THE PRICE OF GOLD.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXVII, Issue 37, 14 October 1913, Page 5

THE PRICE OF GOLD.

TRUTH ABOUT THE RAND. BY ONE WHO WORKED THERE. “Human lives for gold”—the phrase has often been vised before, used in exaggeration, to drive home the sense of some horror, because as a rule, by exaggeration only can you make the public realise truths. But in the case of the Hand mines you can use that phrase coldly, sombrely. If it were possible to get at the real figures—and those who fill the seats of the mighty iu South Africa take good care that it shall not be possible—the British pub lie would be staggered at the price paid for the gold extracted from the Witwatersraud Reef—staggered and shocked, for it does not like to have crude tragedies of that kind forced on its notice. So many ounces, so many pounds sterling in dividends—so many human lives. It is not a matter of accidents—these account for but a

small percentage—it is a matter of the inevitable. Under existing conditions on the Rand the price must he paid. You cannot get away from it. Men must die in order that quartz may he extracted. Often I have been accused of being a kind of Jingo, a flag-waving Imperialist, a sympathiser with the capitalist; hut on the question of the Rand miners I am wholly and utterly with the workers. Right is ou their side. I do not believe for one moment that the late riots were in any way due to the hona fide miners. The type of men yon get in the mines would be the last to engage in such . futile manifestations. They know that they have, but to sit still and the mine owners must give in. As so often happens, the scum, the barloafers, the unemployables have been the strikers’ worst enemies. I have worked as a miner in South Africa for a few months, but for many mouths I was “Rock-drill Boss” on one of ttie most famous, or notorious, of the big properties. As engineer in charge of the compressed air drills I was constantly underground, constantly in touch with the white miners, and perhaps I saw them more clearly than if I had actually been one of themselves.

Th 3 IVserr Who “Were” There. j 1 They wore a good lot. 1 say “were,” because i believe that every one or mv rockdrill men is dead. Once, having a mbrhid lit on lire- — South Africa is a morbid country—l made a list of 20 men who had worked my machines during the last two years—made the list; at random,— and 1 found that'there were only two iOt ; whose deaths I was not quite certain, and they were all young men and all married men. Therein you have the whole question. It man-lives ter--.galddAr. andwhen you have, young, virile men, men with a high measure of teennical skill, selling their lives for the sake of the women and children at home, von are bound to run the visit of t inhit cercd disputed. You get |dtHyn ,*Q Tjdugs, crude passions- YMiiy should/' they rock-drill man in the first stages of imherijvb phthisis think of those unknown shareholders,in London or v ßerlin or Jerusalem Does nut the kiddie in Cornwall or on the Tyneside, bone of- his bone, come lust ? It is no use trying-to confuse the issue by talking of Stock Exchange exigencies, of the necessity of maintaining the supply of bullion, of tne impossibility of, paying Higher wages, li certain shares have been run up owing to the system of underpaying labor those shares must come down. Directors may vapor and fume, but they are in the hands of the miners. For once, these magnates with the strangesounding names must yield to necessity. How many of them would work a rock drill?; How many of them have ever been within the danger area created by that ghastly dust wlucn turns v our lungs into stone and kills you within two years? How many or them have worked in a vertical sit fc, with a 5-ton skip -there them and the possibility of the diiver coilaping suddenly from fever, ami letting it down with a rush? How many of them have “bossed-np” shovelling hoys, with the chance of nnexploded dynamite cartridges being among the rubble? How many of thein have ever known what it means to come out of the shaft

soaked with perspiration and meet the hitter night air of the high veld? How many of them would ue ready to work seven days a week every week, month after month for the benefit of shareholders 7000 miles away? Thz Mersey and the Mound. A pound a day! The pro-capitalist Press has dwelt largely on that fact — the miner never gets loss than 20 silver shillings for Id's day’s work—hut it omits to state that with his labor he is selling his life. Allowing—and it is a. very liberal allowance—that the rock-drill man lives two years, he gets some £7OO gross for his life, out of which, with the greatest care and economy, he may be able to send home some £‘2so for bis wife and children. Then it will stop suddenly, and there' will be another mound in the already over-full cemetery. That is what a pound a day moans on the P irn!. To mo this question is a personal om\ i am writing litis bore in Kngland, and in all human probability 1 shall never see South, Africa again ; I tut there are things one never forgets, and one of those things with me is the memory of my dead comi'ades of the mine, the pity of it all. of those lives lost—wasted, if you will- in order to win that gold.—Stanley P Hyaft, in (ho Daily Citizen.