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."