Chinaman. The native knows the sjambok of the Rand lord well enough. "I
well recollect," says Mr. Douglas Blackburn (lately assistant editor of
the defunct Johannesburg _Daily Express_), writing to _The Times_ on
November 4,--"I well recollect seventy-two boys being flogged before
breakfast one morning in Krugersdorp gaol for the crime of refusing to
work for £2 per month, after being promised £5 by the labour agent."
While these facts are well known in Johannesburg, while there are many
people who openly admit that they have thrashed the coolie, or ordered
him to be thrashed for refusing to do sufficient work, the Rand papers,
which are absolutely under the control of the mine owners, denied
again and again that flogging took place. It was only Mr. Lyttelton's
announcement that flogging must cease that at last compelled them to
admit that flogging had taken place. Mr. Lyttelton had himself denied
on several occasions that the Chinaman was flogged, and his command
therefore that flogging must cease was quite as amazing to the members
of the House of Commons as it was to the Rand lords.
To anybody who has witnessed the development of Chinese slavery on the
Rand, it is almost incomprehensible that there should be any people
at home who deliberately refuse to believe that the Chinaman has been
treated otherwise than as a human being, made in the image of God, with
the rights that belong to all men of justice and freedom. The subject
is as openly discussed, and regarded as a matter of fact on the Rand,
as the Lord Mayor's Show.
I cannot do better than quote from the now famous letters of Mr. Frank
C. Boland to the _Morning Leader_. These letters show the development
of yellow slavery in a nutshell, show how from flogging the yellow man
to his work the Rand lords finally resorted to torture:--
"At the Nourse Deep severe punishment was meted out. Every boy who
did not drill his thirty-six inches per shift was liable to be, and
actually was, whipped, unless he were ill, and could show that it was a
physical impossibility for him to do a day's work. A sjambok was used;
it was laid on relentlessly by Chinese policemen, the part of the body
selected being the muscles and tendons at the back of the thighs. Even
the sight of blood did not matter. The policeman would go right on to
the last stroke. Having been thus punished, the coolie would walk away;
but after sitting down for a time the bruised tendons would refuse to
work. Many of the coolies were sent to hospital to recover.
"At a later date at this mine strips of rubber were substituted for a
sjambok. This rubber, while causing very sharp pain, does not cut.
"After a time the mine officials found that the coolies were not
maintaining the monthly increase, and the management urged the Chinese
controller to 'do something.' He refused to thrash the coolies unless
they had committed some crime; and being informed by the manager
that his policy would not suit, he gave two months' notice of his
resignation.
"Meanwhile, the management issued instructions, because of advice from
England, that flogging should be stopped as far as possible, but asking
that other forms of punishment should be substituted.
"Thereupon certain forms of torture well known in the Far East were
adopted. One of these was to strip erring coolies absolutely naked,
and leave them tied by their pigtails to a stake in the compound for
two or three hours. The other coolies would gather round and laugh and
jeer at their countrymen, who stood shivering in the intense cold.
"A more refined form of torture was to bind a coolie's left wrist with
a piece of fine rope, which was then put through a ring in a beam about
nine feet from the ground. This rope was then made taut, so that the
unhappy coolie, with his left arm pulled up perpendicularly, had to
stand on his tip-toes. In this position he was kept, as a rule, for two
hours, during which time, if he tried to get down on his heels, he must
dangle in the air, hanging from the left wrist.
"Every mine has its lock-up for malingerers, deserters, and others. At
the Witwatersrand the coolies are handcuffed over a horizontal beam.
"The floor is of concrete, and they may sit down, but the beam is so
far from the floor that it is impossible for any but exceptionally
tall men to sit while handcuffed. They must therefore squat, and for a
change raise themselves in a semi-standing posture.
[Illustration: INSTEAD OF FLOGGING.]
"When released, these prisoners stagger about until they regain the use
of their legs; then they take their skoff and go below to work.
"With the abolition of flogging, compound managers are now inventing
other forms of punishment. In future, also, there will be an
extensive system of fines, and food will be withheld.
"Meanwhile, with all these methods of punishment, the coolies are
still turbulent. Last Monday practically every boy on the Nourse
Deep--seventy-five in all--was sent to gaol for seven days. This step
is certain to foment trouble in the near future."
It was this sort of inquisition that Great Britain had set up at the
point of her bayonets.
Well might the Australian Government say in their letter of
protest--"Australia has been told that the war was a miners' war but
not for Chinese miners, a war for the franchise but not for Chinese
franchise. The truth, if it had to be told, would have presented a
very different aspect, and would have made a very different appeal to
Australia."
It would, indeed, have made a very different appeal to the British
public. Would there have been so much killing of Kruger with our mouths
had we known that a white proletariat would not be wanted--in Lord
Milner's words--that the white labourer was not to be allowed into
the Transvaal because his trade unions would shackle the enterprise
of the Rand lords; that yellow slaves would have to be introduced
in the disguise of indentured labour; that these labourers would be
whipped and tortured into doing their work? Had they known that on the
Witwatersrand the average number of Chinamen flogged daily for one
month was forty-two--Sundays included--would there have been so much
Rule Britannia and music-hall Jingoism?
It is quite true, of course, that had the British people accepted the
principle of importing Chinese labour into the Transvaal it would be
quite fair to blame, as Lord Salisbury was always so fond of blaming,
the system for the cruelty that inevitably followed. But the British
public have never accepted the principle of importing Chinese labourers
into the Transvaal. They have always been deliberately opposed to
it, as has every part of the British Empire. They are not to blame,
therefore, for the state of affairs on the Rand.
As to the insane flogging administered for an offence, it cannot be
better described than by giving another quotation from Mr. Boland's
letter to the _Morning Leader_. Here is the method of procedure:--
"A coolie is reported either by a white shift boss or by a head-man for
an offence. He is called into the compound manager's office, charged,
and given a fair trial (except where the compound manager does not know
the Chinese language, and has to trust to his yellow interpreter). Then
the sentence is passed by the compound manager--ten, fifteen, or twenty
strokes, according to the crime. The coolie, with a Chinese policeman
on either side of him, is taken away about ten paces. Then he stops,
and at the word of a policeman drops his pantaloons, and falls flat on
his face and at full length on the floor. One policeman holds his
feet together; another, with both hands pressed firmly on the back of
his head, looks after that end of his body. Then the flagellator, with
a strip of thick leather on the end of a three-foot wooden handle,
lays on the punishment, severely or lightly, as instructed. Should
the prisoner struggle after the first few strokes, another policeman
plants a foot in the middle of his back until the full dose has been
administered.
[Illustration: LAYING ON THE PUNISHMENT.]
"In another form of flogging practised, a short bamboo was used. The
coolie would strip to the waist and go down on his knees with his head
on the floor. His castigator would then squat beside him, and strike
him across the shoulders with lightning rapidity. The blows, though
apparently light, always fell on the one spot, and raised a large red
weal before cutting the flesh. During the first quarter of this year no
fewer than fifty-six coolies were whipped, after 8 p.m. one evening, at
the Witwatersrand Mine, the dose varying from five to fifteen strokes."
In Mr. Douglas Blackburn's letter to _The Times_, from which I quoted
just now, we are told that much of the resultant mischief was due
to the incompetence and mismanagement of the men in charge of the
compound. "I assert unequivocally," he says, "that most of the white
interpreters and compound managers had not a working acquaintance
with the Chinese language, and, therefore, frequently misunderstood
the complaints and requests made to them by the coolies.... This is
no place for detail, but the following incident, which occurred in
my presence, may be accepted as typical and illustrative. A compound
manager was examining the passes of a number of coolies. When we
left the compound we were followed by two Chinamen who shouted and
gesticulated violently, and clutched at the arm of the manager. I could
see that he failed to understand them, for he shouted wildly in return,
exhibited signs of great alarm, and eventually knocked them both down,
called the guard, had the pair locked up, and later in the day he
flogged them for insubordination. Next day he confided to me that he
was in fault. He had inadvertently put the passes into his pocket and
misinterpreted the clamouring request for their return into threats
against himself. That manager is now seeking another engagement."
The twenty thousand soldiers who went to their death fighting what they
imagined was for their country, might well, instead of singing "God
save the King" and the like, have marched to the battle-fields of the
Transvaal and the Orange River Colony crying, like the old gladiators,
"Ave, Croesus, morituri te salutant."
[Illustration: CUTTING THE FLESH.]
CHAPTER IV
THE GROWTH OF TERRORISM
When Mr. Lyttelton said that flogging must cease, flogging ceased on
the Rand, and the Oriental methods of torture were adopted instead.
But even this penal system--reminding one so strongly of the days of
Stephen, when the wretched, tortured peasantry openly said that Christ
and His saints slept, for Pity had veiled her face and Mercy had
forgotten--had to be practised with great secrecy owing to the force of
public opinion at home.
These methods were, however, unavailing to check the growing insolence
and insubordination of the Chinese slaves. No better idea of the
condition of the Rand during the last few months can be gathered
than from the new Ordinance, which was drafted at the beginning of
last October. This Ordinance took the power of punishing the Chinese
coolies from the hands of the resident magistrates and placed it
in the hands of the inspectors, thereby giving the welfare of the
Chinese slaves solely and entirely into the mercy of the Rand lords.
Before, an attempt had been made to cloak the slave Ordinance with a
pretence of law and justice as conceived by the British public. But the
draft Ordinance of August put an end to this piece of hypocrisy. The
superintendents and the inspectors of the Chinese, for all practical
purposes the servants of the mine owners, were to be not only the judge
and the jury, but the plaintiff. It conferred on the superintendents
and inspectors jurisdiction, in respect of offences against the
Ordinance, of a resident magistrate.
Clause I states--"This power will be granted provided such offences
are committed under the Ordinance and within the area of any mine or
mine compound where such labourer resides. The fines to be inflicted
in the case of conviction will be the same as those imposed by the
magistrates under the existing laws, and on conviction the labourer's
employer will be notified, and the amount of the fine will be deducted
from the labourer's wages and paid over for the benefit of the Colonial
Treasury."
Another clause states that--"For the purpose of confining prisoners
awaiting trial, it is provided that the employers of labourers shall
erect a lock-up on their properties, which lock-up shall be deemed to
be a jail."
Again, in the event of labourers on the mines organizing a conspiracy,
refusing to work, creating a disturbance, intimidating or molesting any
person on the mine, the superintendent or inspector is empowered to
impose a collective fine on the labourers.
Insomuch as this new Ordinance once and for all destroys the myth with
which Rand lords endeavoured to surround their slave-owning ideals, I
consider it to be a decided improvement upon the original Ordinance,
with its innumerable pleasures and pretences for the moral and
spiritual welfare of the Chinamen.
That unfortunate and much-deluded man the Colonial Secretary, once
declared in the House of Commons that the Chinaman would have just as
free access to a court of justice as any British subject. He certainly
now-a-days possesses free access to a court, if not to a court of
justice. Access is so easy to it that the court actually follows him
wherever he goes, watches him while he works in the mine, watches him
while he is in the compound, and is ready to punish and fine him, or to
lock him up in the compound prison, without any of those old-fashioned
formalities which, while they may embody the machinery of justice, are
at least guarantees of its purity and disinterestedness.
It would of course be very interesting to know how many of these fines
have ever reached the Colonial Treasury. Armed with such extraordinary
powers as these, it is highly probable that the Rand lords imposed
through their superintendents and inspectors unlimited fines which,
instead of benefiting the Colonial Revenue, merely reduced the wage
bill.
The last clause which I have quoted contains the phrase "organizing a
conspiracy." A conspiracy, of course, is anything in the nature of a
trade union.
I don't say that this new Ordinance was not justified. I think it was
fully justified. No efficiency can be obtained by half measures. The
ablest political trimmers are incapable of serving both God and Mammon.
If God is out of the question, a whole-hearted worship of Mammon is
really better. In short, it would have been far more in the interests
of the Transvaal if the Rand lords had from the first gone the whole
hog and insisted on having Chinese slaves in name as well as in fact.
The state of affairs in August last wanted extraordinary legislation.
But, of course, this must not be held to justify Chinese labour.
That was criminal. But once the principle of Chinese labour had been
accepted by the Government on behalf of an unwilling and protesting
nation, I fail to see how the unfortunate remnants of British subjects
in the Transvaal could be properly protected without these measures.
I don't see how, when once the Chinese had been brought into the
country, the brutalities that have been committed could have been
avoided. I think the superintendent and the inspector and the overseer
should have the right to shoot men down in cold blood. I think the
compounds should be surrounded by artillery. I think all the ideals
of Russian autocratic rule should be brought to bear upon these men.
The awful brutality with which they have been treated is justified.
The superintendent, the inspector and the overseer should be forced to
make a special study of the methods adopted by Hawkins and Magree.
The British Government wanted Chinese labour to be introduced into the
Transvaal, and if they had been efficient and sensible they should
have accumulated in their Ordinance the wisdom of all the slave-owning
traditions of centuries.
But from an unbiassed perusal of the Rand press one would have imagined
that all these extraordinary measures were unjustified.
The statements that the Chinese were committing outrages, were
insolent, were bestial, which have from time to time appeared in the
British press, were referred to by the Rand press as "more Chinese
lies," "Chinese canards," and such headings. They persistently
impressed upon their readers that the Chinese were leading an
industrious, idyllic life, that they were treated with kindness and
humanity by the overseers, that no happier community ever existed on
the face of the earth than the 40,000 odd Chinamen in their compounds
on the Rand.
Of course, they only kept up this pretence for a time. It was
impossible for long to pretend to be a newspaper at all and yet deny
facts which were personally known to the majority of their readers.
The object of this extraordinary legislation was, of course, that the
Chinese preferred to go to prison rather than pay fines.
At the beginning of August there were more than one thousand Chinamen
in jail undergoing various terms of imprisonment, rather than deduct
from their shilling a day, the amounts they were called upon to pay for
disobeying the laws laid down in the Ordinance.
The amended Ordinance now forced them to pay by withholding from them
a portion of their wage equal to the amount of the fine. It has been
found useless, in fact, to pretend that other than a reign of terror
pertains in the Transvaal. The Chinamen have broken loose, and only
their prompt deportation can prevent a very grave crisis. Neither fines
nor floggings have any terror for them, and from their earliest years
they have been accustomed to regard death without a semblance of fear.
I will relate some of the more notorious instances in which these
yellow slaves have figured in the last year. The list includes, murder,
rape, robbery with violence, and that class of criminal assault with
which we deal in England under the Criminal Law Amendment Act.
While working in the mines the Chinaman does exactly what he pleases.
The overseers dare not interfere. Their policy of putting the black
man on to the yellow man has resulted in murder. The Chinaman has a
short way with any white or black man who tries to interfere with his
sense of liberty. He kills the man. Every Chinaman belongs to a secret
society, and when he has determined to kill a white or a black man he
reports his decision to the society. He knows that the deed which he
meditates will be rewarded by his own death: but for this he cares
nothing. All his preparations are made beforehand. His secret society
probably consists of from four to five thousand members. All these
members contribute something like sixpence a-piece to make up a sum,
say of £100. When this amount is collected, it is sent over to his wife
and family in China. Having thus made all the necessary provision for
his wife and children, the Chinaman perpetrates the deed. He is then
arrested, sentenced and hanged. And he meets his end with a stoical
indifference, quite content that he has secured his revenge and set his
worldly affairs in order.
In the face of such sentiments compulsion is futile.
On Wednesday, September 13, a gang of Chinese coolies working at the
Geldenhuis Deep Mine decided to take a holiday. The management of the
mine were instructed to offer them extra pay if they would work. They
refused, and took their holiday. They promised, however, that they
would start their first shift at midnight on the following Sunday,
September 17. When midnight on Sunday, September 17, arrived, they
determined to keep their holiday up. The compound manager endeavoured
to use force. The Chinese met force by force. The police were called
in. The riot at that juncture had reached a most alarming state.
The police were ordered to fire: they obeyed, killing one Chinaman
and wounding another; but not before the compound manager had been
attacked and somewhat seriously injured. Finally the Chinamen were
driven to their work.
On the same Sunday the utter uselessness of the compound system
was proved. One hundred Chinamen bolted from the French Rand Mine.
Somebody, it is supposed, had spread among them the report that the
Boers were enlisting coolies at £4 a month to fight the English. In
vain has the number of police in the Witwatersrand district been
increased. Gangs of deserters are wandering about the country murdering
and looting.
"Last night," wrote a young South African policeman to his parents in
England, "I captured six Chinamen who had run away from the mines. They
are giving a lot of trouble--5000 of them started rioting last week,
and 100 foot police and 200 South African Constabulary had to go to
stop them, and a nice old job we had. They threw broken bottles and
stones when we charged them. Some of our fellows were very badly cut.
The Chinamen also made dynamite bombs and threw them at us, and we had
to shoot into the crowd to drive them back. We aimed low and wounded
a good many of them. They are nasty devils to tackle, and always show
fight when there are a lot of them together. The six I captured were
trekking across the veld. I chased them on horseback and they ran on
top of a kopje and commenced to roll rocks down. I managed to get a
shot at one with my revolver: the bullet struck him on the wrist. Then
they all put up their hands and surrendered. I managed to get some
niggers working in the mealie patch to escort them back to our camp.
The niggers were very proud of themselves. When they passed through the
other native kraals I think if I had not been there the Kaffirs would
have assegaied them. They hate the Chinamen like poison."
These are the sort of incidents that occur daily. All the measures
taken by the Government and the mine owners to prevent desertion have
proved ineffective. The country around the Witwatersrand Mines has
taken upon itself the aspect of the whole of the colony during the late
war. Mounted constables with loaded revolvers organize drives. The
whole district is patrolled, and every effort is made to bring back the
deserters to the compounds. But as soon as one lot has returned another
escapes. Every day you may see a mounted policeman riding down towards
the law courts, followed by a string of Chinese deserters.
The Johannesburger lives in a daily state of terror. He rarely meets a
Chinaman without immediately seeking the protection of the police and
insisting on an inquiry being held then and there, as to whether the
man has a permit to be at large in the Golden City.
Writing on October 2, the Johannesburg correspondent--one L. E. N.--of
a London morning paper gives a graphic account of the wonderful City
of Gold at that date. "Gold of the value of over £20,000,000 a year,"
he says, "is extracted from that stretch of dusty upland called
The Reef.... But look closer. The white workers on the mines carry
revolvers; the police are armed with ball cartridge and bayonet; camped
yonder at Auckland Park is a mobile column of mounted men ready to move
against an enemy at a moment's notice; the country folk on the other
side of the swelling rise are armed to the teeth, and live at night in
barricaded and fortified houses." What a beautiful commentary on life
as it is lived--under the British flag--in the commercial and political
hub of the great sub-continent!
The Boers, who through their political organization the Het Volk have
refused to take any active part in the management of the country,
determined with a sort of grim humour, since the British sought to
destroy the corrupt Government of their late President, they shall be
allowed to mismanage the country as they will, have been led to break
their political silence to petition the Government for more protection.
At a meeting held at Krugersdoorp at the beginning of October, they
decided to forward a resolution to the Imperial Government requesting
that the importation of Chinese coolies should be discontinued, and
those already in the country should be repatriated. Regret was further
expressed at the danger to life and property, and it was pointed
out that the policy of not allowing the Boers to carry firearms
prevented them from properly protecting the lives of their families.
[Illustration: GOOD SPORT.]
General Botha did not exaggerate the dangers which resulted from the
importation of Chinamen, and he voiced the common sentiment of Boer
and Briton when he asked that a Commission should be appointed to
investigate the treatment of the Chinese coolies, and ascertain the
cause of the disturbances.
The mine owners' press informed the public that there are very few
cases of desertion; that when any number of Chinamen do desert the
South African Constabulary deal with them efficiently. They are hunted
down, rounded up, and brought in by their pigtails for trial. At the
trial they are convicted, or were before the amendment of the Ordinance
in August last, and locked up.
Any one going through the Transvaal will see hundreds of these Chinese
convicts working in large batches on the roads. White men are placed
in charge of these convicts, and when the repairing and macadamizing
of the roads is not done to their liking, the Chinamen are flogged,
and flogged in the open. They are subjected to every kind of brutal
treatment; and it is probable that almost as many desert from the
convict prisons as desert from the slave compounds.
In "C" Court, Johannesburg, on October 3 (or 4, I am not sure of the
exact date), before Mr. Schuurman, several Chinese labourers were
prosecuted for wandering from the mines in which they were employed,
without possessing the necessary permission. They all pleaded guilty,
and were fined £1 each. When asked what excuse they had to offer, three
of them said they were homesick, and were on their way to China; two
others stated that they had only gone for a short walk, and were close
to the mine when arrested. The policeman, however, declared they were
twenty-five miles from the mine. A few of the accused stated that they
were ill-treated, and consequently deserted. The magistrate sapiently
advised them that in such a case, instead of absconding, they should
complain to the representative of the Labour Importation Association
when he called at the mine.
Under the new regulations, sixty-five Chinamen, including an alleged
professional robber, were arrested on October 18. A Johannesburg
correspondent describes them as "a band of 450 coolies of bad
character." What has Lieut.-Colonel W. Dalrymple, the Rand mining man
who lately at Tunbridge Wells denounced the "infamous lies" which were
circulated in this country about the Chinese labour question--what, I
repeat, has Lieut.-Colonel Dalrymple to say to _that_?
From the same telegram I learn that the measures which are now being
taken to prevent desertions are proving effective. The roll-call
of October 8--I am now quoting the immaculate Reuter--"showed 278
absentees, and during the following week 245 were captured and brought
back to work. Last night," adds the correspondent, meaning the night
of October 17, "nine coolies attempted to raid a homestead in the
Krugersdoorp district. The farmer fired through a window, and shot one
Chinaman dead; the others fled." I commend these statements, together
with those quoted hereafter, to the earnest attention of the editor of
a certain yellow-covered weekly journal, devoted to the interests of
South Africa--the organ of the Rand lords in London--which persistently
pooh-poohs the "yellow slavery" cry.
Meanwhile gangs of escaped Chinamen are wandering over the country
spreading terror everywhere. The Boer farmer goes to bed at night in
his lonely farmhouse on the veld as if he were still at war with Great
Britain. Long hidden rifles are brought out from the hay-ricks and
other hiding-places and got ready. Windows are boarded up, doors are
double locked. Every preparation is made to warn off the ever expected
attack of the yellow desperadoes.
At the beginning of October two homesteads in the Boksburg district
were attacked by a party of Chinese, who attempted to gain an entrance
by breaking in the back doors and windows. In both cases, however, the
farmers had made every preparation for such an attack, and fired on
the marauders, one of whom was wounded in the chest and another in the
abdomen. The remainder made off.
A similar outrage occurred in the middle of November. A lonely
farmhouse near Germiston, occupied by an Englishman and his wife,
was attacked by a band of Chinese, who were armed with crowbars and
stones. The farmer opened fire, seriously wounding one of the Chinamen
in the jaw, and the rest decamped without entering. The injured man
was captured, but the whereabouts and identity of the others were not
discovered.
In Johannesburg the talk is of nothing but murders and assaults by
gangs of ten or fourteen escaped labourers. House after house away on
the veld has been broken into and looted, and the inhabitants murdered
if they showed any signs of resistance; they have indeed in some cases
been murdered without showing any sign of resistance at all.
Quite recently the Legislative Council of the Transvaal has re-amended
for about the tenth time the Ordinance. It has proposed to offer £1 a
head for the recapture of these yellow hooligans, an amendment which
would have placed the very much-bepatched Ordinance on a level with
the laws that prevailed in the Southern States of America before
the abolition of slavery. It is charged, however, with that strange
spirit of hypocrisy which has characterized all the proceedings of the
Rand lords into a reimbursement to the capturer of his out-of-pocket
expenses. This of course is only another way of offering £1 for
every recaptured Chinaman, for it may be taken for granted that the
capturer's expenses will always include the wear and tear of horseflesh
and moral damages and other matters which can only be estimated in the
abstract. According to the schedule of fees payable in respect of the
capture of Chinese deserters, which was published early in October,
they ranged from 1s. per mile for one or two arrests to 3s. for eight
or more.
Here is a letter from another member of the South African Constabulary
to his people at home which emphasizes the state of affairs which exist
at present on the Rand.
"The Chinese have been causing a lot of trouble. There was a whole
family murdered about a month ago. Several places have been broken
into. Last Sunday there was a storekeeper murdered about ten miles from
where I am staying. We have orders on no account to go out on patrol
without a revolver. The people are seeking police protection, and
are frightened out of their wits. I believe it is as much as a South
African Constabulary man's life is worth to be seen at some places on
the Rand in uniform. I am determined that if I meet any Chinamen, and
they show fight, I will shoot the first one dead."
This is the spirit abroad--a spirit which every right-minded man
must regard as the inevitable result of the criminal action of the
Government in sanctioning the Chinese Labour Ordinance.
Here is another case which has never been reported in the press:--
At Germiston railway station twelve Chinamen were waiting on the
platform for a train. A white woman happened to pass by, and as she
passed the Chinamen hurled some bestial insult at her. One of the
railway officials immediately called a policeman, who tried to take
the offending Chinaman into custody. He was promptly knocked down.
Three more policemen were hurried to the scene. These met with like
treatment, and even when two other comrades came to their assistance
they were utterly unable to effect the arrest. After twenty minutes'
violent fighting, during which the gang of Chinamen were absolutely
unhurt, six policemen were taken on stretchers to the hospital.
Here are two or three more instances taken at random from the
"Butcher's Bill" of a Johannesburg correspondent, whose letter appeared
in the _Daily Mail_ a few weeks ago:--
"_Sept. 5._--Chinese attack Kaffirs in the Lancaster Mine. They throw
one Kaffir in front of a train of ore, so that he is cut to pieces. A
second Kaffir dies of his injuries.
"_Sept. 8._--Homestead at Rand Klipfontein attacked and looted, and
£150 in money taken. The Chinese try to fire the house by throwing a
fire-ball through the window.
"_Sept. 16._--Band of Chinese rush a Kaffir kraal at Wilgespruit, on
the West Rand. Native woman's head nearly severed. Chinese armed with
knives 2 feet 6 inches long, made by a Sheffield firm.
"_Sept. 18._--Riot Geldenhuis Deep. Compound manager assaulted. Mounted
police attacked by 1500 coolies armed with drills, stones, bottles,
etc., and forced to fire their revolvers. One Chinaman killed and a
number wounded."
And so on and so forth. One more instance to show to what length
the Chinamen will go. A gang of the breed employed at the Van Ryn
Mine, where there had previously been a number of disturbances,
struck work and attacked the whites underground. A white man pulled
the signal cord, and police, galloping up, descended the shaft and
saved the whites. The ringleaders were arrested, and, adds the
correspondent somewhat ingenuously--"This phase of attacks underground
is disquieting." From the adjacent colony of Natal, too, come words
of complaint about Chinese stragglers; and it is significant in this
connection that "over a thousand rifles" were issued to the farmers in
the Transvaal at the end of September last. These are facts which Mr.
Reyersbach, of Messrs. H. Eckstein & Co., would be well advised to put
in his pipe and ponder.
Of course the immediate cause which leads to the Chinese committing the
above-recorded acts of violence is the result of bad treatment.
The murder of Mr. Joubert in the Bronkhorst Spruit Mine--for which, on
November 20, four Chinamen were executed in Pretoria jail--who received
some fifty stabs before succumbing, was due to starvation. The men
wanted to find food. They were not allowed to eat apparently, and so,
maddened by ill-treatment, overwork, and starvation, they committed
murder. Perhaps the most tragic part of the whole business is that one
cannot completely blame them for such an awful act. They have grown to
hate the white man. It is small wonder.
There are now nearly 50,000 Chinamen on the Rand, and in the breasts of
all these men there seems to have been imbued a hatred and detestation
of the white man. It seems almost as if these slaves considered it fair
game to commit any outrage, however brutal, on white men and white
women whenever the opportunity occurs. They are treated outrageously
themselves. They get little justice from magistrates, so it is small
wonder that they are indulging themselves in a sort of blood carnival
of revenge.
Discussing this question the other day with a representative of the
London journal _South Africa_, Dr. Corstorphine seriously declared
that the difficulties attendant on the Chinese labour question had
been magnified out of all proportion to the main facts. "We must
expect to find a few black sheep amongst the Chinese," sagely observed
the doctor. Ye gods!--a _few_. It would be interesting to know
what constitutes a "few" in the mind of the worthy geologist. Dr.
Corstorphine would probably indignantly deny the existence of yellow
slavery on the Rand. But possibly he would admit its existence under
another name, just as Sir Edward Grey did at Alnwick the other night.
Addressing his constituents, Sir Edward said he had never said that the
working of the mines by the Chinese in South Africa was slavery; but
the question he would put to those who said it was not, would be--"Was
it _Freedom_?" That is a question that I would put to Dr. Corstorphine,
Mr. Fricker, Mr. E. P. Mathers, and others of their kidney. If Chinese
labour on the Rand isn't slavery, what is it--is it _Freedom_? I pause
for a reply.
CHAPTER V
THE YELLOW TRAIL
The mark of the yellow man is upon the Rand. He has set his seal upon
the country, and it is to be seen in a hundred things.
Johannesburg was never an exactly heavenly place. A gold centre
attracts all the evil passions of men--draws to it, like the lodestone
draws the needle--every species of adventurer and world vagabond.
President Kruger knew how to deal with the cosmopolitan hordes that
thronged the streets of the "Gold-Reef City." He put a check upon
the importation of undesirables, and always remembered before all
things that the Transvaal belonged to the Boer people and not to the
cosmopolitan. The British Government might well have taken a leaf
from his book. But they have failed to do so. Instead of making the
interests of the Briton paramount, they have deliberately allowed the
Rand to be overrun by every type of Continental adventurer.
So Johannesburg, up to the summer of 1904, was never exactly peopled by
a moral, law-abiding population.
The fierceness of competition, the keenness to make money rapidly,
seems to electrify the sunny atmosphere of the Rand, and to produce a
community that knows no law.
But since the summer of 1904 the Rand has suffered a change which at
one time was thought impossible; it has changed for the worse. To the
wild life in the mining city has been added the degrading vices of the
Orient. The Chinaman has brought with him all the worst vices of life
in a treaty port. Opium dens and gambling hells, in spite of the most
careful police surveillance, have sprung up. The yellow man has made
his name a terror. He has murdered, raped, robbed, and committed every
offence against law and morality. He has literally terrorized--and
still terrorizes--the Rand. The plutocrat Jew walks the familiar
streets in a state of trepidation; the Boer farmer sleeps with a rifle
by his side, and his farm house is surrounded by spring guns and
alarums. The life of no white man is safe, and the honour of no white
woman.
"The Chinese reign of terror continues on the Rand," cabled the Durban
correspondent of the _Daily Chronicle_ on November 1. "The latest
outrage is that perpetrated by a gang of coolies, who attacked a house
at Benoni, injuring its occupant, Mr. Vaughan, and wounding his wife
with a razor. They ransacked the house and stole the plate." These
are some of the men whose praises were sung by Sir George Farrar
at a political meeting at the Nigel--and whose work as miners, he
declared, had proved "a great success." A "great success," perhaps, for
the Rand lords, but at what a terrible cost to the community of the
Witwatersrand!
The _South African News_ of Cape Town has rendered yeoman service to
the cause of those who are opposed--and their name is legion!--to the
Chinese labour question. The ridiculous contentions of the Rand lords
have been exposed again and again by the Cape Town journal, whose
fearlessness in grappling with the subject has been in marked contrast
to the majority of its contemporaries in the sub-continent, and has
earned, as it has deserved, the thanks of the thinking portion of the
community. Commenting on October 4 on the continuance of the reign of
terror on the Rand, "as it was bound to continue," the _South African
News_ puts the case with unmistakable plainness;--"Unless the Chinese
are confined in such a way as the mine-owners themselves consider
fairly describable as slavery, they are a menace to the public.
Probably slavery would mean further outrages; it is clear that torture
of various kinds has been allowed on the Rand, and it is far less clear
that this is not the real cause of some of the excesses which have
shocked South Africa. Either we must have slavery and exasperation,
or we must have our people exposed to the danger of murder, outrage
and robbery; or we must demand the expulsion of the Chinese, and the
turning down of a disgraceful page in South African and English
history which has brought good to no one, and only serves as another
indication of the strength to which avarice will lead men in attempting
to bend nature into the service of their own greed."
It was understood that the only conditions under which Chinese labour
could be introduced to the Rand was a system by which they were kept
apart, under lock and key, from the rest of the population. But this
system has broken down. Hordes of Chinese, as I have shown, are running
over the country. The utter futility of the compound system is proved
by the fact that as many as thirteen Chinese laundries have been broken
up by the police in one week, only for others to take their place.
It was recognized by the Government that the Chinaman must not be
allowed to be a competitor. This was one of the reasons of herding him
with his fellows like cattle in a pen.
But the Chinaman broke loose. With Asiatic unconcern he sets all the
rules of the Ordinance at defiance, and calmly sets up a laundry in the
town, caters for custom, carries on his business just as if he were a
free man and not a yellow serf, until some frightened cosmopolitan sees
him in the streets, and in a state of fear demands that the nearest
policeman shall see whether the creature has a permit or not.
John Chinaman, who, of course, has no permit, is thereupon arrested,
his laundry business comes to an abrupt close, and he starts once again
his task of gold grubbing for a shilling a day.
The amended Ordinance of August last contained this clause--
"It is provided that labourers being in possession of gum, opium,
extract of opium, poppies, etc., shall be liable to a fine on
conviction of £20, or in lieu thereof of imprisonment for three months,
with or without hard labour."
This ominous clause was rendered necessary by the steadily increasing
growth of opium dens.
Twelve months before, some few weeks after the arrival of the first
batch of Chinamen, the Government had passed what was known as the
Poison Ordinance. The object of this Ordinance was to regulate the sale
of opium. It provided that only registered chemists and druggists might
sell opium, and that every package of the drug must be labelled with
the word "Poison."
Of course, this was ridiculously inadequate, and it was soon found that
more stringent measures must be taken. It was decreed, therefore, that
opium could only be sold to persons known to the seller, and on an
entry being made in the poison-book. These further restrictions were
found perfectly futile. The sale of opium increased enormously.
At a meeting of the Transvaal Pharmacy Board, the secretary of
the board read his report on the poison-books of the chemists in
Johannesburg. It transpired that an examination of the books of one
chemist had disclosed the following sales of opium on various dates in
July and August last--336 lbs., 18 lbs., 28 lbs., 7 lbs., 31 lbs., 48
lbs. All this had been sold to Chinamen for smoking purposes.
One lot was said to have been sold under a medical certificate, but the
doctor concerned denied all knowledge of such certificate. The chairman
of the board said, that while it was gratifying to know that only three
out of sixty-eight pharmacies along the Rand carried on traffic in
opium, the ugly fact remained that two of these chemists had imported
during August two tons of Persian opium for smoking purposes, and an
examination of their books disclosed that only a few pounds were unsold.
In vain have the authorities attempted to put an end to this drug
habit. Recommendations have been made by the Pharmacy Board that any
chemist secretly supplying the Chinese with drugs should be sent to
prison, without the option of a fine. As if one evil were producing
another evil, it has been proved that not only are the Chinamen
demoralizing the Rand, but the Rand is demoralizing the Chinamen. The
majority of the Chinese labourers have been drawn from the north of the
Celestial Empire, where very little opium is used, on account of the
poverty of the people. The comparatively large salaries which these
labourers are now receiving enables them to indulge their inherited
taste for the drug to their hearts' content.
But in addition to this sale of opium by chemists on the Rand, opium
dens have sprung up all over the place. As soon as the police stamp
them out in one quarter they reappear in another. They are accompanied,
of course, by the usual gambling hells. These, too, the police
endeavour to suppress. All the money that they find is impounded; heavy
fines are exacted. But instead of decreasing they increase. The most
dangerous vice of the Orient is thus thriving luxuriantly upon the
favourable soil of the Rand.
One cannot blame the Chinaman for drugging himself. It is difficult
even to blame him for the outrages that he commits. The opium habit, of
course, is a step towards other habits. If the Chinaman merely went to
the opium dens in his off hours, drugged himself, slept his celestial
sleep, and then returned to his labours prepared to work as hard as
any cart-horse, the Rand lords would be the last persons to forbid him
these indulgences. But the opium habit is demoralizing and degrading.
It excites passions almost beyond control.
I have already pointed out that Mr. Lyttelton promised in the House
of Commons that the Chinaman should be allowed to take his womenfolk
with him if he wished, and a great point was made of the fact that the
morality of the Chinamen would be well looked after. No risks were to
be taken. The Archbishop of Canterbury had to be satisfied upon the
point before he made his regrettable necessity speech--"Show me that it
brings about or implies the encouragement of immorality in the sense
in which we ordinarily use the word, and, I am almost ashamed to say
anything so obvious, I should not call the so-called necessity worth a
single moment's consideration. In such a case there could be but one
answer given by any honest man. The thing is wrong, and please God it
shall not take place."
The Most Reverend Primate should be satisfied by now that the system
deliberately set up in the Transvaal has brought about and encouraged
immorality.
The Chinaman is always a frugal feeder, yet the strength of his
passions is notorious. There is no necessity to go back into the past
moral history of the Chinese race to contradict this statement.
Gangs of escaped labourers have attacked farm houses on the veld, and
where they have found no men, or where the men have been overpowered,
they have committed all the most bestial assaults known upon the women
and children. One white woman was known to have been found raped, and
dead. It is not safe for any decent or respectable white woman to go
near a Chinaman. The way he looks at her is sufficient to raise the
most murderous thoughts in the mind of any white man present.
A deputation of miners asked Lord Selborne for protection against the
Chinamen, stating that the way in which they spoke to and looked at
white women was intolerable, and pointed out further that, unless steps
were taken to protect the white population, the most horrible crimes
would be committed.
That warning has proved true.
Lord Milner has called the sentiment, which has arisen in the breasts
of nearly all Britons, of loathing for the introduction of Chinamen
into the Rand, Exeter Hall sentiment. It possibly is the sentiment of
Exeter Hall, but it is to be hoped it is the sentiment also of all
decent people who believe in virtue and morality, and who still cherish
a fine chivalrous ideal of woman.
The Government have again and again declared that the protest of
the Opposition in the House of Commons was dictated purely by party
considerations--that Chinese labour was a good stalking horse. That
people really were concerned about the welfare of Chinamen on the
Rand they refused to believe. As a matter of fact it is really the
Government that are blinded by partisanship; they see everything
through a false medium. What they do not see falsely in the Transvaal
they do not see at all. For it cannot be that they really are in favour
of retaining on the Rand 50,000 Chinamen who commit the most loathsome
outrages on the white population. It is almost passing belief that they
should blind themselves to the fact that the womenfolk of the Transvaal
are absolutely unprovided with any adequate protection against these
hordes of Chinamen.
Every day, as has been shown, desertions grow more numerous, and
with every Chinaman that escapes the terror increases. No steps have
been taken for the protection of his morals. Not even the most human
elementary step of letting him bring with him his wife has been taken.
And but few steps have been taken to protect the white population. The
most ordinary commonplace foresight has been wanting. The carnival
of lust and blood now going on in the Transvaal could have been
prevented. It was bad enough to introduce Chinese labour at all into
the Transvaal. The case becomes more damnable when they are introduced
without those restrictions which had been promised.
"I am opposed," said Herbert Spencer, "to the importation of Chinese
labour, because if it occurs one of two things must happen. Either the
Chinese must mix with the nation, in which case you get a bad hybrid,
and yet if they do not mix they must occupy a position of slavery."
The British Government, at the dictation of the Rand lords, attempted
to make the Chinaman occupy a position of slavery, failed to completely
establish this system, and is allowing the Chinamen to mix with the
population. Thus we shall have in the Transvaal the two evils which
Herbert Spencer raised his voice against. We have already slavery; we
shall certainly have a bad hybrid population. The degrading influence
of the Chinaman is shown in Johannesburg. White women are actually
marrying them. They are even mixing with the black races. The
Transvaal was bad enough before, when merely thronged with the scouring
of Europe. But it will be a thousand times worse before the last
Chinaman is repatriated.
In a morning paper of November 2 I read that Mr. Lyttelton, the
Colonial Secretary, in a letter to Mr. George Renwick, M.P., defends
the action of the Government in regard to the employment of Chinese
labour. He refers to the demand for it in the South African colonies,
and says--"The opinion to which we came was based upon evidence taken
from many sources. That it was correct is borne out by the fact that
we have received not a single petition from the Transvaal for the
revocation of the Ordinance."
Let not Mr. Lyttelton lay such flattering unction to his soul. If it
be true, as he states, that the Imperial Government have so far not
received a single petition from the other side against the Chinamen,
he need only _wacht een beitje_--wait a bit--as they say in South
Africa. The petitions will follow. By and by they will be thick
as leaves in Vallombrosa. Does Mr. Lyttelton never read the daily
papers? Is he unaware, for instance, that at a special meeting held at
Krugersdoorp on October 10, a resolution was carried praying that an
end might be put to the importation of Chinese, and that the Chinamen
now on the Rand might be sent back immediately after the expiration of
their contracts? Does he pretend to be ignorant of the fact that it
was announced at the time that this resolution would be sent to the
Imperial Government through Lord Selborne? I cannot believe it. Let
Mr. Lyttelton note that the correspondent from whose message I quote,
significantly added--"_If this way of protesting has no result, it is
intended to send a deputation to England to discuss matters regarding
the Chinese question._"
Verily, it would seem that nothing short of a measure of the kind will
stir the conscience of Christian England to an appreciation of the
intolerable state of affairs now being endured in South Africa by those
whose lot is cast in proximity to the yellow man!
CHAPTER VI
THE EFFECT OF CHINESE LABOUR. PROMISES AND PERFORMANCES
The introduction of Chinese indentured labour to the Transvaal has been
a complete failure--(1) Financially, (2) Socially, (3) Politically.
The slave-owning ideals of the Rand lords has made the Transvaal a
hell. It has not even made it a paying hell. Every security connected
with the Rand industry has decreased enormously. It is estimated that
the loss of capital runs to many millions of pounds sterling. It
cannot be said in excuse that this is the result of general commercial
depression throughout the Empire, for almost every other kind of
security, except Consols, has considerably appreciated in value.
Certainly the record monthly output of gold has long been passed. More
gold has been produced each month than was ever produced before, even
during the pre-war period. But these record outputs mean nothing.
Even at 1s. 6d. a day the Chinese labourer has been proved to be an
expensive luxury. He costs nearly 50 per cent. more than the Kaffir.
The expenses of nearly every mine where Chinese labour has been
employed have gone up; the expenses of every mine where Kaffir labour
is employed have gone down.
Mr. F. H. P. Cresswell had something pertinent to say on this topic in
the admirable address on the Chinese labour question which he delivered
the other day at Potchefstroom. Dealing with the argument that white
labour was prohibitively expensive, and that in order to work low-grade
mines coolies must be employed, the indefatigable fighter of the yellow
man observed--
"I have picked out at random a number of mines, and I find that the
mine showing the best results, the only one showing other than very
bad results with coolies, is the Van Ryn Mine. This mine in the
June quarter of 1904 was working at a cost of 24s. 5d. per ton, and
milled 30,000 tons in that quarter; they were then using native and,
I believe, no unskilled whites at all. A year before that they were
milling 24,500 tons, at a cost of 28s. 2d. per ton, with 1,000 natives.
In the June quarter of 1905 it worked at a cost of 21s. per ton, and
milled 60,000 tons. In that quarter it was using some 2,000 coolies."
Here is an instructive list which was compiled by the _Pall Mall
Gazette_ on September 8 last:--
MINES WITH CHINESE LABOUR
EXPENSES GOING UP
June 1905. Avge., 1904.
s. d. s. d.
Durban Roodepoort Deep 28 2 27 5
Geldenhuis Deep 22 11 19 1
Glen Deep 24 0 20 8
Nourse Deep 28 9 26 7
Rose Deep 21 9 17 2
Jumpers Deep 27 9 23 0
MINES WITH KAFFIR LABOUR
EXPENSES GOING DOWN
June 1905. Avge., 1904.
s. d. s. d.
Ferreira Deep 21 7 26 5
Crown Deep 19 3 20 2
Langlaagte Deep 22 2 20 9
Ever since the beginning of the war, we seem to have been watching in
a bewitched trance for the coming of the boom. Some people described
Johannesburg as the enchanted city waiting for the spell to be removed
for the boom to come. It has never come; and it never will come as long
as Chinamen are employed to do the work that can be done by Kaffirs or
white men.
When the incurable idleness of the Chinaman and his cost of keep is
added to that 1s. 6d. a day, he is dearer than the black man or the
white man.
The Rand lord was anxious to procure cheap labour and subservient
labour. The white man could not be employed because he would have held
the management of the country in the hollow of his hand, have formed
trade unions, and insisted on proper wages and proper treatment. Enough
black men, if time had been given, would have worked at the mines even
at the reduced wages paid by the Rand lords.
On this point, too, Mr. Cresswell, from whose Potchefstroom speech I
quoted just now, had something instructive to say. In dissecting the
official records, he observed--
"They show that between June 1904 and the end of last August--the
last month for which statistics are available--the number of natives
on the producing mines of the Rand had increased by 19,000, or an
average increase of 1,355 a month. Does any man here for a minute
really believe that if no Chinese had come here at all the gentlemen
controlling the mines would not have done exactly the same from June
1904 to August 1905, as they did from June 1903 to June 1904? Does any
one believe that in the latter period, as in the former period, they
would not have managed to bring an average of a hundred more stamps
into operation, and into the producing mines, for every 1,085 natives
at least that they added to their force of native labour? If they had
merely added on 100 stamps for every 1,085 natives, as they did up
to June 1904, do you know how many stamps would have been working in
August 1905? They would have had 6,503 stamps at work. Do you know how
many they actually had at work? They had 6,845 stamps at work, or a
paltry 342 stamps more than if no Chinese had ever been imported!"
But the Kaffir could not be forced to work. There was nothing to
prevent him from throwing up his employment when he had earned
sufficient money and was returning to his kraal. The only chance,
therefore, so the Rand lords argued, of acquiring the voteless and
subservient labour that they wanted, was to get Chinese labour.
The Chinaman is certainly voteless, but he has proved far from
subservient--far less subservient than a Kaffir.
Belonging to a more intelligent race, the child of an old though
dormant civilization, he has known exactly how to deal with his
masters. Of the gold extracted from the mines so much goes to wages
and so much goes to dividends; the wages are spent in the country, the
dividends are spent in Europe. Raise wages and you will render South
Africa prosperous; lower wages and you will denude South Africa.
The Chinese policy of so-called economy has ruined the small trader,
and turned the main stream of South African gold to Park Lane, Paris
and Berlin, with a thin stream to China. This country, which has given
so much for the Transvaal, has benefited least by the gold mines.
The Kaffir does nearly 50 per cent. more work than the Chinese coolie,
and Mr. Cresswell has proved that for the actual work of mining it is
better to employ a white man than a Kaffir. These are not fanciful
deductions, but indisputable facts proved finally and conclusively.
For almost two decades now the gold fields of South Africa have been
the most potent force in English society, a force more for evil than
for good. It is probable that we have lost more money in wars which
are the direct result of the gold fever than we have ever made from
the gold mines. If we were to estimate the cost of maintaining a large
military force in South Africa, the financial effect of the unrest
which existed in the pre-war period, the serious effect of the Jameson
Raid on the money market, the £250,000,000 that we spent on the war,
the millions that we have spent since in the work of repatriation, if
we were to compare these figures with the amount of wealth extracted
from the Rand, and made a simple profit and loss account, it is highly
probable that we should find ourselves very considerably out of pocket.
And yet, as if hypnotized by the glamour of gold, we continue to treat
the mine owners as if they were some particularly favoured class. We
continue to submit to their dictation, which has proved so ruinous in
the past, and we deliberately disregard the voices of the whole Empire
in their favour. Such a policy is neither good sense nor good business.
The introduction of Chinese labour into the Rand on the top of all
these grave financial and economical failures cannot be distinguished
for a moment from madness. It would seem, indeed, that we were
deliberately bent on destroying the Empire for the sake of the Jewish
and un-British houses in Johannesburg. "He whom the gods intend to
destroy they first make mad," is an ancient proverb, which seems
strangely applicable to those gentlemen who are responsible for the
management of our vast Empire.
They say here in Britain that the stories of gangs of murderers roaming
over the Transvaal are so many political fairy-tales, the result of
party feeling, the usual bait for the hustings, the stalking-horse to
bring into office one set of men and to throw out of office the other.
They say that the objection of the British public to Chinese labour
is a matter of hypocritical sentiment; that they really have none of
those fine ideals which they pretend to; that they have no passion for
liberty and freedom and the rights of man. Is not the Chinaman better
off than he is in his own country?
Such casuistry would justify the beating to death with the knout in
this country of a black criminal, because in his own country capital
punishment was carried out by the more cruel process of burying him
alive in an ant-heap to be eaten by the ants in the heat of the African
sun.
It has brought terror and fear into the Transvaal. And terror and fear
breed passions and vices which are a danger to every social community.
It emphasizes the cruelty and cunning in a man's nature. It destroys
in him that kindliness and sympathy--those "virtues of the heart," as
Dickens used to call them--which in spite of all are still noble and
fine sentiments to cherish.
Professor James Simpson, of New College, Edinburgh, who lately visited
South Africa with the British Association, takes the view, I see, that
ere long the more evilly-disposed among the Chinese will have been
worked out of their ranks, and the whole body will settle down to
"strenuous, if automatic, labour." It is devoutly to be hoped that such
will be the case, but up to the present there is nothing to indicate
that it will be so. On the contrary, everything points to the fact that
the Chinaman, emboldened by his successful efforts at checkmating the
representatives of law and order, will perpetrate fresh outrages with
increased impunity, and that the last phase of the yellow terror will
be worse than the first.
I had just written the foregoing when, happening to pick up an evening
paper, the following Reuter message from Johannesburg, dated November
3, caught my eye:--
"CHINESE SECRET SOCIETY ON THE RAND.
"_Johannesburg_, November 3.
"Evidence given at the trial here of some Chinamen charged with
being concerned in the disturbance at the New Modderfontein Mine,
disclosed the existence of an organized secret society among
the Chinese called the 'Red Door,' the object of which is the
committal of crime. The members, who are all of bad character,
are sworn to render each other assistance. The authorities are
breaking up the society and repatriating the ringleaders."
What has His Grace of Canterbury to say to this?
I have seen in a recent election in England a poster evidently intended
as a counterblast to the posters issued by the Opposition. It is a
poster, in which Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman is addressing an English
miner, while in the distance two happy Chinamen grin pleasantly in the
clean, well-laid-out mine. Says Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman in effect,
"My dear man, these men are robbing you of your labour." "Not at all,"
replies the white miner, "for every batch of these yellow men one white
man is employed."
This is intended as a defence of the statement made by Lord Milner
on March 20, 1904, who then stated that he was prepared to stake his
reputation on the estimate that for every 10,000 coloured labourers
introduced there would be in three years' time 10,000 more whites in
the country. In effect, the implication underlying this statement was,
of course, that for every yellow man introduced, one white man would
come into the country and find employment.
Six months later--on September 5, 1904--the Colonial Secretary replied
as follows, to a correspondent who wrote asking him whether it would be
now advisable for a man to go out to the Transvaal.
"Mr. Lyttelton," so ran the answer, "would certainly not advise any one
to go out without a definite prospect of employment."
So far from 50,000 white men finding employment in the Transvaal since
the introduction of 50,000 Chinamen, the proportion is thousands below
this number, and not even the poverty-stricken state of Poplar or
West Ham can compare with the impecuniosity to be met with at every
street corner of the Gold Reef City. There are thousands of men in
South Africa who have been lured there by the prospects of the Rand
in a daily state of destitution. The streets of Johannesburg are
crowded with unemployed. The evil seeds of poverty and destitution
have been scattered throughout the length and breadth of South Africa.
Business in Durban is in a parlous condition. In Cape Town there are
thousands of absolutely destitute men, women, and children who have to
be provided for weekly out of funds now almost exhausted. Night after
night these unfortunate wretches are compelled to sleep on the mountain
slopes, whether it be winter or summer, and quite recently a man was
found on one of the seats in the Public Gardens in such a state of
starvation--for he had tasted nothing for five whole days--that he
died an hour and a half after.
This is the boasted prosperity which was to have come to the country
through the introduction of Chinese labour. And yet Mr. Balfour writes
to Mr. Herbert Samuel on November 22--_vide_ the correspondence in
_The Times_--that he can see "nothing in the condition of things to
induce the Government to reverse a policy which was recommended by an
overwhelming majority in the Transvaal Legislative Council, with the
approval of the great bulk of the white population."(!)
Many attempts have been made to justify the pledge made by Lord
Milner, that for every 10,000 introduced, 10,000 white men would find
employment. This is a side of the question which was admirably put by
Lord Coleridge in May last:--
The Government's policy seems to be that of the mine owner, or
rather to serve that of the mine owner--to get labour as cheaply
as possible, and, above all, to keep out the white man for fear he
should grow independent. Mr. Lyttelton, speaking at Exeter on May
5, said:--
"The result of the introduction of Chinamen has been that 3000
white men are employed on the mines in addition to those that were
employed before the introduction of that labour, and the result
is that, in round figures, £500,000 has been received by British
artisans."
And so on. That is a completely misleading statement. I say,
and I think I shall show, that the employment of Chinese has
led to a decrease in the amount of white labour employed. Take
the year from June 1903 to June 1904. The proportion of white
men to Kaffirs during those twelve months remained practically
stationary, at one in six, in round figures. On March 31,
1905, which is the date of the last Return we have, there were
105,184 Kaffirs working in the mines, and at the proportion of
one-sixth there would have been 17,530 white men. But the number
of white men employed at that date was only 16,235. Following
that proportion, if the Chinese had not arrived we should have
had at least 1300 or 1400 more white men employed than there are
now. In addition to that there are over 34,000 Chinese employed
not represented by a single white man, and Lord Milner does not
hold out any hope that the proportion of white men to coloured
labourers will in future be greater than one in fourteen.
Crime and outrage are all that this degrading policy of Chinese slavery
has brought to the country. There is an old text that says, "Be sure
your sins will find you out." But rarely does it happen within the
space of a year and a half, that a national crime meets with its reward.
Immediately after the war one could not say that the Transvaal was
peopled by a happy, industrious community, but it was a veritable
heaven compared with the Transvaal of 1905; a veritable paradise of
plenty. This has been the social effect of the importation of Chinese
labour. The political effect is quite as serious.
It has been said that the ultimate object of our rule in South
Africa is the federation of all the states of South Africa into one
commonwealth. It was the dream of Cecil Rhodes that South Africa should
take her place among the commonwealths of the Empire. A constitution,
such as exists in Australia at the present moment, was to be given to
South Africa. The states of Cape Colony, Natal, the Orange River Colony
and the Transvaal--all free, self-governing units--were to be welded
together into one great self-governing Imperial unit. The introduction
of Chinese labour in the Transvaal has rendered this impossible. Until
these Chinamen are repatriated there will be no commonwealth for South
Africa.
In the first place, one of the essentials for such a federation
would be that each state should be a self-governing colony. The mine
owner knows, and the Government of Great Britain must know by now,
that once self-government is given to the Transvaal, Chinese slavery
would be at an end. Therefore the mine owners, who really "boss" the
Transvaal, would take care to suppress any agitation in favour of
self-government. As they refused the referendum so will they refuse the
Boer and the Briton the right of free constitution. Hence the granting
of responsible government to the Transvaal is deferred, and hence the
federation of South Africa is postponed indefinitely.
Again, Cape Colony would never consent to the federation of the
Transvaal unless the Chinese labourers were repatriated. They have
stated their opinion in no uncertain language. They would have no
desire to enter into a partnership arrangement with a community which
was hampered with such a grave social problem as Chinese labour. The
Transvaal has done harm enough to Cape Colony, without adding this last
straw to the load of evil which the gold mines of the Rand have bred
for her.
This is one of the Imperial political disasters resulting immediately
from the importation of Chinese labour.
There is another Imperial consideration even more serious.
No one can read the protests sent to the Colonial Office by the great
self-governing colonies that fought in the war, without realizing the
gravity with which such a breaking away from the traditions of the
Empire has been received by these colonies. Had we known it was to be
war for the Chinese miners, the appeal made to Australia for men and
arms would have had a very different effect. This is the substance of
Australia's protest. Sentiment is a thing easily destroyed. Not even
the Government, I think, can realize the indignation felt in Canada,
Australia, and New Zealand by the Indentured Labour Ordinance. It
should have been the policy of the Imperial Government to foster the
tie that binds all the units of the Empire together. Mr. Chamberlain
has voiced this opinion times out of number; our Imperial bards have
sung it. The Government, which has always boasted that it was more
Imperial than the Opposition, more wrapped up in the honour and the
greatness of the Empire, has made this sentiment a commonplace in every
election speech. And yet they have done more to destroy this bond than
any other party in the state.
Again, some attention should have been paid to the Dutch problem in the
Transvaal. No attention was paid to it. We hear little now of the war.
The Transvaal might have been ruled from the beginning by the British
Government. Now and again the English papers mention casually the once
familiar name of General Botha as having addressed the Het Volk. But
the Dutch problem is never considered at all in England by the great
men of the people. And yet it is a very vital and important question.
Next to the native question it is, perhaps, the most vital question
with which South Africa has to deal.
Throughout South Africa the Boers are to-day the most thrifty, the most
industrious, and almost the most agricultural section of the community.
Of their ability in war we have had a long experience. Of their courage
and patriotism we gained a knowledge at a great cost. They outnumber
the English population in the Transvaal and Cape Colony. And South
Africa will never be absolutely secured to the British Empire until the
proportion of Boers to the total white population is reduced.
It should have been the object of the Government, immediately after the
war, to pack the Transvaal with Englishmen, to act as a counterbalance
to the Boer population. This would have been a dangerous experience if
there was no excuse for introducing such a large number of Englishmen.
But the excuse was to hand. A splendid opportunity of reducing the
population of the Boers to the total white population occurred at the
re-opening of the mines. Increased use of white labour in the mines
would have given to the Transvaal that preponderating majority of
Britons which the safety of the Empire demands. The home Government did
not take that opportunity, and South Africa has been left in exactly
the same dangerous condition as she was after the war.
Instead of performing this obvious duty to the country, the Government
listened to the objections of the mine owners to swarming the country
with white labour, upon the grounds that they would prove a disturbing
element socially and politically, and agreed to the importation of the
Chinamen.
There is yet another grave political aspect of this deplorable problem.
As the British people are apt to forget that the Boers outnumber the
Britons in the Transvaal, so they forget, when considering the problem
of South Africa, that there is a vast population of natives within our
territory.
These black tribes are utterly demoralized, and, it is recognized, by
the war of the white man against the white man, and certain causes
which could not have been foreseen, have increased the unrest and
lawlessness.
From Lagos to the Cape the same story has been told for the last two
years: that the black man is growing restive under the white man's
rule, that the white man is losing rapidly that superstitious authority
which up till then he had always carried with him. The cause of this
is the utter failure of the Germans to bring the war in Damaraland
to a successful conclusion. The continued successes scored by the
Hereroes have undoubtedly set aflame the ambitions of the black tribes
throughout the south-west coast and inland. In some cases it has been
fomented and worked up by Mahommedan and Ethiopian missionaries. In
addition to these disturbing elements the death of Lerothodi, the
paramount chief of Basutoland, has increased the natives' restlessness.
The spectacle of Chinese bands roaming the country, looting farms,
killing white men and raping white women has added to these symptoms of
native disaffection.
A rising among the Basutos--which more likely than not would be
followed by a general rising of natives throughout Swaziland, Zululand
and the Transvaal--would engage all our strength to suppress. We should
have to make use of the constabulary which is now with great difficulty
keeping under control the Chinese labourers. It is not hard to imagine
the terrible state of affairs that would result from such a rising.
While we suppress the black man the Chinaman would be left unguarded
and unpoliced free to desert and to commit outrages. Indeed, should the
Chinaman rise with the black man the safety of both Briton and Boer
would be in the gravest jeopardy.
These are the deplorable risks which are being run by maintaining in
the Transvaal some 50,000 Chinamen.
Financially the Chinamen have been a failure, a very grave failure.
Socially their importation has proved disastrous. Instead of bringing
wealth they have brought stagnation. Instead of bringing employment
for the white man they have brought destitution and abject poverty. In
introducing them it was recognized that some system must be devised by
which they could be prevented from mixing with the population. That
system has failed utterly and completely. They were to have brought
wealth; they were to have brought employment for the white man. All
they have brought is chaos. All they have done is to increase the
output of gold at a cost which has decreased instead of increasing
the mining companies' dividends. They have spread a terror throughout
the length and breadth of the Transvaal. Economically and socially
the policy proposed by the mine owners and forced upon the Government
has proved deplorable. Their introduction has been a grave Imperial
error which has aroused in the great self-governing Colonies anger and
indignation. It has already loosened the bonds which the common danger
of war had tightened.
Their continued stay in South Africa, and the continued introduction of
more coolies has given rise to the possibility of danger that is awful
to contemplate. The rising of the black man would leave the policing of
nearly 50,000 Chinamen in the hands of a few white men.
It is not too much to say that no greater sin against the ideals of
the British people, no more vicious and ruinous policy, has ever been
adopted.
THE END
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