THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. SATURDAY, MAY 18, 1907. THE TRANSVAAL EXODUS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8445, 18 May 1907, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. SATURDAY, MAY 18, 1907. THE TRANSVAAL EXODUS.

It is a depressing picture that the, special correspondent of the London Daily Mail in South Africa draws of the exodus of white men from the Transvaal. There are over 4,000 fewer white men on the Rand to-day than there were in 1903. The local agent of the Federal Government receives hundreds of applications from Australians for repatriation, and the majority of those who want to leave' are skilled men. It is extraordinary to find how many British-born residents in the Transvaal trying to take advantage of the offer. Hundreds of men are claiming to be Australians who could not say whether Sydney was in New South Wales or Queensland. Investigation has proved some of the letter-writers to be holding decent positions or possessing banking accounts—men who are not only not Australians, but who could afford to pay their own passages to another colony. Six or seven hundred men were living in Johannesburg recently in tents in Milner Park, which quarters they took up without so much as "by your leave." Some of these gentry are rather particular. The Government is offering two shillings a day and found on the relief works at Rustenburg, "whereas the unemployed regard anything less than ten shillings a day as an insult to a deserving section of the community." Official records of the past year tell a sad state of depression. On the Rand offences against the person increased by 475, and offences against property in Johannesburg by 622. In the

Johannesburg courts there were nearly 9,000 civil cases in which the amounts in dispute were less, than' £IOO. There were 1,611 decrees of civil imprisonm ent, and bankruptcies quadrupled. The distress extends to the small farmers on the back veldt, who do not, however, make a fuss about their privations. "In many of the farmsteads," reports a magistrate, "bread and coffee (the most common beverage among farmers) are rarely if ever seen, their places being taken by mealie pap and substitutes for coffee made from either roasted mealies or from the pith of the witgat bloom." Hopes are entertained that the new Government may be able to do something.