tted. The
white people lost the habit of performing manual toil, and acquired the
habit of despising it. No one would do for himself what he could get a
black man to do for him. New settlers from Europe fell into the ways of
the country, which suited their disinclination for physical exertion
under a sun hotter than their own. Thus, when at last slavery was
abolished, the custom of leaving menial or toilsome work to people of
colour continued as strong as ever. It is as strong as ever to-day. The
only considerable exception, that which was furnished by the German
colonists who were planted in the eastern province after the Crimean War
of 1854, has ceased to be an exception; for the children of those
colonists have now, for the most part, sold or leased their allotments
to Kafirs, who till the soil less efficiently than the sturdy old
Germans did. The artisans who to-day come from Europe adopt the habits
of the country in a few weeks or months. The English carpenter hires a
native "boy" to carry his bag of tools for him; the English bricklayer
has a native hodman to hand the bricks to him, which he proceeds to set;
the Cornish or Australian miner directs the excavation of the seam and
fixes the fuse which explodes the dynamite, but the work with the
pickaxe is done by the Kafir. The herdsmen who drive the cattle or tend
the sheep are Kafirs, acting under the orders of a white. Thus the
coloured man is indispensable to the white man, and is brought into
constant relations with him. He is deemed a necessary part of the
economic machinery of the country, whether for mining or for
manufacture, for tillage or for ranching.

But though the black people form the lowest stratum of society, they are
not all in a position of personal dependence. A good many Kafirs,
especially in the eastern province, own the small farms which they till,
and many others are tenants, rendering to their landlord, like the
metayers of France, a half of the produce by way of rent. Some few
natives, especially near Cape Town, are even rich, and among the Indians
of Natal a good many have thriven as shopkeepers. There is no reason to
think that their present exclusion from trades requiring skill will
continue. In 1894 there were Kafirs earning from five shillings to seven
shillings and sixpence a day as riveters on an iron bridge then in
course of construction. I was informed by a high railway official that
many of them were quite fit to be drivers or st