The Chinese in South Africa.

Bruce Herald, Volume XXXX, Issue 46, 14 June 1903, Page 3

The Chinese in South Africa.

• A TRENCHANT CRITICISM. An ex-resident ot Wellington, who is in South Africa, 'has written* a very interesting ' letter to a % friend on j the anti-Chinese labor"" agitation in the Transvaal. The Post takes the following extracts from the letter : — . - "So you are- getting angry as regards the Chow. ¥ou needn't ; it is waste of time. This country is owned body and sjul, and Government, by the money magnates, German Jews, Jewß, Jews everywhere, and .' if you' think you have got Buckley's chance of interfering with them you flatter yourself. One simply has no chance whatever. For example,! when, Mr S.eddon : made his first protest agairist.the Chow,the papers- here (mouthpieces of the capitalist party, of .course) heaped all sons of scorn on his head as an arrant meddler, wholly ignorant of local conditions. I wrote a simple letter in his defence, and not one of thethree papers would print it. Then I rushed in for some amusement and interviewed the editor of the Daily Mail as to his reason for not printing it. He had the grace to say that the letter as a letter was well worth printing, but that he ' would not print it. ' Seems to me " couldn't " is the word you should use,' said 1. Then the fat was in the fire. 1 had quite the warmest ten minutes 1 ever had in my life, and 1 flatter myself got all over him. 1 asked him, ] among other things, how he supported the claim of his paper as an. openminded mouthpiece of public opinion when he deliberately muzzled" the mouth of the opposition ? Also, if his paper wus not simply a capitalists organ, why did he not print an honest opinion opposing theirs ? Oh, 1 had a perfectly lovely time, and I came away as pleased as if 1 had got a£s note. ' "• My letter was on these lines : — Colonials spend blood and money like water to make the Transvaal British. Transvaal Crown- Colony administered by Colonial Office in London, not by local self government. Colonies therefore quite within their rights, nay, their duty, to offer the Golonial Office the benefit of their experience in a matter so intimately affecting the Transvaal's future welfare. Ignorance of conditions? Well, they were mighty peculiar, certainly. I defied any man on this planet to reconcile dividends of 183 per cent., 153£, 130, 120, 112£, 100, and so on (vide their own published statements of the mines' progress for the past year), with the statement that ' our great mines could not afford to pay for white labor.' Capitalists knew and were afraid of the colonial Premier's capacity to deal with such a condition of affairs. Conceive a colonial Premier in power; gold law at once prohibiting any but white labor in all mines proved capable of producing a certain dividend ; permitted use of black labor only in mines proved capable of not returning that dividend ; forfeiture of interest in all mines not worked to their fullest extent. There, I was satisfied, lay the solution of the whole difficulty. True, the great dividends would be cut down ; that is, the capitalists (principally the foreign capitalist) would receive a fair return for an investment not an absolutely illegitimate "cent per cent " profit with a return of his capital every year without being of any assistance to the country, nay, acting as a vampire (I did not say this, by-the^bye, though I meant it) that sucks its lite's blood ; but instead we have a great influx of working whites — whites who would make the Transvaal their home, with all the attendant benefits of vast increase in the volume of trade to supply their wants, an increased spending power through the diffusion of money instead of its withdrawal;' the liberation of sufficient Kaffir labour from the big mines to make the low grade propositions paying concerns ; and finally the absolute prevention of the locking up of good mining country in order to force the Government to yield to the desires of the capitalist. ' " Such was the gist of my letter, and that my views are right needs no further evidence to me than the fact that the three papers here would not print them. , - " The capitalists have engineered the Ordinance through the British House of Commons, where the Opposition adop* ted the most foolish po icy they could in raising the cry of slavery, instead of keeping the Transvaal for whites and the aboriginal Kaffir. For the cry of slavery is all nonsense ; you never hear it -mentioned here even by the most bitter opponents of the Chows. How can there be slavery with consent of the enslaved party, who becomes free again at the end of a fixed time even against the consent of the enslaving party? But.,that consideration quite apart, no one raises the question of slavery in regard to the niggers working in , the mines here or the contract coolies- in Natal, or the contract Chows in British Columbia j yet it i&- quite on the lines of these labourers that the Chow is to be transported here. I have gone very carefully through the conditions of engagement, and if you yourself have any suspicion of the slavery idea you may take'it from me that it ia quite erroneous. Now, the point I fight the Chow is the purely economic one that the mineral wealth is the property of the State (a point conceded Here in the Diamond Law, by which 60 per cent, of i the.prpjittrih diamond claims pass to the 'Government), and it is, therefore^n;titled to dictate as J6 its disposal with the view of pricing the greatest good

to the community. The question simply is : ' Is the Chow or wnito ma a the better citizen tc have ?' Let white men answer."