SIR, —I am sending you under separate cover a paper, the
Midland News, with a letter of mine on Chinese labour and an article of its own upon the same subject. I hope you will do your best to keep this blight from our sorely stricken country. There is no doubt about the matter; the mine magnates mean to have the gold at as little cost to themselves, not caring in the least what becomes of the country after they have got the gold away. There is also no doubt that there is labour enough, black and white; but they do not want it. They want machines, not men who reason. We heard nothing about Chinese in the Boer regime, for they knew too well it would not be allowed ; but still we heard nothing about scarcity of labour then ; now they have got more than they could have expected they still cry for more. No, they want to shirk the war-tax, and they will shirk it, for even if they get the Chinese, they are not going to get the work done any cheaper than they can get it done now. So they want to create a fictitious boom, and they are at their wits' end to know how to do it. But that is not to pay the war-tax, it is only to get rid of bad scrip, for they have any amount of that stuff. When the war was over the natives and all other labour flocked back to the mines. What did they do P They at once began to tamper with the wages; and that was only done for a purpose best known to the mine magnates. We Colonists know well enough that if we want to lose the confidence of our farm servants, " natives," we must begin to tamper with their wages, and the mine men know it quite as well as we do. They had an object in view when they lowered the wage at the end of the war, and they have an object in view now, hence this move for Chinamen. They have the Executive of the Transvaal with them. Lord Milner seems quite to have lost his back- bone; he'is in a fair way to lose all that we fought for; better the land had been left to the Dutch than that it should be flooded by Chinese.—Hoping you will do your best to save us, I Mu, Sir, &c., D. C. BOWKER. Doom Berg, P.O. Tafelberg Station, C.C.
[With the general conclusions of this letter we are in agree- ment, but 'we must not be held to endorse all the statements it contains. We do not think it fair to say that the mine- owners want to shirk the war-tax. That tax, however, should never have been imposed on the Colony.—ED. Spectator.] THE SOUTH AFRICAN LABOUR QUESTION.
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