Most of the wealthy houses in the Transvaal are either offshoots of or have supporting connections with firms in England or on the Continent. Between them and their principals much correspondence had taken place on the political situation. As far as these houses were concerned, it was impossible for them to enter upon any movement without the consent of their European associates. For this reason the Reform movement, as it eventually took place, has in some ways the appearance of and has very frequently been stigmatized as an organization planned and promoted outside the Transvaal. The fact is that Mr. Alfred Beit, of the firm of Wernher, Beit and Co., London, and Mr. Cecil Rhodes, managing director of the Consolidated Goldfields, may be regarded as the chiefs to whom the ultimate decision as to whether it was necessary from the capitalistic point of view to resort to extreme measures was necessarily left. Each of these gentlemen controls in person and through his business associates many millions of money invested in the Transvaal; each of them was, of course, a heavy sufferer under the existing conditions affecting the mining industry, and each, as a business man, must have been desirous of reform in the administration. Mr. Beit acted in concert with Mr. Lionel Phillips, of H. Eckstein and Co., the Johannesburg representatives of Wernher, Beit and Co. Mr. Rhodes was represented by his brother, Colonel Francis Rhodes, and Mr. J.H. Hammond, of the Consolidated Goldfields Company in Johannesburg. Mr. George Farrar, another very large mine-owner, who joined a little later than the others, with the gentlemen above named, may be considered to have represented the capitalist element in the earlier stages of the Reform movement. The other elements were represented by Mr. Charles Leonard, the chairman of the National Union, and one or two other prominent members of that body.