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Evening Post, Volume LXVII, Issue 150, 25 June 1904, Page 14

THE TRIUMPH OF THE RAND CLIQUE.

TO I'HE EDITOR. Sir, — The following is 'a .selection from the c.iblcgi.uns in this day"« Rand Daily Mail : — "A strikingly able letter to the Finnnz Chronik, a German iin.iuri.il paper, from Sir .Howard Vincent, advances v number of forcible ai^mnents in favour of Chinese! labour, and sho^s Unit it is bound to benefit both the Brjtifeh and Boer colonist on the spot, as veil as all I'iijglMi and European industries." "The n.s. Tureddide leaves on 26th ins>l., wiui 1600 coolies, and the Swanley early in June with 2000." " Agents are rejecting habitual opiumsmokers, only the best type being nccepU'd." "A special commissioner of London Daily Mail says the Tweeddale has splendid accommodation — better -than the transports during the late war. Dietscale is an improvement on emigrant scalp. The Tweeddale is a new- Gla.sgowbuilt steamer on her maiden voyage. The medical ofliccra are thoroughly satisfied with her, especially her hospital accommodation." "Pamphlets are being scattered throughout China. Applications are plentiful, but 30 per cent, me rejected by medical officers." " Coolies arc- collected from as far north .as Port Arthur." '* Fir.st bateh — a fine body of men — are waiting only for Chinese * Government's permission to embark." " Public regard the scheme as likely to be as successful as in Borneo an<l -Malay States." " English missionaries approve, and say Chinese tire just the men who are wanted. They have not the- slightest doubt of its success." " A missionary with twenty years' experience in Borneo mines' and the Malay Peninsula thinks Chinese labour is the only thing to save the situation in the Transvaal." " Japanese also approve the scheme." • The messages quoted above are for South African consumption, but doubtlcis " wiseacres oversea "" — to use a Millicrism—will read them with interest. 'When Hoggonheimer decided that the Transvaal must be grabbed — annexed — and the bleeding wrongs of his poor Christian employees be lighted, he— not being a warlike man himself, and annexation of other people's property being generally a more or less dungeroun line of polior— directed his political ageuts in South Africa and London to enrol all the nble-bodied men they could, and send them againbt the stiff-necked and autocratic Boer. The latter, who had had much experience of Hoggenheimer, fought hard nnd long, but the power of numbers and wealth was at last too much for him nnd his territory was annexed. Then the man who had suffered so many political wrongs, and the man who had endured so many hardships, and in seeking to redress them (at the . behest of Hoggcnheimcr), turned to the latter with outstretched hands for the fruits of victory. But Haggcnheimcr replied that the land was not &o rich as he had thought it, and that he feared he could do nothing for them ; the political rights would come some day, but as to giving them employment and a home, thoir labour would bo too expensive. So ho looked about for economical ways and moans of developing his newly-acquired property. First oi all he reduced the wagos of his black servants. As these proved still too dear, he inaugurated a scheme to bring cheup labour from China. The men who had worked for him before, and the men who had fought for him, protested that he had humbugged them, and an agitation was started --with the object of wrecking his cheap-labour scheme. But they knew not the power of Hoggenheimer,* who soon humbled them into submission, and drove many of them out of tho country. His political agents in London and South Africa, wiser than their humbler brothrcn, helped him from the outset, and his scheme is now all bub a e>uccess, as the quotations nt the commencement of this letter prove. And now the Transvaal will go on her .way rojoicing, and bearing in her hand Urn inscription : " Saved from ruin by Milner.i Chjunfocrluin, Hoggenheimer, nnd Ah Sing, of tie Birmingham and Jerusalem . Imperial Corporation. " An old Boer, in spite of this, moans and says : " Poor Transvaal ! A fair maiden in the bloom of youth under the guardianship of a tottering old moneylender, slavo-denter, and sweater — what a fate!" . But a missionary in Borneo, nud Lord Milncr in Johannesburg, say that. Hoggenheimer is right, sc- those >vho say { otherwise must be wrong. — I am, etc , " ONLY A WHITE' BRITISHER. Johannesburg, 23rd May.