Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 41, Number 96, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 August 1909 — Coolle Labor on the Rand. [ARTICLE]

Coolle Labor on the Rand.

There are 45,000 Chinese coolies employed in the gold mines of the Rand, in South Africa. For more than a year and a hall a fleet of steamships has been engaged in carrying these laborers from various Chinese pons to Durbin, where they are tagged and shipped in guarded trains to Johannesburg. There they live in stockaded camps, under a kind of imprisonment, which provokes occasional rio.s and other troubles. However, Lord Selborne, British high commissioner for South Africa, in a recently published government blue book, describes the coolies as happy and amicable toward the rest of mankind. “There have been riots, thefts and murders.” he says, “but, considered in proportion to the number of Chinese import ed, I doubt whether a less amount oi crime could have arisen from an aggregation together of $45,000. men o: any other nationalßy- under the sun. The liberal newspapers of England tell a very different story. They represent that a reign of terror has been produced by the criminal acta of escaped cooues who roam the countrv In large numbers. They also insist that the importation of Chinamen is an ou - rage against free white labor.

On this point Lord Selborne says that the labor in the mines now performed by coolies would not be performed by whites, Kaffirs, being necessary for the work if ooolies are not to be had. For every 10,000 colies employed he thinks about 1,000 white men are supplied with labor such as they will consent to do the work of the white men being dependant upon the work of the coolies. Sir Henry CampbellBannerman in his address last Thursday evening In London announced tbit the new liberal government would suspend the importation of coolies until a Transvaal parliament should decied whether or not more importations of this sort are desirable. Lord Selborne reports that it ccsts about $55 to import each coolie to the Transvall and that it w II cost about S3O to send each of them home again to China on the expiration of their threeyear contracts. That coolie labor is highly valued and that the miners of the Rand want many more Chinamen to work for: them is proved by the hiavy drop in mining shares that fbllowed the speech of the British premier. The organ of t v e mine owners, South Africa, asks in Ls Issue of Dec. 9: “What would be t’)« Immediate effect of any hostile intervention on the pari of the new ministers?” It answers its own question thus: “The minlug Industry wor’d be absolutely dislocated and practically ruined.”