ROOM FOR WHITE SETTLERS.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1216, 26 August 1911, Page 5

ROOM FOR WHITE SETTLERS.

BLACK LABOUR IN SOUTH AFRICA. By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright Cape Town, August 24. Mr. Burton, South African Minister for Native Affairs, in an interview, characterised as false tko contention that white skilled labour cannot bo employed for sugar-gvowing, owing to its cost, whoa sugar is selling at ,£l9 per ton. The Minister argued that reliance on native labour for everything was keeping tba country back, and he predicted that there would be great -white immigration into South Africa.

Nobody knows how many natives thero arc in South Africa, i'oi the census returns have not yet been counter! (wrote tlio "Manchester Guardian" correspondent recently), hut in 1904 the four colonics which now form tho L'nion of Souiii Africa contained a population of about 1,200,000 Europeans, 3,500,000 natives and 000,000 Asiatics and persons of mixed race. This does not include somo 550,000 natives in tho three Protectoraies—Basutoland, Swaziland, and Northern Bechuanalnnd—which for the time being aro under the direct government of Lord Gladstono as High Commissioner, and not in or under the Union. Tho Asiatic problem stands by itself. The coloured population cannot bo treated as part of the nativo question, for the coloured pcoplo are necessarily'closer than the natives to European habits of life and thought. The native problem of the Union is, for the time being, the problem ft a population which numbered 3,500,000 some years ago and must have increased very greatly sinco that time.