A Pig-tail Paradise

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIV, Issue 26, 28 June 1906, Page 19

A Pig-tail Paradise

The Randlords— or nabobs of the Kand— kept their home and foreign skins well out of the reach of shot and shell when the war pursued the uneven tenor of its blundering way in South Africa. They lived* riotously in Cape Town and Cairo and London, while cooks' sons, dukes' sons, sons of belted earls, and other white men galoro ga>ve blood or life— to increase the nabobs' dividends and to maKe the Rand a pigtail paradise. According to the Johannesburg correspondent of the 'Otago Daily Times,' ' the main reef continues to give an ever increasing harvest of gold.' Goad dividends for the men that made and profited by the war ! Yet ' the depression in trade is deeper and more widespread than ever. The Rand,' cont : nues the same writer, ' ha's been steadily losing, not gaining, in population, and the' very life is being knocked out of the place. Big men (many accounted a few years back as .worth hundreds of thousand's), as well as the little, have gone to the wall, and there is more actual want in. the Golden City- at the present time than at any previous period of its existence. Here is what the 'Johannesburg Leader" oi _yesterday has to say, in regard to those out of work :— " Once, not so long ago, one could say that the uwonployed man in Johannesburg was, in 99 cases out of 100, an undesirable. He either preferred to live and loaf on the casual charity of the unwary- or the unwisely kind, or he was an inefficient. Now the number of unem--ployed, on our streets is increasing £ daily , and, unfortunately, the character of the class is changing.- Everyone in this town who has^the-opp'ortunity of coming in close contact with the workless has noticed, within the last few months, a significant and dis heartening increase in the men of good character and capacity who cannot find employment even in this young and -developing country. \. Those, who can afford, it ar* leaving' the town in hundreds ; those who cannot^—their Hame is lejgfon, and ifl} many cases their poverty is

blameless-find themselves in a n impasse from which apparently there is no escape: What" .is to be done is a matter that demands the most serious consideration • but it is otfvidusr that something must be done, and the town is indebted .to the Mayor of Johannesburg for hay- . ing grasped -the nettle and brought the problem, prominently before the -Government. Unemployment in an old and crowded State is a curse for -which one may find an' explanation more easily than a remedy'; in anew country, just entering on progress, the willing man workless is a spectacle which we cannot afford to see." '