I believe the gold fields will attract a
large European population. The wages are enormous. There are 20,000
black men, without a stitch upon them, earning as much as eighteen
shillings a week a-piece, and getting as much food as they can eat,
in the mines of Johannesburg. People talk about the treatment of
the blacks. Nobody dares to treat them badly, because they would
run away. There is a competition for them, and the black man has an
uncommonly rosy time of it. The white men naturally won't work
under the same conditions as the blacks. I saw a letter from an
operative cautioning his fellow artisans against going out. He
says, "We get thirty shillings a day, but it is a dreadful place to
live in." I ask the operatives in England to mistrust that
statement. ("What is the cost of living?") You can live at the club
very well indeed for L10 a month--the club, mind you, where the
aristocracy live. It is idle to tell me the honest artisan cannot
live. In addition to the black and white population, there is
another problem, and that is, the influx of Arabs, who creep down
the East Coast through the door of Natal.
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