THE GOLD-MINING INDUSTRY OF THE W11 W ATERSRAND.
The Gold-Mining Industry of the Witwatersrand. (Argus Com- pany.)—This is a Statement drawn up for the information of Mr. Chamberlain and Lord Milner by fifteen mining engineers, and annexed to last year's Report of the Transvaal Chamber of Mines. It is illustrated and explained by between thirty and forty exhibits, which show in diagrams the facts on which the conclusions are founded. There is, to begin with, no fear of exhaustion within any time on which it is worth while to reckon. The worked-out claims are but a small portion, say a fifteenth, of the claims known to be auriferous, and a much smaller portion of those which may be reasonably looked upon as coming under the same description. Starting, then, from the fact that the gold industry is not a temporary phenomenon, we have to consider how it is to be carried on. Of course the labour question comes first. And here we have to acknowledge an error into which we were led by a misquotation of the Statement. The mining correspondent of the Times gave what purported to be a passage in the Statement to the effect that a certain policy "would leave no opening for the trail of the serpent, the formation of labour unions." No such words occur, or could have occurred. The statement is an absolutely neutral document giving facts without any expression of opinion as to social and political questions. The statistics of labour give fifty-two thousand natives as now working in the mines, as against a hundred thousand before the war. How is this t-..% be dealt with ? The Committee suggests (1) more legal and moral pressure to compel a greater number of natives to work and for longer periods; (2) recruiting over a larger area and with more vigour; (3) importation of Asiatics--thia as a pis-a/ler. What does (1) mean ? What moral pressure is we can under- stand; but what is legal pressure, when the native does not work, as the Committee tells us, because he does not want the money ? Can there be any large number of natives who are released from the necessit:; of working by the possession of many wives? In all other polygamous countries nine-tenths of the men have one wife only. There is much useful information about the cost of railway carriage, about explosives, in fact about all the circum- stances of gold-mining.
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