"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:—
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.