we may look with some degree of apprehension? I believe myself that
things will work round, but, undoubtedly, the state of affairs is
serious. After all, there is something which goes to build up a
country besides material wealth, and I am not sure that gambling in
gold shares is exactly the thing which is wanted. Of course, there
have been other countries where these vast increases of material
wealth have occurred--California and Australia--but there the
conditions were different. They were new countries, which attracted
large numbers of white men, and, when they found the gold fields
did not pay, they made homes for themselves on the land.
Unfortunately, that state of affairs does not exist at the present
time in South Africa, and that brings us face to face with the
great problem on which Sir Frederick Young has touched--the great
problem which we have always before us--viz., how two races utterly
alien to each other, the black and the white, are to live and
increase side by side. South Africa is the only country in the
world where that problem exists, excepting the Southern States of
North America. This is a great question, on which the future of
South Africa depends. Unfortunately, the white men do not work in a
country where the black race flourishes. If the white man does not
become a "boss," he sinks to the level of a mean white man. The
difficulty is to get a state of society in which the white race
shall flourish side by side with the black; and when people talk
about the "local politicians," the "average Cape politician," and
the like, they should remember we have to deal with this enormous
problem--that we are anxious to do justice to the "black," and at
the same time we are naturally anxious to see the European
population flourish. I believe the gold fields will attract a
large European population. The wages are enormous. There are 20,000
black men, without a stitch upon them, earning as much as eighteen
shillings a week a-piece, and getting as much food as they can eat,
in the mines of Johannesburg. People talk about the treatment of
the blacks. Nobody dares to treat them badly, because they would
run away. There is a competition for them, and the black man has an
uncommonly rosy time of it. The white men naturally won't work
under t