STUBBED HIS TOE ON GOLD ROCK

Northern Advocate, 31 October 1936, Page 6 (Supplement)

STUBBED HIS TOE ON GOLD ROCK

MAN WHO FOUND MILLIONS DIED POOR

QEORGE Walker, out for a stroll in the early morning on a South African farm, stumbled over a piece of rock projecting from the ground. He was angry, hut not for long. Curiosity made him examine that rock—and in his hand was gold.

He tried to keep it a secret, but the news flashed across the country, and soon men were hard at work, tracing the course of the precious gold reef across the fields. The Main Reef of the Witwatersrand Gold Mine had been discovered.

A valuable reef—that : was certain. But did those early pioneerS realise that in the following fifty years, up to 1936, twelve hundreds tons of gold, worth £1,200,000,000 would be, removed? Today the Rand Mines , earn £70,D00;000 a year, .and.ihe figtire is likely to : increase to £ 100,000,000. *'•

The great Empire Exhibition at Jchanriesburg, which opened recently, celebrates two things—the fiftieth anniversary of the Proclamation of the Rand Mines, and also of the birth ,of Johannesburg. This “city built on gold” has in that time increased its population from 50 people to half a million. , /

of the mines—which now stretch across a hundred and seventy miles of country. In some of them the men work two miles below the ground. And in this world of millions, what happened to George Walker? He staked two claims, gave one of them away, and sold the other for £ 350. The man who might have been a millionaire died a poor man.

Deeper and deeper go the workings