Shall British Soil be Stained with Slavery?

White Ribbon, Volume 9, Issue 106, 15 March 1904, Page 6

Shall British Soil be Stained with Slavery?

Thinking w r omen can heartily con l mend the action of Mr Seddon in regard to Chinese labour in the Transvaal. L is now nearly two years since peace va‘ proclaimed ; but the conditions of life and work in the blood-bought colony are most lamentable still. Living i immensely dear; settlement is impos sible yet; and the mines are closed, practically. After discounting the usual depression after war, and the bitter ani mositiesof race, it is impossible todeii) that the main reason is still the selfish greed of the few mining capitalists who not only own the Rand, but seem to have laid the unhappy colony under the rule of A South African Tammany. The first act of these plutocrats was to largely reduce the p-.y and privileges of the Kaffirs who icnnerly worked the mines. < he Kaffirs struck doty, refusing to be sweated. Needless to say, no white labourer could live on the former,

much less the present, Karhr wage; neither are white miners (and future voters) desired by the magnates, whc now declare that unless unskilled labour in large: quantities and at “ reasonable " wages can be obtained, the mines cannot be worked, nor the debt of the Transvaal be met in the London moneymarket. The Transvaal Government (which of course, is non-representative as yet), is hastily pushing through the Labour Importation Ordinance, which authorises the introduction of troops ol Chinese who are to be kept apart from the whites under Conditions of Virtual Slavery. The Transvaal Government has made capital of certain petitions for Chinese labour signed in the colony ; but it pointedly refuses a far safer test oi public opinion—the referendum. These petitions, it is freely stated, have been obtained by bril>ery, terrorism, and starvation, the poorer whites being unable either to live or leave until the mines are set going again. The methods of the magnates are fairly indicated by their use of hired roughs to break up protest meetings. South Africa surveys with anxiety, the prospect of a growing canker in her midst ; the degradation of race on one hand, and the brutalising effects of slavery on the other. The Parliament of Cape Colony protested in January, but the subsequent elections have returned Dr Jameson and a “ Progressive ” (i.e. pro millionaire) Cabinet to power here so no further interference will come from that quarter. In New Zealand this un-British step L viewed with lively disfavour. In January, Mr Seddon induced the Federal Premier of Australia to join in a dignified and well-worded protest, unhappily with no result on the Transvaal’s policy, though with moral effect throughoutthe Empire. Publicopinion runshigh in England, the Lib ral leaders denounce he ordinance, and one bye-election has been lost to the Government

through it. But these warnings are lost on the miserably effete Government whose mismanagement of South African affairs has been revealed in the War Commission, and which has just forced the ecclesiastical tyranny of the Education Act on an angry nation. It seems likely to fill up the measure of its iniquities by putting the stigma of slavery on a British Crown Colony. J. M.