The old Free State and Transvaal Governments in a like manner determined to fleece the industrial workers, and so save their own burghers from bearing their due share of the cost of Government. While they were the greatest sinners themselves, they could not with reason ask the southern Governments to take the first step towards moderation. As a consequence, the Rand, dependent for the most part of its food and for the whole of its industrial equipment on over-sea supplies, became one of the most expensive places to live and work in that the wide world knows. Under the new _regime_ there is as yet no improvement; the Imperial Government is looking for revenue. To the despair of British loyalists the old high rates are maintained, with the effect of delaying and perhaps prohibiting the enormous industrial progress which the wealth of the country would under other conditions make possible. All classes feel the burden, and at the forthcoming Congress of the Associated Chamber of Commerce, which will meet at Kimberley, resolutions bearing on the question are to be submitted. The first affirms: "That the railways, being the highways of the country, should be worked solely with a view to furnishing the transit and traffic requirements of the country, and entirely dissociated from the revenual, political, or protective considerations;" and "That the policy of raising revenue through excessive railway rates is an objectionable method of taxation. It is unfair in its incidence, and bears with especial hardship on the inland wage-earner." These resolutions reflect the feelings of the whole inland community of South Africa. [Illustration: COMMISSIONER STREET, JOHANNESBURG Photo by Barnett & Co., Johannesburg]