This matter of live stock leads me to one of the really picturesque industries of the Union which is the breeding of ostriches, "the birds with the golden feathers." Ask any man who raises these ungainly birds and he will tell you that with luck they are far better than the proverbial goose who laid the eighteen-karat eggs. The combination of F's—femininity, fashion and feathers—has been productive of many fortunes. The business is inclined to be fickle because it depends upon the female temperament. The ostrich feather, however, is always more or less in fashion. With the outbreak of the war there was a tremendous slump in feathers, which was keenly felt in South Africa. With peace, the plume again became the thing and the drooping industry expanded with get-rich-quick proportions.
Port Elizabeth in the Cape Colony is the center of the ostrich feather trade. It is the only place in the world, I believe, devoted entirely to plumage. Not long before I arrived in South Africa £85,000 of feathers were disposed of there in three days. It is no uncommon thing for a pound of prime plumes to fetch £100. The demand has become so keen that 350,000 ostriches in the Union can scarcely keep pace with it. Before the war there were more than 800,000 of these birds but the depression in feathers coupled with drought, flood and other causes, thinned out the ranks. It takes three years for an ostrich chick to become a feather producer.
America has a considerable part in shaping the ostrich feather market. As with diamonds, we are the largest consumers. You can go to Port Elizabeth any day and find a group of Yankees industriously bidding against each other. On one occasion two New York buyers started a competition that led to an eleven weeks orgy that registered a total net sale of more than £100,000 of feathers. They are still talking about it down there.
South Africa has not only expanded in output but her area is also enlarged. The Peace Conference gave her the mandate for German South-West Africa, which was the first section of the vanished Teutonic Empire in Africa. It occupies more than a quarter of the whole area of the continent south of the Zambesi River. While the word "mandate" as construed by the peace sharks at Paris is supposed to mean the amiable stewardship of a country, it really amounts to nothing more or less than an actual and benevolent assimilation. This assimilation is very much like the paternal interest that holding companies in the good old Wall Street days felt for small and competitive concerns. In other words, it is safe to assume that henceforth German South-West Africa will be a permanent part of the Union.
The Colony's chief asset is comprised in the so-called German South-West African Diamond Fields, which, with the Congo Diamond Fields, provide a considerable portion of the small stones now on the market. These two fields are alike in that they are alluvial which means that the diamonds are easily gathered by a washing process. No shafts are sunk. It is precisely like gold washing.
The German South-West mines have an American interest. In the reorganization following the conquest of German South-West Africa by the South African Army under General Botha the control had to become Anglo-Saxon. The Anglo-American Corporation which has extensive interests in South Africa and which is financed by London and New York capitalists, the latter including J. P. Morgan, Charles H. Sabin and W. B. Thompson, acquired these fields. It is an interesting commentary on post-war business readjustment to discover that there is still a German interest in these mines. It makes one wonder if the German will ever be eradicated from his world-wide contact with every point of commercial activity.
It is not surprising, therefore, that South Africa, in the light of all the facts that I have enumerated, should be prosperous. Take the money, always a test of national economic health. At Capetown I used the first golden sovereign that I had seen since early in 1914. This was not only because the Union happens to be a great gold-producing country but because she has an excess of exports over imports. Her money, despite its intimate relation with that of Great Britain, which has so sadly depreciated, is at a premium.
I got expensive evidence of this when I went to the bank at Capetown to get some cash. I had a letter of credit in terms of English pounds. To my surprise, I only got seventeen shillings and sixpence in African money for every English pound, which is nominally worth twenty shillings. Six months after I left, this penalty had increased to three shillings. To such an extent has the proud English pound sterling declined and in a British dominion too!
South Africa has put an embargo on the export of sovereigns. One reason was that during the first three years of the war a steady stream of these golden coins went surreptitiously to East India, where an unusually high premium for gold rules, especially in the bazaars. The goldsmiths find difficulty in getting material. The inevitable smuggling has resulted. In order to put a check on illicit removal, all passengers now leaving the Union are searched before they board their ships. Nor is it a half-hearted procedure. It is as drastic as the war-time scrutiny on frontiers.
To sum up the whole business situation in the Union of South Africa is to find that the spirit of production,—the most sorely needed thing in the world today—is that of persistent advance. I dwell on this because it is in such sharp contrast with what is going on throughout the rest of a universe that staggers under sloth, and where the will-to-work has almost become a lost art. That older and more complacent order which is represented for example by France, Italy and England may well seek inspiration from this South African beehive.