NATIVE LABOUR IN THE TRANSVAAL.
WE are not among those who believe that the black races, and especially the natives of Africa, can be equalised with the white, either socially or politically. Instead, we hold with the late Mary Kingsley, the truest friend the black races ever had, that it is not good for the white or the black that they should mix ; that the more the black races are kept apart and by themselves the better; and that the vote and other political rights which are beneficial in the case of the white will in the vast majority of cases do, not good, but harm to the black. But though we believe that nothing • but evil will come from the attempt to give the black races social and. political equality—we do not, of course, object to the black man possessing the vote when he has reached a high standard of education, and is a sub- stantial holder of property—we hold that it is impera- tively necessary that the black man, though he can- not have equality, should have justice, and justice not merely in name but in fact. His peraonal rights, even though he does not possess political rights, must be as inviolable and as jealously guarded as those of, say, a woman or a minor. To give him anything less than justice and the complete personal freedom that justice demands must inevitably bring to ruin the State which has a foundation so insecure. We therefore repudiate in the strongest possible way each and every suggestion that the black man should be forced to labour against his will, —except, of course, through the economic compul A.011 which in a greater or a lesser degree affects each one of us. The proposal to introduce forced labour for the native into South Africa is one which would be unjust to the black man and would inevitably demoralise the white, and against it we must protest with all our strength. Forced labour is slavery, and it was to put down slavery, not to enforce it under an alias, that we have fought a hundred-years' fight with the Dutch race in South Africa. The proposal, though many of its upholders are, we readily admit, not aware of its effect, is nothing less than treason to the Empire. The Empire, whether for the white man or the black, is founded on liberty and on emancipation, not on slavery.
We should be content to resist the plea for any form of forced labour in South Africa on grounds of abstract justice, but a perfectly unanswerable case against it can also be made out on grounds of political expediency. People often seem to argue as if the situation in South Africa were something new and strange, and as if we were confronted with a fresh problem there in regard to native labour. Nothing could be further from the facts. The Empire is not a thing of yesterday, and we have behind us a hundred and. fifty years of experience. This experience teaches us in the plainest terms that forced. labour and slavery are impossible foundations of Empire. it is as certain as that the sun will rise to-morrow that if we had not rejected the specious pleas for forced labour which arise under a hundred names in all Oriental coun- tries, we should. never have been able to maintain our Indian Empire. We do not doubt that tea-planters and other private employers of labour in India have often com- plained of labour being scarce and dear, and of natives being idle ; but the Government of India has never yielded to such pleas, and has always protected the Indian native in his right to sell or not to sell his labour as he chooses. The success of our Indian Empire is, in truth, a standing donial of the claim to deprive the native of his personal liberty, and a standing proof of the wisdom of basing our Imperial system on liberty and justice. Take, again, the case of Egypt. We found Egypt degraded by that worst form of shivery,—forced labour. We freed her from the curse, and to-day the Egyptian peasant, instead of being the most miserable, is one of the most prosperous of Orientals. No doubt we did a great deal more than merely abolish forced. labour, but its abolition was the sign and symbol of the reign of right and justice which Lord. Cromer was able to establish on the Nile. We see what the refusal to admit forced labour has done. Let us look at the other side. Happily there has in recent years been only one real example of forced labour being allowed under direct British rule, but the result speaks eloquently in favour of our contention. By an aberration of the Imperial instinct which somehow seized on our Government, we allowed Mr. Rhodes and his Company to establish what was in fact forced labour in Rhodesia. The natives were com- pelled to put in a certain amount of labour in the mines. What was the result? Some two years after the conquest of the country Rhodesia was involved in the bloodiest and most formidable native insurrection that, with the exception ..tf the Indian Mutiny, the Empire has yet known. It is, indeed, said. that more white women and children and. non- combatant men perished in Rhodesia than during the Mutiny. No doubt other causes contributed to the rising, but an impartial judgment of its origins will, we believe, show that forced labour, and especially forced. labour in the mines, had the greatest share in producing the rebellion.
In support of the view—one which we have always held and set forth in these pages—that slavery under the alias of forced labour must not be allowed. in South Africa, Sir William Harcourt contributes a long letter to Thursday's Times, while Sir Edward Grey made the matter the subject of a speech to his constituents on Wednesday. With most of the substance of Sir William Harcourt's letter we are in agreement, but we very much wish that he had adopted, instead of his usual truculent and provocative style, the moderation, fairness, and good taste of Sir Edward Grey. The two men mean the same thing; but one contrives to be rude and insulting to those who hold the view opposed to his own, while the other, though just as firm on the main issue, is courteous, reasonable, and therefore convincing in argument. We hold that those of the mine-owners—they may be in the majority, but there are also plenty who hold our view—who, in effect, ask for forced labour are entirely wrong, and we would resolutely withstand. their demands; but our opponents in the matter, though mis- taken, ought not to be treated with flouts, jeers, and even insults. Sir Edward Grey states the case so well that we cannot refrain from quoting his words. "There were people," he said, "who seemed to think that by some roundabout method they might be able to put compulsion on the natives of South Africa in order to induce them to labour. He held that the natives of South Africa who were getting the benefit of good govern- ment should contribute towards the expenses of that good government by the payment of taxes ; but if it came to putting unduly high taxes upon the natives with the object of forcing them to labour at work which they would. not otherwise undertake, we should be going a step towards a, form of slavery to which this country would never consent." Some taxation was right. It was right also that the natives should work ; but their work must be voluntary work. After all, taxation and labour were essential to all civilised. government, and no civilisation got on without them. "The natural course, therefore, was that there should be reasonable taxation in South Africa, and that the natives should acquire the habit of labour,— 'voluntary and not forced." Sir Edward Grey went on to say that he looked forward to seeing South Africa become far more of a white man's country than it had been. He would much rather see prosperity and progress gradual and based upon white labour than he would see a sudden spurt and boom brought about by native labour. White labour, after all, was essential to a great civilisation.
With every word of this wise and statesmanlike speech we are in agreement. We are firmly convinced that it is good for the black man to work, and that without steady and continuous work he will not be likely to improve socially ; but the work which will produce these valuable moral results is voluntary work, and no other. Work without the voluntary stimulus, but under compulsion, will demoralise, as slavery in any form always does, and will work the double curse,—on the enslaved and on the enslaver. Again, we agree with Sir Edward Grey that it is only right that the native should. bear some reasonable amount of taxation, but it must be taxation solely for revenue purposes, and not taxation intended to force the unwilling black man into the labour market. But most of all we agree with Sir Edward as to the use of white labour. Assuredly the working men of England, who have borne cheerfully the heavy burden of the war, have a right to demand that the experiment of white labour shall be fairly tried, and not tried merely in order to advertise a failure. We believe that in the Transvaal, as in every other industry in every other part of the world where white men can work, white labour plus labour-saving machinery proves to be cheap labour. Nay, more, we feel sure that if so-called. cheap native labour is relied on in the mines to do the bulk of the work, it will retard their development by taking away the stimulus to vigorous working. It used to be said, and not without truth, that a high rent was often the best manure for a field. So a high wage-bill per man is often the best stimulus to an industry. It forces the owner, as we see in America, to make his labour and his machinery efficient in every particular. He cannot afford to be slack, and his alertness thus enforced in the end increases his profit. Let the mine-owners make up for the deficiency of natives, not by striving after any indirect system of forced labour, which even if allowed them would prove a poisoned gift, but by means of white labour and. improved. machinery. That is the way of success. The mine-owners tell us that they do not want our white wastage. We equally do not want them to take it, but to take instead the best type of British labourer. He will prove a far better bargain than the coerced native, and he will help to found a white State in what ought to be a white man's country.
We cannot help thinking that at heart many of the mine-owners dread the white labourer not so much on account of his cost as because of his vote, and because they imagine that if there are too many white labourers with votes they will interfere with the mining industry, or, as it is euphemistically said, "prove unreasonable.' We believe that these fears are groundless, and come from the habit of dependingupon native labour. The white labourer may want his rights, and may be less amenable to certain influences than the native, but he will in the end recognise his partner- ship in the industry, and will not want to kill the gold industry any more than he wants to kill the cotton trade. It is, we think, only because they have so little experience of him that the mine-owners so greatly dread the white labourer. At any rate, it is not our business to attend to such pleas, but to do our best to get white men on to the Rand, and when the period of direct Imperial rule is over, to see that what we leave behind is a popular and democratic State, based, like the rest of our self-governing Colonies, on manhood suffrage for the white man.
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