30 APRIL 1904, Page 18

In the House of Commons on Monday the Secretary of

State for the Colonies, in answer to a question addressed to him by Major Seely, stated that the value of the output of gold in the Transvaal in March, 1899, was 21,654,258. Now it has reached the total of £1,309,329,—that is, it is now nearly as large as it was at its most prosperous period before the war. This does not look as if the gold industry were being utterly ruined by the lack of labour, or as if its condition warranted the most desperate remedies. If even after the tremendous convulsion of a three years' war the output can be so quickly restored almost to its highest previous figure', the industry is not one about which there need be any despair.