A Renter's telegram from Johannesburg in Tuesday's Times briefly announced
that fighting had broken out between the Chinese coolies and Kaffirs at the Witwatersrand mine on Sunday night. Three Kaffirs and one Chinaman were killed, and eight Kaffirs and twenty-five Chinamen were wounded. The despatch ends with laconic optimism : "All is now quiet." Further details supplied by the Johannesburg correspondent of the Daily Chronicle place a very different construction on the episode. According to his account, one of the Chinese coolies trespassed on the native location, where there were women, and was maltreated by the Kaffirs. He then appealed to his comrades, who evaded the police patrol, broke out of the compound, surrounded and burned the native location, and attacked the native mine compound. The outbreak was finally suppressed with considerable difficulty by the Johannes- burg Mounted Rifles, with the Boksburg and Germiston police. The same correspondent sends an instructive analysis of the October labour returns for the Rand mines, which show an increase over the September figures of 102 whites and 6,300 coloured labourers, or one new white to sixty new coloured, as compared with one white to five coloured in January last. For the seventeen months beginning with January, 1903, the white workers increased by 2,300 and the Kaffirs by 30,000. But from May to October, 1904, the white increase was only 1,400, despite a further Kaffir expansion and the influx of 15,000 Chinamen.
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