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THE STORY OF A CRIME BEING THE VINDICATION

OF TH E

TRANSVAAL STRIKE LEGAL DEFENCE

C O M M IT T E E in connection with the Great Strike on

the Witwatersrand in 1922.

AWAKE, ARISE, OR BE FOR EVER FALLEN!

Sold for the Benefit of the Strike Victims Dependants Relief Fund.

PRICE ONE SHILLING.

28th M ay, 1924.

Published by the Committee at Room No. 11, New, Trades Hall, Rissik Street. Johannesburg. South Africa (P.O. Box 125), to whom all orders for copies and subscriptions to the Fund

should be sent. TABLE OF CONTENTS.

...... Chapter 1 Page 4 Origins and Issues ...... r

Page 9 History of the Strike Chapter

Pape 12 The lie as to the Nationalist Party (hapter 3

Page 13 The lie as to Bolshevik influences (’hapter 4

Page 16 The He as to the alleged attacks by Strikers on Natives Chapter ft

Page 18 The true cause of the Strike ...... Chapter 6

Page 12 The true causes of the Outbreak ...... Chapter 7

Page 28 Government by Martial Law Chapter

Page 32 The Trials and Sentences ( hapter

Page 37 The Report of the Mining Industry Board ...... Chapter 10

Page m The Report of the Martial Law Commission Chapter 11

Page 44 Chronological History of the Strike ...... Chaptei 12 THE MAN

From m Photograph by Rudolf Steger. Pretoria

GENERAL JAN CHRISTIAN SMUTS at the age of 29

NOTE— The authenticity of this portrait has been questioned. It is an exact photographic re pro dnction of the portrait in “ The Heroes of the Boer War,” by F. Rompel of the Volk stem, published in 1903 by the late W . T. Stead.

WHAT WILL HE BECOME? THE HOUR

KILLED AT B E N O N I, MARCH, 1922.

CHILDREN. WOMEN. MEN.

Dora Tackey, age 12 years. Annie Bullard. C. B. de Villiers. Alexander Tackey, age 15 years. C. E. Lombard. Gert van Rooyen. Cyrus St. J. Watt, age 16 years. 11. M. Truter J. Jooste. S. G. Beal. Clifton Beiigelly L. I. Swartz. THE STORY OF A CRIME being THE VINDICATION OF THE DEFENCE COMMITTEE in connection with the trial by Special Criminal Courts without Juries of 195 men and 6 women, arising out of the Strike on the Witwatersrand in 1922.

CHAPTER I.

ORIGINS AND ISSUES.

This Committee was formed by the Trades Unions on the Witwatersrand to provide for the defence of the prisoners who were indicted for murder, treason, sedition and other felonies in connection with the great Strike on the Witwatersrand in the Transvaal, which commenced on the 2nd of January and ended on the 17th of March, 1922. The funds were subscribed mainly by those Trade Unions, and the Committee was composed of representatives of the fol- lowing Trades Unions:— Amalgamated Engineering Union. Amalgamated Society of Woodworkers. Associated Building Trades Union. Boilermakers, Ironworkers and Shipbuilders’ Society. Buildings Workers Industrial Union. National Vehicle Builders Union. S.A. Engine Drivers and Firemen’s Association. S.A. Ironmoulders Union. S.A. Mine Workers Union. South African Typographical Union. with the addition of the Chairman, then and now, of the Provincial Council of the Transvaal, and the Chief Magistrate of Johannesburg in 1916— 19. No money was received from the Communist Party or any other political party, or from any foreign source. In all but four cases these Accused had been deprived of their right under the Magna Charta to be tried by Jury, by a provision in the Indemnity Act passed after the alleged offence that trial by Jury might be denied in Martial Law Areas “ if the Attorney General is of opinion that if the accused person were tried by Jury the ends of justice are likely to be defeated,” that is, in plain words, if the Attorney General thought a Jury would be likely to acquit. By similar provisions Trial by Jury has for the past ten years practically been abolished in cases arising out of Labour disputes in South Africa. One result of that was that on this occasion at least four innocent men were convicted of murder, and were sentenced to death, and at least two innocent men were hanged, one of them after a second trial, the first Court having been unable to agree. The four men tried by Jury had to be so tried as the locality of the alleged offence was outside the areas in which Martial Law was proclaimed. They were all acquitted. Three Special Crim­ inal Courts of two or three Judges were created to try the other cases and this Committee pro­ vided for the defence in all the cases where, as was usual, the accused was without means. In no case was the charge one of theft, robbery, or looting, nor was there so far as is known any such charge in connection with the Strike, although most of the men had drawn no wages for over two months, and although in many parts of the Witwatersrand there was no police force for weeks at the end of that period. These facts speak for themselves. The Outbreak out of which these cases arose was of a very serious character; the fighting- lasted for five days, and in the course of it at least 76 members of the Government forces, 78 strikers and 62 ordinary residents, including women and children, were killed. The civilians killed number many more than the number given, but we have no means of getting the exact figures. The Dependants Fund Committee still has 21 destitute widows and 71 fatherless chil­ dren on its books and that is not one third of these widows and fatherless. Rifles, machine guns, artillery, bombing aeroplanes, armoured trains and tanks were used against the Strikers and their families, and the civilian population generally. In the Town of Benoni alone (which is the only town from which we have been able to get detailed information) the civilian deaths, due mostly to bombing by aeroplane, were:— Dora Tackey, age 12 years. Alex. Tackey, age 15 years. Cyrus St. J. Watt, age 16 years. Annie Bullard (female). C. E. Lombard (female). M. M. Truter (female). C. B. de Villiers. Gert van Rooyen. J. Jooste. S. G. Beal. Clifton Pengelly. L. I. Swartz. The official explanation of these Benoni casualties was that the bombing apparatus on several aeroplanes had been put into operation accidentally by rifle bullets fired by the Strikers, although the destruction of the Benoni Trades Hall by aeroplane bombs was spoken of at the same time as " splendid marksmanship.” The men, women and children who were killed were of the governing races of this country, as were also the men who took part in the Outbreak. The sup­ pression of the Outbreak was followed by the arrest of 4,692 men, 62 women and 4 children, of whom only 844 men and 9 women were ever charged in any Court, and of these 657 were ultimately disposed of in Magistartes’ Courts as petty offenders. The offences alleged against the four children arrested are not known to us, as none of them were ever charged.

It is obviously our first duty, to these Prisoners, to ourselves and also to the public, to give the causes and history of the Strike and of the Outbreak in which it ended, as a virulent and world wide campaign of lies has been conducted against the Strikers by the capitalistic and Gov­ ernment press and other agencies under the same influence. We are fully conscious of the strength of the forces against us, but we are also confident that in the future as in the past truth will in the end be made manifest and will endure. Speaking in the House of Assembly on the 19th of March, 1922 our present Prime Minister described the Outbreak as a blood bath ” and stated that the aim of the “ Rand Revolutionaries ” was to establish “ a sort of Soviet Repub­ lic.” On the 25th of that month the reactionary Town Council of Johannesburg resolved that it “ places on record the horror and disgust with which it regards the recent attempt to subvert law and order and hand over the City to bloodshed and outrage, and calls upon the Government to punish with proper severity those who are responsible.” On the 2 8th of February, ten days before the Outbreak started, this Town Council had turned all its employees, none of whom had committed anv offence, out of the Power Station and Tram Sheds by the use of an armed force and at the point of the bavonet without notice. At the same time they secured from London Financial houses intimately connected with the Gold Mines, a loan of £1,000,000 on what they rightlv boasted to be the most favourable terms ever granted. The London newspapers said, for instance, that there was “ for the most part only praise for his (General Smuts’ -) statesmanship in allowing the so-called Strike to develop until it was revealed as a Bolshevik or anarchial attempt to foment revolution.” that “ everywhere it is the same story — Russian gold behind a movement subversive of civilization ” and that ‘‘ the S.A. Government will, we are informed, be able to prove the existence of a wide spread Bolshevik conspiracy, and this constitutes fresh evi­ dence of the Bolshevik bad faith.” No vestige of this proof has as yet been forthcoming. Similar reports have been made to the Labour Party in Great Britain through Mr. Arthur Henderson, the present Home Secretarv from a tainted source on the Witwatersrand : and General Smuts has taken care to congratulate that party on its accession to power and to flatter it bv approving of the abandonment of the Singapore base as a “ great moral gesture ” whatever that vulgarity mav mean. On the other hand Captain Urauhart, M.C., a Tohanneshurg iournalist whose sympathies were certainly not in favour of the Strikers, and who was in intimate touch with events through­ out. said at the time in his pamphlet “ The Outbreak,” (which, although wrong in fact on many points and written from the anti-Strike point of view, is not intentionally unfair-) :— “ What­ ever effect communistic doctrines and alien agitators may have had on the minds of the workers of the Rand, the climax of the Revolt cannot be so cursorily explained. The word “ Revolu­ tion ” must be dismissed at the outset, although it has the catchet of Ministers of the State” ; and a recent English writer, Mr. Fgerton. in his book “ Twentieth Century British Colonial Policv ” anpears also to have had some difficulty in swallowing the Bolshevik explanation and its embellishments. He says (page 77) that:—

‘‘ It is too soon to estimate the significance of the Outbreak on the Rand in the Spring’ of 1922. That the Bolsheviks would seek to destrov the chief gold producing industrv of the world was natural enough, but that intelligent and highly paid artisans rhould be their blind dupes seems singularly strange. Stranger still were the unprovoked attacks on peaceful natives.” Either would be strange if true; but neither was true. Fiction for political purposes is. on occasion, stranger than truth; and this is one of those occasions. We shall give you later some account of the methods of the obscene ghouls- who. after the Strike was over, engaged in the no doubt congenial, and certainly to them necessary, work of defaming the dead of their own race: but. for the benefit of the manv honest people who, like Captain Urquhart and Mr. Fgerton. are in doubt, we will at once explain shortly what the Strike was about, and you will then see that with the methods of government by military despotism at discretion which have become habitual in the Transvaal for the past ten years it could not but end in bloodshed. It is true that towards the end of the Strike the Trades Unions lost control and a handful of irresponsible orators appeared to be exercising some influence. But they did not cause the Out­ break any more than the foam on the crest of the wave is the cause of the storm; and when the Outbreak started they, to use a hackneyed phrase, became, with two exceptions, conspicuous by their absence. Nor was it a question of wages. Although in all the labour disputes which cul­ minated at the beginning of 1922 the rate of wages was a factor, it was a minor factor, and from the beginning to the end of the Rand Strike it was never mentioned. In August 1921 it was agreed between the S.A.I.F. and the Chamber of Mines that the cost of living increase of 8s. per day on wages should fall with the decreased cost of food, fuel, light and rent (which represented only half of the true increase) until it was reduced to 3s. 6d. per day when there was to be no further reduction without a further conference. The Strike was fought throughout on the question of the Colour Bar, including the Status Quo Agreement. That was the theme of every speech made during the Strike, and you will search in vain in the reports of those speeches for any exhortation to the men to stand firm against reductions or for increases of wages. Mr. Advocate Nixon, the Government Member of Parliament for the Denver Division of the Wit- watcrsrand, said truly in a letter published by the “ Rand Daily M ail” on the 25th of January that:— “ The men are not opposed to a reduction of wages, nor will they strike because useless, incompetent and undisciplined men are got rid of here and there; but on the principle of the maintenance of the Colour Bar they are adamant.” The Miners were not only adamant, but, although the Colour Bar question affected only them directly and immediately, the other trades stood by them almost to a man; and, until the question was deliberately obscured by the false cry of Bolshevism, at least 90 per cent, of the white country people were also in active sympathy with them. Not only so, but of the men who fought and fell in the Outbreak or who were sentenced after it a large proportion were not Miners. For two months practically every white working man in the Mining and Industrial Centres of the Transvaal stood solidly together on Strike, notwithstanding intimidation, encour­ agement by the Government and the Mines to scab, abuse by the whole Press, and slow starva­ tion; and in the end they armed themselves as best they could and flamed up into an Outbreak such as no part of the British Empire has ever seen before in which they fought for five days against overwhelming Government forces, using bombing aeroplanes, artillery, tanks, armoured trains, machine guns, and rifles. They captured armed Police posts, some of which surrendered voluntarily; they inflicted on the Government forces losses almost equal to their own, and the casualties on both sides, amounting certainly to over 250 killed and at least 1,000 wounded, were as great as in many an historic pitched battle. The races to which these men belong do not so act unless there is at stake some principle of National life and character which to them at least seems right and vital. No one even attempts to say otherwise. The attempt up to the present has been to make out that they stood and fought for Bolshevism or Republicanism. That is, of course, a lie, and a deliberate lie, with which we deal later in Chapters III. and IV. We shall shew you that, as most people on the Witwatersrand know already, the real domin­ ant principle for which these men fought was the old principle vital to the welfare, if not indeed tc the existence, of every civilized community, for which men have always fought and will always fight as long as they are men and not emasculated parasites, and that is that free men will not tamely submit to be ousted from work and they and their descendants degraded into pauperism by the substitution of slave labour. It was the same question as caused the Civil War in the United States sixty years ago, and would have caused Civil W ar in Australia if Queensland had insisted in retaining servile Kanaka labour. For the Colour Bar and the Status Quo Agreement to maintain which these men fought were in sufrstance and effect an occupational Mason and Dixon line, against the spread of what is in substance and effect Negro slavery. Below that line all labour on the Mines is done by compounded Negro labour in exactly those conditions which twenty years ago not only the British public, but the country people and workers of the Transvaal, rightly called “ Chinese slavery.” Bear that clearly in mind. The compounded Negro labour system to-day is exactly the same as the compounded Chinese Slavery system of 20 years ago, and the Status Quo Agreement, to maintain which the men fought, was merely the same restriction on the extension of compounded Negro labour as had then been imposed by Parliament on compounded Chinese labour. What is the compounded Negro labour system? It is this. The Negro labourer is shut up, on the Mines, in closed and guarded barracks, mostly of corrugated iron, which he may not leave without the written permis­ sion of the Manager and which he seldom does leave between his arrival and departure. If he has not that permission the private, but uniformed, Mine Police, turn him back at the gate, and if he does escape he is fined or imprisoned when caught. True, it is not as harsh as the Com­ pound system on the Diamond Mines where the Negro is not allowed out at all, and ends his service with two days under guard, having his hands muffled and tied up and a strong purga­ tive applied to cleanse his stomach of any mine property. But, even on the other mines, he is in no sense a free man. He is recruited very largely through his Native Chief whose bidding he must do. If he has a wife or family, and his ambition is to have several, he has to leave them behind on the tribal land when he comes to the Mines. His wages are about 2s. 2d. a day, and he is fed on the Mine at a cost of under 5d. a day on a strictly scientific diet consisting mainly of mealie pap, offal and meat, unsaleable for European consumption, so that his total cost for wages, food and housing is under 17s. 6d. a week. It is true that this is not chattel slavery in the old sense, although the arrangements of Traders and Recruiting Agents with Native Chiefs for the supply of Native labour to the Mines often come very close to it. It is a temporary and not a permanent bondage, and it carries some pay although of that the Trader and the Chief get the lion’s share. But, for so long as the ser­ vitude in the Mine Compound lasts, it is essentially slave labour which no European would toler­ ate unless he were a convict, and which, with a Native race like the Zulus, only tribal outcasts will submit to, nor will their Chiefs force them into it, however remunerative it might be to them. With such a system of labour the European cannot compete, and would not if he could since it must in the end degrade all labour to that level unless a clear line of demarcation can be drawn and maintained. For brevity we shall refer to the system in this Report as “ slave labour ” which it is in fact. Now the demand of the Chamber of Mines to abrogate the Status Quo Agreement meant simply a demand for liberty to extend, as far as they thought fit in their own interests, that form of Negro slave labour to all the occupations which had hitherto been free labour occupations and thus to oust the dearer Europeans from them; and every infringement of the Status Quo Agreement and every disregard of the Colour Bar meant the same, that is, an extension of that system of slave labour at the expense of European free labour. It is incidental to every such extension that it means not only the ousting of the European from that employment, since he will neither submit to be compounded nor could he live on the wages paid if he would submit, but also the prevention of the South African born Euro- r pean from becoming skilled, because it was only in the semi-skilled work that he could earn enough to live whilst learning to become a skilled man on the Mines. That is an issue which should have been fought by the Government of this Country instead of being left to the Trade Unions to fight by Strikes; and can any one wonder that, when the men affected found not only that the Govern­ ment was not helping them but was actively supporting the extension of slave labour into what had been their work, they turned and fought them also as traitors to their race and country? There were other causes of the Outbreak, with which we deal in Chapter VII. of this Report. As a public Meeting in the Town Hall of Pretoria on the 29th of August last said unan­ imously, the causes included “ the policy of deliberate provocation which was carried out and the unconstitutional methods of the Government in 1914 and thereafter.” You may well say that a policy of deliberate provocation is incredible. But a good many “ incredible ” things were done on both sides during this business and of the Mining Magnates who have, beginning with the Jameson raid, tried, generally with success, to dominate this country nothing is incredible. Up to the present the Mine Owners and their Press and political supporters have been able to deceive the world into the belief that the Colour Bar was an “ irrational and immoral ” attempt to keep the Negro in industrial subjection for the benefit of the European worker. We do not deny that there is some, although very little, truth in that. The aversion of all white races to living and working on a basis of equality with the Negro no doubt enters into the matter; but a part of even that aversion is due to a sound instinct to preserve the purity of the race and part is due to an instinctive perception of the fact that the European worker who accepts equality with the Negro tends to become in the end in effect a Negro ceasing to live up to the standards, traditions and inspirations of the great white races, which can be the heritage of them alone. The mere fact that the Negro submits to be compounded is, in itself, sufficient to make it impossible for him ever to be an associate on equal terms of White men, whose ancestors have fought their way to freedom. We have seen in the Cape the results o f a policy of equality. There the European artisan has been almost entirely displaced by cheap Native and Coloured free labour, partly due to the fact that when faced with such competition the self respecting European artisan goes elsewhere if he can. And we have seen also that in the Cape that policy of cheap labour has ended not in the prosperity but in the bankruptcy of the country, so that they not only must rely on the wealth of the Transvaal to meet their cost of government, but their traders are clamouring for the extension of the slave labour system at the expense of White labour on the Rand so that more Native wages from the Rand may be spent in their shops. But Europeans and Trade Unions outside the Transvaal and the Free State have as a matter of fact accepted the Negro and the half-caste as fellow workers, and the dominant motive of the objection to the removal of the Colour Bar is beyond question a deep seated and righteous objection to the extension of the slave labour system which is known as compounded Native labour. When Mine Negro labour is free labour it will be time enough to decide what our attitude shall be towards it; but that is not the present position or question. We are not even express­ ing any opinion about the compounded Native Labour, system for unskilled work on the Mines, since we have no desire to encroach on it. Some of us think that low grade Mines, such as all the Rand Mines are, can be worked at a profit only under such a system of labour for unskilled work; but even those of us who agree to it do so only because they regard gold mining as a tem­ porary phase and not a permanent part of National life. Others of us think the Mines could be worked profitably with entirely free European labour paid adequate wages. But all of us are agreed that the slave labour system, existing as it does only by virtue of special legislation, must be kept by legislation within the narrowest possible limits; that its existence is a constant menace to all free labour, and that any extension of the system into what have hitherto been free labour occupations is a matter to be decided only by Parliament and not by employers of labour in their discretion and to be permitted by Parliament only after conclusive proof that the extension is necessary in the interests of the Country. To accept, as the Government, Judges, Professors, Clergy and high State officials have accepted, that the extension of that Negro slave labour system to all occupations on the Mines, and therefore inevitably everywhere in time, should be left to the absolute discretion of the Em­ ployer o f labour seems to us to strike at the heart of civilized life in industry in South Africa. And, although we disclaim with a clear conscience any taint of anti-Semitic prejudice, we say plainly that one of the most sinister features of the business is that now the decision as to how far that Negro slave labour system shall be extended is left to a handful of Jews in Europe with no sense of National duty, who are alien to the traditions of the Northern European races, who have never shewn any concern for the welfare of the people of South Africa, but have always shewn a concern to fill their own pockets by the employment of the cheapest and most degraded form of labour, and whose standards of life we have no desire to discuss on so serious an issue. And it is certain that, if an unfettered discretion is left to Employers to use this Negro slave labour to the fullest possible extent, there will be no more room for Europeans in South African Mines and Industries than there is, for instance, in Hayti or Liberia. The process is already at work. Time has already shewn that on every essential point the Strikers were right and the repre­ sentations of the Chamber of Mines were false. The Chamber promised new Mines, extension of old Mines, and an influx of more capital if they were allowed to have their way. They have had their way, but no new Mines have been started, nor has there been any extension of old Mines or any influx of capital worth talking about. On the contrary six mines have since been closed down, whilst the Mine Owners have put back into capital only about a fourth of what they have gained by reductions of European wages since the Strike. They promised increased pros­ perity, and instead there has been unexampled and increasing depression, a creeping paralysis in all business and an admitted inability to find employment for half the youths who are leaving school each year. They vowed (Sir Evelyn Wallers on 21st January, 1922 and others) that “ the Gold Mining Industry does not wish nor has it proposed to abolish the Colour Bar,” but immedi­ ately after the Strike they attacked the Colour Bar, employed Negro slave labour on work in con­ travention of the Mining Regulations, and eventually on the 12th of November last, they succeeded in getting those Regulations declared to be ultra vires. They said that they were only going to get rid of 2,000 Europeans of whom 600 would go gradually over a long period— like the girl in Midshipman Easy ” their apology was that although their progeny was illegitimate it was only “ a very little one —and they got rid at once o f over 3,000. In June, 192 3 the reduction was still 2,95 7 Europeans of all occupations, but now, on the eve of the General Election, one or two hundred more Europeans are being taken on until the Election is over. They said they intended merely to revise Miners’ contracts and they have reduced the wages of not only Miners, but of all Europeans to the starvation level. The old spirit of bouyant optimism and love of and pride in the Rand has been killed and instead most men, especially with children, are thinking of how and when they can get out of the country. But if we may believe our present Prime Minister there is still hope.

Speaking at Johannesburg on the 1 3th instant, he said:— “ In 192 2 the mines made a promise to me, that if there were a proper settlement made, if the low grade mines were given a chance and could continue, although a large number of white miners would be displaced at the moment, with confidence, with settled conditions and with efficiency there would be such further development on the Witwatersrand— every man displaced would be taken into employment again, and there would be more places than men coming forward to take them. That was the promise to me,” and he proceeded, “ I shall hold the Mines to that promise. That promise has not been carried out.” On the following day a letter from the Cham­ ber of Mines was published stating that:— “ The Chamber of Mines denies in the most definite manner that any such promise was ever given by the gold mining industry. The Chamber, as a body of business men, jealous of its reputation in such matters, scrupulously honours its undertakings, whether to its employees or to others. General Smuts’s statement constitutes an accusation of bod faith on the part of the indus­ try, which calls upon him to substantiate it.” Next day the General gave the Chamber the lie direct. That one or the other is lying is o f course plain and that both are is possible; but which it is we neither know nor care. That is of minor importance. What is of real importance is that it is clear from both statements, not only that there were negotiations between the Government and the Chamber before the Strike, of which the public have hitherto been ignorant, as to the terms on which the armed forces of the State would be placed at the disposal of the Chamber to enforce the extension of Negro Slave labour at the expense of the white man; but, if the General is to be believed, he was fooled by the Chamber then into a decision fraught with the most bloody consequences, and it is of course also plain from this controversy that it was realized by both of them, as was indeed obvious, that a large number of white men would be thrown out of work by the proposals of the Chamber. We shall also shew you that they both knew that those proposals meant serious bloodshed before they could be forced through. That a promise such as General Smuts alleges was in fact made before he agreed to place the armed forces of the State at the disposal of the Chamber with those inevit­ able consequences is probable enough; and that he was intentionally misled by the Chamber is not unlikely; nor is it impossible that the whole controversy is merely a sham fight for electioneering purposes designed to convey to the voter that General Smuts is no longer the pliant servant but has become and, means to remain, the stern master of the Chamber. Indeed in a leading article in the Mail at the time the new Editor claimed that that was the moral and congratulated each side impartially in its manly independence in mud-slinging. That one of our best liewespapers should expect the public to accept that it is highly creditable to both the Prime Minister of this country and the head of the Gold Mining Industy to be calling each other liars in real earnest shews the depth of degradation to which some part of public opinion has sunk.

Possibly some light is thrown on this unedifying and unsavoury controversy between those present governors of South Africa by the fact that some six months ago the London Financial houses intimated that the Union of South Africa had already borrowed too much, and could get no more; and by the assurance General Smuts gave to Parliament on the 21st of February, 1921- that he never had any meeting with the Chamber of Mines. We doubt whether we can even pay a sincere tribute to the General as a practical elec- tioneerer. We all knew that some brilliant electioneering “ stunt ” was coming before the Election was over, but none of us guessed that it would be the General as the champion of the unem­ ployed working man and the determined foe of the Chamber of Mines. “ Humanity ” said the General in his message to the Kerkbode, the organ of the Dutch Reformed Church, last Christ­ mas, “ Humanity wants a new heart,” and so does the Chamber of Mines, and he is going to give it to them whether they wish it or not. It was necessary and as electioneering it would be magni­ ficent if it deceived anyone. But it is not business-—unless he restores the legislative barrier against the invasion of Negro slave labour into the skilled and semi-skilled occupations. Then indeed the Strike will have been vindicated and “ these heroic dead shall not have died in vain.” And the General may possibly even be in earnest. The Chamber and its allies would be well advised not to assume that on this occasion he is merely a political Bombastes Furioso. They are the only section of the community on which he has not turned the machine guns during the past ten years, and he may possibly have decided that it is time for their turn. Which ever view you take the business stinks; but, if General Smuts was fooled by the Chamber, the Strikers were not. The dead who were shot or hanged, the widows and the fatherless, these at least, are indisputable. Let us leave it at that.

CHAPTER II.

HISTORY OF THE STRIKE.

Chapter XII. of this Report contains a detailed chronological history of the Strike, taken from the columns of the “ Rand Daily Mail,” an organ of the Mining Houses and the Government which did its work very w ell; and any statement made in it from any other source is so indicated. Although the “ Mail” naturally served its masters by denouncing the Strikers as Bolsheviks, Rebels and Red Revolutionaries, its reports of facts were usually correct and its editorial comments were not in the circumstances more unfair than was reasonably to be expected. When you have read that history you will have no doubt as to the causes of the Strike or of the bloody Outbreak in which the Strike ended on the verge of something like Civil War. There were three well defined stages: — Firstly, a peaceful and orderly Strike for over a month. Secondly, an attempt by the Mines during the month of February with the active support of the Government to break the Strike by the encouragement of Scab labour which led, as was inevitable, to reprisals 011 scabs usually by women, and Thirdly, that having failed, the determination, which was carried out, to suppress the Strike by provoking the Strikers into an Outbreak which might be suppressed by Military force. That is the history of the last fortnight. And we shall satisfy you that in the Strike there were, and are still, two great princi­ ples at stake, firstly whether labour 011 the Goldfields shall be slave or free, and secondly whether the government of South Africa shall be by the laws the people make or by military despotism at the discretion of the Executive. W e make 110 apology for having waited for over two years before publishing the case of the Strikers. W e have had much other work to do, and we have done it. There were 9 men still in Gaol until the 17tli instant, and in their interests we could not make this Report until their release. There has been no harm done by the delay, since, if the public are no longer interested after two years and have decided to condone these methods of government and to accept the indefinite replacement of European free labour by Negro slave labour at the discretion of the Employer, then they deserve the kind of government they will undoubtedly get, v iz.: the gradual extension of Negro slave laboii” into all work and the definite and permanent continuance of govern­ ment by means hitherto confined to half-caste Republics and repugnant to every principle of constitutional government as we understand it. These methods of government are shortly these: — (1) First, goad and incite people into an outbreak so that they may be crushed. (2) Then, and without the sanction of Parliament, proclaim that all law is abolished and that the whole population is at the mercy of the Military. (3) Then crush the Outbreak, as you must, with the full power of the State; imprison wholesale people who had nothing to do with it and ride roughshod over every con­ stitutional right and liberty of the subject. (4) Then denounce the victims as Rebels, Bolsheviks, Syndicalists and enemies of the country, and prevent public repudiation of your methods by abolishing trial by Jury. (5) Then get a servile Parliament to pass an Act legalising retrospectively everything you have done; and finally, having hanged a few and ghen others a stiff dose of penal servitude, extend your clemency after a year or two and release all of them who are still alive, knowing that the public will not tolerate the carrying out of the sentences passed and so that a proper spirit of grateful appreciation of your gracious clemency may prevail at the next general election. It was of course to be expected both that the Strike would be attributed by the Govern­ ment and the Chamber of Mines to a Bolshevik conspiracy financed with Russian gold and provided with Geiman arms and to political intrigue by the Nationalist Party to establish a Republic. Tt was due to neither, but to very serious causes including gross and habitual ilegality of government during the past ten years. It was also to be expected that the Strikers would be held up to the execration of the World as murderers of peaceful and un­ offending Natives, since the “murder of peaceful Natives” touch, although peculiar to South Africa, has been common form here for the last hundred years. All these allegations are unmitigated lies from beginning to end, as we will show in Chapters III., IV ., and V. The lie was varied, of course, to meet the needs of each section appealed to. For the Farmer and (lie middle class generally the explanation was that the IN

country was faced with a Bolshevik insurrection led by foreign Jews. To appeal to the racial jingo element and to the Durban Light Infantry the lie was necessary that the Strike was a Nationalist move in disguise to establish an independent Republic. The Nonconfor­ mist conscience here and elsewhere was fed on the usual pabulum about murders of peaceful Natives. The work was done very efficiently and with a lavish expenditure which is still being continued. During the Strike the Newspapers were flooded with half or whole page advertisements in large leaded type giving the “ facts” and arguments of the Chamber and since the Strike the Chamber has conducted, and is still conducting, an elaborate campaign of propaganda and villification throughout the country. It has been, and still is, carrying on an “ Indus­ trial News Service” which supplies gratuitously to the press throughout the country “news” and arguments in defence of its conduct in a form for publication without disclosure of their place of birth; it has been flooding the country with free pamphlets and tracts of the same character; and it has been subsidising at least two periodicals of the pimp type in the same cause. The system has not even the merit of originality except, and it is an impor­ tant difference, in that it has been applied to members of the conquering and governing races of a country and has not been confined to imported elements alien in race and men­ tality. Otherwise it was in accordance with the practice of which John Macey writes in “ Civilisation in the United States” published in 1922. He says (page 4G) that “ the posi­ tive corruption of the newspaper by the advertiser goes deeper and proceeds from larger economic powers than individual merchants. There is all over the world a terrific economic contest between the employing classes and the wage earning classes. The dramatic mani­ festation of this contest is the Strike. Almost invariably the news of the Strike is, if not falsified, so shaped as to be unfavourable to the workers. In the “ New York Nation” of 5th of anuary, 1921, Mr. Charles G. Miller, formerly Editor of the “ Cleveland Plain Dealer,” exposes the lies of the Pittsburg papers during the Steel strike. In two weeks the Pittsburg papers published more than J50 pages of paid advertisements denouncing the leadership of the strike and invoking ‘Americanism’ against radicalism and syndicalism. The news and editorial attitude of the papers coincided with the advertisements and gave the impression that the strikers were disloyal, un-American, Bolshevik. They were silent 011 the real questions at issue— hours, pay, and working conditions. And not only the Pittsburg press but the press of the entire country was poisoned,” and he asks (page 47): “ What is the object of this patriotic enthusiasm? The prevailing theme of the bulletins I have seen is ‘ Labour be good— fight Bolshevism— beware the agitator.’ Who is going to be influenced by these bulletins? Not the working man. He knows what he wants and, if he is the dupe of agitators and false theories, these sermons can never rescue him. Not the Capi­ talist. He knows what he wants and gets it. Perhaps the little middle-class man may swallow such bunkum 011 his daily journey between his office and his home in the suburbs. But he is already an intellectually depraved servant of the employing classes, and it is not worth hundreds and thousands of dollars to complete and confirm his corruption.” Mr. Macey might have been writing of the Transvaal; and the immediate adoption of these methods here will convey to you how careful were the preparations against the Strikers. But it was not necessary to depend in South Africa on full page advertisements since all the daily newspapers 011 the Rand and in Pretoria and most of those in Natal and Capetown are owned or controlled directly by the Mining Houses and their financial asso­ ciates and as soon as an Editor was found to be anyway lukewarm in their cause he was discharged. The process had the full assistance of the Government. In South Africa under the methods of government now habitual in South Africa the freedom of the press 110 longer exists, any more than in Spain or Mexico. Under Martial Law the newspapers in the Transvaal which were on the side of the Strikers were sup­ pressed, and a strict censorship was established on communications with the outside World. These methods were unknown to the Transvaal under the Republic and under the Crown Colony government. They were first introduced in 1907 within a few months after the appearance of government under the dominance of the present Prime Minister. They have grown worse with each successive episode until they culminated in the tragedy of 1922; they have involved the killing of at least 250 men, women and children of the white population 011 the Witwatersrand alone in the last eleven years: and they have in that time produced three applications of “Martial Law” and three Indemnity Acts to cover illegalities of govern­ ment. W e desire mainly to state plainly the facts and the issues which are raised by the facts. It is for you to decide whether that system of government by blood shall continue; and that is essentially a question of whether the wage earners have the courage, tenacity and cohe­ sion to vindicate their rights as the middle classes have done in the past. Only he that endureth unto the end shall be saved. But it is not a matter which concerns only the wage-earners. It is true that those methods have so far been applied only to them on the Witwatersrand; but there is nothing more certain than that you cannot tamper with the rights and liberties of any section without endangering the rights and liberties of all, unless it be this, that every extension of the Negro slave labour system harms in the end every section of the community alike. That is peculiarly so when you are dealing with a small white population in a country with a Negro population four times greater, and only an im­ becile can believe that when this slave labour supplants free labour the Rand will continue to support the large community of professional men, shop-keepers and property owners who prospered on it before 1922. Bear in mind also that the eyes of the sinister forces of the World are on this busi­ ness. It is a “New Model” both of labour systems and also of ways of dealing with objec­ tors to their extension at the expense of free men. If it is possible to delude the public and the workers into not merely condoning but actively supporting these methods, then they will most certainly be continued here and imitated elsewhere. And why not? If the wage earner likes that sort of thing and may with his approval and support be treated not as afree man but as a dog to be whipped to his kennel when he makes himself a nuisance to his “betters,” why refuse him what he wants and what in that case he would deserve? As was truly said more than two centuries ago by Bolingbroke, one of the greatest of the fathers of Constitutional freedom: — “ Our liberty cannot be taken away by the force or fraud only of those who govern. It cannot be taken away unless the people are themselves accomplices, and they who are accomplices cannot be said to suffer by one or the other. Some nations have received the yoke of servitude w-th little or no struggle, but, if ever it is im­ posed upon us, we must not only hold out our necks to receive it, we must help to put it 011.” (If this we are certain, that if the white wage earners of South Africa hold out their necks to receive the yoke and help to put it on, their progressive poverty, degradation and ultimate absorption into the Negro races, as has already taken place to a large extent in the Cape, is not only inevitable but will be fully deserved and will re-act on the welfare of every other section of the community. But we do not yet believe that the public of South Africa will approve of the methods of government by illegal despotism and blood which have become habitual on the Witwatersrand for the last 17 years; and we shall continue to hope that, in the language applied by our present Prime Minister to the British Government in 1899 in his book called “A Gentry of Wrong” : “It proceeds according to eternal laws, un­ moved by human pride and ambition. As the Greek poet of old said, it permits the tyrant, in his boundless self esteem, to climb higher and higher and to gain greater honour and might, until he arrives at the appointed height and then falls down into the infinite depths.” It is encouraging that in the Town Hall of Pretoria on the 29th of August, 192'!, a large and representative public meeting which was held with open doors and had been adver­ tised so extensively that the “ Star” stated that Pretoria had been “flooded” with notices of it, resolved without a dissentient voice that: — “ This meeting expresses its sympathy with the dependants of the men who were killed on the Witwatersrand in March, 1922, and records its conviction that the Outbreak was not due to Bolshevism or to anything else than the determination of the Chamber of Mines with the full support of the Government to put Natives into the place of White men on White men’s work, to the policy of deliberate provoca­ tion which was carried out, and to the unconstitutional methods of the Government in 1914 and thereafter.”

And the excuse for calling a Strike a “ Revolution ” and applying those methods of gov­ ernment need apparently be very slight. For instance, notwithstanding the fact that in the 1914 Strike (which was also suppressed by Martial Law accompanied by the wholesale sjam­ boking and imprisonment of Strikers without legal cause and the use of artillery to enforce the surrender of a dozen unarmed men in the Trades Hall) there was no riot or disturbance of any sort on the part of the Strikers, General Smuts, speaking at Johannesburg on the 13th instant, and referring specifically to the Strike in 1914, said that:— “The trouble started as an ordinary Strike but it grew and developed until after some time it was transformed into a revolution.” He cannot have meant that it was a revolution merely because it started as a Railway Strike, since Mr. B. Pohl, whom lie has recently made a paid Organiser of his Party, tried, in a speech on the 19th of January during the 1922 Strike when he was still Assistant Secretary of the Miners Union, to induce the Railway men to strike also. We are forced to the conclusion that to General Smuts a Strike becomes a Revolution when the Strikers venture to disregard his wishes, and that is supported by the facts that, speaking at Tulbagh in May 192-3, he claimed that he had “ risen to be Prime Minister by the grace of God,” and in liis letter to the organ of the Dutch Reformed Church he said that “the foundations of spiritual life have been shaken as never before. All authority has been shaken—including that of religion”—the latter apparently a minor evil. It is there­ fore no wonder that in the back veld a favourite argument of his supporters is that opposi­ tion to him is forbidden by the 13th Chapter of Romans. That was also the text on which the supporters of the “divine right of Kings” relied 250 years ago to defend the same methods of government as have now become habitual in the Transvaal but which were ended in Great Britain in 1088 by the pact between the British people and the Dutch. Let us hope that now also history will repeat itself, since a man imbued with these ideas is, if entrusted with such power, apt to develop into a dangerous political homicidal maniac if we may be permitted to borrow the elegant phraseology of General Smuts, who in the same speech described the leader_ of the Labour Party as “a political lunatic,” and his views as “ an insane idea.” THE LIE AS TO THE NATIONALIST PARTY.

It is fitting that this Committee, being composed with one exception o f men of British birth, should recognize the support received by the Strikers from members of the Nationalist Party and should refute the slanders on that Party for political purposes in connection with the Strike. That the Strikers had the active support o f members of the Nationalist Party and also of other Parties throughout the country is of course clear. We hope that it continues and they may well be proud of having given it. Since the Strikers were fighting to maintain the status of the white man in this country and to prevent the extension of slave labour into European occupa­ tions, they naturally had the active support of the political parties which stand for those tradi­ tions. Supplies of food were sent in liberally from the country, a few farmers came in during the Strike and fought, and some o f them fell, besides the Strikers and so bitter was the feeling that the country came in the end perilously near to something in the nature of a Civil War of the rank and file. At least 1 5,000 of the men on strike belonged to the Boer population and had come from all parts of the Union. The three men killed by the Police in the public streets at Boksburg at the end of February were that; and these 15,000 men had many relatives in all parts of the country. That the sympathy of the country should be with them in their heroic struggle was therefore not surprising, nor was it surprising that after those three men were killed there should be a widespread spontaneous movement to translate sympathy into action. But the leaders of the Nationalist Party did all that was possible to maintain peace. The Mail of the 21st of January reported that the then Secretary of the Miner’s Union, who is a Nationalist in politics, warned the men against violence and said that:— “ The Government wants an excuse to proclaim Martial Law and that excuse must not be given.” Speaking at Germiston on the same day., Mr. Tielman Roos, K.C., the Nationalist leader in the Transvaal, said: “ Your best Strike weapon is the General Election. At the next one you will sweep the Smuts Government from power and so remove a great obstacle to our progress.” On the 29th of January he circulated to the Strikers the following leaflet which was also published in the Rand Daily Mail of the 3Oth of that month:— “ How can the Government make the public forget their weak attitude and their mismanage­ ment of the country’s affairs. There is only one way— Martial Law and Violence. It is rumoured that a Martial Law Proclamation has already been printed. And again it is only by Violence that the Miners can give the Government the chance of proclaiming Martial Law. Remember this— by Violence the Mine Workers will play into the hands o f the Government. But again remember— No Violence.” On the 4th of February a Mass Meeting at Brakpan and Springs addressed by the Mayor of Springs, an Englishman from Northumberland, and the Labour Member of Parliament for Brakpan, also an Englishman who had served in the Army, passed a Resolution that:— “ This Mass Meeting is of the opinion that the time has arrived when the domination of the Chamber of Mines and other financiers in South Africa should cease and that to that end we ask the Mem­ bers of Parliament assembled in Pretoria to-morrow to proclaim a South African Republic and to form a provisional Government for this country.” The latter said that “ rather than go down in this struggle we are prepared as a last weapon to have a Revolution.” This Resolution was confirmed with enthusiasm by a Meeting of thousands of all classes held in the Johannesburg Town Hall on the following day. It was taken next day by a deputation to a meeting in Pretoria of 11 Nationalist and 5 Labours Members of Parliament and the Provincial Council which had been summoned by Mr. Roos; and it was unanimously rejected by them. On the 7th the Rand Daily Mail said:— “ As we anticipated would be the case the leaders of the Transvaal Nationalists declined point blank to have anything to do with the demand of the Strikers for the proclaiming o f a Republic. Mr. Tielman Roos declared at yesterday’s meeting in Pretoria that the Republican ideal was to be retained and worked for on constitutional lines, but his Party would not lift a finger to help any Republic— by—Violence scheme.” When Percy Fisher, one of the delegates, said:— “ There is no alternative but bloodshed on the Reef,” Mr. Heyns, the Nationalist Member for Middelburg, replied “ Let them wait until the next election, if they can remain faithful until then, and then they can talk about a Republic.” On that day a deputation of Nationalist Members of Parliament interviewed our present Prime Minister in Pretoria. The interview ended thus:— Mr. Grobler, Member for Rustenburg, said:— “ General, what are you going to do?” The Prime Minister: “ Nothing.” Mr. Grobler: “ The two par­ ties are drifting into bloody developments, and you are going to do nothing. You will of course use force, and you will be obliged to do so in order to maintain order. But surely you should think of the blood and of the Widows and Orphans.” The Prime Minister made no reply. The evidence of the Strike leaders in the first Treason trial was that, as was undoubtedly true: “ We know nothing of any suggestion of the Nationalist Party to use the Strike for revolu­ tionary purposes, and are certain that no such objective was entertained by the Leaders and Exe­ cutive members whom we met. We received promises of support from Nationalist representa­ tives, both moral support and also support in the way of money and foodstuffs, conditional that the movement did not resort to methods of violence. It was made plain at every meeting we had with the representatives of the Nationalist Party that support would be withheld if any disturbance arose. We received no promise or suggestion of armed support in the event of the Strike becoming a revolutionary outbreak, and all the endeavours of the Augmented Executive and the Strike Committees were entirely to the contrary.” There has never been a vestige of evidence otherwise.

CHAPTER IV.

THE LIE AS TO BOLSHEVIK INFLUENCE.

We know of no Bolshevik emissaries or gold or of any German or other arms. None were ever produced and no evidence has ever been given of their existence. The arms the Strikers hud were such as any ordinary population possesses plus those taken from the Police. Most of the arms “ captured ” after the Strike was over wete surrendered by peaceful citizens in peaceful suburbs on Martial Law Orders. None of the men tried were Bolsheviks, Russians or Germans. Ihe only foreign arms ever produced were two German machine guns which had been captured in German West and stored by the Town Council in the Sanitary Compound at Vrededorp and parts of these were missing whilst there was no ammunition for them. It was reported in the Mail that in Boksburg the Police had immediately on the declaration of Martial Law taken pos­ session of the Trades Hall and seized there documents proving the existence of such a plot; but neither these, nor any other documents of the sort, were ever produced. But there are fools who will believe anything. On the 2 3rd of March a sensational illustrated report appeared in the Mail of the discovery in the Trades Hall in Johannesburg of robes of “ Justice ” and “ Liberty ” to be worn by Revo­ lutionary Courts. The discovery was the subject of a grave leading article, and some unsophisti­ cated visitor from the country subscribing himself “ Loyalist ” suggested that they be exhibited at the coming Cattle Show,” so that the public might know the danger they had been saved from.” But these also were never seen or heard of again, probably because they were costumes which had been used by girls for years in the Annual May Labour Day and other processions, the last being a War Fund procession under the auspices of the Chamber of Mines. The oldest English settlement, now the State of Virginia, has always had on its Great Seal a female so dressed and the motto “ Sic semper tyrannis ” ; but we do not believe that the Old Dominion is a Bolshevik State. But in South Africa it is common form for the Jingo element, which is striving with but small success to form a bastard aristocracy without either birth or breeding, with no tradition of public service and with the instinct only of private profit, to describe their opponents as what­ ever the latest popular brand of revolutionary bogey may be. We do not question the right of some of them to pose as the “ oldest families ” since on the distaff side they derive from the Bush­ man and the Hottentot. The only reason for taking this common form of abuse seriously, and it is a very cogent reason, is that here, unlike most civilized countries, it is used either to cloak or to precipitate bloodshed, and the profound tragedy of that is that it has always been the blood­ shed of the white man for the benefit of the black man who looks on at this race suicide and bides his time. In the end it is, of course, often the precursor of the most friendly relations with those on the other side who afterwards see the error of their ways. In 1914, for instance, the present Prime Minister suppressed a strike, also by Martial Law, although there had been no disorder, except on the part of the Government Forces. He then had nine of the strike leaders seized and deported to England illegally, and in his speech of 5| hours’ duration in Parliament in support of that Indemnity Bill be explained his reasons. He said that:— “ Syndicalist doctrines were being introduced in the most open form-” that “ There the terror started—the Red Ruin,” that one of the men, a Mr. Poutsma, was a lieutenant of the author of a book entitled “ From Christ to Anarchy,” which was, he said, the autobiography of the leading Syndicalist in Holland, who was the instigator of Railway strikes there. He added that Mr. Poutsma “ had graduated in the school of anarchy,” and that he “ was a much more sinister figure than J. T. Bain, another of the deportees of whom our Prime Minister said at the same time that “ a more desperate character he never came across,” with the exception, presumably- of Mr. Poutsma. Bain, who took a prominent part in negotiating the alliance between Het Volk and Labour in the 1907 Election, is dead but Poutsma still lives. Indeed he has since been for years one of the salaried officials at the Headquarters of the Prime Minister’s party, where he is possibly compiling, as a companion to the work of his master, a treatise on “ From Christ to the South African Party.” Another of the deportees was Mr. Archibald Crawford who has since then been several times selected by the Government to represent the Union of South Africa on labour questions at League of Nations gatherings at Washington and Geneva, although rn^is great speech of 1914 the present Prime Minister said that “ Crawford tf;ai^r^ Ifj l , 9 ^ m u s t be recognized that these things could not be done by peaceful methods and had advocated the use of dynamite ” and he added that “ Crawford and Mrs. Fitzgerald led a large mob to Park Station; they (pre- sumablynhfe f'shbtfsmne'people,skilled'S©me;t^feirri(Jlei(S(i©thrirs'iarKlJJburned down the Station. A^e toe tffi»X!On?idae' tliis’ferce ofchivingrn^enUvHti havb cdrispiirct&dginiistJ'ISociety and have launched a struggle such as this to be treated like Mrs. FitzgeVakHmfl <3tf&\tffbvdo(i.e., acquitted by a Jury). It was necessary in the public interest to expel these people.” It is almost unnecessary to add that Mrs. Fitzgerald also has since then been sent by the present Government to Geneva, at the expense of the over-burdened South African tax-payer, in the capacity of “ Labour Adviser ” to her husband Mr. Crawford. Again in the present Strike a Mr. B. Pohl was Assistant Secretary to the Miners’ Union. At a meeting at the Nourse Mines on the 9th of February he and Mr. Crawford expressed their satisfaction that there was no truth in the rumour that the men wanted to go back to work. That was a fortnight after a reactionary member of the Town Council had described the Strike Com­ mittee as Bolsheviks. On the 1 8th of January Mr. Pohl assured a meeting in the country, and quite truly, that “ the spirit which now prevailed among the white workers was exactly the same as that of the old Voortrekkers when they met and conquered Dingaan. He hoped the Railway- men would fall into line with the mine workers ” and on the 20th he remarked, also quite truly, at a public meeting that “ the white workers on the Rand were fighting for life. They were out to guarantee a white South Africa for future generations.” He remained true to the Strike until the Strikers objected to him nearly at the end, and he is now the salaried Organiser of the Prime Minister’s party in the Eastern Transvaal.

A study of these careers of Messrs. Poutsma, Crawford and Pohl will enable you to gauge a', their true value any allegation by our present Prime Minister against his victims; and, indeed, in view of their careers, it may possibly be that those Bolshevik emissaries, of whom we have been told so much, but know nothing and whom no one has ever seen, are now under the care of the South African Party and in training to take the place of Messrs. Poutsma, Crawford ,and Pohl when they are elevated to still higher positions of public service. But even 1914 was not the first time in South African history that the ‘ Red Terror ” had made its appearance. For instance in June, 1900, when most people thought the fighting was over, the present Judge YVessels o f the Appellate Division made a speech in the safe seclusion of the Paarl to- appropri­ ately enough, a meeting of women on the subject of loyalty to the Crown. He was so proud of it that he afterwards published it as a pamphlet with an introduction in which he described the Burghers of the Republic, including our present Prime Minister who was then State Attorney, as “ Those of our countrymen who long to establish over us a rule of “ RED TERROR.” That our present Prime Minister was the “ Red Terror ” to Mr. Justice Wessels 25 years ago is no doubt a striking evidence of the learned Judge’s foresight; but to understand correctly his abuse of his heroic countrymen generally as the “ Red Terror ” we must bear in mind that in this unhappy country abuse of that sort has been a stock argument in political controversy for more than a century.

Even as far back as 1795, the year following the Reign o f Terror in France and only two years after the execution of the King and Queen of France, the Burghers of the Eastern Cape Colony, who had, undoubtedly under the influence of the French Revolution, formed a “ National Assembly” in Graaff-Reinet and Swdlendam with “ Vryheid, Gelykheid en Broeder- schap ”, “ Liberty, Equality and Fraternity,” as their badge were according to official reports of the time “ infected with the rankest poison of Jacobinism.” The repdrt of the Landrost of Graaff-Reinet in 1 794 stated that “ some evil disposed persons at the Cape as well as in the country took advantage of these circumstances to propagate revolutionary principles and Graaff- Reinet became the theatre of anarchy and revolt” quite like the Rand in 1922. In l7 9 9 General Dundas referred to the farmers of those districts as a “ troublesome and disaffected race” and “ the strongest compound of cowardice, and cruelty, of treachery and cunning, and of most of the bad qualities with very few of the good ones of the human mind.” These men were the fathers of the Voortrekkers. »

An historical search would no doubt shew that in all times past a certain type of politician has always abused his opponents as revolutionaries when he sought to inspire the supporters of military despotism. We will give only one example, which is appropriate enough because we have to go back to those times to find a precedent for the methods of government now habitual in South Africa. In 1642 at the beginning of the English Civil War, Charles I., who was after­ wards executed, inspired his supporters by remarking that:— “ Your conscience and your loyalty hath brought you hither to fight for your religion, your King, and the laws of the land. You shall meet with no enemies but traitors, most of them Brownists, Ana-Baptists and atheists; such who desire to destroy both Church and State.” His adversaries included Cromwell, John Milton, Hampden, Pym, Selden and Sir Harry Vane. The attacks on the Strikers on the Rand have been in similar terms and not more true. There is no doubt, for instance, that the Burghers of Graaff-Reinet and Swellendam were influenced by the French Revolution; but what the official mind never grasped was that that was because they had not forgotten the traditions of their ancestors who had brought out with them the memory of the Feast of St. Bartholmew and of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and that they regarded the French Revolution as the vengeance of God on the persecutor. The work­ man who has the tradition of generations of grinding oppression and of the soulless exploitation by capitalistic industry of men, women, and children chained to the wheel at starvation wages may with equal justice sympathise with the successful revolt of the workers against despotism which is called Bolshevism without thinking that it is either necessary or possible in South Africa. Bolshevism had as little to do with the Outbreak on the Witwatersrand in 1922 as the Reign of Terror of the French Revolution had to do with the Great Trek, or the “ Red Terror ” of Mr. Justice Wessels had to do with the Anglo-Boer War. The strength of the handful of Bolsheviks on the Witwatersrand, who are naturally delighted to find themselves credited with so great an influence, can be judged best by the results of the three Parliamentary Elections since 1910, in which a Communist has stood. In all the Constituencies the voters number 2,000. At Commis­ sioner Street the Communist secured 52 votes, at Germiston 63 and at Troyeville 32. If they have increased in number since, which we doubt, it has been entirely due to the illegal methods of government which have been pursued. We repeat that in the List of prisoners there will not be found the name of a single person who ever belonged to any Bolshevik Party. This Bolshevik lie was worked up with very great skill. For long before the Outbreak it was already being put forward to pave the way for the methods of government ultimately adopted and always intended. On the 24th of January a reactionary member of the Town Council refer­ red to the Strike Committee as Bolsheviks. As early as the 3rd of February Sir Abe Bailey, the Government Party Member of Parliament for Krugersdorp, a Director of Mining and Finan­ cial Houses and a proprietor of the Mail, described the Strike as a ‘‘ political revolutionary strike.” The Strike was naturally repugnant to this gentleman whose ideas on the subject may be gathered from the following remarks by our present Prime Minister in the Transvaal Parlia­ ment in 1907:— “ Must we approve of the policy which the Member for Krugersdorp (Sir Abe Bailey) has so impudently placed before the House—that this is a blackman’s country. No, that policy means after a few years big holes in the ground and a large number in the grave yard; only I daresay that the honourable Member would like little black children playing round the graves of the white people. We want only a white man’s land and we shall do our duty to carry out that policy. It might be difficult to do but we shall do it.” On the 24th of February Mr. Webber, who is a Government Party Member of Parliament, a director of leading Mining and Financial Houses and formerly senior member of a firm of Attorneys which acts for about half of the Mining Companies, Banks and Financial Houses, stated that he “ felt convinced that the whole of object of the strike had been a Revolution.” On the 25th the Mail cartoon shewed an “ Extremist Orator” waving a “ red” flag. Two days afterwards the Putfontein Strikers were attacked and dispersed by the Police when committing no offence, and next day three Strikers who were committing no offence were shot dead by the Police in the public street in Boksburg and a number wounded. The perverse tendency of the working man not to be contented with what his employer thinks right has, of course, always been “ riot and rebellion.” So long ago as 1767 in a book with a title that has a present day appeal—“ Causes and consequences of the present high price of provisions” it was said in almost the language of the allies of the Chamber of Mines 150 years afterwards, in 1922 : “ The meanest mechanic will touch nothing but the very best pieces of meat and the finest white bread and if he cannot receive double the wages for being idle to what he formerly received for working hard, he thinks he has a right to seek for a redress of his grievances by riot and rebellion.” To the Employer one of the great charms of slave labour is that it is under thorough disci­ pline; that it is content with mealie pap and offal for food, with a blanket for clothing, and with being shut up in corrugated iron barracks for lodgings; and that it can therefore work for wages on which a white man could not even clothe a family decently. The economic value of such a compounded Negro labour system is indeed such that its introduction into industrial centres in Europe, and especially as a solution of the coal mining difficulties in Great Britain, ought not to be delayed if “ the greatest possible production at the lowest possible cost ” is the only sound basis of national welfare.

CHAPTER V.

THE LIE AS TO ALLEGED ATTACKS BY STRIKERS ON NATIVES.

We have already quoted Mr. Egerton’s statement that “ stranger still were the unpro­ voked attacks on peaceful Natives,” and at a Service held outside the Town Hall on the 19th of March to celebrate the suppression of the Strike it was said by one of the two im­ ported clergy who officiated that “ the most wonderful wave of indignation has swept over the country at the news of the outrages on Natives.” Mr. Egerton is possibly not aware, as the local clergy are of course well aware, that lying charges of “ unprovoked attacks on peaceful Natives” have been a stock weapon of abuse against the white people of this country for the last century. There were in fact no unprovoked attacks by Strikers on Natives during the Strike. Four Europeans were, however, killed by Natives in the suburb of Sophiastown on the 10th of March. One of them was a Municipal labourer who had served and been wounded in Europe with the South African Scottish, who had married there his Nurse, the daughter of a Stock Broker in London, and whose wife had sent him out for groceries that morning. That, however, the apologists for the Government and the Chamber of Mines and the imported clergy, always, with few exceptions, the most bitter enemy both of the older white population of this country and of the white worker, should endeavour to convince the world that the Strikers were murderers of inoffensive Natives was to be expected in South Africa. So long ago as 1794 the Government of that time, in endeavouring to explain the Out­ break at Graaft-Reinet, “ made every attempt to represent the Natives as a quiet and peac- ably disposed people who had been driveu to the violence they had committed by ill-usage on the part of the Burghers” ; and the practice has been continued ever since. As late as 1899 our present Prime Minister said in his “ Century of Wrong” that “ Emissaries of the London Missionary Society slandered the Boers and accused them of the most inhuman cruelty to the Natives. These libellous stories, endorsed as they were by the British Government, found a ready ear amongst the English.” What are the facts as to this charge against the Strikers The “ Raud Daily Mail,” an organ of the Chamber of Mines and the trovernment, reported that as soon as the Coal Strike started “ an adequate force of mounted police was drafted into the district, for although no trouble was anticipated— the Strike Committee making Law and Order one of the first planks of its platform— the fact of there being 23,000 Natives in the district makes the presence of the Police necessary.-’ There was in fact at no time any trouble with Natives on the Coal Fields or on the East or West Rand; but there was grave and well- founded apprehension of it. Our present Prime Minister had said in the House of Assembly on the 4th of February, 1914, in his 5^ hours’ speech in support of that Indemnity Bill, which covered not only Martial Law hut also the nine illegal deportations, that “ No one could foresee what was going to happen with the Natives. Assegais had been prepared iu large numbers and were ready for use. Tons and tons of these weapons were ocllected on July the 5th.” In July, 1918, about 15,000 Natives struck on three of the Gold Mines on the Rand. The nature of the Strike can he gathered from the fact that on the Ferreira Deep Mine alone two wagon loads and five Scotch cart loads of lethal weapons, ranging from axes and iron jumpers to assegais and triangular files sharpened to a fine point and fixed firmly into lengths of iron piping, were collected when these Natives were disarmed (Department of Justice Report for 1918, page 109). This Strike had been organised by a coloured man named Talbot Williams. He made a speech on the 4th of January, 1918, to a large gathering of Natives and coloured men which was afterwards published broadcast by the “ African Political Organisation” in which he denounced white trade unionists and advocated the organisation of black labour, and remarked amongst other similar things th at:— “ Something terrible has happened to the world. The working man is being slaughtered by the millions; and something more terrible still has happened to the Autocrats. The working man of Russia has come into his own. Now my friends, the remedy for all your evils, for all your disabilities, is in your hands; the coloured man and the Natives are the true sons of South African soil.” This man succeeded in organising a very formidable movement which ended in the Strike mentioned. The following quotations from Native political oratory at that time may possibly be of interest:— “ The white people of South Africa want to bring more white people to South Africa to make it their home. We must fight to get hack our country, the country of our fathers. The Native must get back the land of our fathers and not let it pass into the hands of those who have come here to ask a place to live” (Report of Department of Justice for 1918, page 112). It is not necessary to attach more importance to Negro political oratory than to that of General Smuts, nor do w7e do so; but in those circumstances, which were well known espe­ cially to men working on the Mines, and with over 300,000 raw' Negroes working on the Rand, of whom about 175,000 are compounded slave labour on the Mines, it is not sur­ prising that people, including the Police and the Director of Native Labour, feared the possibility of a Negro outbreak during the Strike and sought to guard against it. It is only just to say that these fears were falsified. The Natives generally fully understood and appreciated that the Government and the Chamber of Mines were fighting their battle against the white workmen; and they were grateful and kept quiet. W e do not blame them for the killing of the four white men at Sophiastown. There had been attacks by Europeans on Natives there the previous day. We are ashamed to say that in one case a European had fired at coloured school children there, but he was not a Striker and he was not typical of the European population, but was one of those appalling degenerates who are to be found in every large population. That iu the circumstances of fear and hysteria which prevailed, the Negroes should next day kill stray Europeans where that had happened is not surprising. The Strikers also realized that what they were facing was not Negro aggression on their means of livelihood, but a determination of the Chamber of Mines to extend their system of Negro slave labour. So far as the Natives are concerned nothing on the Rand at this time approached the state of affairs in London in May 1919, Liverpool and Cardiff in June 1919, Washington and Chicago in July 1919, and Port Elizabeth in October 1920. The two Strikers who did shoot Natives (C. C. Stassen who was hanged, and J. Brussouw whose sen­ tence of death was commuted to one of imprisonment for life), acted under an honest belief that they were protecting the community against a dangerous Native outbreak. Partly they no doubt suffered in fact for taking our present Prime Minister’s speeches seriously; but there were facts which lent them support. About the 31st of January, i.e. a month after the Strike started, an unarmed white man was murdered and mutilated by Negroes at Oakdene, a suburb of Johannesburg, not four miles from the centre of the City. Mutila­ tion by Negroes of the corpse of a white man or woman they have murdered is usually for the preparation of Muti, i.e. witch medicine for War, and iu some circumstances it is tan­ tamount to a declaration of war on the whites. In the early morning of the 18th instant an old Scotch night watchman was murdered by Natives in a respectable part within a mile of the Town Hall. His skull was smashed with a four pound hammer and he was stabbed through the face. Nothing was stolen, and it is clear that the murder was due only to the instinct of some Natives to murder the white man when such an opportunity presents itself. No imported clergyman has up to the present considered that either of these incidents call for any remark. On the contrary, in the Pulpit and the Press that type is at present attacking the Police for alleged ill-treatment of Native prisoners, although every year over 200 Constable are, without any comment from them, seriously injured by Native criminals on the Witwatersrand alone. As we have already said, there are about 300,000 raw Negroes on the Rand. On the 1st February, 1922, the Director of Native Labour informed the Negroes that complaints had been received that some of them had jeered at the Strikers’ demonstrations, and stated that the Europeans on Strike had not interfered with Natives, and that all unseemly con­ duct on the part of Natives should he checked. He has since been retired on pension. On the 10th of that month a crowd of some 200 Natives congregated in the vicinity of Fordsburg Railway Station adjoining Vrededorp, and commenced rioting and throwing stones indiscriminately at all white people encountered. This Native riot was suppressed by the Police and 40 of the rioters were arrested. A similar occurrence took place at the Apex Railway Station on the previous day. There has never been any suggestion that either of these Native outbreaks was due to any attack or provocation by Strikers or other white men. Apart from this Native outbreak at the Apex Station it is admitted by every one that there was no trouble from Natives or attacks on Natives anywhere in the Transvaal except at the Primrose Mine near Germiston, and in two suburbs of Johannesburg. Broadly, the whole Native trouble was confined to an area of not more than two square miles out of about 1-50 square miles affected by the Strike. It is in those two square miles that Negroes and Europeans live cheek by jowl in slums and in the most extreme poverty. In 1920, when there was no Strike, there had been a more serious race conflict there in which one European Policeman was killed and several were wounded, and 8 Natives were killed and about 80 wounded. Anyone who knows the social conditions of those localities and the bitterness of feeling which arises where European women and children are forced by poverty to herd with Negroes, will understand why the issues raised by the Chamber of Mines resulted in a ratfial conflict, not between Strikers and Negroes, but between poor whites and Negroes. On the 7th of March there was a fight at Brixton, near Vrededorp, between large crowds of Natives and Europeans, in which one white man and an Indian woman were killed and a Native was wounded. Next day there was renewed fighting with Natives at Yrededorp, which adjoins Brixton, and attacks at the Municipal Compound at Marshallstown, and in Ferrierastown, which adjoins Marshallstown and is one of the worst slums in Johannesburg. Five Natives were killed and fifteen wounded and three Europeans were wounded. On the same day the Strike Committee published the following notice: — “ Reports have reached the Augmented Executive that in many parts of the Witwaters­ rand bodies of Strikers are attacking Natives wantonly and without any reason or cause. These acts have without doubt caused considerable feeling among the Natives particularly in the Fordsburg and Vrededorp Areas, and the position in the various compounds contigu­ ous to where these happenings have taken place is viewed with the utmost concern. The Executive Committee hereby instructs all Strikers that conduct such as above outlined must cease forthwith, and any Striker observing one of their party attacking Natives must see that such offender is handed over to the authorities without delay. It cannot be too strongly impressed that the provoking of Natives to disorder must have far-reaching cou- sequeuces in so far as the whole community is concerned and must provoke ill-feeling on the part of the general public towards the industrial cause. The Executive cannot too strongly impress upon all concerned that such action is subversive to the interests which the Execu­ tive Committee lias at heart." -I()E THOMPSON, Acting President, S.A. Industrial Federation.

This notice was prepared by the Police and was published at their request cn informa­ tion supplied by them. It was signed under protest about the facts in the anxiety of the Strike Committee to prevent such a development. The Director of Native Labour made a similar appeal to the public, stating that he was satisfied that the ATTACKS W ERE NOT BY STRIKERS but by “ Europeans who have no interest or stake in the present trouble." On the same day a figlit between Strikers on the one side and Mine Officials and Natives on the other took place at the New Primrose Mine, in which two white men named Webbstoclc and Olivier were shot dead on the side of the Strikers and two Natives were killed and twenty wounded. This is the only incident of this sort in which Strikers took part, and there is no doubt as to the facts. Anticipating that in the end the Strikers would try to occupy the Mines, as the Muni­ cipal einploj'ees of all classes had done in 1918 with the Municipal Services, the Chamber of Mines had on the previous day armed the Mine Officials with guns and the Mine Natives with jumpers and pick handles to resist any such attemjit. That was denied in Parliament, but proved and admitted before the Martial Law Commission. They were quite entitled to do so to protect their property. Next day with this encouragement a procession of Strikers passing the New Primrose Mine was attacked and jeered at by these Natives, who fired re­ volver shots, threw stones and rushed at them. The Strikers with other white men who came to their assistance drove them back. It ended in a very serious fight, which was ter­ minated by the arrival of a body of mounted police, who certainly at that time took the side of the Strikers. However deplorable such an incident may be, it is a plain lie to describe it as “an unprovoked attack on peaceful Natives.” It was, on the contrary, an unprovoked attack on Strikers by Natives in which they got the worst of the fight. Public opinion at the time may be judged by the fact that the funeral of Webbstock, who was killed by a bullet from the Mine fired either by a Mine Native or a Mine Official, was a mile long and was attended by the Band of the Church of England St. George’s Home for Boys and by the Salvation Army. The Director of Native Affairs reported at this time to the Government that “ I found that the town and district are inflamed and excited, and many are arming themselves and are anxious to attack the European community and residents especially in Vrededorp.” This “arming themselves” and “ anxiety to attack the European community and residents especi­ ally in Vrededorp” must have been reported to the Director of Native Labour before tEe fighting with Natives at Brixton and Vrededorp 011 the 8th, and before tbe attacks on Natives at Ferrierastown and Marshallstown 011 the same day. But these are probably not all the facts. Thus Mr. Newton, the Station Master of New Clare, near Sophiastown, gave evidence at the first of these trials—that of Erasmus, Viljoen and Mare— to the effect that there was good cause at the time for honest fear of a Negro rising. He was arrested in Court on a charge of high treason during the Outbreak, and, although he was eventually acquitted, the arrest did not encourage others to give evidence. He has since been obliged to leave the Railway service. In Mr. Newton’s area there was a Negro pop­ ulation of about 17,000 which had armed themselves with weapons such as were described by our present Prime Minister in 1914, with the addition of large butchers’ knives lashed to six foot poles. Again we are not prepared to condemn them. No one knew what was * going to happen and these Negroes were quite entitled to arm themselves for self-defence. W e think that they armed themselves thus for defence and not for aggression and, with the exception of the attack on Strikers at the New Primrose Mine and jeering at Strikers on other Mines, there was no Negro outbreak as most people feared there would be. Although that was due to the good influence of men like the Director of Native Labour and Mr. Newton, we recognise that the Native generally behaved wcl 1 and that the fears of a Negro insurrection were unfounded. But they were honest and widespread, and it is quite possible that but for the action of Stussen and the skirmishes at Brixton and Vrededorp on the 7th and 8tli of March the result might have been different. In the Southern Suburbs about the end of February all the residents went into laager one night in the Churches and Schools, believing that a Native rising was imminent, and in all the suburbs the women lived in daily terror of a Black insurrection such as our present Prime Minister anticipated in the Strike of 1914 and as nearly took place in 1918. On the 10th of March it was reported that Natives had asked for Martial Law to be proclaimed against white men. On the same day a statement was published signed by Ministers de W et and Mentz that attacks were being made on Natives as an attempt to stampede the Natives into a rising. That was, of course, the usual lie. Contrast it with the warning pub­ lished two days before bv the Strike Committee, and ask yourself who in his senses would try to stampede about 300,000 Natives into a rising, knowing as every one did that the "Mine Natives, still numbering over 100,000 even then, hnd been armed by the Chamber of Mines. Remember also the much more serious fight with Natives in Vrededorp in 1920 when there was no Strike, and that Ferrierastown is the worst slum on the Rand, inhabited largely by a mixed population of all races and of all occupations honest and otherwise; and you will, we think, come to the conclusion that not onlv were the Strikers not guilty of unprovoked attacks on Natives but that the attempt to show that they were is some indication of the methods of the Chamber of Mines and the Government who find a naturally congenial, and certainly to them necessary, occupation in the defilement of the dead. It is not a pleasant spectacle— “ When you’re wounded and lain on Afghanistan’s plains And the women come out to cut up what remain^.”

CHAPTER VI.

THE TRUE CAUSE OF THE STRIKE.

At a Meeting on the 15th instant at Koster, a small country town in the Western Transvaal, the Village Blacksmith asked General Smuts why the men went on Strike, to which he replied that it was on the wages question. The Village Blacksmith retorted: “ You are telling an untruth; it was the status quo agreement” ; and thereupon the Prime Minister called him a Bolshevik and lie was assaulted by the Prime Minister’s supporters. We commend to Mr. Egerton and other students of contemporary history a comparison of this dialogue with those which once took place on foreign affairs between Palmerston and the Butcher of Taunton. It will throw some light on the causes of the intermittent break-down of government by law in South Africa. Obviously to the General a Bolshevik is only a person who contradicts him or insists on telling him the truth. Possibly the Village Black­ smith, as well as the Chamber of Mines, was in error in attributing deliberate mis-statement to the Prime Minister, since it is conceivable that he really did not know what the Strike was about; but the Village Blacksmith was right in saying that the men went on strike to maintain the status quo agreement. The issue in the Strike was, therefore, as we have already shewn, whether free Euro­ pean labour should be displaced by the extension of Negro slave labour on contract in the, unfettered discretion of the Chamber of Mines and with the blessing of the imported clergy. The Chamber of Mines knew that that would cause a Strike. In 1918 Sir Evelyn Wallers said in his evidence before the Native Grievances Commission th a tP u b lic opinion is not prepared to see the substitution of coloured and native workers for white skilled and semi­ skilled workers, and any attempt to employ a non-white workman in Mining work at present occupied by white men would cause a strike o f the white employees on the Mines who would be supported by the great hulk of white population of the Witwatersrand.” W e shall show you in the next Chapter that they also knew that that Strike would be broken only by armed force. It is scarcely necessary to repeat that the free European cannot compete with Negro slave labour on contract, and would not if he could. The extension of the slave labour system if left, as it is now, to the discretion of the Chamber of Mines is limited only by the intelligence and training of the Negro who will submit to be compounded, and there is no reason to doubt that unless prevented by legislation the slave labour system can with training and sub-division of work be extended to more than half of the work at present done by Europeans. It is unnecessary to discuss at any length what would happen if mine native la­ bour were free labour, since in that event the European population, especially the European women, would have to be compounded in fortifications. But it is equally clear that the Euro­ pean could be displaced very largely in South Africa by free Negro labour. Even when free the Negro is usiially docile and amenable to orders. In South Africa he has special advan­ tages. His expenditure on clothing is very small and when at home practically nil; and lie spends about as much time in his Native Kraal as he does on the Mines. At his Native Kraal he produces his own food mainly through the labour of his wives (polygamy is still the rule) ; he lives rent free in his own hut on tribal land, and his cash expenditure is only for a few luxuries. Not only coxild no European possibly live on any civilised standard on the wages he will accept: hut not many Eiiropeans have the advantage of possessing land and housing in the country where their families are practically self-supporting. To talk about leaving the issue of which is to survive to be decided by fair competition between the European and Negro is therefore nonsense. The competition cannot he fair unless the European abandons a civilised standard of life and lives like a Native, and until the Euro­ pean is endowed with free land in the country.

To the Minins' Company the only question is, of course: What is the most efficient for- - of labour obtainable, the formula of efficiency being output, divided by cost. And, since Negro labour is in that sense the most efficient, Negro labour will be employed for all but the most skilled work except so far as its employment is restrained in the public interest. The question is not peculiar to this country, although in South Africa it is peculiarly acute owing to tribal authority, the tribal lands and the compound system, and the Strikers did not stand alone in their aversion to the displacement of the European by the Negro. In 1809 in his work entitled “ A Century of W rong ” General Smuts said for instance: “ And as the brain of the onlooker reels, and as his thoughts fade away into uneasy slumbers, there arises before him in a dream the distant prospect of Bantu children playing amongst the gardens and ruins of the sunny south around thousands of graves in which the descen­ dants of the European heroes of Eaith and Freedom lie sleeping. “ For the marauding hordes of the Bantu are once more roving where European dwel­ lings used to stand. And when the question is asked: W hy all this has happened? W hy the heroic children of an heroic race, to which civilization owes its priceless blessings, should lie murdered there in that distant quarter of the globe ? An invisible spirit of mockery answers, ‘ Civilisation is a failure, the Caucasian is played out,’ and the dreamer awakens with the echo of the word ‘ Gold, Gold, Gold ’ in his ears.” lie was still apparently of the same opinion in 1907 and recognized that it applied to the displacement of Europeans on the Mines by Negro slave labour. Then he said in the Transvaal Parliament that “ to dis­ pense with the services of the white man is naturally a policy which suits the Mine owners. If they get rid of the white workers, the Mine owners would rid themselves of Strikes, expenses, and a lot of difficiilties, and from that point of view I understand them and sym­ pathise with them, and I think it is a good economic plan to rid themselves of difficulties. But must the Government and the people of this country follow that policy?” Apparentlv he is now of the opinion that the answer to that question should be in the affirmative. There are obvious reasons for that chancre of opinion. In 1907 he was depen­ dent on the anti-Mining house vote on the Witwatersrand and in Pretoria; bnt in 1922 he held office solely by reason of the Native and coloured vote in the Cape Colonv, which holds the balance in at least a dozen seats and gave him his maioritv. In 1907 he was speakinsr for the Transvaal which had ample revenue and a small public debt; hut in 1922 he was dealincr with the TTnion which is carrvinsr the bankrupt Province of the Cane on its back, which has since TTnion in 1910 more than doubled its public expenditure and has been getting deeper and deeper into debt by some £7.000.000 a year, so that to carry on more and more money has to he borrowed in Europe from the financial houses which control the Industry, and more and more money has to go from the Transvaal to the Cape. One wav to white man who lives on the Bond nnd spends his mon^v here, and to put in his place the Neon':lent on the Cane Native "Vote. Fnr instance. no word of ohieetion to the extension of Neorn slave labour came from Mr. Potrick Thmean. Minister for the Interior, although he had so late as the 7th of February, 1911, said in the TTnion Parliament that: “ If the white man was going to be excluded from unskilled work and was going to be exposed to the competition of the coloured man who was being trained to take liis place, then no further argument was needed to show that that was no hope for him.” The Status Quo agreement, to maintain which the men were fighting, was the real bar­ rier against the extension of Negro slave labour into European free labour occupations : and it arose in this way. In the early days of the Rand the organization of labour, which grew up spontaneously, was that all skilled and semi-skilled work was done by Europeans and all unskilled work was done by raw Negroes imported mostly from the East Coast. In 1904 when' the importation of Chinese slave labour was commenced it was realized that the Chinese would be used to displace Europeans in skilled work unless some restriction was placed on the greed of the Chamber of Mines and their ingratitude to the men who had helped them to win the Anglo-Boer War. The Statute regulating Chinese slave labour therefore excluded it from certain scheduled free European occupations. That reservation of these occupations to free labour remained substantially until after the outbreak of the Great War. Then the Mines were regarded at first as essential services and were excluded from recruiting: but, when it was found to be impossible to fill up the Third Contingent, recruiting on the Mines was allowed and encouraged. But as men left for the War, with the most solemn pledges that their jobs would be kept open for them when they returned, their places were not unnaturally filled by the experienced Natives who had been working un­ der them. For a long time the remaining Europeans did not object, as they also wished to help to win the W ar: they knew of the promise to replace these men when they returned, and they knew also that half pay was being paid to the dependants of men on active service. But. as the process increased and it was realized that many of the men would never return, men became alarmed that the encroachment of Negro slave labour in these occupations might possibly be permanent; and towards the end of the War they agitated on the question. That led eventually to the Status Quo Agreement on the 1st of September, 1918, providing that there should be no further extension of Negro slave labour in European occupations.

Bear in mind that that Agreement merely provided a partial exclusion of slave labour from those occupations from which it had been wholly excluded by Parliament in 1904. It did not even provide, as it should have done, that when the War wa^> over slave labour should be wholly removed from all these occupations: hut, so far as it did go, it was merely an attempt to maintain by agreement a right standard of National life which had been sanc­ tioned in specific terms by the Legislature in 1904. It was the true Colour Bar or more correctly the true “ Slave Labour Bar.” The Mines now (in 1922) demanded that that standard should be removed and that they should be allowed to extend their slave labour system into all occupations not protected by the legal Colour Bar. The War was over, the knighthoods had been distributed, the supply of white labour was in excess of the demand and it was time therefore to end the farce of the “ square deal” and the sympathetic at­ titude to labour. The men not only objected to the extension of slave labour but they felt, and subsequent events have proved that they were right, that if the Status Quo Agreement went, the legal Colour Bar would go also, and that the slave labour system would then be extended in time into all occupations. The legal Colour Bar consisted only of certain Min­ ing Regulations, made in the first instance to prevent accidents, -that certain occupations should be filled only by white men. These occupations are mainly blasting, removing mine props and driving engines. Knowing the Chamber of Mines, the men had good reasons for their fears. For instance, on the 24th of November, 1921, Sir Lionel Phillips, a mining magnate, said in an interview published in the Rand Daily Mail that “ he entirely agreed with General Smuts as to the wisdom of making better use in the mines of some of the more experienced natives” working under slave conditions; and the Star of the 23rd of December, ten days before the Strike, contained an interview with Sir Lionel, in which, in reply to the question: “ Are you in favour of the abolition of the Colour Bar,” he replied: “ Yes, it is both immoral and irrational.” In 1920 tbe Low Grade Mines Commission recommended in the Majority Report (which included the Chairman, the Secretary and the Technical Adviser of the Chamber of Mines) that the Colour Bar should be abolished (para. 178). Assurances to the contrary were, of course, given. On the 28th of January our present Prime Minister assured the Strike Committee that “ the Colour Bar is not in danger,” and the Chamber of Mines declared its policy to be “ No elimination of the Colour Bar.” On the 21st of February General Smuts said in Parliament that “ the entrenchment of the white position under the law shall not be touched,” but on the following day Mr. J. X. Merriman, one of his supporters and once Prime Minister of Cape Colony, said: “ We want to abolish the Colour Bar.” Whatever was said, it all came to the same thing in the end. Since the Strike the Colour Bar lias been abolished. As soon as the Strike was over Mines employed Negro slave labour on Engine-driving in breach of the Regulations, and when prosecuted claimed that the Regulations were ultra vires and that contention was upheld by the Courts on the 12th of November last. But notwithstanding the promise of the Government that “ the entrenchment of the white position under the law should not be touched,” legislation was not introduced during the past Session to legalise the Colour Bar and prevent any further extension of the slave labour system into European occupations. Up to the present the pro­ cess of extension lias been hampered by an agreement made by the Mines in 1922 that for two years they would maintain a ratio of white men of 1 to 10.5; but that agreement expired on the 31st of March last. The Government at the same time resigned and dissolved Par- iiament, and if they are returned to power again the Chamber of Mines will be rightly able to say that the country approves of their plans and methods, and it will then proceed to reduce the white men employed to a minimum. I’lie following Table will shew how much has been done in that direction already:—

NUMBER OF EUROPEANS EMPLOYED.

Miners. g . Tons milled. ______r w OQ 00 ------

CO 05fn M o r—H other other artisans. employed Mechanics Mechanics and Cleaners Cleaners and Gr( Period. Engine Drivers a Tons milled to each European Firemen, Firemen, Boilers Cntract. Day’s Day’s Pay. Drill sharpeners. Total number. Total. Reduction Reduction Work* < 1909 2285 1694 3818 537 1635 1857 10,271 22,997 21,011,285 950 1914 2304 2247 2459 377 1582 1383 10,634 20,986 24,463,765 1261 1921 2159 1279 2675 363 1247 1521 11,612 20,856 23,441,048 1124 1923 1984 1203 2509 241 1075 1102 9,785 17,899 26,765,126 1495 05 *© .s ® ©ac 05oo &05 $g 5 « c ® 1909 — 301 —491 1309 — 296 — 560 — 755 —486 —5,098 + 5,754,841 + 545 1921 — 175 — 76 - -166 — 122 — 172 —491 — 1827 — 2,957 + 3,324,078 + 371

The numbers em ployed are at Decem ber, 1909, and June, 1914, 21 and 23. We call your serious attention to the progressive decrease in the employment of Euro­ peans which is shewn. In 1921 there were 2,141 fewer Europeans employed than in 1909, although the tonnage of ore milled had increased by 2,430,763 tons per annum, and the tonnage per European has increased by over 18% ; and 1921 was the year before the Strike when it was alleged by the Chamber of Mines that the Mines were burdened with redundant, incompetent, and insubordinate Europeans who had to he got rid of. Since the Strike the European has been got rid of, not to the number of 1,400 as they said during the Strike, but to the number of 2,987, which is more than double. The application of the Coal Mining ratio, which they are aiming at and which they will be free to effect if the present Election goes their way, will mean that at least 8,000 more Europeans will be thrown out of employment on the Mines alone and forced into relief works at 3/6 per day. The result -of the process of reduction in the number of white men em­ ployed and of the earnings of those who are employed has up to the present been a decrease of at least £3,000,000 a year in the spending power of the Witwatersrand, and if the public decide in favour of the elimination of the Colour Bar that figure will be doubled. The second cause of the Strike was a combination of employers to reduce wages. Not much importance was attached to that, as the exact figure was not given except on the Coal Mines where it was put at 5/- a shift. As a matter of fact, the Strike having been lost, wages have been reduced without mercy. The Miner on contract is now getting about a third of what he iised to earn, and the Mine artisan is back at the 1914 wage although the cost of living has increased since by about a third. But it will be said that all these changes, howe%7er deplorable, were unavoidable in order to save the Mining Industry from extinction. The Strikers did not believe it, nor do we. It lias been said that: “ The grievance of the Mining Industry next came under review. The agitation for the removal of burdens on the Industry has been represented in England as a grotesque complaint on the part of the cosmopolitan Jew capitalist that he is not allowed to add to his already superfluous millions. But, it is said, there is more in the complaint than the disappointment of the millionaire. The whole prosperity of the country depends on the Mines. If by taxation mines of inferior grade are made incapable of being worked at a profit, not merely the cosmopolitan millionaire but all the inhabitants of the Rand, and more particularly the working class, must suffer. Furthermore, the European investor must suffer. £150.000,000 of European capital have been sunk in the Transvaal mines; and the return in dividends to the European shareholders has been slight. Gener­ ally. also, it is alleged that the excessive taxation, direct and indirect, prevents the higher grade mines giving adeauate return for the canital invested in them, and prevents the lower grade mines being worked at any profit at all.” You might think these remarks were made in 1922. They were not. They are extracts from a book by Dr. M. J. Earrelly pub­ lished in 1900 entitled “ The Settlement after the W ar.” Apain, if you will turn to the Mail of the 28th of January, 1914, which also contains part of General Smuts’s great hours speech in defence of his deportation of Messrs. Crawford. Poutsma and others, you will find even then a cartoon representing the Chamber

Collection Number: A3392-2 Collection Name: “The story of a crime being the vindication of the Transvaal Strike Legal Defence Committee in connection with the Great Strike on the Witwatersrand in 1922”

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