Mr. Cresswell, who had stood out for white labour on the Village Main Reef mine, and had proved conclusively that white labour could be employed at a profit greater than that at which black labour was employed, was compelled to resign his general managership. Mr. Wybergh, Commissioner of Mines, and for long a distinguished servant of the Government, had dared to protest against Chinese serfdom, and was forced also to resign. Every day it became more clear that the Transvaal was to be no place for an Englishman. The white man's blood and the white man's treasure may have been spent to win it for the one-time flag of freedom, but the Englishman was not to make his home or earn his living upon the land. "We want no white proletariat," Lord Milner had said. But the magnates did not stop at merely coercing the press. Indignation meetings were held at Cape Town and Kimberley, and they employed men to break them up at 15s. per head. At a meeting at Johannesburg, held by the African Labour League, it was arranged that a proposal should be put to the vote deploring the importation of Asiatics, and protesting against the action of the Government, and demanding a referendum in the colony. At this meeting several men were present, paid by a certain Mr. B. of Johannesburg to create a disturbance. Their efforts were so successful, they shouted so long "You want the Chinese," that the meeting became an uproar, and the speakers were unable to be heard. But all protests were unavailing and futile. All opposition was considered as a party move. The cry of "Yellow slavery" was attributed to shameless Radical tactics. The Liberal Party, it was said, would stoop to anything with which to besmirch the fair name of the Conservative Party. The Ordinance passed the House after having been debated at length. It has since been altered in some of its most important details, thereby emphasizing the fact that in permitting the question to be debated in the House the Government only regarded the discussion as a sham. But even in the Conservative Party there were men whose consciences pricked them over the Ordinance. One old respected member, who has recently died, declared privately on the day that the vote was taken that for the first time in his life he had voted against his conscience, at the urgent instance of the Conservative whips. He for one realized, when it was too late, that the introduction of the Chinese on the Rand was--as Mr. Asquith lately remarked at Leven--"a most gigantic and short-sighted blunder." CHAPTER III THE YELLOW MEN ON THE RAND "It must be admitted that the lot of the Chinese labourer does not promise to be very gay or very happy from our point of view" (extract from _The Times_).