The latest phase of the Chinese labour question calls for
a few words of comment. Last week Mr. Lionel Phillips con- gratulated the Government on their pluck, but on Tuesday Lord Teynham, at the annual meeting of the Rand Victoria Gold Mining Company, stated he had good reason to believe that the Government intended to call a halt, and to stop further immigration of Chinese coolies until full evidence was forthcoming as to the results of what they regarded as an "experiment" Inquiries at the Colonial Office have failed to elicit either a confirmation or contradiction of this report ; and Lord Harris, chairman of the Consolidated Goldfields of South Africa, and Mr. Gillam, of the Van Ryn Gold Mines, have made statements tending to qualify or contradict the suggestion that the Government are wavering. We may note in this context the significant and explicit announcement of the chairman of the Van Ryn Mining Company that "when the Chinese had become thoroughly proficient, it is the intention of the management to resort more and more to hand drilling," i.e., to replace machine drills with the cheapest form of hand labour. It is pointed out in Thursday's Chronicle that in last July there were two thousand one hundred and thirty-five skilled white miners on the Rand working these machine drills, and that as the Rand mine-owners "resort more and more" to hand drilling by Chinamen, these skilled whites will• be left stranded on the veld by the adoption of methods which the chairman of the Van Ryn described as "good for white labour, good for black labour, and good for the gold industry." We do not stop to dwell on the disingenuousness of such statements, but may simply say that it is an industrial axiom on which masters and men are now agreed that no indus- try can be progressive in which improved machinery is tabooed.
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