This was the people into whose territory there came, after 1884, a sudden swarm of gold-seekers. The Uitlanders, as these strangers are called (the word is not really Dutch, one is told, but an adaptation from the German), who by 1890 had come to equal and soon thereafter exceeded the whole number of the Boers, belonged to many stocks. The natives of England, the Cape, and Natal were the most numerous, but there were also many English-speaking men from other regions, including Australians and Americans, as well as a smaller number of Germans and Scandinavians, some Russians (mostly Jews) and a few Italians and Frenchmen. Unlike as these newcomers were to one another, they were all still more unlike the rude hunting and pastoral people among whom they came. They were miners, traders, financiers, engineers, keen, nimble-minded men, all more or less skilled in their respective crafts, all bent on gain, and most of them with that sense of irresponsibility and fondness for temporary pleasure which a chanceful and uncertain life, far from home, and relieved from the fear of public opinion, tends to produce. Except some of the men from the two Colonies, they could not speak the Boer Taal, and had no means of communication, any more than they had social or moral affinities, with the folk of the land. There were therefore no beginnings of any assimilation between them and the latter. They did not affect the Boers, except with a sense of repulsion, and still less did the Boers affect them. Moreover, there were few occasions for social intercourse. The Uitlanders settled only along the Witwatersrand, and were aggregated chiefly in Johannesburg. The Boers who had lived on the Rand, except a few who came daily into the towns with their waggons to sell milk and vegetables, retired from it. It was only in Pretoria and in a few of the villages that there was any direct social contact between the two elements.

Although less than half of the immigrants came from England, probably five-sixths spoke English and felt themselves drawn together not only by language, but by community of ideas and habits. The Australians, the Americans, and the men from Cape Colony and Natal considered themselves for all practical—I do not say for all political—purposes to be English, and English became the general spoken tongue not only of Johannesburg, but of the mining districts generally. Hearing nothing but English spoken, seeing nothing all round them that was not far more English than Dutch, though English with a half-colonial, half-American tinge, it was natural that the bulk of the Uitlanders should deem themselves to be in a country which had become virtually English, and should see something unreasonable or even grotesque in the control of a small body of persons whom they deemed in every way their inferiors. However, before I describe their sentiments and their schemes, some account must be given of the government under which they lived.

As was explained in a previous chapter (Chapter XII) the South African Republic was formed by the union, between 1858 and 1862, of several small and theretofore practically independent republican communities. Its constitution was set forth in a document called the Grondwet,[81] or "Fundamental Law," enacted in 1858 and partly based on a prior draft of 1855. It is a very crude, and indeed rude, instrument, occasionally obscure, and containing much matter not fit for a constitution. It breathes, however, a thoroughly free spirit, save as regards Kafirs and Roman Catholics, recognizing the people as a source of power, laying down the old distinction between the three departments of government,—legislative, executive, and judicial,—and guaranteeing some of the primordial rights of the citizen. By it the government was vested in a President, head of the executive, and elected for five years, an Executive Council of five members (three elected and two ex officio), and a Legislature called the Volksraad, elected by the citizens on a very extended suffrage, and declared to be the supreme power in the State. The Volksraad consists of one chamber, in which there are at present twenty-four members. The President has the right of speaking, though not of voting, in it, but has no veto on its action. Though there are few constitutions anywhere which give such unlimited power to the Legislature, the course of events—oft-recurring troubles of all sorts, native wars, internal dissensions, financial pressure, questions with the British Government—have made the President practically more important than the Legislature, and, in fact, the main force in the Republic. The Executive Council has exerted little power and commanded little deference, while the Volksraad has usually been guided by the President and has never taken the direction of affairs out of his hands. Both legislation and administration have been carried on in a rough-and-ready fashion, sometimes in violation of the strict letter of the law. In particular the provision of the Grondwet, that no statute should be enacted without being submitted for a period of three months to the people, has been practically ignored by the enactment as laws of a large number of resolutions on matters not really urgent, although the Grondwet permits this to be done only in cases which do not admit of delay. This has, however, been rectified by a law passed subsequently to 1895, altering the provision of the Grondwet.

In 1881, when the Republic recovered its independence, there were neither roads, railways, nor telegraphs in the country. Its towns were rough hamlets planted round a little church. Its people had only the bare necessaries of life. The taxes produced scarcely any revenue. The treasury was empty, and the Government continued to be hard-pressed for money and unable to construct public works or otherwise improve the country till 1885, when the discovery of gold on the Witwatersrand began to turn a stream of gold into its coffers. Riches brought new difficulties and new temptations. Immigrants rushed in,—capitalists, miners, and traders. As the produce of the gold-field increased, it became plain that they would come in ever increasing numbers. The old Boers took alarm. The rush could hardly have been stopped, and to stop it would have involved a check in the expansion of the revenue. It was accordingly determined to maintain the political status quo by excluding these newcomers from political rights. The Grondwet declares (Article VI.) that "the territory is open for every foreigner who obeys the laws of the Republic," and as late as 1881 an immigrant could acquire the electoral franchise after a residence of two years. In 1882, however, this period was raised to five years, and in 1887 to fifteen. In 1890, by which time the unenfranchised strangers had begun to agitate for the right to be represented, a nominal concession was made by the creation of a new chamber, called the Second Volksraad, for membership in which a newcomer might be eligible after taking an oath of allegiance followed by four years' residence, the right to vote at elections to this chamber being attainable after the oath and two years' residence. This Second Raad, however, is limited to the consideration of certain specified subjects, not including taxation, and its acts can be overruled by the First Volksraad, while its assent is not required to the acts of that body. It has therefore turned out little better than a sham, having, in fact, been created only as a tub to throw to the Uitlander whale. The effect of the legislation of 1890 and subsequent years down to 1894 (legislation too intricate and confused to be set forth in detail here) has been to debar any immigrant from acquiring the right to vote for the First Volksraad until he has passed the age of forty and resided for at least twelve years in the country after taking the oath and being placed on the local government lists, lists on which the local authorities are said to be nowise careful to place him. Nor does birth in the Republic confer citizenship, unless the father has taken the oath of allegiance. President Kruger, who has held office since 1881, was chiefly instrumental in passing these laws, for his force of character, long experience of affairs, and services in the crisis of 1877-81 gave him immense power over the Raad, in which he constantly spoke, threatening the members with the loss of national independence unless they took steps to stem the rising tide of foreign influence. As a patriot, he feared the English; as a Boer Puritan of the old stubborn stock, he hated all foreigners and foreign ways, seeing in them the ruin of the ancient customs of his people. He carried this antagonism so far that, being unable to find among his citizens men sufficiently educated to deal with the growing mass of administrative work which the increase of wealth, industry, and commerce brought, he refused to appoint Dutch-speaking men from the Cape or Natal, because they were natives of British Colonies, and recruited his civil service from Holland. The Hollanders he imported were far more strange to the country than Cape Dutchmen would have been, and the Boers did not, and do not now, take kindly to them. But they were, by the necessity of their position, anti-English, and that was enough.

Meanwhile the old Boer virtues were giving way under new temptations. The Volksraad (as is believed all over South Africa) became corrupt, though of course there have always been pure and upright men among its members. The civil service was not above suspicion. Rich men and powerful corporations surrounded those who had concessions to give or the means of influencing legislation, whether directly or indirectly. The very inexperience of the Boer ranchman who came up as a member of the Volksraad made him an easy prey. All sorts of abuses sprang up, while the primary duties of a government were very imperfectly performed. Hardly any administration was needed while the Transvaal had a population of wandering stock-farmers. But when one hundred thousand white immigrants were congregated along the Witwatersrand, and were employing some fifty thousand native workpeople, an efficient police, an abundant water-supply, good sanitary regulations, and laws to keep liquor from the natives became urgently needed; and none of these things was provided, although taxation continued to rise and the treasury was overflowing. Accordingly, the discontent of the Uitlanders increased. It was no longer a mere question of obtaining political rights for their own sake, it was also a question of winning political power in order to reform the administration, and so secure those practical benefits which the President and the Volksraad and the Hollander officials were either unable or unwilling to give. In 1892 an association, called the National Union, was formed by a number of Uitlanders, "to obtain, by all constitutional means, equal rights for all citizens of the Republic, and the redress of all grievances." Although nearly all those who formed it were natives either of England or of the British Colonies, it did not seek to bring the country under British control, but included among its aims "the maintenance of the independence of the Republic." Nevertheless, it incurred the hostility of the President and his friends, and its petitions were unceremoniously repulsed. This tended to accentuate the anti-Boer feeling of the Uitlanders, so that when Sir H. Loch, the High Commissioner, came up from the Cape in 1894 to negotiate regarding Swaziland and other pending questions, he was made the object of a vehement demonstration at Pretoria. The English took the horses out of his carriage and drew it through the streets, waving the British flag even over the head of President Kruger himself, and shouting "Reform! reform!" This incident redoubled Mr. Kruger's apprehensions, but did not shake his purpose. It suggested new plans to the Uitlanders, who had (shortly before) been further incensed by the demand of the Government that they should, although debarred from the suffrage, serve in a military commando sent against the Kafir chief Malaboch. Despairing of constitutional agitation, they began to provide themselves with arms and to talk of a general rising. Another cause, which I have not yet mentioned, had recently sharpened their eagerness for reforms. About 1892 the theory was propounded that the gold-bearing reefs might be worked not only near the surface, but also at much greater depths, and that, owing to the diminution of the angle of the dip as the beds descend into the earth, a much greater mass of gold-bearing rock might be reached than had been formerly deemed possible. This view, soon confirmed by experimental borings, promised a far longer life to the mines than had been previously expected. Those who had come to the Rand thinking they might probably leave it after a few years now conceived the idea of permanent residence, while the directors of the great mining companies, perceiving how much their industry might be developed, smarted more than ever under the maladministration and exactions from which the industry suffered.

These were the events and these the causes that had brought about the state of things which a visitor saw at Pretoria and Johannesburg in November, 1895. Revolution was already in the air, but few could guess what form it would take. The situation was a complicated one, because each of the two main sections of the population, Boers and Uitlanders, was itself subdivided into minor groups. The Uitlanders were of many nationalities; but those who spoke English were so much the most numerous that I shall speak of them only, dismissing the remainder with the remark that while many of them sympathized with the Reform movement, few of them gave it active support, while most of the Germans, moved by anti-British feeling, favoured President Kruger's Government.

The English section, including Cape and Natal men, Australians and Americans, consisted of three sets of persons: the middle classes, the capitalist mine-owners, and the working men. The middle class people, traders, professional men, engineers, and the like, either belonged to or were in sympathy with the National Union. It was they who had formed it. They had recently presented to the Volksraad a petition, signed by thirty-eight thousand non-enfranchised residents, asking for reforms, and this petition had been scornfully rejected, one member saying, with no disapproval from his colleagues, that if the strangers wanted to get what they called their rights they would have to fight for them. Their agitation had been conducted publicly and on constitutional lines, without threats of force. It was becoming plain, however, in 1895, that some at least of the leaders were now prepared to use force and would take arms whenever a prospect of success appeared. But under what flag would they fight? Would they adhere to their original idea, and maintain an independent South African Republic when they had ejected the dominant oligarchy and secured political power for all residents? Or would they hoist the Union Jack and carry the country back under the British Crown? No one could speak positively, but most thought that the former course would be taken. The Americans would be for it. Most of the Cape people who came of Dutch stock would be for it. Even among the pure English, some talked bitterly of Majuba Hill, and declared they would not fight to give the country back to Britain which had abandoned it in 1881.

The motives of these Reformers were simple and patent. Those of them who had been born and lived long in Africa thought it an intolerable wrong that, whereas everywhere else in South Africa they could acquire the suffrage and the means of influencing the government after two or three years' residence, they were in the Transvaal condemned to a long disability, and denied all voice in applying the taxes which they paid. Thinking of South Africa as practically one country, they complained that here, and here only, were they treated as aliens and inferiors. Both they and all the other Uitlanders had substantial grievances to redress. Food was inordinately dear, because a high tariff had been imposed on imports. Water-supply, police, sanitation, were all neglected. Not only was Dutch the official language, but in the public schools Dutch was then the only medium of instruction; and English children were compelled to learn arithmetic, geography, and history out of Dutch text-books. It was these abuses, rather than any wish to bring the Transvaal under the British flag, or even to establish a South African Confederation, that disposed them to revolt against a Government which they despised.

The mine-owning capitalists were a very small class, but powerful by their wealth, their intelligence, and their influence over those whom they employed. They had held aloof from the agitation which began in 1892, because they did not themselves care for the franchise, not meaning to spend their lives in the Transvaal, and because they knew that political disturbances would interfere with the mining industry. The leading man, and certainly one of the ablest men among them,[82] foresaw trouble as far back as June, 1894, when he wrote that the unrest of the country came "from the open hostility of the Government to the Uitlanders, and its hostility to all principles of sound Government; the end will be revolution;" and a few weeks later wrote again: "The mining companies ought to have arms. The courage of the Boers is exaggerated. If they knew there were in Johannesburg three thousand well-armed men, they would not talk so loud of destroying the town." Nevertheless, these capitalists, like capitalists all over the world, disliked force, and long refused to throw themselves into the movement. They raised a fund for the purpose of trying "to get a better Volksraad"—whether by influencing members or by supplying funds for election expenses has never been made clear. However, these efforts failed, and they became at last convinced that the loss of their industry from misgovernment was, and would continue, greater than any loss which temporary disturbances might involve. The vista of deep-level mining, which had now opened itself before them, made their grievances seem heavier. Before they entered on a new series of enterprises, which would at first be costly, they wished to relieve mining from the intolerable burdens of a dynamite monopoly, foolishly or corruptly granted to a firm which charged an extortionate price for this necessity; of a high tariff both on food-stuffs, involving large expenses in feeding the workpeople, and on mine machinery; of extravagantly heavy railway rates for coal; and of a system which, by making it easy for the Kafir workers to get drunk, reduced the available amount of native labour by one-third, and increased the number of accidents in the mines. These burdens made the difference of one or two or three per cent, on the dividend in the best mines, threatened the prospect of any dividend on the second best, and made it useless to persevere with the working of a third class, where the ore was of a still lower grade. Such were the considerations which at last determined several of the leading mine-owners to throw in their lot with the Reform party; and the fusion of the two streams gave a new force to the movement. This fusion took place in the middle of 1895, and had become known to many, though not to all, of the Johannesburgers in November of that year. It inspired them with fresh hopes, and made them think that the day of action was near. The object of these capitalists was to obtain better government, not the extinction of the Republic, or its addition to the territories of Britain. This, however, was not the main object of Mr. Rhodes (then prime minister of Cape Colony and managing director of the British South Africa Company), with whom they were (though the fact was known only to a very few of the leaders) by this time in communication. Although he was largely interested in some of the mines, his aim was, as even his opponents have now admitted, not a pecuniary one. It was (as is generally believed) to prevent the Transvaal from passing under anti-British influences, and to secure that it should ultimately become incorporated in a confederation of the several States and Colonies of South Africa under the British Crown. There were probably others among the leaders who shared this purpose; but some did not, and here was a question which would seem to have divided the chiefs as it divided the rank and file. A rising there was to be. But under what flag? This vital point was left unsettled, and at the last moment it caused a fatal delay.

The third class of Uitlanders consisted of the white workmen. It was the most numerous class, and its action would evidently be decisive. When the visitor who heard the situation discussed—for there was no secrecy observed—asked about the attitude of the working men, he received no very definite answer. The general belief was that they would respond to a call to arms; some from patriotism, because most of them were Englishmen and Australians; some because they meant to make the Transvaal their home, and had an interest in good government; some from sympathy with their employers; some from the love of a fight, because they were men of mettle. One or two of the Reform leaders were able speakers, and meant to rouse them by eloquence when the proper moment arrived. The result showed that a majority—that is, of the English-speaking workmen—were willing to fight. But when the day of battle seemed to be at hand, many, including most of the Cornish miners, proved to be indifferent, and departed by train amid the jeers of their comrades.

These three sections of Uitlanders constituted a numerical majority not merely of the dwellers on the Rand, but of the whole white population of the country.[83] There are about 65,000 Boers, all told, and about 24,000 male citizens over the age of sixteen. The English-speaking Uitlanders numbered nearly 100,000, of whom fully one-half were adult males. Seven-eighths of these were gathered on the Rand. Had they been armed and drilled and unanimous, they would have been irresistible. But they were not unanimous, and were, moreover, not only unarmed but also unorganized, being a crowd of persons suddenly gathered from the four winds of heaven.

Over against the Uitlanders stood the native Boer population, among whom we must distinguish two classes. The majority, consisting of the old "true blues," who hated the British Government and clung to their national ways, supported the Boer Government in its stubborn refusal to grant reforms. The President in particular had repeatedly declared himself against any concession, insisting that no concessions would satisfy the disaffected. He looked upon the whole movement as a scheme to destroy the independence of the country and hand it over to England. Exercising by his constant harangues in the Volksraad, what has been called a "dictatorship of persuasion", he warned the people that their customs, their freedom, their religion, were at stake, and could be saved only by keeping the newcomers out of power. He was confirmed in this policy of resistance by the advice of his Hollander officials, and especially of the State Secretary, an able and resolute man.

But the President, though powerful, was not omnipotent. There existed a considerable party opposed to him, which had nearly overthrown him at the last preceding presidential election. There was in the Volksraad a liberal minority, which advocated reforms. There were among the country Boers a number of moderate men who disliked the Hollander influence and the maladministration of the Government, and one was told (though with what truth I could not ascertain) that the trekking which went on out of the Transvaal into Mashonaland and to the far north-west was partly due to this discontent. There was also much opposition among the legal profession, Dutch as well as English, for attacks had been made upon the independence of the judiciary, and the reckless conduct of legislation gave displeasure. So far back as 1894 the Chief Justice, a man greatly respected for his abilities and his services to the State, had delivered a public address warning the people against the dangers which threatened them from neglect of the provisions of the constitution. Whether this party of opposition among the enfranchised citizens would have aided the Reform movement was doubtful. They would certainly not have done so had the British flag been raised. But if the movement had sought only the destruction of Hollander influence and the redress of grievances, they would at any rate have refused to join in resisting it.

"Why," it may be asked—"why, under these circumstances, with so many open enemies, and so many wavering supporters, did not President Kruger bow to the storm and avert revolt by reasonable concessions?" He had not a friend in the world except Germany, which had gone out of her way to offer him sympathy. But Germany was distant, and he had no seaport. The people of the Orange Free State had been ready to help the Transvaal in 1881, and from among the Boers of Cape Colony there might in the crisis of that year have come substantial succour. But both the Free State and the Cape Boers had been alienated by the unfriendly attitude of the President in commercial matters and by his refusal to employ Cape Dutchmen in the Transvaal service. The annoyance of these kindred communities had been very recently accentuated by a dispute about the drifts (i.e., fords where waggons cross) on the Orange River. It was therefore improbable that any help could be obtained from outside against a purely internal movement, which aimed solely at reform, and did not threaten the life of the Republic.

The answer to the question just put is to be found not so much in the material interests as in the sentiments of the old Boer party. They extended their hatred of the English, or rather perhaps of the British Government, to the English-speaking Uitlanders generally, and saw in the whole movement nothing but an English plot. If the President had cared to distinguish, he might have perceived that the capitalists cared, not for the franchise, but for the success of their mines; and he might, by abolishing the wasteful concessions,—which did not even enrich the State, but only the objects of its ill-directed bounty,—by reducing the tariff, and by keeping drink from the blacks, have disarmed the hostility of the mine owners, and have had only the National Union to deal with. Even the National Union would have lost most of its support if he had reformed the administration and allowed English to be used in the schools. He might have taken a hint from the Romans, who, when they admitted a large body of new citizens, managed to restrict their voting power, and might, in granting the suffrage to those who had resided for a certain period on the Rand, have kept the representation of the Rand district so small that it could not turn the balance against the old Boer party in the Volksraad. Had he gone further, and extended the franchise to all immigrants after, say, five years' residence, he might not only have disarmed opposition, but have made the South African Republic a powerful State, no considerable section of whose inhabitants would thereafter have thought of putting themselves under the British Crown. To have gone this length would no doubt have been to take the risk that a Republic of Boers might become before long a Republic of Englishmen, with an English President; and from this he naturally recoiled, not merely out of personal ambition, but out of honest national feeling. But short of this, he might, by dividing his enemies, have averted a grave peril, from which he was in the end delivered, not by his own strength, but by the mistakes of his antagonists. However, he kept the ship steadily on her course. He had grown accustomed to the complaints of the agitators, and thought they would not go beyond agitation. When pressed to take some repressive measure, he answered that you must wait for the tortoise to put its head out before you hit it, and he appeared to think it would keep its head in. He is one of the most interesting figures of our time; this old President, shrewd, cool, dogged, wary, courageous; typifying the qualities of his people, and strong because he is in sympathy with them; adding to his trust in Providence no small measure of worldly craft; uneducated, but able to foil the statesmen of Europe at their own weapons, and perhaps all the more capable because his training has been wholly that of an eventful life and not of books.

This was how things stood in the Transvaal in November, 1895. People have talked of a conspiracy, but never before was there, except on the stage,[84] so open a conspiracy. Two-thirds of the action—there was another third, which has only subsequently become known—went on before the public. The visitor had hardly installed himself in an hotel at Pretoria before people began to tell him that an insurrection was imminent, that arms were being imported, that Maxim guns were hidden, and would be shown to him if he cared to see them, an invitation which he did not feel called on to accept. In Johannesburg little else was talked of, not in dark corners, but at the club where everybody lunches, and between the acts at the play. There was something humorous in hearing the English who dominate in so many other places, talking of themselves as a downtrodden nationality, and the Boers as their oppressors, declaring that misgovernment could not be endured for ever, and that those who would be free themselves must strike the blow. The effect was increased by the delightful unconsciousness of the English that similar language is used in Ireland to denounce Saxon tyranny. The knowledge that an insurrection was impending was not confined to the Transvaal. All over South Africa one heard the same story; all over South Africa men waited for news from Johannesburg, though few expected the explosion to come so soon. One thing alone was not even guessed at. In November it did not seem to have crossed any one's mind that the British South Africa Company would have any hand in the matter. Had it been supposed that it was concerned, much of the sympathy which the movement received would have vanished.

As I am not writing a history of the revolution, but merely describing the Johannesburg aspects of its initial stage, I need not attempt the task—for which, indeed, no sufficient materials have as yet been given to the world—of explaining by what steps and on what terms the Company's managing director and its administrator and its police came into the plan. But it seems probable that the Johannesburg leaders did not begin to count upon help from the Company's force before the middle of 1895 at earliest, and that they did not regard that force as anything more than an ultimate resource in case of extreme need. Knowing that the great body of the Uitlanders, on whose support they counted, would be unorganised and leaderless, they desired, as the moment for action approached, to have a military nucleus round which their raw levies might gather, in case the Boers seemed likely to press them hard. But this was an afterthought. When the movement began it was a purely Johannesburg movement, and it was intended to bear that character to the end, and to avoid all appearance of being an English irruption.[85]

To the visitor who saw and heard what I have been describing—and no Englishman could pass through without seeing and hearing it—two questions naturally presented themselves. One related to the merits of the case. This was a question which only a visitor considered, for the inhabitants were drawn by race or interest to one side or the other. It raised a point often debated by moralists: What are the circumstances which justify insurrection? Some cases are too clear for argument. Obviously any subject of a bloodthirsty tyrant ruling without or against law is justified in taking up arms. No one doubts that the Christian subjects of the Sultan ought to rebel if they had a prospect of success; and those who try to make them rebel are blamed only because the prospect of success is wanting. On the other hand, it is clear that subjects of a constitutional Government, conducted in accordance with law, do wrong and must be punished, if they take arms, even when they have grievances to redress. Here, however, was a case which seemed to lie between the extreme instances. The Uitlanders, it need hardly be said, did not concern themselves with nice distinctions. In the interior of South Africa Governments and Constitutions were still in a rudimentary stage; nor had the habit of obeying them been fully formed. So many non-legal things had been done in a high-handed way, and so many raids into native territories had been made by the Boers themselves, that the sort of respect for legality which Europeans feel was still imperfectly developed in all sections of the population. Those of the Reformers, however, who sought to justify their plans, argued that the Boer Government was an oligarchy which overtaxed its subjects, and yet refused them those benefits which a civilised Government is bound to give. It was the Government of a small and ignorant minority, and, since they believed it to be corrupt as well as incompetent, it inspired no respect. Peaceful agitation had proved useless. Did not the sacred principle of no taxation without representation, which had been held to justify the American Revolution, justify those who had been patient so long in trying to remove their grievances by force, of course with as little effusion of blood as possible?

On the other hand, there was much to be said for the Boers, not only from the legal, but from the sentimental, side of the case. They had fled out of Cape Colony sixty years before, had suffered many perils and triumphed over many foes, had recovered their independence by their own courage when Britain had deprived them of it, had founded a commonwealth upon their own lines and could now keep it as their own only by the exclusion of those aliens in blood, speech and manners who had recently come among them. They had not desired these strangers, nor had the strangers come for anything but gold. True, they had opened the land to them, they had permitted them to buy the gold-reefs, they had filled their coffers with the taxes which the miners paid. But the strangers came with notice that it was a Boer State they were entering, and most of them had come, not to stay, and to identify themselves with the old citizens, but to depart after amassing gain. Were these immigrants of yesterday to be suffered to overturn the old Boer State, and build up on its ruins a new one under which the Boer would soon find his cherished customs gone and himself in turn a stranger? Had not the English many other lands to rule, without appropriating this one also? Put the grievances of which the Uitlanders complained at their highest, and they did not amount to wrongs such as had in other countries furnished the usual pretext for insurrection. Life, religion, property, personal freedom, were not at stake. The worst any one suffered was to be overtaxed and to want some of those advantages which the old citizens had never possessed and did not care to have. These were hardships, but were they hardships such as could justify a recourse to arms?

The other question which an observer asked himself was whether an insurrection would succeed. Taking a cooler view of the position than it was easy for a resident to take, he felt some doubt on this point, and it occurred to him to wonder whether, if the Government was really so corrupt as the Uitlanders described it, the latter might not attain their object more cheaply, as well as peaceably, by using those arguments which were said to prevail with many members of the Volksraad. Supposing this to be impossible,—and it may well have been found impossible, for men not scrupulous in lesser matters may yet refuse to tamper with what they hold vital,—were the forces at the disposal of the Reform leaders sufficient to overthrow the Government? It had only two or three hundred regular troops, artillerymen stationed at Pretoria, and said to be not very efficient. But the militia included all Boers over sixteen; and the Boer, though not disciplined in the European way, was accustomed to shoot, inured to hardships by his rough life, ready to fight to the death for his independence. This militia, consisting of eighteen thousand men or more, would have been, when all collected, more than a match in the field for any force the Uitlanders were prepared to arm. And in point of fact, when the rising took place, the latter had only some three thousand rifles ready, while few of their supporters knew anything of fighting. As the Reform leaders were aware that they would be out-matched if the Government had time to gather its troops, it has been subsequently hinted that they meant to carry Pretoria by a coup de main, capturing the President, and forthwith, before the Boer militia could assemble, to issue a call for a general popular vote or plebiscite of all the inhabitants, Boers and Uitlanders, which should determine the future form of government. Others have thought that the Reformers would not have taken the offensive, but have entrenched themselves in Johannesburg, and have held out there, appealing meanwhile to the High Commissioner, as representative of the Paramount Power, to come up, interpose his mediation, and arrange for the peaceable taking of such a general popular vote as I have mentioned. To do this it might not have been necessary to defend the town for more than a week or ten days, before which time the general sympathy which they expected from the rest of South Africa would have made itself felt. Besides, there were in the background (though this was of course unknown to the visitor and to all but a few among the leaders) the British South Africa Company's police force by this time beginning to gather at Pitsani, who were pledged to come if summoned, and whose presence would have enabled them to resist a Boer assault on the town.

As everybody knows, the question of strength was never tested. The rising was to have been ushered in by a public meeting at the end of December. This meeting was postponed till the 6th of January; but the Company's police force, instead of waiting to be summoned, started for Johannesburg at the time originally fixed. Their sudden entrance, taking the Reform leaders by surprise and finding them unprepared, forced the movement to go off at half-cock, and gave to it an aspect quite different from that which it had hitherto borne. That which had been a local agitation now appeared in the light of an English invasion, roused all the Boers, of whatever party, to defend their country, and drew from the High Commissioner an emphatic disclaimer and condemnation of the expedition, which the home Government repeated. The rising at Johannesburg, which the entrance of the police had precipitated, ended more quickly than it had begun, as soon as the surrender of the Company's forces had become known, for the representatives of the High Commissioner besought the Uitlanders to lay down their arms and save the lives of the leaders of that force.[86] This they did, and, after what had happened, there was really nothing else to be done.

The most obvious moral of the failure is the old one, that revolutions are not so easy to carry out as they look when one plans them beforehand. Of all the insurrections and conspiracies recorded in history, probably not five per cent. have succeeded. The reason is that when a number of private persons not accustomed to joint action have to act secretly together, unable to communicate freely with one another, and still less able to appeal beforehand to those on whose eventual support they rely, the chances of disagreement, of misunderstanding, of failure to take some vital step at exactly the right moment, are innumerable; while the Government in power has the advantage of united counsels, and can issue orders to officers who are habituated to prompt obedience.[87] In this instance, the plan was being conducted by three groups of persons in three places distant from one another,—Johannesburg, Pitsani, and Cape Town,—so that the chances of miscarriage were immensely increased. Had there been one directing mind and will planted at Johannesburg, the proper centre for direction, the movement might have proved successful.

Another reflection will have occurred to the reader, as it occurred to the visitor who saw the storm brewing in November, 1895: Why could not the Reformers have waited a little longer? Time was on their side. The Uitlanders were rapidly growing by the constant stream of immigrants. In a few years more they would have so enormously outnumbered the native Boers that not only would their material strength have been formidable, but their claim to the franchise would have become practically irresistible. Moreover, President Kruger was an old man, no longer in strong health. When age and infirmity compelled his retirement, neither of the persons deemed most likely to succeed would have thrown obstacles in the way of reform, nor would any successor have been able to oppose a resistance as strong as Mr. Kruger's had proved. These considerations were so obvious that one asks why, with the game in their hands at the end of a few years, the various groups concerned did not wait quietly till the ripe fruit fell into their mouths. Different causes have been assigned for their action. It is said that they believed that the Transvaal Government was on the eve of entering into secret relations, in violation of the Convention of 1884, with a European Power, and that this determined them to strike before any such new complication arose. Others hint that some of those concerned believed that a revolution must in any case soon break out in the Transvaal, that a revolution would turn the country into an independent English Republic, that such a republic would spread Republican feelings among the British Colonies, and lead before long to their separation from the mother country. To prevent this, they were resolved to take control of the movement and steer it away from those rocks. Without denying that these or other still more conjectural motives which one hears assigned may have influenced some of the more long-sighted leaders,—and the Transvaal, with its vast wealth and growing population, was no doubt becoming the centre of gravity in South African politics,—I conceive that a more obvious cause of haste may be found in the impatience of those Uitlander residents who were daily vexed by grievances for which they could get no redress, and in the annoyance of the capitalists, who saw their mining interests languishing and the work of development retarded. When people have long talked over their wrongs and long planned schemes for throwing off a detested yoke, they yield at last to their own impatience, feeling half ashamed that so much talk should not have been followed by action.

Whatever were the motives at work, whatever the ultimate aims of the leaders, few things could have been more deplorable than what in fact occurred. Since the annexation of the Transvaal in 1877 nothing has done so much to rekindle racial hostility in South Africa; nothing has so much retarded and still impedes the settlement of questions which were already sufficiently difficult.

I have described in this chapter only such part of the circumstances which led up to the rising as I actually saw, and have, for reasons already stated, confined myself to a narrative of the main facts, and a statement of the theories put forward, abstaining from comments on the conduct of individuals. The expedition of the British South Africa Company's police took place after I left the country. Of it and of what led to it oral accounts have been given by some of the principal actors, as well as by many independent pens, while the visible phenomena of the Johannesburg movement have been less described and are certainly less understood. I have dwelt on them the more fully not only because they are a curious episode in history which will not soon lose its interest, but also because the political and industrial situation on the Witwatersrand remained in 1897 substantially what it was in November 1895. Some few reforms have been given, some others promised. But the mine owners did not cease to complain, and the Uitlanders were excluded from the suffrage as rigorously as ever. The Transvaal difficulty remained, and still disturbed the tranquillity of South Africa. The problem is not a simple one, and little or no progress had been made towards its solution.

[Footnote 78: Since the first edition of this book appeared, Mr. Selous has told me—and no one's authority is higher, for he has lived much amongst them—that this statement is exaggerated, and that, great as has been and is the dislike of the Boers to the British Government, the average Boer is friendly to the individual Englishman.]

[Footnote 79: I was told that their frequent term (when they talk among themselves) for an Englishman is "rotten egg," but some persons who had opportunities of knowing have informed me, since this book was first published, that this is not so. Another common Boer name for an Englishman is "red-neck," drawn from the fact that the back of an Englishman's neck is often burnt red by the sun. This does not happen to the Boer, who always wears a broad-brimmed hat.]

[Footnote 80: Their laws at one time forbade the working of gold mines altogether, for they held with the Roman poet (aurum inrepertum et sic melius situm) that it does least harm when undiscovered.]

[Footnote 81: I have elsewhere analysed (in the Forum for April, 1896) this constitution, and discussed the question whether it is to be regarded as a true Rigid constitution, like that of the United States, of the Swiss Confederation, and of the Orange Free State, or as a Flexible constitution, alterable by the ordinary legislative machinery. Further examination of the matter has confirmed me in the view there suggested, that the constitution belongs to the latter category.]

[Footnote 82: Copies of the letters written by Mr. Lionel Phillips were seized after the rising and published by the Boer Government.]

[Footnote 83: There were some 700,000 Kafirs in the Transvaal, but no one reckoned them as possible factors in a contest, any more than sheep or oxen.]

[Footnote 84: This operatic element appeared in the rising itself, when a fire-escape, skilfully disguised to resemble a Maxim gun, was moved backward and forward across the stage at Johannesburg for the purpose of frightening the Boers at a distance.]

[Footnote 85: It is hardly necessary to point out the absurdity of the suggestion that the Company intended to seize the Transvaal for itself. The Company could no more have taken the Transvaal than it could have taken Natal. It was for self-government that the insurgent-Uitlanders were to rise, and they would have objected to be governed by the Company at least as much as they objected to be governed by the Boers. Such individual members of the Company as held Rand mining shares would have profited by the better administration of the country under a reformed Government, but they would have profited in exactly the same way as shareholders in Paris or Amsterdam. This point, obvious enough to any one who knows South Africa, is clearly put by M. Mermeix, in his interesting little book, La Revolution de Johannesburg. Other fanciful hypotheses have been put forward, which it seems needless to notice.]

[Footnote 86: Much controversy has arisen as to the promise which the Boer commandant made, when the police force surrendered, that the lives of its leaders should be spared. Whatever might have happened immediately after the surrender, they would in any case not have been put to death in cold blood at Pretoria, for that would have been a blunder, which a man so astute and so far from cruel as the President would not have committed.]

[Footnote 87: When a conspiracy succeeds, the chief conspirator is usually some one already wielding some civil or military power, as Louis Napoleon did when he overcame the French Assembly in 1851.]



CHAPTER XXVI

THE ECONOMIC FUTURE OF SOUTH AFRICA

Though I do not attempt to present in this book an account of the agricultural and mineral resources of South Africa, some words must be said regarding its economic prospects—that is to say, regarding the natural sources of wealth which it possesses, their probable development, and the extent to which that development will increase the still scanty population. The political and social future of the country must so largely depend on its economic future that any one who desires to comprehend those political problems to the solution of which the people are moving, must first consider what sort of a people, and how large a people, the material conditions which nature furnishes are likely to produce.

The chief charm of travel through a new country is the curiosity which the thought of its future inspires. In South Africa, a land singularly unlike any part of Europe or of North America, this curiosity is keenly felt by the visitor. When he begins to speculate on the future, his first question is, Will these wildernesses ever become peopled, as most of North America and a large part of Australia have now been peopled, and if so, what will be the character of the population? Will South Africa become one of the great producing or manufacturing countries of the world? Will it furnish a great market for European goods? Will it be populous enough and rich enough to grow into one of the Powers of the southern hemisphere?

Let us begin by recalling the physical features of the country. Most of it is high and dry; all of it is hot. The parts which are high and dry are also healthy, and fit for the races of Europe to dwell in. But are they equally fit to support a dense population?

South Africa has three great natural sources of wealth: agricultural land, pasture-land, and minerals. The forests are too scanty to be worth regarding: they are not, and probably never will be, sufficient to supply its own needs. Fisheries also are insignificant, and not likely ever to constitute an industry, so we may confine ourselves to the three first named.

Of these three agriculture is now, and has hitherto been, by far the least important. Out of an area of two hundred and twenty-one thousand square miles in Cape Colony alone, probably not more than one one-thousandth part is now under any kind of cultivation, whether by natives or by whites; and in the whole country, even if we exclude the German and Portuguese territories, the proportion must be even smaller. There are no figures available, so one can make only the roughest possible conjecture. As regards more than half of the country, this fact is explained by the dryness of the climate. Not only the Karroo region in the interior of Cape Colony, but also the vast region stretching north from the Karroo nearly as far as the west-coast territories of Portugal, is too arid for tillage. So are large parts of the Free State, of the Transvaal, and of Matabililand. Where there is a sufficient rainfall, as in many districts along the south and south-east coasts, much of the country is too hilly and rough for cultivation; so that it would be well within the mark to say that of the whole area mentioned above far less than one-tenth is suitable for raising any kind of crop without artificial aid. Much, no doubt, remains which might be tilled, and is not tilled, especially in the country between the south-eastern edge of the great plateau and the sea; and that this land lies untouched is due partly to the presence of the Kafir tribes, who occupy more land than they cultivate, partly to the want or the dearness of labour, partly to the tendency, confirmed by long habit, of the whites to prefer stock-farming to tillage. The chief agricultural products are at present cereals, i.e., wheat, oats, maize, and Kafir corn (a kind of millet), fruit and sugar. The wheat and maize raised are not sufficient for the consumption of the inhabitants, so that these articles are largely imported, in spite of the duties levied on them. There is a considerable and an increasing export of fruit, which goes to Europe,—chiefly to the English market—in January, February, and March, the midsummer and autumn of the southern hemisphere. Sugar is grown on the hot lands of Natal lying along the sea, and might, no doubt, be grown all the way north along the sea from there to the Zambesi. Rice would do well on the wet coast lands, but is scarcely at all raised. Tea has lately been planted on the hills in Natal, and would probably thrive also on the high lands of Mashonaland. There is plenty of land fit for cotton. The tobacco of the Transvaal is so pleasant for smoking in a pipe that one cannot but expect it to be in time much more largely and carefully grown than it is now. Those who have grown accustomed to it prefer it to any other. With the exception of the olive, which apparently does not succeed, and of the vine, which succeeds only in the small district round Cape Town that enjoys a true summer and winter, nearly all the staples of the warmer parts of the temperate zone and of subtropical regions can be grown in some district or other of the country.

The introduction of irrigation would enormously enlarge the area of tillage, for some of the regions now hopelessly arid, such as the Karroo, have a soil of surprising fertility, which produces luxuriant crops when water is led on to it. Millions of acres might be made to wave with corn were great tanks, like those of India, constructed to hold the rains of the wet season, for it is not so much the inadequacy of the rainfall as the fact that it is confined to three or four months, that makes the country arid. Something might also be hoped from the digging of artesian wells dug like those which have lately been successfully bored in Algeria, and have proved so infinitely valuable to parts of Australia. Already about three hundred thousand acres are cultivated with the aid of irrigation in Cape Colony. At present, however, it has been deemed hardly worth while to execute large irrigation works or to bore wells.[88] The price of cereals has sunk so low over all the world that South Africans find it cheaper to import them than to spend capital on breaking up waste lands; and there is plenty of land already which might be cultivated without irrigation if there were settlers coming to cultivate it, or if Kafir labour was sufficiently effective to make it worth the while of enterprising men to undertake farming on a large scale. The same remarks apply generally to the other kinds of produce I have mentioned. As population grows, and the local demand for food increases, more land will be brought under the plough or the hoe. Some day, perhaps, when the great corn-exporting countries of to-day—North America, La Plata, central India, southern Russia—have become so populous as to have much less of their grain crops to spare for other countries, it will become profitable to irrigate the Karroo, on which the Kafir of the future will probably prove a more efficient labourer than he is now. But that day is distant, and until it arrives, agriculture will continue to play a very subordinate part in South African industry, and will employ a comparatively small white population.

Ever since the last years of the seventeenth century, when the settlers were beginning to spread out from the Cape Peninsula towards the then still unknown interior, the main occupation of the colonists, first of the Dutch and afterwards of both Dutch and English, has been the keeping of cattle and sheep. So it remains to-day. Nearly all the land that is not rough mountain or waterless desert, and much that to the inexperienced eye seems a waterless desert, is in the hands of stock-farmers, whose ranges are often of enormous size, from six thousand acres upward. In 1893 there were in Cape Colony about 2,000,000 cattle, in Natal 725,000, in the Orange Free State 900,000, and in Bechuanaland the Bamangwato (Khama's tribe) alone had 800,000. Of these last only some 5,000 are said to have survived the murrain, which worked havoc in the other three first-mentioned territories also. In 1896 there were in Cape Colony alone 14,400,000 sheep and 5,000,000 Angora and other goats. The number of sheep might be largely increased were more effective measures against the diseases that affect them carried out. All the country, even the Kalahari desert, which used to be thought hopelessly sterile, is now deemed fit to put some sort of live stock upon, though, of course, the more arid the soil, the greater the area required to feed one sheep. To the traveller who crosses its weary stretches in the train, the Karroo seems a barren waste; but it produces small succulent shrubs much relished by sheep, and every here and there a well or a stagnant pool may be found which supplies water enough to keep the creatures alive. Here six acres is the average allowed for one sheep. Tracts of rough ground, covered with patches of thick scrubby bushes, are turned to account as ostrich farms, whence large quantities of feathers are exported to Europe and America. In 1896 the number of ostriches in Cape Colony was returned as 225,000. The merino sheep, introduced about seventy years ago, thrives in Cape Colony, and its wool has become one of the most valuable products of the country. In the Free State both it and the Angora goat do well, and the pasture lands of that territory support also great numbers of cattle and some horses. The Free State and Bechuanaland are deemed to be among the very best ranching grounds in all South Africa.

Although, as I have said, nearly all the country is more or less fit for live stock, it must be remembered that this does not imply either great pecuniary returns or a large population. In most districts a comparatively wide area of ground is required to feed what would be deemed in western America a moderate herd or flock, because the pasture is thin, droughts are frequent, and locusts sometimes destroy a large part of the herbage. Thus the number of persons for whom the care of cattle or sheep in any given area provides occupation is a mere trifle compared to the number which would be needed to till the same area. Artesian wells might, no doubt, make certain regions better for pastoral purposes; but here, as in the case of agriculture, we find little prospect of any dense population, and, indeed, a probability that the white people will continue to be few relatively to the area of the country. On a large grazing farm the proportion of white men to black servants is usually about three to twenty-five; and though the proportion of whites is, of course, much larger in the small towns which supply the wants of the surrounding country, still any one can see with how few whites a ranching country may get along.

The third source of wealth lies in the minerals. It was the latest source to become known—indeed, till thirty-two years ago, nobody suspected it. Iron had been found in some places, copper in others; but neither had been largely worked, and the belief in the existence of the precious metals rested on nothing more than a Portuguese tradition. In 1867 the first diamond was picked up by a hunter out of a heap of shining pebbles near the banks of the Orange River, above its confluence with the Vaal. In 1869-70 the stones began to be largely found near where the town of Kimberley now stands. This point has been henceforth the centre of the industry, though there are a few other mines elsewhere of smaller productive power. The value of the present annual output exceeds L4,000,000, but it is not likely to increase, being, in fact, now kept down in order not to depress the market by over-supply. Altogether more than L100,000,000 worth of diamonds have been exported. The discovery of diamonds, as was observed in an earlier chapter, opened a new period in South African history, drawing crowds of immigrants, developing trade through the seaports as well as industry at the mining centres, and producing a group of enterprising men who, when the various diamond-mining companies had been amalgamated, sought and found new ways of employing their capital. Fifteen years after the great diamond finds came the still greater gold finds at the Witwatersrand. The working of these mines has now become the greatest industry in the country, and Johannesburg is the centre toward which the import trade converges.

I need not repeat the description given in a previous chapter (Chapter XVIII) of the Rand mining district. The reader will remember that it differs from all the other gold-fields of South Africa in one essential feature—that of the comparative certainty of its yield. Accordingly, in considering the future of South African gold, I will speak first of those other gold-fields and then separately of the Rand district.

Gold has been found in many places south of the Zambesi. It occurs here and there in small quantities in Cape Colony, in somewhat larger quantities in Natal, Zululand, and Swaziland, in the eastern and north-eastern districts of the Transvaal, at Tati in northern Bechuanaland, and in many spots through Matabililand and Mashonaland. In all (or nearly all) these places it occurs in quartz reefs resembling those of North America and Australia. Some reefs, especially those of the northern region between the Limpopo and Zambesi, are promising, and great quantities of gold have in times long past been taken out of this region. As already explained (Chapter XVII), it seems probable, though not certain, that in many districts a mining industry will be developed which will give employment to thousands, perhaps many thousands, of natives, and to hundreds, perhaps many hundreds, of white engineers and foremen. Should this happen, markets will be created in these districts, land will be cultivated, railways will be made, and the local trades which a thriving population requires will spring up. But the life of these gold reefs will not be a long one. As the gold is found in quartz rock, and only to a small extent in gravel or other alluvial deposits, the mining requires capital, and will be carried on by companies. It will be carried on quickly, and so quickly with the aid of the enormously improved scientific appliances we now possess, as to exhaust at no distant period the mineral which the rocks contain. I saw in Transylvania in 1866 a gold mine which was worked in the days of the Romans, and was being worked still. But mining now is as different from the mining of the ancients or of the middle ages as a locomotive engine is from an ox-waggon, such are the resources which chemical and mechanical science place at our disposal. Accordingly, the payable parts of the quartz reefs will have been drained of their gold in a few years, or, at any rate, in a few decades, just as many of the silver lodes of Nevada have already been worked out and abandoned. There will then be no further cause for the existence of the mine-workers at those points, and the population will decline just as that of Nevada has declined. These South African districts will, however, be in one point far better off than Nevada: they possess land fit everywhere for ranching, and in many places for tillage also. Ranching will, therefore, support a certain, though not large, permanent population; while tillage, though the profitable market close by will have been largely reduced by the departure of the miners, will probably continue, because the land will have been furnished with farmhouses and fences, perhaps in places with irrigation works, and because the railways that will have been constructed will enable agricultural products to reach more distant markets, which by that time may possibly be less glutted with the cereals of North and South America. Accordingly, assuming that a fair proportion of the quartz reef gold-fields turn out well, it may be predicted that population will increase in and round them during the next ten years, and that for some twenty years more this population will maintain itself, though of course not necessarily in the same spots, because, as the reefs first developed become exhausted, the miners will shift to new places. After these thirty or possibly forty years, that is to say, before the middle of next century, the country, having parted with whatever gold it contains, will have to fall back on its pasture and its arable land; but having become settled and developed, it may count on retaining a reasonable measure of prosperity.

This forecast may seem to be of a highly conjectural nature. Conjectural it must be, if only for this reason: that the value of most of the quartz reefs referred to is still quite uncertain. But one cannot visit a new country without attempting to make a forecast of some kind; and the experience of other countries goes to show that, while deposits of the precious metals are, under our present conditions, no more an abiding source of wealth than is a guano island, they may immensely accelerate the development of a country, giving it a start in the world, and providing it with advantages, such as railway communication, which could not otherwise be looked for. This they are now doing for Matabililand and Mashonaland, countries in which it would not at present be worth while to construct railroads but for the hopes attaching to the mines. This they may do for Zululand and Swaziland also, should the reefs in those districts prove profitable.

So much for the quartz reefs. As has been observed, the gold mines of the Witwatersrand differ in the much greater certainty of their yield and in the much greater quantity of auriferous rock which they have been ascertained to contain. It is probable that gold of the value of L700,000,000 remains to be extracted from them. Already a population of at least 150,000 white men has collected in what was in 1885 a barren wilderness; already about L15,000,000 of gold per annum is being extracted. It is practically certain that this production and population will go on increasing during the next few years, and that the mines will not be worked out before the middle of next century at earliest. For the next fifty years, therefore, the Rand district will be the economic and industrial centre of South Africa and the seat of the largest European community. What will it be after those fifty or perhaps sixty years, when the banket beds have been drained of their gold to a depth of 5,000 feet, the greatest at which mining seems to be practicable? It is possible that the other industries which are rising as ancillary to mining may for a while and to a reduced extent hold their ground. Probably, however, they will wither up and vanish. The land will remain, but the land of this highest part of the Transvaal, though fit for pasture, does not lend itself to tillage. The probabilities, therefore, are that the fate of Nevada will in time descend upon the Witwatersrand—that the houses that are now springing up will be suffered to fall to ruin, that the mouths of the shafts will in time be covered by thorny shrublets, and that soon after A.D. 2000 has been reached this busy hive of industry and noisy market-place of speculation will have again become the stony solitude which it was in 1880. For all practical purposes, however, an event a hundred years away is too distant to be worth regarding. The world will in A.D. 2000 be so different from what it is now that the exhaustion of the Rand gold-field may have a different bearing from any which we can now foresee. Johannesburgers themselves are not disquieted by thoughts of a future that is even half a century distant. The older sort will not live to see it, and the younger sort expect to have made their fortunes long before it arrives. Still it must be remembered that, so far as minerals go, South Africa is now living, not on her income, but on her capital, and that in twenty-five years half or more of the capital may be gone.

There are other metals in the country besides the precious ones. The presence of extensive coal-beds in the Transvaal and Natal has been a circumstance of the first importance for the profitable working of the Rand gold-beds, and may encourage the growth of some kinds of manufacture.[89] Iron is abundant both in the Transvaal and in Mashonaland, and has been found in many other districts, often in the neighbourhood of coal. It is not worked now, because all iron goods can be obtained more cheaply from Europe; but it may one day grow into an industry, as copper-mining already has in Little Namaqualand on the west coast.

The mention of coal and iron brings us to another branch of the subject—the possibility of establishing manufactures which may become a source of wealth and the support of an industrial population. At present the manufactures are insignificant. All the textile goods, for instance, nearly all the metal goods, and by far the larger part even of the beer and spirits (intended for the whites) and mineral waters consumed in the country come from Europe. The Boers in the two Republics and the Boer element at the Cape have neither taste nor talent for this kind of industry, and such capital as exists is naturally attracted to mining enterprises. Nevertheless, it may be thought that as capital accumulates things will change, and that the English part of the population in the two British Colonies will take to manufactures, as it has done in Australia. Let us see whether this is probable.

To enable South African manufacturers to compete on a large scale with the established manufacturing countries, such as those in north-western Europe or north-eastern America, three things are needed—a large market, cheap sources of mechanical power, cheap and efficient labour. Of these the first is at present wanting, and even should the growth of the Rand mining district raise the white population of the two Colonies and two Republics from something over 700,000 to 1,200,000, that number of consumers will still be too small to encourage the expenditure of any large capital in endeavouring to produce articles which the immense manufacturing establishments of Europe, working for populous markets, can turn out more cheaply. As to mechanical forces, there are no rivers to give water-power; and though Natal, Zululand, and the Transvaal provide coal, the quality of the mineral is inferior to that obtainable in South Wales or Belgium or Pennsylvania. But the most important conditions for success are those connected with labour. In South Africa skilled labour is dear because scarce, and unskilled labour is dear because bad. As was explained in a preceding chapter, all rough, hard work is done by natives; not that white men could not, in the more temperate regions, perfectly well do it, but because white men think it beneath them and only fit for blacks. Now black labour is seldom effective labour. The mixed race called "Cape boys" are good drivers, and quite fit for many kinds of railway work. They are employed in the building trades and in sawmills, and to some extent in such trades as bootmaking. The Kafirs of the eastern province and of Natal are more raw than the "Cape boys." They make good platelayers on railways, and having plenty of physical strength, will do any sort of rough work they are set to. But they have no aptitude for trades requiring skill, and it will take a generation or two to fit them for the finer kinds of carpentry or metal-work, or for the handling of delicate machinery. Besides, they are often changeable and unstable, apt to forsake their employment for some trifling cause. Their wages are certainly not high, ranging from ten to twenty shillings a month, besides food, for any kind of rough outdoor work. Miners are paid higher, and a Malay mason will get from thirty to forty shillings a week; but a white labourer at twice the price would, for most kinds of work, be cheaper. Nor is it easy to get the amount of native labour that may be needed, for the Kafir prefers to till his own patch of ground or turn out his cattle on the veldt. The scale for white workmen is, of course, far higher, ranging from L2 10s. to L8 a week, according to the nature of the work and the competence of the artisan. Such wages are nearly double those paid in England, treble those paid in some manufacturing districts of Germany or Belgium, higher even than those paid in the United States. It is therefore evident that, what with the badness of the cheaper labour and the dearness of the better, a manufacturer would, in South Africa, be severely handicapped in competing with either Europe or the United States. Protectionists may think that a high tariff on foreign manufactured goods would foster industrial undertakings in these Colonies. Such a tariff would, however, need to be fixed very high to give the local factory a chance—so high, indeed, that it would excite serious opposition from the consumer. And, in point of fact, there has been hitherto no cry for a tariff to protect home manufactures, because so few people are at present interested in having it. Such protection as exists is directed to food-stuffs, in order to please the agricultural classes, and induce a wider cultivation of the soil; and the tariff on other goods is almost solely for revenue.

The conditions I have described may, and probably will, change as the industrial training of the natives improves and their aversion to labour declines under the pressure of increasing numbers and a reduction of the quantity of land available for them. But a review of the present state of things points to the conclusion that no great development of manufactures, and of a white population occupied in manufactures, is to be expected, at least for some time to come.

Three other observations must at this stage be made. Till very recently, South Africans had what the Psalmist desired—neither poverty nor riches. There were hardly any white paupers, because the substratum of population was black; and as few black paupers, because a Kafir needs nothing but food. On the other hand, there were no rich whites. The farmers, both agriculturists and ranchmen, lived in a sort of rude plenty, with no luxuries and very little money. Everybody was tolerably well off, nobody was wealthy. There were large stock-farms, as in Australia, but the owners of these farms did not make the immense gains which many Australian squatters and some American cattle-men have made. Accordingly, when capital was needed for the development of the mines it was obtained from home. A few successful residents did, no doubt, make out of the diamond fields large sums, which they presently applied to the development of the gold-fields. But by far the greater part of the money spent in opening up mines, both on the Witwatersrand and elsewhere, has come from Europe, chiefly from England, but to a considerable extent also from France, Germany and Holland. Accordingly nineteen twentieths at least of the profits made by the miners are paid to shareholders in those countries, and not expended in South Africa. Even among those who have made fortunes out of diamonds or gold by their personal enterprise on the spot, the majority return to Europe and spend their incomes there. The country, therefore, does not get the full benefit, in the way either of payments for labour (except, of course, labour at the mines) or of increased consumption of articles, out of its mineral products, but is rather in the position of Mexico or Peru in the seventeenth century, when the bulk of the precious metals won from the mines went to Spain as a sort of tribute. There are at this moment probably not more than a dozen rich men, as Europe counts riches, resident in the country, and all of these are to be found either at Johannesburg or at Cape Town. Most of them will after a time betake themselves to Europe. Nor is there any sign that the number of local fortunes will increase; for the motives which draw men away from Johannesburg to Europe are likely to continue as strong in the future as they are at present.

Secondly, as the whites are not—except at Johannesburg, where the lavishness of a mining population is conspicuous—large consumers of luxuries, so the blacks are poor consumers of all save the barest necessaries of life. It is not merely that they have no money. It is that they have no wants, save of food and of a few common articles of clothing. The taste for the articles which civilized man requires is growing, as the traders in Bechuanaland have already begun to find, but it grows slowly, and is still in a rudimentary stage. The demand which South Africa is likely to offer either for home-made or for imported products must, therefore, be measured, not by the gross population, but by the white population, and, indeed, by the town-dwelling whites; for the Dutch farmer or ranchman, whether in the British Colonies or in the Dutch Republics, has very little cash in his pocket, and lives in a primitive way. It is only the development of the mines that makes South Africa a growing market for European goods.

Thirdly, there is not much European immigration, except of artizans; and these go chiefly to the gold mines of the Rand. Few agriculturists come out, because farms have seldom been offered by any of the Governments on the same easy terms as those which prevail in Canada or New Zealand, and because the climate and the existence of a black population deter the agricultural classes of northern Europe. Although the Government of Cape Colony has little or no land obviously fit for tillage to dispose of, because all the untilled area not absolutely barren has been appropriated for stock-farms, still there are districts on the south coasts of Cape Colony, as well as in Natal and in the healthy uplands of Mashonaland, which Englishmen or Germans might cultivate with the assistance (in the hotter parts) of a little native labour, and which Italians or Portuguese might cultivate by their own labour, without native help. The Germans who were brought out in 1856 throve in body and estate on the farms which they tilled with their own hands near Grahamstown. Nevertheless, few agricultural immigrants enter, partly, no doubt, because so much of the land is held by a comparatively small number of persons, and reserved by them (as just observed) for pastoral purposes only. Neither do men go from Europe to start ranching, for the pastoral lands are taken up, except in those wilder regions where no one could thrive without some previous experience of the country. The settling of the newer parts of the country, such as those between the Zambesi and the tropic of Capricorn, is chiefly carried on by the Boers of the Transvaal, and, to a less extent, of the British Colonies; for the Boers retain their passion for trekking out into the wilderness, while the English, with few exceptions, like to keep within reach of one another and of civilisation. Accordingly, the country receives comparatively few recruits from rural Europe, and its agricultural population grows only by natural increase. There are probably more natives of India to-day tilling the soil in Natal alone than the whole number of agriculturists who have come from Europe in the last thirty years. Legislation which should attract such agriculturists by the offer of tillage farms of moderate size would be a great benefit to the Colonies.

We may now endeavour to sum up the facts of the case, and state the conclusions to which they point.

South Africa is already, and will be to an increasing extent, a country of great mineral wealth. It is only in the diamond-fields, especially those of Kimberley, and in the gold-fields of the Witwatersrand, that this wealth has yet been proved to exist, so far as regards precious stones and precious metals, but it may exist also in many other districts. It is not confined to precious stones and metals, and when these have been exhausted, copper, iron, and coal may continue to furnish good returns to mine-owners and plenty of employment to work-people. The duration of the gold-fields generally is uncertain, but those of the Witwatersrand will last for at least half a century, and will maintain for all that period an industrial population and a market for commodities which, though small when measured by the standard of the northern hemisphere, will be quite unique in Africa south of the equator.

South Africa is, and will continue to be, a great grazing country; for nearly all of its vast area is fit for live stock, though in large regions the proportion of stock to the acre must remain small, owing to the scarcity of feed. It will therefore continue to export wool, goats' hair, and hides in large quantities, and may also export meat, and possibly dairy products.

South Africa has been, is, and will probably continue to be for a good while to come, a country in which only a very small part of the land is tilled, and from which little agricultural produce, except fruit, sugar, and perhaps tobacco, will be exported. Only two things seem likely to increase its agricultural productiveness. One of these is the discovery of some preservative against malarial fever which might enable the lowlands of the east coast, from Durban northward, to be cultivated much more largely than they are now. The other is the introduction of irrigation on a large scale, an undertaking which at present would be profitable in a few places only. Whether in future it will be worth while to irrigate largely, and whether, if this be done, it will be done by companies buying and working large farms or by companies distributing water to small farmers, as the Government distributes water in Egypt and some parts of India, are questions which may turn out to have an important bearing on the development of the country, but which need not be discussed now.

South Africa has not been, and shows no sign of becoming, a manufacturing country. Water power is absent. Coal is not of the best quality. Labour is neither cheap nor good. Even the imposition of a pretty high protective tariff would not be likely to stimulate the establishment of iron-works or foundries on a large scale, nor of factories of textile goods, for the local market is too small to make competition with Europe a profitable enterprise. In these respects, as in many others, the conditions, physical and economic, differ so much from those of the British North American or Australian Colonies that the course of industrial development is likely to be quite different from what it has been there.

From these conclusions another of great importance follows. The white population will remain scanty in proportion to the area of the country. At present, it is, in the two British Colonies and the two Dutch Republics, only about one and a half persons to the square mile, while over the other territories it is incomparably smaller.

The country will probably remain, so long as present agricultural conditions continue, a wilderness, with a few oases of population scattered at long distances from one another. The white inhabitants will, moreover, continue to be very unequally distributed. At present, of a total population in the last-mentioned four States of about 730,000, more than one-fourth lives in the mining district of the Rand; one-sixth is found in the five principal seaports on the southern and south-eastern coast; the remaining seven-twelfths are thinly dispersed over the rest of the country in solitary farms or villages, or in a very few small towns, the largest of which, Kimberley, has only 10,000 inhabitants. The only towns that are growing are those five seaports, and Johannesburg with its tributary mining villages. Assuming the present growth of the Rand to continue, it may have in ten years about 500,000 whites, which will be not much less than a half of the then white population of the whole country. Stimulated by the trade which the Rand will supply, the five seaports will probably also grow; while elsewhere population may remain almost stationary. Unless the gold reefs of the country beyond the Limpopo turn out well and create in that region miniature copies of the Rand district, there seems no reason to expect the total number of whites to reach 1,200,000 in less than twenty years. After that time growth will depend upon the future of agriculture, and the future of agriculture depends on so many causes independent of South Africa that it would be unsafe to make any predictions regarding it. I know some South Africans, able men, who think that the day will come when the blacks will begin to retire northward, and a large white population will till their own farms by their own labour, with the aid of irrigation. Of the advent of such a day there are no present signs, yet stranger changes have happened in our time than this change would be. Other South Africans believe that minerals not less valuable than those which the last twenty years have revealed are likely to be discovered in other places. This also may happen,—South Africa, it has been said, is a land of surprises,—and if it does happen there may be another inrush like that which has filled the Rand. All that one can venture to do now is to point out the probable result of the conditions which exist at this moment; and these, though they point to a continued increase of mineral production, do not point to any large or rapid increase of white inhabitants.

Twenty years hence the white population is likely to be composed in about equal proportions of urban and rural elements. The urban element will be mainly mining, gathered at one great centre on the Witwatersrand, and possibly at some smaller centres in other districts. The rural element, consisting of people who live in villages or solitary farmhouses, will remain comparatively backward, because little affected by the social forces which work swiftly and potently upon close-packed industrial communities, and it may find itself very different in tone, temper, and tendencies from its urban fellow-citizens. The contrast now so marked between the shopkeeper of Cape Town and the miner of Johannesburg on the one hand, and the farmer of the Karroo or the Northern Transvaal on the other, may be then hardly less marked between the two sections of the white population. But these sections will have one thing in common. Both will belong to an upper stratum of society; both will have beneath them a mass of labouring blacks, and they will therefore form an industrial aristocracy resting on Kafir labour.

[Footnote 88: It is still doubtful whether very large areas can be irrigated by means of artesian wells.]

[Footnote 89: The Transvaal coal-fields are said to extend over 56,000 square miles; there is also a coal-field in the eastern part of Cape Colony, near the borders of the Orange Free State.]



CHAPTER XXVII

REFLECTIONS AND FORECASTS

In preceding chapters I have endeavoured to present a picture of South Africa as it stands to-day, and to sketch the leading events that have made its political conditions what they are. Now, in bringing the book to a close, I desire to add a few reflections on the forces which have been at work, and to attempt the more hazardous task of conjecturing how those forces are likely to operate in the future.

The progress of the country, and the peculiar form which its problems have taken, are the resultant of three causes. One of these is the character which nature has impressed upon it. Of this I have already spoken (Chapter VI), pointing out how the high interior plateau, with its dry and healthy climate, determined the main line of European advance and secured the predominance, not of the race which first discovered the country, but of the race which approached it, far later in time, from its best side. It is also in this physical character that one must seek the explanation of the remarkably slow progress of the country in wealth and population. South Africa began to be occupied by white men earlier than any part of the American continent. The first Dutch settlement was but little posterior to those English settlements in North America which have grown into a nation of seventy-seven millions of people, and nearly a century and a half prior to the first English settlements in Australia. It is the unhealthiness of the east coast and the dryness of the rest of the country that are mainly accountable for this tardy growth—a growth which might have been still more tardy but for the political causes that drove the Boers into the far interior. And again, it is the physical configuration of the country that has made it, and is likely to keep it, one country. This is a point of cardinal importance. Though divided into two British Colonies, with several other pieces of British territory, and two Boer Republics, the habitable parts of South Africa form one community, all the parts of which must stand or fall together. The great plateau is crossed by no lines of physical demarcation all the way from the Zambesi to the Hex River (some fifty miles north-east of Cape Town), and the coast regions are closely bound by economic ties to the plateau, which through them touches the outer world. Popular speech which talks of South Africa as one whole is scientifically right.