d slender
chimneys of Johannesburg, that uprooted side of social life, that
accumulation of toilers divorced from the soil, which is Industrialism
and Labor and which carries such people as ourselves, and whatever
significance and possibilities we have, as an elephant carries its
rider.

Now all Johannesburg and Pretoria were discussing Labor and nothing but
Labor. Bloemfontein was in conference thereon. Our work of repatriation
which had loomed so large on the southernward veld became here a
business at once incidental and remote. One felt that a little sooner or
a little later all that would resume and go on, as the rains would, and
the veld-grass. But this was something less kindred to the succession of
the seasons and the soil. This was a hitch in the upper fabric. Here in
the great ugly mine-scarred basin of the Rand, with its bare hillsides,
half the stamps were standing idle, machinery was eating its head off,
time and water were running to waste amidst an immense exasperated
disputation. Something had given way. The war had spoilt the Kaffir
"boy," he was demanding enormous wages, he was away from Johannesburg,
and above all, he would no longer "go underground."

Implicit in all the argument and suggestion about me was this profoundly
suggestive fact that some people, quite a lot of people, scores of
thousands, had to "go underground." Implicit too always in the discourse
was the assumption that the talker or writer in question wasn't for a
moment to be expected to go there. Those others, whoever they were, had
to do that for us. Before the war it had been the artless Portuguese
Kaffir, but he alas! was being diverted to open-air employment at
Delagoa Bay. Should we raise wages and go on with the fatal process of
"spoiling the workers," should we by imposing a tremendous hut-tax drive
the Kaffir into our toils, should we carry the labor hunt across the
Zambesi into Central Africa, should we follow the lead of Lord Kitchener
and Mr. Creswell and employ the rather dangerous unskilled white labor
(with "ideas" about strikes and socialism) that had drifted into
Johannesburg, should we do tremendous things with labor-saving
machinery, or were we indeed (desperate yet tempting resort!) to bring
in the cheap Indian or Chinese coolie?

Steadily things were drifting towards that last tremendous experiment.
There was a vigorous opposition in South Africa and in England (growing
there to an outcry), but behind that prop