BLACK AND WHITE IN THE

THE

TRANSVAAL

THE LOCAL LABOUR PROBLEM

HE discussions in England during the past three years in connection with the vexed question of Chinese Labour in the gold mines of the Witwatersrand have shown that the whole conditions of the labour question in the Transvaal are most imperfectly understood. This is but natural when it is remembered that before the war the Transvaal was practically a terra incognita to the masses of the population in England, and that the very causes, events and results of the war, involving as they did the relations between two dominant white races, tended to obscure entirely the local labour problems. Further, the association in the popular mind of the name of the country with the gold-mining industry suggested a train of thoughts and of recollections of the life of glittering gold in early Australia, California, and Klondyke, which has no connection at all with the actual state of affairs in the Transvaal colony.

It is proposed to show from statistics in the possession of the Government Departments, the Municipalities, the Chamber of Mines, and the Chamber of Commerce, that the labour problems to be met and dealt with in the Transvaal are not such as can be solved (or even appreciated) by any merely a priori reasoning, or

by any generalities based upon or analogies drawn from the experiences of all-white countries. On the contrary, these questions must be studied on the spot and in strict connection with the position of the Transvaal in the general scheme of the South African colonies. Further, the considerations are wider than any mere questions of the method and rate of gold-getting on the mines or the colour by which that operation is effected. It must not, however, be assumed that therefore in the Transvaal there has sprung up a new Ireland, “Hibernia ipsa, hibernior," from which political economy is banished to Mars and Saturn, but simply that in South Africa capital and labour cannot be represented by symbols x and y and treated in their relation to each other as purely mathematical entities. The last and only accurate Transvaal census was held in 1904. From it are taken the following figures:

A. POPULATION OF THE TRANSVAAL (+ SWAZIELAND).

Compare average density in England, 470 per square mile. These figures take no account of the Chinamen working on the mines, who did not begin to arrive until the middle of

1904; under the item of "other coloured," however, is included a considerable number (? 200) of non-indentured Chinamen working in market gardens, laundries, and small shops.

Certain broad conclusions can be at once drawn.

(1) That in the Transvaal as a whole there are nearly four coloured to every white person.

(2) That the whites are concentrated in the town areas, Johannesburg having about 28 per cent. of the whole white population of the colony.

(3) That a large number of Asiatics have already come into the Transvaal as licensed traders or free labourers.

(4) That the Transvaal is a very sparsely populated country, even as regards the black population.

Personal observation will soon make it apparent that Johannesburg is a town of males.

Among the white population over the age of sixteen years the number of males is almost twice that of females. On the municipal voters' roll of 28,338 in 1905 there appeared the names of only 1550 females.

Among the coloured population in the town the disparity is still greater, and while in 1904-5 there were registered 2964 white births, equal to a rate of 35 per mille, there were only 573 coloured births, or less than 7 per mille, which indicates about ten coloured males to each coloured female in the city.

Therefore, if a portion of the white population can be described as "squatters," the black male population can only be classed as one of "trippers."

One result of such a state of affairs must be to make all labour of a transitory character. The white man seeks to rise, and to rise rapidly, in order that he may return to his family ties in Europe; the black man desires to make money rapidly but intermittently, in order that he may take a holiday at his kraal and thereby increase his family ties.

As regards the white man it will be found, as one would

expect, that it is chiefly in the more poorly paid avocations and among the least skilled that this lack of family life prevails. Let a white man get into a good permanent position and he either sends for his family or marries locally, and settles down. On the other hand, let a man of any push and capacity see that the job he is working on leads to nothing higher and he will abandon it for another even of a more precarious character, or seek a short cut to fortune by trekking or by speculation. In England a very different state of affairs obtains. The average working man and the average clerk have their family interests, their family surroundings, and to some extent their family traditions; in fact they have near to them all that makes for respectability on the one hand, and secures cheap social recreation on the other. Work of a routine kind at a bare living wage has therefore no terrors for them. They are content to go on in a groove, and to tell the truth they are often persons of but little enterprise. In an old country it is best so. A proletariat of Winston Churchills would be an appalling phenomenon, and would disorganise the constitution of the country. But further, the British working man has all the resources of an elaborate State organisation to smooth his path. Baths, libraries, schools, cheap transit-and cheap beer-are at his door. His wife, and his children when they reach the age of fourteen, can take up unskilled labour without losing caste thereby, and so can add to his income. The fact of his being a married and settled man has a protecting influence over the permanency of his employment, while in a new country it is often the married man with his hostages to fortune who is the first to be "retrenched " in salary, as he cannot afford to kick for fear of having to join the ranks of the unemployed. Again, as a consequence of the preponderance of males in the Transvaal towns, it is found everywhere that white men are doing the more "genteel" but not necessarily highly skilled work which falls elsewhere into the hands of females. The barmaid is practically unknown. It may be said that this is due to the law against their employment, which is so strict

that it prohibits women who are proprietors of licensed restaurants taking female partners without capital. In reality the law is the effect of the situation (as in Australia, where the state of affairs is very different), for the number of bars is enormous, and even the work in them which does not involve the actual selling of liquor is done by men. Again, in the very numerous "ladies'" shops there is a quite disproportionate number of male assistants. An enormous amount of the shorthand and typewriting work in offices is done by men, while the female book-keepers in shops, so common in England, are almost unknown, or where she does exist is a member of the family which keeps up the establishment. Female white servants are at a premium. Black men act as house- and chamber-maids, often as cooks, or even nurses. When white women do take on any of these occupations, or that of waitress in tea-shops (a favourite occupation, as furnishing one of the shortest cuts to matrimony), black "boys" must be supplied to do the washing up or other menial work. Laundries are run by Chinamen (who do not bring their wives), and the smaller sweetstuff or fruit shops by foreigners or Asiatics, who practically monopolise the door-to-door trade. The female tobacconist is practically unknown, and the female vendor of newspapers and stationery is comparatively rare. It is almost unnecessary to add that in some of the poorer districts the conditions of the mining camp still prevail to such an extent that the young white men do their own cooking and washing, and mend their own clothes.

As regards the black man, it must always be recognised that he has no desire to work, and apart from the presence of white men would not work; further, he has no permanent necessity to work. It is scarcely understood in England that one of the principal objects of taxes like the hut tax, now causing so much trouble in Natal, is to force the black man to do some work which will involve his actually earning some money. Otherwise there would have to be a resort to the old Dutch system of forced labour, if only to prevent the danger to the