Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 August 1895 — NEW GOLD MINES. [ARTICLE]

NEW GOLD MINES.

$50,000,000 MADE IN ONE YEAR BY A SPECULATOR. Engineers Say That tha Amount of Gold in South Africa is Practically Unlimited. For almost a year the world has been slowly growing more and more excited over the gold mines of South Africa. Within a year mining shares that were issued at $5 per share, and often sold for only a portion of that, have sold up as high as $165 per share, and there are many who believe that these same shares will go to SSOO. It is not impossible that mining shares of the South African properties will be listed on the New York Stock Exchange within the year. Proposals to that effect have already been made. The single little district known as the Witwaters and, in the Transvaal or South African republic, will yield this year upward of $40,000,000 worth of gold. This little district is, so far as its productive area is concerned, not over fifteen miles wide, and about sixty miles long. Ten years ago it was laid out in stock farms. To-day the mines located upon this narrow strip have a market value of more than $150,000,000. Perhaps the most remarkable man of the gold fields is B. I. Barnato, known from Cape Town to London as Barney, Barnato is still a young man. He comes of a good English family, turned out to be a wild youngster, who shipped off to Cape Colony, knocked about there as best he could, was, it is said, at one time a member of a circus company as a juggler, found himself stranded with a half crown in his pocket, went into the diamond business at Kimberley, made money hand over fist, was soon ranked as one of the diamond magnates, and when the Kimberley diamond mines were consolidated turned up at the top of the heap, worth millions. Later Barnato followed the movement to the Witwatersrand, became a leading promoter of goldmining enterprises there, and a year ago his fortune was estimated at $175,000,000. It is currently given out in London that within the last year he has made $50,000,000 in the sale of mining shares and in promoting mining enterprises. It was through the diamond mines and the gold mines tliut Cecil Rhodes came to be Premier of the Cape Colony and practically dictator of South Africa. Rhodes was a young man in ill health when he went out to South Africa and followed his brother into the diamond mines. There he not only recovered his health but showed remarkable business talent and Boon became the head of the movements to consolidate the Kimberley mines, which were then held by some 1,600 different small holders, into one vast concern. The De Beers Consolidated Mines, limited, valued to-day at $80,000,000, is practically his handiwork. Later Rhodes became interested, with other diamond magnates, in the Transvaal gold mines, and has a fortune that is estimated at $25,000,000. His friend and associate, Alfred Beit, of the firm of Wehrner, Beit & Co., is worth perhaps $60,000,000, and J. B. Robinson, of the famous Robinson mine, upward of $85,000,000. South Africa has thus far produced perhaps twice as many millionaires as did California, and the remarkable feature of the whole matter is, that if the engineers are right in their calculations as to the extent of the Witwatersrand deposits, the amount of gold the latter contain is almost unlimited. Free predictions are offered that in live years the production of gold in the Transvaal alone will have gone far toward $1,000,000,000 a year, or about twothirds as much as all the gold now mined in the world. It is a rather remarkable fact that it has been American engineers who have directed the development of the South Africa gold mines, as it was Gardner Williams and L. S. Seymour, two American engineers, who rescued the Kimberley diamond mines from disaster, and who have since directed their operations. The principal gold fields are grouped about the town of Johannesburg, which lies inland just a thousand miles northeast from Cape Town. It is reached by rail from either Cape Town, Port Elizabeth or East London, and probably by this time also from Delagoa Bay, The town is situated in the southern portion of the Transvaal or South African republic, about thirty-five miles south of Pretoria, the capital. Johannesburg has now a population of about 40,000 whites, and Pretoria is a little place, a typical Boer town, of about 10,000.

Johannesburg lies on the uplands of the Witwatersrand, and for the most of the year is a very pleasant place to live in. It is nearly six thousand feet above the level of the sea, is surrounded by a grassy, rolling country, and with tree planting and other improvements that are being made rapidly, it is becoming a pretty and attractive city. It lacks nothing of .the comforts and conveniences of civilization. The town is lit by electricity and an electric street railway line is being built connecting all the surrounding mines and villages with the central town* The mines are equipped with perhaps the finest mining machinery in the world. Johannesburg itself is a study. It lias sprung up entirely within the last ten years, principally within the last seven or eight years, and it is a typical |>oom town. It presents none of the characteristics that we used to read of in the flush days of Leadville, of Virginia City or Pioche. The rowdy element has never developed, and the -‘Man from Creede” is not there. The saloons of Johannesburg are closed on Sunday, ancl at 12 o’clock each night of the wefk. A sanitary board, elected by the people, is making many improvements, and the water works, built by Barney Barnato, have introduced an abundance of wator. Prices jin general ars not high. Good board at the hotels can be secured for about *2O a week, and while there is, of course, a general tendency to higher prices than pre-

vails here, that is fully equalized by somewhat higher wages than are paid here. However, the Transvaal offers no inducements for making money. With the discovery and development of the mines came an immense rush, so that all kinds of ordinary labor are to be had at fair prices. Moreover, a great many persons who thought to settle in Mashona Laud and Matabele Land, several hundred miles north of Johannesburg, were disappointed and have returned to the Transvaal. Then, too, almost every kind of business is represented in some way or other, and the business man of Johannesburg has his typewriter and rides his bicycle, and in general, has all the facilities and con veniences that one enjoys here. The town is rapidly building up with handsome brick blocks and fine residences and tasteful churches; streets are being paved, and the only thing so far lacking are good public school facilities. Not the least striking characteristic of the country is the presence of the gold mines on a green prairie. There are no mountains anywhere about, and the usual bare, desert-like mining country is lacking. Before the mines were discovered all this area was good farming land, and the cautious old Boers used to fight off the prospectors, and in the early days of the Transvaal there was a heavy fine attached to prospecting anywhere in the republic. Of course, that is all changed now, but it is the English rather than the native Boers who have made money out of the mines.