NEGRO SLAVERY.

Grey River Argus, 17 January 1928, Page 2

NEGRO SLAVERY.

Continues in U.S.A. » A DAMNING INDICTMENT. President Coolidge sent a message to the eighteenth congress of the American National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, that considering the many years of bondage and the lack of educational and other opportunities for many years “we cannot but marvel at negro advancement. It has been steady in the face of many discouragements. We find the coloured man to-day not only an important factor in our industrial and agricultural development, but successful in business and showing skill in the professions and the arte. 1 hat his achievements and standing in our communities will continue is certain. To that end he should receive every assistance that may be given.

In tin* Rep- rt issued by the Association it is sta ed that it has done successful work in fighting against the pracitcal disfrancdiisement of the negro in th? southern States. “The champions of race segregation,’’ it, goes on, “have been chased from pillar to post in city council, legislature and court by this association during the last fifteen years.’’ In spite of improvement, the Report is compelled to admit that the American of Negro descent is still a slave in the United States. Lynching is increasing, and the burning of human beings has not ceased. Negroes arc forced to labour at wretched wages and under impossible conditions. Peonage, even in the midst of such a calamity as the Mississippi flood, has been carried out openly. The doors of trades unions still remain partially closed, and the path of the profession is strewn with discouraging obstacles, even to conspicuous ability.

Similar conditions prevail in South Africa, where the Government has, it will be remembered, just passed legislation against the native trade unions, because they consider restrictive measures necesary in controlling uncivilised or half-civilised peoples. The fact is that, according to statements made by the Commission on Economics and Wage?, in 1925 75 per cent., of the natives organised in trade unions had been detribalised and industrialised. Many i f these natives have already attained a very fair standard of living and culture, and in any case they are entitled to the same protection as the Europeans.. Furthermore, the disproportion in numbers between the blacks and whites is less great than it is often represented to be, for the respective ratios aro often magnified for the sake of propaganda against the blacks. Clements Kadalic, the secretary of the Union of native workers which is affiliated with the I.F.T.U. (The Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union of South

Africa), recently wrote in the “Daily Herald’’ that there are not, as was recently alleged one and three-quarter millions of whites and eighteen millions of blacks in South Africa, but, according to the latest census, one and a-half million whites and only 4,967,813 blacks to which should be added about half a million coloured (Indians). As for the attitude of the white trade unions. Kadalie contends that these are not, as has been declared, engaged in a fight for their lives against the capital ist efforts to lower the standard of livliving by the freest use of native labour, with a standard of living hopelessly inferior to the whites. If that were so, writes Kadalie, the obvious methods they would adopt to fight the capitalists would be to support trade unionism among the natives, and use every effort to get their standard of life raised. Instead, the Labour members of the South African House of Commons supported the Native Administration Act, which was avowedly introduced to crush native trade unionism, and the propaganda of the I.C.U. among the natives for a demand for increased wages and q higher standard of living. The truth Is that the policy of “keeping the nigger down” is as much to the material advantage of the white trade unionist as it is of the white capitalist. His higi wages, as surely as the capitalists’ hign profits are founded on and made possible by the scandalously low wages paid for black labour. In the meantime, a certain reapproachment has taken place between the South African Trade Union Congress (white) and the Cape Federation of Labour Unions. The last-named works chiefly in Capetown, and organises also coloured workers, (a mixed race, known usually as the “Cape Coloured”), and only the skilled workers of these. The two organisations have now established a Joint Committee, which recently held its first meeting, and agreed to found a joint secretariat, consisting of the secretaries' of the two bodies. The Government had been already informed of the fact that the joint Secretariat should be the medium of communication for all communications of a national or international char

acter, and had agreed to the suggestion. The next meeting of the Committee will draft Rules, which will establish continuous contact between t ]?.-■* two organisations. It is quite possible that this co-op-eration may hamper rather than facilitate the amalgamation with these centres of the organisation affiliated With 1.F.T.U., which caters for unskilled workers. Mr H. B. Butler, the assistant Director of the International Labour Office, who is now assisting Labour Office who is now visiting South Africa on a lecturing tour, will have a good opportunity to use his influence ta benefit the whole of the worknig class of South Africa. The problem is evidently ripe for discussion, for Mr R. J. Hall, late Professor of Sociology at Duiban, recently

wrote in the ‘ 1 Manchester Guardian” that there was a very definite intention not only among the white statesmen, but also among native leaders, that there should be a South. African nation which should not have an ideal like that of “White Australia.” Turning to the question of native forced labour, Hall commented on the detribalisation of the natives, and their industrialisation, adding that “the blacks are in the white community, but are not of it; there is not in South Africa any Christian church which admits a black man to membership, nor any white educational institution that admits a black child.” Referring to the economic aspect., Hall said that the difficulty was that in the mines the black was paid at th? rate of 2/6 per shift while the white was paid £1 per shift. The black man was not permitted to do certain of the work in the mines, though he could do it as well as the white man. There was, to his knowledge, a growing spirit of resentment among the natives against the whites. The ordinary white man is South Africa did not know it, but the resentment was there, and it i was as well to recognise it.