THE CHINESE IN SOUTH AFRICA.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR") SIR,—With reference to "Britisher's " letter re Chinese and South Africa which appeared in the Spectator of April 25th, I should like to question his statement as to the similarity between the mining on the Rand and on the Mother Lode of California. It would occupy too much of your valuable space to go into technicalities, but owing to the comparative poverty ( oz. to the ton) of the banket reef, and also to the excessive depth to which the reef is worked, any economies in the ex- penses are absolutely necessary to make the difference between profit and loss in some cases. As to Chinese labour, I have seen a good deal of it here, whence three-quarters of the world's supply of tin comes, and very nearly the entire labour force is Chinese. They are lazy, given up to opium-smoking —which means a day off—dishonest, hopelessly conservative, and even more superstitious, which last comes out in an accident, when nothing will induce them in many cases either to extract the bodies or continue working. In China one entire section of a coal mine at Kaiping has had to be closed down for this reason. They will only work at all well under Chinese supervision, which needs careful watching ; and each man's earnings must be proportionate to his work to approach efficiency. I do not know what he is like in other countries, but his intense dislike for innovations makes him very dijicile
here.—I am, Sir, &c., G. E. G. Perak, Federated Malay States.
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