Apparently it was assumed that only a cessation of hostilities was needed for the mines to hurry up and resume their old-time rate of production and prosperity. Such an assumption ignores the real difficulties of reconstituting a country and its industries, devastated and disorganised for three years by war, and setting up an entirely new order of things. As a matter of fact, the progress actually achieved has been marvellous, and as much, or even more, than could have been expected in like cases. It has apparently been forgotten that civil government has only within a few weeks replaced the military in the main administrative channels. The railway network of the sub-continent has only been thrown open to the free transport of merchants' goods within the past month, and the limitation of transit to the Rand, and the interior generally, is a most serious matter, by reason of the fact that the trunk railways from the coast are only single lines. For the clearance at the ports of the accumulations of mining machinery, mining stores, building materials, foodstuffs, and general merchandise, months are required, and this clearance must take place ere the railway traffic can fall back into its normal grooves. Abundance of labour, too--always a crucial question with mining operations, whether they be on the Rand, in Rhodesia, or elsewhere in the sub-continent--is, for a variety of causes, not yet available, although measures have been taken by the Government and the mining industry, acting in concert, which have placed this subject on a more satisfactory footing than it ever enjoyed. Other advances have been made in the improvement of the status of the industry, such, for instance, as the reduction of the customs duties, which enormously improve the industry's chances of future remunerative working. Some desiderata are certainly unfulfilled, such as reduced railway rates; but the instalment of reforms made affords a fair basis on which working can be resumed with admirable chances of remuneration and profit. This being so, the unreasonableness of the show of impatience that progress has not been more rapid, and the undeservedness of the distrust with which the industry is professed to be regarded in some quarters, are obvious. A sober view of the situation of the Transvaal at the present moment must undoubtedly force the confession that the amount of solid work done in solving the many problems simultaneously surging up for solution in a new colony besides mining,--repatriation, resettlement, &c.--and in rebuilding generally the body politic, is of substantial volume, and that the progress hitherto made, in removing the difficulties which beset the mining industry, are sufficient augury that whatever remains unalleviated will receive its due and satisfactory attention in the near future.