GRATEFUL RAND MILLIONAIRES. They Repay the Saviours of South Africa.

Free Lance, Volume IV, Issue 185, 16 January 1904, Page 6

GRATEFUL RAND MILLIONAIRES. They Repay the Saviours of South Africa.

CHINA is so sure that labourers from that country are necessary for the future of the Rand mines that she has already signified her intention of imposing conditions She wants an agreement whereby the admission of Chinese to Pntish colonies may presumably be made easier. It is said China may piohibit the emigration of unskilled labour to help the Rand "gold bugs" to greater affluence, and the British worker to extinction as far as that country is concerned * * * The Transvaal was the field on which the outposts of the Empire closed m, and shook hands The colonies made liberal sacrifices They fought for the honour of the Briton, they bled for the freedom .of their brother. And how is that honour sullied ? The fact that men, whose position is assured by the white men they scorn and flout, should dare to say their labour is impracticable, is the vilest untruth of a long series. * « * And, what is John Bull doing ? What is he doing to compensate his own fighting men, his own country, for the sacrifices made ? He is apathetic, listless, uninterested He is abetting the millionaire, the unspeakable person who pleads coming poverty while weighed down with wealth. And what of Chamberlain, the pacificator ? The man whose undivided aim is to evolve a self-sup-porting, independent Empire. If he were convinced that white labour is impracticable, would he not say so? He says nothing His silence can be construed into nothing but consent to the filching of his countrymen's rights by a horde of aliens ♦ * * The parks of the great cities of Africa are sleeping places for white men. The Rand mine-owners, who are scared of poverty, do not work their mines because there is only white labour available. They prefer te suffer "poverty" until the yellow alien arrives. Africa has men of every creed and colour now Boer and Briton are not yet living in

amity The over-paid Kaffirs, who helped during the war, are too surfeited with what to them have been good things, that they make arbitrary conditions when desired to work. The country seethes with discontent, and the cable saying the "majority" of people favoured alien labour, and that ladies were canvassing for its introduction is possibly a lie. It does not fit m with the assertion of South Africans now in Wellington. * * • And the position that Britain will not kick against must be fought by the colonies, which, according to the sacrifices made by them, are entitled to have a voice in the disposition of the good things they materially helped to make possible — for the millionaires. It would have been better for the Republics to have remained so than that Britain and her colonies should give the death blow to the chances of the Empire's subjects, and the introduction of aliens, who don't love us, who are capable of becoming a social pest, and who make it possible for men already surfeited with gold to crush the worker, white, black, and yellow, under an iron heel * # * The working of the mines by Chinese will mean that the only industry undisturbed by the vagaries of the climate is in the hands of a select few, who did much to cause the war, and cleared out of the country until n was over. If it could have been foreseen that Mr Seddon, on behalf of this colony, had to vehemently protest against the robbers for whom this country fought, it is probable this country would not have fought. If a squad of millionaires can influence the Legislature of a country and its press, we can only offer up a solemn prayer, "God save us from the millionaire."