When the incurable idleness of the Chinaman and his cost of keep is added to that 1s. 6d. a day, he is dearer than the black man or the white man. The Rand lord was anxious to procure cheap labour and subservient labour. The white man could not be employed because he would have held the management of the country in the hollow of his hand, have formed trade unions, and insisted on proper wages and proper treatment. Enough black men, if time had been given, would have worked at the mines even at the reduced wages paid by the Rand lords. On this point, too, Mr. Cresswell, from whose Potchefstroom speech I quoted just now, had something instructive to say. In dissecting the official records, he observed-- "They show that between June 1904 and the end of last August--the last month for which statistics are available--the number of natives on the producing mines of the Rand had increased by 19,000, or an average increase of 1,355 a month. Does any man here for a minute really believe that if no Chinese had come here at all the gentlemen controlling the mines would not have done exactly the same from June 1904 to August 1905, as they did from June 1903 to June 1904? Does any one believe that in the latter period, as in the former period, they would not have managed to bring an average of a hundred more stamps into operation, and into the producing mines, for every 1,085 natives at least that they added to their force of native labour? If they had merely added on 100 stamps for every 1,085 natives, as they did up to June 1904, do you know how many stamps would have been working in August 1905? They would have had 6,503 stamps at work. Do you know how many they actually had at work? They had 6,845 stamps at work, or a paltry 342 stamps more than if no Chinese had ever been imported!" But the Kaffir could not be forced to work. There was nothing to prevent him from throwing up his employment when he had earned sufficient money and was returning to his kraal. The only chance, therefore, so the Rand lords argued, of acquiring the voteless and subservient labour that they wanted, was to get Chinese labour. The Chinaman is certainly voteless, but he has proved far from subservient--far less subservient than a Kaffir. Belonging to a more intelligent race, the child of an old though dormant civilization, he has known exactly how to deal with his masters. Of the gold extracted from the mines so much goes to wages and so much goes to dividends; the wages are spent in the country, the dividends are spent in Europe. Raise wages and you will render South Africa prosperous; lower wages and you will denude South Africa. The Chinese policy of so-called economy has ruined the small trader, and turned the main stream of South African gold to Park Lane, Paris and Berlin, with a thin stream to China. This country, which has given so much for the Transvaal, has benefited least by the gold mines.