the mine or
above the ground, which require intelligence and special knowledge.

The number of natives regularly employed was in 1896 47,000, the total
employed altogether during the year 70,000. In 1898 these numbers had
risen to 67,000 and 88,000 respectively. The average monthly wage of a
native was in 1896 L3 0_s._ 10_d._ and in 1898 L2 9_s._ 9_d._ The number
of whites employed was in 1896 7,430 (average monthly wage L24), in 1898
9,476 (average monthly wage L26). Whites would be still more largely
employed if they would work harder, but they disdain the more severe
kinds of labour, thinking those fit only for Kafirs. The native workmen
are of various tribes, Basutos, Zulus, Shanganis, and Zambesi boys being
reckoned the best. Most of them come from a distance, some from great
distances, and return home when they have saved the sum they need to
establish themselves in life. The dream of the mine manager is to cut
down the cost of native labour by getting a larger and more regular
supply, as well as by obtaining cheaper maize to feed the workmen, for
at present, owing to the customs duties on food-stuffs, the cost of
maize--nearly all of which is imported--is much higher than it need be.
So white labour might be much cheapened, while still remaining far
better paid than in Europe, by a reduction of the customs tariff, which
now makes living inordinately dear. Heavy duties are levied on machinery
and chemicals; and dynamite is costly, the manufacture of it having been
constituted a monopoly granted to a single person. Of all these things,
loud complaints are heard, but perhaps the loudest are directed against
the rates of freight levied by the railways, and especially by the
Netherlands Company, which owns the lines inside the Transvaal State
itself.

Even apart from the question of railway freights, Johannesburg believed
in 1895 that better legislation and administration might reduce the cost
of production by twenty or thirty per cent., a difference which would of
course be rapidly felt in the dividends of the mines that now pay, and
which would enable many now unprofitable mines to yield a dividend and
many mines to be worked which are now not worth working.[61] However
this may be, an examination of the figures I have given will show how
great has been the development of the industry during the last eight
years, how largely the dividends have grown and how much the cost of
production has been reduced. Thus in spi