COOLIES IN NATAL.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1018, 6 January 1911, Page 5

COOLIES IN NATAL.

■NO MORE £FTER JULY 1. (By Telegraph—Press Association Copyright) Calcutta, January 4. The Indian Government is prohibiting tho emigration of further indentured labour to Natal from July 1 nest. .

Tho Hon. Gopal Krishna Gokhale, C.1.E., has expressed the gratitudo of Indians'for this measure.

Tho newspapers declare that the prohibition will be popular, owing to tho shortage of labour in the coal and tea industries in India.

THE INDIAN IN AFRICA. It is now four years since the onestion of the position of British Indians in . South Africa became afcute. For the last two years, there has been an almost continuous crisis, and the failure of government has been shown in the usual way —tho imprisonment of innocent end respectable men. Now the question has assumed a new phase, for the unification of South Africa means that there is now one Power to deal with the situation instead of four. Attention has hitherto been concentrated on events - in the Transvaal, where General Smuts has been vainly endeavouring to negotiate a satisfactory settlement, but each of the .'four provinces has a special interest in the question, and in none of them is public opinion anything'like indiiferent. f .

Uncleanly Traders. In'several - parts of the Cape province the Asiatic is very much in evidence. In Bechuanalund especially the petty trade' is in the hands of the Indian, and in all the : port towns something' of the'same kind .is to bo seen. Jlr. Kemp, chief sanitary. inspector of . Port Elizabeth, has recently presented tho Town Council with a report on Indian and Chinese traders in the town, and this is a fair sample of what is generally alleged in this regard. The Indian, Mr. Kemp "says, has no idea of cleanliness. :Jlcat is carelessly handled. by . Indian butchers and is sent out wrapped Sin old newspapers picked off the dust-heaps by coloured people and bartered for meat. Xintil premises become a public danger the sanitary authority cannot interfere. Moreover, of twenty-one Indian butchers in Tort Elizabeth eighteen are unmarried and herd together, several sharing a single room.. They are undesirable in themselves and they are not to be competed with, so that since 1303 the number of European butchers in Port Elizabeth has been reduced by half, while' the Indians have multiplied seven-fold. In the same way, it was stated some time ago that in Natal two out of every three storekeepers and four out of every five cultivators of 'the land were Indian. , Elsewhere in South Africa the'luditinv.isenofc' a farmer, but as a trader he appears everywhere, and beforp.the t war the ; white traders of the 1 EreeYState towns, induced tho Government;" to pas's' restrictive legislation. Almost every .year now the Associated Chambers; of Commerce pass resolutions calling for more'.stfiiigent action and -procliuioiuc; their .alarm. Except in Natal the rival parties everywhere vie with each other, and have for some years carried 011 an animfitod competition as to which, can show the most zeal in thwarting the Indian.

The Other Side. Tho other side of the question is well known to . English readers. More than four years ago, when self-government was still untried in the new colonies, an Indian congress ai Calcutta called for relief from the disabilities under which British Indians laboured. Last year the Indian Congress threatened to put a stop to the supply c? indentured labour to Natal, and a meeting at.Madras did the same. The debates jn both Houses, of the Imperial Parliaments have made tho question familiar, and everywhere men who have had to do only with the East express unmixed disapproval of the policy pursued by South Africans, a policy which, however, is practised by Australians, Americans, and all who havo to deal with a problem similar to the South African'side of the British Indian problem. ______