South Africa.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLI, Issue 8198, 26 May 1906, Page 2

South Africa.

According to Mr Herbert Easton, who has lately arrived in Melbourne, the outlook of South Africa wears a very depressing aspect. Mr Easton was for some Years engaged in making enquiries into and reporting upon land settlement, but as far as the settlement of Britishers was concerned, there had been but poor progress; and while the Boers were increasing in numbers many of tho British people and colonials, he said, had been driven out of the country. "That was largely the work of foreign financiers in their policy of employing Chinese, roolie and cheap Continental labour iri place of that of Britishers. Though Johannes burg was turning out X"2,<KX\(.X».) sterling in gold every month the depression was far worse than it had been when the output was half as much. It had been many times represented that the employment of Chinese coolies would bring about an influx of, and provide work for, white labor, but the only result had been to increase cheap Continental labor. The only hope of maintaining the colonies as British possessions. he asserted, would be to settle people of our own race on the land ; and it would have paid the British Government to have subsidised people to occupy the land. As it was there was no likelihood of the people of the new colonics paying back the <£80,000,000 advanced by the British Government for public works. Even if the Boer regime was reverted to, Mr Easton contended, it would be better than the prosent rule of foreign capitalists, who desired to crush out the Britiah element. It was not unlikely that such people were supporting the natives in the present rising."