John Chinaman on the Rand

by Anonymous

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.