South Africa and the Boer-British War Part 23

"The Rand has at last reached and surpa.s.sed the marvelous output of 400,000 ounces of gold as the production for a single month of twenty-eight working days. Every twenty-four hours, then, witness the recovery of 14,250 ounces of gold, worth rather over 50,000 ($243,325). The Rand total comprises only the output of mines along a stretch of some thirty miles of country. With this statement for the month of October, the gold winnings of the whole Republic for the ten months of 1898 amount to 3,700,908 ounces. At this rate the total for the whole of 1898 would be over four and a half millions.

[Sidenote: Gold Production of South Africa in 1897 and 1898]

The value of the October 423,000 ounces is 1,500,000 ($7,299,750), which may be compared with 11,653,725 ($56,162,743), the value for all in 1897, and 12,208,411 ($59,412,232), the value of the gold production of the United States in the same year. Although the combined mines of Colorado, California, Dakota, Montana, Nevada, and Alaska put out more gold last year than did the South African Republic, it is not likely that the Transvaal will take second place this year.

Deep levels continue on the upgrade, as their production in October was 106,426 ounces--the first time that the hundred thousand has been exceeded. The average price of the September production was 3 16s.

($18.42) per ounce."

The yearly aggregate for eleven years was:

Ounces. Ounces.

1888 .......... 208,122 1894 .......... 2,024,162 1889 .......... 369,577 1895 .......... 2,277,685 1890 .......... 494,819 1896 .......... 2,279,827 1891 .......... 729,238 1897 .......... 3,034,678 1892 .......... 1,210,869 1898 .......... 3,700,908 1893 .......... 1,478,477

The price of gold is a few cents less than $18.50 per ounce. The figures $18.42 often occur. Consul Macrum sent from Pretoria December 31, 1898, a report of the gold production of the South African Republic--the Transvaal--saying:

"It must be remembered that this has been a remarkably dull year, so far as ordinary business is concerned, and the mining companies, it is freely said, are not working up to their full capacity; but, nevertheless, the production and profit have been greater this year than ever before. When the differences that are said to exist between the Government and capital have been removed or adjusted, the Transvaal, it is predicted, will see a most wonderful boom."

But it must be taken into account that the Boer has a soul above booms.

[Sidenote: A Clear and Impartial Statement]

Mr. O. P. Austin, Chief of the Bureau of Statistics of the Treasury Department of the United States, gives an admirable, impartial and clear statement of the matters of first importance in the Transvaal. A few official, indisputable figures and simple facts put the question of the right and wrong of the b.l.o.o.d.y war in South Africa in the right way and yield the correct answer unmistakably. He says:

"The laws of the State are enacted by a Parliament of two chambers, the first or higher chamber enacting a large share of the laws independent of the lower house, which only originates measures relating to certain subjects of administration, and which cannot become laws without the approval of the upper house. Members of the first chamber are elected from and by the first-cla.s.s burghers, who comprise only the male whites resident in the Republic before May, 1876, or who took an active part in the war of independence in 1881 or subsequent wars, and the children of such persons over the age of sixteen. This condition would deprive persons natives of other countries of becoming "first-cla.s.s burghers,"

and thus obtaining the privilege of partic.i.p.ating in the election of the President or the house which enacts the most important of the laws and has a veto power upon all measures originating in the lower house.

The second-cla.s.s burghers may become members of and partic.i.p.ate in the election of the second chamber, the second-cla.s.s comprising the naturalized male alien population and their children over the age of sixteen. Naturalization may, according to the Statesman's Year Book, 1899, "be obtained after two years' residence and registration on the books of the field cornet, oath of allegiance and payment of 2, and naturalized burghers may by special resolution of the first or higher chamber become first-cla.s.s burghers twelve years after naturalization."

[Sidenote: Boss and Caste Government]

This is the rarest combination known of Boss and Caste Government. It is an unrestrained despotism designed to perpetuate itself by favor and force, regardless of everybody not of the ruling race and condition, and the Englishman who would give up his rights in the Transvaal as a British subject for the privilege of ultimate partic.i.p.ation in the government, even of his own town, if that town contained ten Englishmen to the people of all other nationalities, would have to be "a man without a country" for seven years. It was at this point that Mr.

President Kruger stood fast, peremptorily refusing the reduction of the period of probation even two years--leaving it five, and yet the probability is a very large number of the naturalized citizens of the United States who would regard such a restriction in this country as a bitter and remorseless discrimination against the foreign born, are sympathizing with the unrelenting att.i.tude of the Boers upon this subject. Apply to this condition of things in the Transvaal the facts and figures following:

[Sidenote: Facts and Figures]

The area of the Republic is 119,139 square miles; the white population, according to the State Almanack for 1898, is 345,397, and the native population, 748,759. The seat of government is Pretoria, with a white population of 10,000. The largest town is Johannesburg, the mining center of Wit.w.a.tersrand gold fields, having a population within a radius of three miles, according to the census of 1896, of 102,078 persons, of which number 50,907 were whites, 952 Malays, 4,807 Coolies and Chinese, 42,533 Kaffirs, and 2,879 of mixed race. One-third of the population of the Republic is estimated to be engaged in agriculture, the lands of the Republic generally, outside the mining districts, being extremely productive, and the demand for farm products in the mining regions very great, even in excess of the local products at the present time."

It does not in the least soothe the Boers that they have a good market for their farm products, for which they are indebted almost exclusively to English enterprise in great feats of engineering, in the application of the most modern methods of mining, and to immense investments, in the cheapening of transportation, and extending the capacities and facilities of the poor as well as the rich, for swift and easy communication with neighbors.

[Sidenote: Boer Prejudice and Intolerance]

The chief care, concern and anxiety of the Boer is that a government of the people must not by any chance be established in Transvaal. It is the elementary principle of the Boer disposition and government, that there are no real "people" except Boers, who place the Hottentot, the Englishman, the Zulu and the Kaffir, the American, the German and the Frenchman on the same level. He will have none of them except in the capacity of subordinates, and when it suits his humor, servants of the established cla.s.s that dominates. The native population is double that of the number of whites, but that does not concern the Boer. His Republicanism takes no account of people with darker skins than his own. In the most important part of the Transvaal, the Boers themselves are in a p.r.o.nounced minority, if we take into account only the white folks. The Boer capital, Pretoria, has a white population of 10,000; the white population of Johannesburg is 50,907; and the great political task and vindictive occupation of the Boers of Pretoria, the political capital of the alleged free country, is that the select few of the 10,000 whites in that town shall rule it and Johannesburg also at their pleasure, and according to the obstinate caprices of their will. There were 50,000 whites in Johannesburg, and the argument the Boer advocates have advanced in America is that the whites of that city, five times as numerous as those of Pretoria, must not be allowed even the shadow of the right of suffrage, because they would outvote the chosen people who have taken the course of government upon themselves in the political capital. It is this insistence upon an atrocious inequality that is the elementary cause of the war. Such an oppression becomes an intolerable condition, and there is no cure for it but the sword. Of course, it has been a characteristic of this situation that it is a.s.sociated with a systematic tyranny at once insulting and extortionate. [Sidenote: The "Dog in the Manger"] The Boer policy is moderately described as that of the "dog in the manger." The 50,000 white people of Johannesburg, are disfranchised, first, because they under the rule of the majority would be at least their own rulers and exercising an important influence in the government of Johannesburg, would impair the authority and destroy the prestige of the oligarchy at Pretoria. We do not urge the fact that this majority at Johannesburg are also the creators and possessors of the greater wealth of the Transvaal. Property has the right of recognition as the result of investment and industry, but it is not necessary that to protect itself it must have political advantages out of proportion to the number of the electors who are the property holders. So the argument for the enfranchis.e.m.e.nt in a reasonable time of the Uitlanders of Johannesburg rests primarily and safely upon the proposition that they could cast a majority vote, and we do not need to call in the merits of the property qualification or the question whether the natives have by possibility any rational right to consideration because about sixty years ago they were crowded out of their hunting grounds by the Boers, seeking a country where they could own labor and a.s.sert mastery over all others, instead of being second in importance as a people to the English of lands further South.

[Sidenote: The Commerce of the Transvaal]

The Johannesburghers are not merely disfranchised; they are, by a vengeful and grasping minority, excluded from the right to protect themselves in persons and property. It is a great fault in them that they did not arm themselves and march to Pretoria to receive and reinforce the Jameson raiders as deliverers. They are justly punished for this sin of omission. The statistician of the United States Treasury Department says: The gold mines are now the most productive in the world, and have already turned out gold to the value of more than $300,000,000, and, according to the estimate of experts, have still $3,500,000,000 'in sight.' The commerce of the South African Republic, while naturally great because of the large number of people employed by the mining industries, cannot be as accurately stated as that of states or divisions whose imports are all received through a given port or ports. Foreign goods for the South African Republic reach it through several ports--Cape Colony, Natal, Lourenco Marquez, and in smaller quant.i.ties from other ports on the coast. The total imports of 1897 are estimated at 21,515,000, of which 17,012,000 were from Great Britain, 2,747,000 from the United States, 1,054,226 from Germany, and the remainder from Belgium, Holland and France."

All this does not help the Boer as a politician. He is devoted to the rule of the minority and the exercise of his will in commanding others, native and foreign, black and white, and trampling them into the place he has a.s.signed them. This he calls liberty, and for that sort of liberty he has a portentous pa.s.sion that he is absolutely sure is sanctified.

Mr. Howard C. Hillegas, in his book "Oom Paul's People," D. Appleton & Co., holds the Boers to be a nation, and his pages are full of highly colored partiality for their cause. The diamond mines, he says, "have yielded more than four hundred million dollars worth of diamonds since the Free State conceded them to England for less than half a million dollars."

He does not condescend to consider the proposition that if the cession had not been made, the find of diamonds would not have occurred, or if it had, and the Boers undertaken to work the mines, their success would have been small in comparison with the remarkable results produced by the Uitlanders.

Mr. Hillegas in his story of the gold mines sheds light upon the character of the people of the Orange State as well as the Transvaal.

He says:

"In 1854, a Dutchman named John Marais, who had a short time before returned from the Australian gold fields, prospected in the Transvaal, and found many evidences of gold. The Boers fearing, that their land would be overrun with gold seekers, paid 500 to Marais and sent him home after extracting a promise that he would not reveal his secret to any one.

"It was not until 1884 that England heard of the presence of gold in South Africa. A man named Fred Stuben, who had spent several years in the country, spread such marvellous reports of the underground wealth of the Transvaal, that only a short time elapsed before hundreds of prospectors and miners left England for South Africa. When the first prospectors discovered auriferous veins of wonderful quality on a farm called Sterkfontein, the gold boom had its birth. It required the lapse of only a short time for the news to reach Europe, America and Australia, and immediately thereafter that vast and widely scattered army of men and women which constantly awaits the announcement of new discoveries of gold was set in motion toward the Randt.

[Sidenote: The First Stamp Mill]

"The Indian, Russian, American and Australian gold fields were deserted, and the steams.h.i.+ps and sailing vessels to South Africa were overladen with men and women of all degrees and nationalities. The journey to the Randt was expensive, dangerous and comfortless, but before a year had pa.s.sed almost 20,000 persons had crossed the deserts and the plains and had settled on claims purchased from the Boers. In December, 1885, the first stamp mill was erected for the purpose of crus.h.i.+ng the gneiss rock in which the gold lay hidden. This enterprise marks the real beginning of the gold fields of the Randt, which now yield one-third of the world's total product of the precious metal.

The advent of thousands of foreigners was a boon to the Boers, who owned the large farms on which the auriferous veins were located.

Options on farms that were of little value a short time before were sold at incredible figures, and the prices paid for small claims would have purchased farms of thousands of acres two years before. * * *

"Owing to the Boer's lack of training and consequent inability to share in the development of the gold fields, the new industry remained almost entirely in the hands of the newcomers, the Uitlanders, and two totally different communities were created in the Republic. The Uitlanders, who, in 1890, numbered about 100,000, lived almost exclusively in Johannesburg, and the suburbs along the Randt. The Boers, having disposed of their farms and lands on the Randt, were obliged to occupy the other parts of the Republic, where they could follow their pastoral and other pursuits."

Elsa Goodwin Green, a lady who volunteered as a nurse and served in the hospital at Pretoria, where forty of Jameson's wounded raiders were cared for, writes of "Raiders and Rebels in South Africa," and says of the gold question:

"In the year 1885 gold was found in the reefs underlying the Wit.w.a.tersrand (Whitewater's strand). Miners, prospectors and capitalists soon gathered together--drawn by the magnet gold--and a fine town, Johannesburg, sprang rapidly into existence. The progress of this town with its rich reefs--gold-bearing--excited a large amount of curiosity, felt by the world in general.

"With the rapid development of the mining industry and the influx of strangers, a certain amount of friction sprang up between the two races--viz., the Boers and the ever-increasing Uitlander population. A repressive legislation was persevered in, to prevent the still growing majority of newcomers from predominating or partic.i.p.ating in affairs of the Republican States.

"This rush of men with capital to the Randt meant undreamt of prosperity to the Boers, who found a ready market for horses, cattle and farm produce. Railways and telegraphic communication further developed the land.

"Though the foreigner and his money were welcome to the Boer, yet he was persistently denied a voice in the government of the community--a vote even in matters most concerning himself--indeed all rights as a citizen. Heavy duties were imposed on the articles most necessary to the development of the mining industry. Monopolies were often unjustly obtained by those having interest with the Government. Concessions were granted only after large consideration to a Government not wholly free from a taint of bribery."

South Africa is not only a land of gold. It is even more famous for its diamonds; and the richest mines in the whole world for these precious stones are located in that country. Some of the most fabulous stories have been told by travelers of their experiences in the early mining days of South Africa, and such books as "King Solomon's Mines,"

and others have served to awaken a lively interest and induce adventurous spirits to go to that land.

[Sidenote: Diamonds for Toys]

The use the Boers had for diamonds when they took their wagons and oxen and moved north from Cape Colony 700 miles, to find a country where they could subjugate the natives and live in a Paradise of Great Game, was to amuse their children with the pretty stones,--certain glittering pebbles that sparkled as the young Boers, without the least comprehension of the prodigality of Nature, rolled on the gra.s.s and sand. If it had not been for the revelations of the riches of Africa by travelers from foreign lands, the Boer boys would still have had a monopoly of diamonds for toys, and but a dim consciousness of their bucolic magnificence. Boers are very queer people. Their idea of a next-door neighbor is that he must keep his hut and wagon at least three miles away. A closer approach makes a crowd; the air and the soil become impure, and the Boer is stifled in the midst of his own splendors. He is the most conservative citizen in the world. He estimates his own inherent, individual imperialism so extravagantly, that the rights of men without big wagons with tents on them, and long strings of oxen with long horns, fade into speculative insignificance.

The Boers did not believe in diamonds--for they are not decorators of their persons--until they found others making money by mining them, and even then they only took a feeble interest in the work and were willing to rent a few square miles of each of their farms to those who were, with labor and capital, seeking the beautiful crystals. The Boer talent, according to the testimony of their lives, was in the multiplication of cattle, the shooting of wild beasts good to eat, occasional encounters with lions, and hunting parties that pursued the hippopotamus in the marshy lakes. As a matter of military science, they were educated in making forts out of their big wagons to repel the black warriors opposed to invasion by the drivers of horned cattle and dwellers in houses on wheels.

[Sidenote: President Kruger]

President Kruger is a power, because he is representative of his people. He is a great chief for the reason that a big savage becomes a leader and the headman of a tribe on account of his superior strength.

In his youth he was the swiftest and longest winded runner and the champion rifleman in his part of the country, and it is the favorite tradition of his admirers that once when a youth he was pursued by a lion, and the brute incontinently ran away when the man of destiny turned upon him and looked him in the eye. His att.i.tude towards gold is a distinction in which those who celebrate his virtues take special pride. It is well known that his capital city, Pretoria, is built on a gold mine, and a few years ago there was a revolutionary proposition made in Mr. Kruger's alleged parliament--even that of opening the neighboring land to prospectors seeking gold! The powerful President crushed out the insidious proposal.

"The Transvaal and the Boers," an interesting volume by William Garrett Fisher, says of the pre-eminence of Mr. Kruger in the official decision settling this matter that the great and good man said, with the wisdom inherited from generations of ancestors who had studied the encyclopedias of Nature:

"Stop and think what you are doing before you open fresh gold fields.

Look at Johannesburg, what a nuisance and expense it has been to us!

We have enough gold and gold seekers in this country already; for all you know there may be a second Rand at your very feet."

These momentous words in the aid of higher destinies were addressed to the Volksraad, and there was no more countenancing the idea of digging for gold.