A correspondent of the Manchester Guardian sends some interesting notes
to last Saturday's issue on Chinese labour on the Rand, taking for his text Lord Milner's confident state- ment that it was "absolutely certain" that the number of white employes would increase as the Chinese came in. He points out that, according to a despatch from Lord Milner, when the Chinese-employing Comet mine drops all its hundred stamps, 143 whites will be employed, or, say, 11 whites per stamp. This ratio, when applied to the five thousand stamps now dropping, would give 7,500 whites. But at present less than 70,000 Kaffirs create employment for 12,730! Next he quotes the South African Mines for particulars as to the fine work done by Mongolian hand-drill men in a Korean mine controlled by a great Rand financial house, where the only white men employed are one foreman and four overseers. The deduction is obvious. What the Mongolian hand-drill men can perform for a Rand house in Korea they can accom- plish for them on the Rand itself. In any case, it is obviously premature, even for Lord Milner, to be "absolutely certain" of what will happen in the future, when the unskilled Chinese become skilled. Finally, the writer quotes Lord Miler's latest official returns to show that between March and June last, when native employment for the first time rapidly decreased, white employment rapidly increased. He thus concludes that while "the natural and beneficial solution of the labour problem was steadily taking place by means of the increased employment of whites and of labour- saving machinery, there is nothing as yet to prove that the unnatural means now being adopted will be in the least degree less disastrous to the State than those who opposed it anticipated." In fact, by our disastrous Chinese labour policy we have deliberately rejected the opportunity of making the Transvaal "a white man's country,"—a place where a white working man can live and bring up a family.
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