Part 9

The pay of the skilled white miner is 30s. a day. Throughout Rhodesia the artisan earns good wages, the blacksmith and the bricklayer, for example, receiving respectively 30s. and 35s. a day in Salisbury. Detractors of Rhodesia are constantly asserting that the white population is outrageously taxed, each settler, they state, having to pay £40 per annum to the Chartered Company in the shape of taxes; and a well-known politician, beloved of Little Englanders, has publicly declared that this is the case. It appears that these ingenious people arrived at this conclusion by dividing the amount of the Company's revenue, £440,000, by the number of Europeans in the country, namely, 12,000, which certainly does give a result of nearly £40 per head. It is thus assumed that all the Company's revenue is derived from the taxation of the settlers. Now, in the first place, out of this £440,000 of revenue, £113,000 represents the amount of the native hut-tax, and is therefore not contributed by white people at all. Another £23,000 is derived from the sales and rent of land, the Company's property; and another £58,000 from the telegraph and postal services, which up till now have been worked at a loss. No one can maintain that these items fall under the head of taxation. To go further, another £86,000 of the Company's revenue is paid directly by the mining companies that have been floated--that is, by the shareholders in England, not by the people of Rhodesia. These figures added up amount to £280,000, which leaves a balance of £160,000--the taxation laid on the settlers, that is, about £13 per head. To go still further, of this £160,000, £73,000 is derived from the duties on wines, spirits, and tobacco. Therefore if one puts these luxuries out of the calculation the taxation amounts to only £7 a head per year, which is anything but high when one bears in mind that there are no paupers in Rhodesia, that women and children are few, and that the large bulk of the population are adult males in the prime of life earning high wages.

The climate of the Rhodesian plateau is undoubtedly healthy and well suited to British colonists. It is a land where the white man can work in the fields. The British children reared here are as rosy of cheek and as sturdy of limb as those at home. There is, of course, malaria in the lowlands, but that will disappear before occupation and civilisation, even as it has done in once unhealthy districts of the Transvaal and the Cape Colony. It is the same with the diseases that affect domestic animals: thus horse-sickness once prevailed far to the south, and gradually has been driven north before advancing civilisation. The dreaded tsetse fly too, fatal to horses and cattle, can only exist where the larger wild beasts abound, and vanishes with the latter wherever the white man establishes himself. The rinderpest, in killing off the wild buffalo, did one good service: the tsetse disappeared with the buffalo, and now only frequents remote and unfrequented regions.

From every point of view the future of Rhodesia now looks hopeful. The young State suffered from every calamity that can befall a new country, but was too vigorous to succumb. The Company and the Rhodesian community have displayed pluck, energy, and patriotism in the hour of Britain's danger, and every loyal Englishman must sincerely wish Rhodesia prosperity. As regards the prospects of the Chartered Company itself, I will conclude by calling attention to one point. Up till now the Company has been compelled to maintain a large and expensive military force, costing £276,000 a year. Now that the Boer war has been brought to a conclusion, the necessity for so large a force has ceased to exist, and Mr. W. H. Milton, the Senior Administrator of Southern Rhodesia, has recommended, as sufficient to meet the requirements of the country, the maintenance of a force of 400 Europeans and 400 natives, with a simple organisation on the lines of the Cape Police. The cost of this, he maintains, should not exceed £100,000 per annum. If his proposal is accepted, the revenue of the Chartered Company should balance its expenditure, and the corner will be turned.

PROBLEMS AND POSSIBILITIES

BY JAMES STANLEY LITTLE

_Author of "South Africa," "The Progress of the British Empire in the Nineteenth Century," "The United States of Britain," &c. &c._

The magnificent vagueness of the subject the editor of this volume has, in his wisdom, thought fit to apportion to me might have its conveniences, were it not that such pregnant matters as emigration, federation, education, irrigation, and half-a-dozen subjects besides, all of which bristle with problems and possibilities of the most clamant kind, are ruled out of this paper, in that their consideration has been entrusted to highly competent and patriotic writers, upon whose preserves it would be unbecoming to poach. Nevertheless, it must be obvious to everybody that it will not be possible to attempt a comprehensive analysis of the problems and possibilities of the future, and to keep entirely clear of these all-important factors in the case; seeing that every political, ethnical, financial, and economic problem impinges on these special subjects of which one and all are a part.

As to the political situation to-day, it seems scarcely to be apprehended in this country that the lines of cleavage between parties and factions at the Cape, and indeed in the new colonies, are by no means simple ones. In South Africa generally it is not merely a case of Briton _versus_ Boer; it is not in Cape Colony simply a case of Dutch Africander _versus_ British loyalist. In the Transvaal the problem is not solely how to bring the Boers and English together, or how to conciliate and retain the loyalty of those men, largely of British origin, formerly known as Uitlanders. A labour party, championing a programme practically identical with that with which all students of later-day politico-social questions are familiar, is coming into existence, and is, I think, certain to make itself a power in the land as time advances. It has been frequently, if somewhat hastily, assumed that in South Africa generally parties will follow the lines of division common to most civilised communities, and range themselves in camps, the composition of which will be determined respectively by the place of residence and occupation of the units of the people; the interests, sentiments, and aspirations of the town dwellers being at variance with those of the rural inhabitants. In a sense, we may take the people of Johannesburg to represent what passes for the urban population of old-settled countries. Roughly speaking, the citizens of the older established and smaller towns were dependent for their existence, and are likely to continue to be so dependent, on the agriculturists, since outside the Rand the Transvaal had no industries, no manufactures worth considering: for some time to come she is not likely to have any. So the Rand stood and stands for the towns, and the Uitlanders for the townsmen. The rest of the State stood and stands for the country, and, the agriculturists being mainly Dutch, the Boers stand for the countrymen. In the future, however, the race question, which has practically overruled any dividing lines drawn on the basis of townsmen and countrymen in Cape Colony, should cease to govern, in quite the old way, the political antagonisms of the inhabitants of the Transvaal; in any case, if the various schemes for settling British farmers in the land are crowned with reasonable success, it will no longer be possible to regard the rural Transvaalers as simply Boers, and the townsmen as simply Britishers. At present in the Transvaal there exists, of course, the great and principal division of its people, the British and philo-British _versus_ the Dutch and philo-Dutch. But the interests of the great mining companies are not now, and never can be, on all-fours with those of the operatives; while the traders are likely to find their ideals at variance with those of the mining magnates and operatives alike. Obviously there will be no immediate community of interest and aim between the old Boer farmers and the new British elements introduced on to the land. The differences of the townsmen are likely to be more strictly economic than political; but they must necessarily take a political complexion in the process of their devolution. It would be rash to attempt anything in the shape of a precise forecast; but it certainly seems to me quite unlikely that the future divisions into parties of the citizens of the Transvaal can take the simple form of Briton _versus_ Boer. No doubt the existence of the two races, living side by side, with the remembrance of a century's differences between them, will continue to give a decided tincture to the parties to be formed in the future. It depends entirely on the kind of statecraft Great Britain brings to bear on the settlement of the new colonies and on its results, whether the progressive elements in the existing population--the population waiting for the gates to be opened to it may, for the purposes of this argument, be considered as entirely progressive--range themselves on the side of British imperialism, or whether they will join themselves to those forces, already existing, which openly or secretly aim at the establishment of a republican régime. It is quite a mistake to suppose that these forces--republican sympathies, that is to say--are at the moment entirely to be sought for in the Boer camp. It is, or it ought to be, common knowledge that the internal movement for reform on the Rand, and for the elimination of the Dopper-Hollander dominance of Pretoria, was not exactly inspired or sustained by men who wished to see the Transvaal an integral portion of the British Empire. At the same time, it is not denied that a great many sympathisers with this movement, and not a few of its active supporters--the late Mr. Rhodes, for instance--were above all things anxious that when the Transvaal flag was hauled down the Union Jack should be run up.

Apart, however, from such considerations, matters of history, it may be allowed that whatever the nationality or preferences of respective Uitlanders at that time of day, a rough sense of justice would reconcile most of them now to the flag of the country, which at enormous sacrifice of treasure and men has procured their release from the bondage of Pretoria. It is equally certain, more so in fact, that their acceptance of the British flag, now and hereafter, is and will be contingent on the treatment they receive at the hands of the new Government. Already many voices are heard in the land declaring that, so far from the new Government having brought relief to the mining industry and to the Uitlanders--and it must be clearly understood by all Englishmen, however much they may resent the fact, that upon the prosperity of the mines not only the welfare of the Transvaal but of all South Africa depends--it has increased its burdens. The limits of space will not permit any exhaustive examination into the basis of this complaint. Mr. Chamberlain, before these lines are in the hands of the public, will doubtless be on the spot examining into the grounds of the complaint. It would be clearly impossible for any one to accuse me, of all persons, of favouring the millionaires, or of holding a brief for their views and interests. But this is not a millionaires', or a mining question; it is the question of the to be or not to be of South Africa as a British dependency. It may be said at once, that if, as Mr. Chamberlain at one time indicated, the somewhat contradictory and superficial report drawn up by Sir David Barbour, full of inconsistencies and injustices as it is, is to be accepted by the British Government, then I would not care to purchase at any price a seven years' repairing lease--a repairing lease with a vengeance--of British tenure of South Africa, much less the freehold of the property. Whether he be a financial expert or not, no man who possesses a sound working knowledge, personal knowledge, of South Africa and its affairs can study this report and preserve his equanimity. It fills one with fear and trembling. Sir David Barbour's proposals savour of the arbitrary confiscation of mining profits. This perhaps, standing alone, would not matter much from a South African point of view, since the loss would mainly fall on the hundreds of thousands of English and foreign shareholders interested in the mines; according to the _Statist_, the British public has something like £250,000,000 invested in the mines. However, it is not with such losses we are at present concerned. My contention is that if the Transvaal is taxed out of all proportion to its wealth--its immediate or permanent prospects even; if the new colonies, despite the heavy losses from the war, and the serious--for a long time to come it will be serious--dearth of labour contingent thereon, is burdened with taxation, the incidence of which is to be double, or in any case greatly in excess of the monstrous charges levied by Kruger and his advisers; if the Transvaal is to be saddled with a heavy war debt, then the financial, political, and economic ruin of South Africa in general, and the Transvaal in particular, must follow as an inevitable consequence, and this will happen even should a short respite be given. I have set forth again and again, in the columns of the _Times_ and _Post_, and in the Anglo-African journal I formerly conducted, that apart from the uneconomic and impolitic nature of these suggestions, they are morally unsound. He who calls the tune must pay the piper. The British people, by allowing themselves to be ruled and betrayed by men who persisted in blinding their eyes to the writing on the wall, though there were Daniels in abundance to interpret it to them; by allowing themselves to be served by an army wholly inadequate in numbers, and largely composed of inefficients, are responsible for the cost of a war which never would have taken place had British pro-consuls and colonists on the spot been trusted; their counsel listened to here, and their hands freed and actions upheld yonder.

Moreover, all such heroic schemes of taxation in the interest of the British taxpayer, of which Sir David Barbour's report is a type, are based on proleptic statistics of an expansion which after all is problematical, and which in any case will not become solid fact if onerous conditions are imposed upon the Rand in advance of that expansion. The profits from the mines, great as they ought to be if we do not strangle the goose right away, are ephemeral profits--thirty to fifty years will see the last of them. Possibly the high-water mark of production will be reached twenty years hence, and from that time the decline will begin as in the case of the Australian and Californian mines. It is obvious, therefore, that a heavy war debt must press disastrously on the industry during its growth and during its decline. Taxation seems to have been proposed on the basis of the anticipation, as if it were already an accomplished fact, of the most prosperous days possible of attainment by the industry, and in entire obliviousness of the fact that no sooner is the zenith reached than gradual decline, ending in extinction, must supervene. Unjust taxation would be a suicidal policy; it would retard the flow of capital, render all but a few higher-grade mines unprofitable, with the result that the budgets of the new colonies would show deficits year after year. Not only would capital awaiting employment be frightened into other channels, but schemes of federation would remain sterile schemes; and the hope of a prosperous and united South Africa would continue a mere day-dream, impossible of accomplishment.

I have put this question of the taxation of the Transvaal in the forefront of this paper, because it is of pressing importance and immediate interest. Scarcely less important, though the subject will probably be dealt with more fully by another pen, is the question of land settlement. We are approaching this matter too parochially and timidly. If the land companies and burghers will not part with suitable land to settlers on reasonable terms, they must be made to do so. The example of New Zealand must be followed. It is absolutely essential that we should plant out settlers on a large scale; especially is it essential in view of the fact that the loyalty of the dwellers in Johannesburg and other mining centres is not to be counted on confidently. With these men commercial considerations are certain to be dominant. Even if they are not given the solid reasons for discontent already foreshadowed, reasons, real and imaginary, in plenty are certain to crop up. Hence their loyalty will not be a matter of sentiment, but one of calculation. Further, every help and encouragement must be given to the right kind of settlers; the country which spent over two hundred millions sterling in making South Africa a possible place for Englishmen to live in, should not grudge another ten, twenty, or if necessary thirty millions to make the conditions of life sufficiently attractive to the emigrating English agriculturist. The conditions underlying land settlement have been carefully studied by Mr. Arnold Forster's Land Commission, and they were lucidly set forth in the report of that Commission. It remains for the Imperial Government to make them operative, by coming to the country for generous support. I can do no more here than record my absolute conviction, for what it may be worth, that if land settlement in the new colonies is to find its own level, so to speak; if we are trusting to men with the necessary capital, some £300 or more, to come forward in anything like sufficient numbers to affect appreciably the question of British _versus_ Boer in favour of the British, or the problem of self-seeking Cosmopolitanism (purely commercial interests) _versus_ sentimental and patriotic Imperialism, we are building our hopes on sand. The drawbacks to farming in Africa are many: absence of transport (and obviously without well-devised and speedily carried out railway schemes the internal development of South Africa is impossible); absence of navigable rivers; recurrent droughts (here again I may say that nothing less can avail than grand schemes of organised irrigation such as those favoured by Mr. Hedger Wallace and by Mr. Willcocks in his luminous report); cattle disease and locusts. The _ignis fatuus_ of the Rand, it must always be remembered, is ever present to lure away the settler when he has once been induced to settle. To the Englishman the love of isolation is not generally the strongly developed vice or virtue it is with the Boer. Consequently, we must go before the settler and prepare the way for him. Large and well-organised schemes of planting families on communal principles, freely scattered over the land in the midst of the Boers, both from an economic and political point of view, are absolutely necessary if we are to retain our hold on the country, or ensure its permanent prosperity. Under proper conditions and safeguards, generous schemes of female immigration must be initiated. It has been said, and I do not gainsay it, that South Africa requires almost immediately 70,000 more women. Also the Children of the State, the waifs and strays, the foundlings, those who are physically and morally fit, of course, should be sent out to South Africa, there to be carefully prepared in proper establishments for colonial life. In this matter we may well learn wisdom from the early Dutch settlers, who, under an arrangement with the Amsterdam authorities, received into their midst a number of foundlings. From these the present race of sturdy burghers has sprung. The subject is too vast for detailed treatment here; else much might be said about the policy of obliging all male settlers to bind themselves to a course of military training and contingent service, and as to the expediency of encouraging a respectable number of Canadians and Australians to make their home in South Africa. It is, in any case, obvious that no tentative tinkering with the question of land settlement can avail.

The sooner we face this necessity the better; since the sooner it is in a fair way to being faced, mastered, and provided for, the sooner can those electoral and legislative concessions we have promised the Boers, and which honour, justice, and expediency oblige us to grant at the earliest possible date, be granted. As things now are, we have a British autocracy in power, alternating in turn between the desire to repress the clamant demands of the one great industry of South Africa--the gold mines, and dread of that powerful confederacy--the Rand magnates. The methods and example of the great financial corporations and financial princes are not, to write temperately, conducive to the elevation of public morals; nor do they tend to give to the public life of a colony a high or healthy tone. Students of Mr. Cecil Rhodes' career cannot fail to notice the disintegrating effect on that great patriot's manners, and on his public and private procedure, which resulted from his close association with, and inexplicable reliance on, men, most of whom (it would be invidious to specialise the exceptions) lived and moved and had their being on a plane infinitely lower than Rhodes' natural one. The destinies of the new colonies are for the moment nominally in the hands of British officials. These officials have practically nobody to go to for counsel but the mining and financial experts. This is not as it should be. The sooner there is a free play of interests and opinions between the Boers, British settlers, and Johannesburgers the better. These divergent classes, all colonial, however antagonistic their interests and prejudices, must fight out their differences among themselves as best they may. The British official, excellent as he is in dealing with subject races, is not seen at his best in controlling men of his own flesh and blood--men, I should say, of his own colour--when these men are in a position of political inferiority to himself.

The mention of this subject reminds me, that one of the most effective arguments in favour of granting representative institutions to the new colonies as quickly as may be is to be found in the native question. In this matter, as indeed in every matter, colonial opinion asserting itself through the necessarily imperfect, but only possible, system of parliamentary institutions, must be respected. As to the native question, an enormous majority of British South Africans, though it may reprobate certain tendencies to undue harshness, brutality even, still observable in the conduct of Boers of the baser sort, is nevertheless convinced that the Dutch attitude toward the native is, in its essence, the only possible or safe one. There is not the smallest fear that anything in the shape of compulsory labour will be sanctioned by any legislature in South Africa. But that the principles and provisions of that most statesmanlike Act, the Glen Grey Act, will be further extended there can be no doubt.