South Africa -- Description and travel; South Africa -- History -- 1836-1909; South Africa -- History -- To 1836
Gradually I suppose these people will learn to cling to their work with
some better constancy. I, as a stranger, was tempted to say that better
diet, better usage, and better wages would allure them. But I was
assured that I was wrong in this, and that any attempts in that
direction only spoilt “the Native.” No doubt if you teach a Native to
understand that he is indispensable to your comfort you raise his own
estimation of himself, and may do so in such a manner as to make him
absurdly fastidious. He is still irrational, still a Savage. He has to
be brought by degrees to bend his neck to the yoke of labour and to
learn that continued wages are desirable. That the thing will be done by
degrees I do not at all doubt, and do not think that there is just cause
of dissatisfaction at the rate of the present progress. The new comer to
Pretoria to whom I am addressing myself will doubtless do something
towards perfecting the work. In the meantime his domestic servants will
cost him very much less than they have done in England.
A man with a wife and family and £500 a year would I think live with
more comfort, certainly with more plenty in Pretoria, than in England.
The inhabitants of Pretoria will demur to this, for it is a matter of
pride to the denizens of every place to think that the necessaries of
life are dearer there than elsewhere. But the cheapness of a place is
not to be reckoned only by what people pay for the articles they use.
The ways of the country, the requirements which fashion makes, the pitch
to which the grandeur of Mrs. Smith has aroused the ambition of Mrs.
Jones, the propensities of a community to broadcloth or to
fustian,--these are the causes of expensive or of economical living. A
gentleman in Pretoria may invite his friends to dinner with no greater
establishment than a Kafir boy to cook the dinner and another to hand
the plates, whereas he does not dare to do so in London without paying
10s. for the assistance of the greengrocer.
As, however, men with £500 a year will not emigrate in great numbers to
Pretoria it would be more important to say how the labouring man might
live in the Transvaal. With him his condition of life does not depend so
much on what he will have to pay for what he consumes as on the wages
which he may receive. I found that an artizan can generally earn from
10s. to 12s. a day at almost any trade,--if the work of the special
trade be required. But I am far from saying that amidst so small a
community all artizans would find an opening. At the present moment
bricklayers and carpenters are in demand at Pretoria,--and can live in
great plenty on their wages.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account