The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1896-09-06

tee have spoken and written of them
freely, and they are so we'll known that
they are described as the admitted
grievances. When the Uitlander first
came to the Transvaal the revenue of
the country was $375,000; it is now
S10000,0 600 and, as 1 have said, the Uit-
lander furnishes eighteen-twentiethS Of
that total revenue, and yet il has been
practically impossible for him to obtain
even education for his children in the
state schools which his money support
ed.
THE SALE OF MoNOPOLIEs
by the government to different COM
panies made his expenses excessive
beyond reason, and the mismanage-
ment of the railroads led TO delay in
the transportation OF machinery and
perishable goods, which robbed legiti-
mate business of any profit. Another
ey il arose from the LIQUOR trust, which
gave the complete control of all the
liquor sold on the rand into the hands
Of one firm, which manufactured a
poisonous quality of whisky and sold
it without restriction to the natives,
upon whom the mines depended for
labor, and who for the half time were
incapacitated from attending to the
work they were paid to do. Land,
for mining purposes was not regarded
by the Boer government as their pri-
waite property. This being the case, the
Polish Jews, who handled most of the
liquor sold on the rand, we're able to
place their caravans where they pleas
ed, at tie very mouth of a shaft if
they wished to do so, with the result
that kaffir boys were constantly drink
ing and in consequence continually
themselves and suffering from serious
attacks. Edgar E. Rathburn, late mine
inspector Of the east and central dis
tTfcts OF the Witwatersrand under the
Boer government, said, in a recent in
tefvieW of his grievances: Every
Monday morning when the natives have
TO go 10 work after their pay day, one
third Of them
ARE LAID OFF DRUNK.
If they are apparently sober enough
TO be able to tgavel down the main
ladderways and to go into the cages,
as soon as they get under ground the
different atmosphere utterly units
them for work. The white miner runs
risk under the mining regulations
IN having a, drunken Kaffir at work in
the mine, and he IS forced to send such
a man 20 the surface again In my
own experience I have frequently had
to order the natives out of the mines,
because they were unfit to be entrusted
with drilling or any other work. You
must also remember that ii is impos-
sible to examine or even to distin-
guish every case of drunkenness among
some hundreds or thousands of Kafirs,
and thus men who are at least par
TALLY under the infiuence Of drink are
allowed to go about their work in the
mine. I have no hsSire1ion in saying
that a large proportion of the many
fearful eceidents which happen on the
rand are due. directly or indirectly, to
this cause"
Another monopoly under the protec-
ton of the government was the sale
Of dynamite, which gave one man the
exclusive right to manufacture that
most essential part OF miners sup
plies, on the condition that he would
manufacture it in the Transvaai. He
die not manufacture it in the Trans
vaal. but bought q low quality of dy-
namite in Germany. changed the wrap
pegs in his co-called mandatory, and
sold the stuff at any price he pleased.
1t is said that the accidental explo-
sdons which have occurred in the rand
are largely due to the low quality OF
this dynamite which was the only
THE GOVERNMENTS METHOD
of protecting the Netherlands railroad
is also interesting; the coal deposits
run parallel with the gold mines, but at
a distance Of ten to thirty miles This
coal could be bought at the mouth of
the shaft by anyone for rs. Sd. but the
Netherlands railroad charged from Sd.
to Is a. ton per mile for carrying it
IL, a.
the coal fields and the gold mines So
that the coal which originally sold for
rs. Cd, cost. when delivered at the
mines, from 15s. to 30s. The average
charge for freight per mile in the
United States is one-half cent per mile
In England it is three-quarters of a
cent, which throws a lurid light on
what the earnings must have been
for the Netherlands railroad when it
charged from to 20 cents per mile.
There was so very little profit in this
for the gold miners that the different
companies purchased strips OF land and
giving each other permission to use
the land already owned, they mapped
out g, railroad over which they pro-
posed to carry what coal they needed.
When the burghers heard of this. they
passed a law forbidding them to build
this railroad. and later, when the min
eIS attempted to carry the coQi in
ox-caTts with traction engines. they
were forbidden to do that also.
Freight can be sent from the cape in
almost a direct line by an English rail
way, which stopped at the border of
the Transvaal, the rest OF the haul be-
ing made over the system of
THE NETHERLANDS COMPANY.
This point of the border is only forty
miles from johannesburg. Or it can be
taken in a more roundabout way from
a point much further east. If it comes
from this direction it travels 500 in
stead of forty miles.
In order to make the Uitlanders use
the longer distance and so bring more
money into the Golfers of the govern
ment railroad, the Netherlands COM
pany allowed the freight to longest at
the point forty miles from Johannes
burg and kept it there for three or
four weeks, and subjected it to such
delay and to such treatment on the
way up as they hoped would finally
drive the Uitlanders into abandoning
the use Of the more direct route from
the cape. Sooner than do this the Uit-
landers organized a system of ox-carTs
and started to carry their freight over
land in that slow and cumbersome
fashion. To prevent their doing this
the government closed the drifts as