CHAPTER II 'AVE, CRŒSUS, 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—
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.