There were circumstances, however, which kept
away the rowdy and desperado element who usually make for a newly
opened goldfield. It was not a class of mining which encouraged the
individual adventurer. There were none of those nuggets which
gleamed through the mud of the dollies at Ballarat, or recompensed
the forty-niners in California for all their travels and their
toils. It was a field for elaborate machinery, which could only be
provided by capital. Managers, engineers, miners, technical
experts, and the tradesmen and middlemen who live upon them, these
were the Uitlanders, drawn from all the races under the sun, but
with the Anglo-Celtic vastly predominant. The best engineers were
American, the best miners were Cornish, the best managers were
English, the money to run the mines was largely subscribed in
England. As time went on, however, the German and French interests
became more extensive, until their joint holdings are now probably
as heavy as those of the British. Soon the population of the mining
centres became greater than that of the whole Boer community, and
consisted mainly of men in the prime of life - men, too, of
exceptional intelligence and energy.
The situation was an extraordinary one. I have already attempted to
bring the problem home to an American by suggesting that the Dutch
of New York had trekked west and founded an anti-American and
highly unprogressive State. To carry out the analogy we will now
suppose that that State was California, that the gold of that State
attracted a large inrush of American citizens, who came to
outnumber the original inhabitants, that these citizens were
heavily taxed and badly used, and that they deafened Washington
with their outcry about their injuries. That would be a fair
parallel to the relations between the Transvaal, the Uitlanders,
and the British Government.
That these Uitlanders had very real and pressing grievances no one
could possibly deny. To recount them all would be a formidable
task, for their whole lives were darkened by injustice. There was
not a wrong which had driven the Boer from Cape Colony which he did
not now practise himself upon others - and a wrong may be excusable
in 1885 which is monstrous in 1895. The primitive virtue which had
characterised the farmers broke down in the face of temptation. The
country Boers were little affected, some of them not at all, but
the Pretoria Government became a most corrupt oligarchy, venal and
incompetent to the last degree. Officials and imported Hollanders
handled the stream of gold which came in from the mines, while the
unfortunate Uitlander who paid nine-tenths of the taxation was
fleeced at every turn, and met with laughter and taunts when he
endeavoured to win the franchise by which he might peaceably set
right the wrongs from which he suffered. He was not an unreasonable
person. On the contrary, he was patient to the verge of meekness,
as capital is likely to be when it is surrounded by rifles. But his
situation was intolerable, and after successive attempts at
peaceful agitation, and numerous humble petitions to the Volksraad,
he began at last to realise that he would never obtain redress
unless he could find some way of winning it for himself.
Without attempting to enumerate all the wrongs which embittered the
Uitlanders, the more serious of them may be summed up in this way.
1. That they were heavily taxed and provided about seven-eighths of
the revenue of the country. The revenue of the South African
Republic - which had been 154,000 pounds in 1886, when the gold
fields were opened - had grown in 1899 to four million pounds, and
the country through the industry of the newcomers had changed from
one of the poorest to the richest in the whole world (per head of
population).
2. That in spite of this prosperity which they had brought, they,
the majority of the inhabitants of the country, were left without a
vote, and could by no means influence the disposal of the great
sums which they were providing. Such a case of taxation without
representation has never been known.
3. That they had no voice in the choice or payment of officials.
Men of the worst private character might be placed with complete
authority over valuable interests. Upon one occasion the Minister
of Mines attempted himself to jump a mine, having officially
learned some flaw in its title. The total official salaries had
risen in 1899 to a sum sufficient to pay 40 pounds per head to the
entire male Boer population.
4. That they had no control over education. Mr. John Robinson, the
Director General of the Johannesburg Educational Council, has
reckoned the sum spent on Uitlander schools as 650 pounds out of
63,000 pounds allotted for education, making one shilling and
tenpence per head per annum on Uitlander children, and eight pounds
six shillings per head on Boer children - the Uitlander, as always,
paying seven-eighths of the original sum.
5. No power of municipal government. Watercarts instead of pipes,
filthy buckets instead of drains, a corrupt and violent police, a
high death-rate in what should be a health resort - all this in a
city which they had built themselves.
6. Despotic government in the matter of the press and of the right
of public meeting.
7. Disability from service upon a jury.
8. Continual harassing of the mining interest by vexatious
legislation. Under this head came many grievances, some special to
the mines and some affecting all Uitlanders. The dynamite monopoly,
by which the miners had to pay 600,000 pounds extra per annum in
order to get a worse quality of dynamite; the liquor laws, by which
one-third of the Kaffirs were allowed to be habitually drunk; the
incompetence and extortions of the State-owned railway; the
granting of concessions for numerous articles of ordinary
consumption to individuals, by which high prices were maintained;
the surrounding of Johannesburg by tolls from which the town had no
profit - these were among the economical grievances, some large,
some petty, which ramified through every transaction of life.
