SOUTH AFRICA'S RESOURCES.
PaoFEsson LEmszerer, of the Witwatersrand University, has written a most valuable pamphlet on The National Resources of South Africa (Longmans, 5s.), comparable in its way to Professor Bowley's famous essay on the distribution of our national "dividend," Professor Lehfeldt estimates the income
of the white population in 1917-18 at £109,000,000---about £76 per head—and that of the coloured 'population at £28,000,000. -Farming yielded £40,300,000, mining and manu- facturing each about £22,000,000 net, house rent £13,000,000. Of the total incOme £91,000,000 was expended in wages, £12,000,000 in rent, £21,000,000 in interest and £13,000,000 in profits. South Africa, - the author observes, "is passing away from a prevailingly mining stage of development, just as California and Victoria have done already." He does not think that South Africa will be, or need be, a great manu- facturing country, but agriculture is rapidly developing, especially on the coast of Cape Colony and on the High Veldt, and is capable of almost unlimited expansion. If the High Veldt were inhabited as thickly as Spain, it would have a population of 10,000,000, whereas the total white population of the Union is only 1,400,000. Professor Lehfeldt remarks that South Africa exports half its total output, and is thus more dependent on foreign trade than most countries. Pro- tection, therefore, is likely to be exceptionally harmful. The sugar industry has grown up under the shelter of the tariff, but is still unable to supply the home market with sugar as cheap as could be imported. The author finds that the income- tax payers in 1917-18 numbered only 57,869 out of 478,000 " occupied " white persons. The taxable minimum was £300 a year. In Australia only one person in twenty earned as much. The proportion was higher in South Africa because living was dearer, so that £300 was not worth so much as in Australia, and also because the coloured majority were ignored for the purposes of the calculation. The average yearly wage of an artisan was £270 and of a factory worker £181; between such wages and those of " unskilled " coloured labour there was a very wide gulf. In this connexion the author notes the significant fact that between 1916 and 1918 the coloured factory workers increased much faster than the white workers. Professor Lehfeldt discusses the question whether, as the Socialists contend, the " worker " can get a larger share of die "dividend," and concludes that about £20,000,000 a year, or 15 per cent, of the total, might conceivably be transferred from the richer to the poorer classes, giving £42 to each of the " occupied " white persons, if the coloured population were denied any share. But " the attempt would not be worth while, for such extensive changes, though carried out, we suppose, by constitutional means, would raise the bitterest opposition, would involve considerable risk of disorganization in industry, and might after all fail owing to the spontaneous compensating influences that are brought into play by an attempt to alter distribution." It would be far simpler to raise the existing low standard of efficiency and increase the output by 15 per cent. In other words, Professor Lehfeldt, dealing with the facts in South Africa, comes to the same conclusion as all other sound economists elsewhere. The workman can only earn a permanently higher wage by working harder and producing more. Increased output, and not redistribution of the existing national income, affords the only means of increasing the average individual's earnings.
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