THE YELLOW TRAIL
The mark of the yellow man is upon the Rand. He has set his seal upon
the country, and it is to be seen in a hundred things.
Johannesburg was never an exactly heavenly place. A gold centre
attracts all the evil passions of men--draws to it, like the lodestone
draws the needle--every species of adventurer and world vagabond.
President Kruger knew how to deal with the cosmopolitan hordes that
thronged the streets of the "Gold-Reef City." He put a check upon
the importation of undesirables, and always remembered before all
things that the Transvaal belonged to the Boer people and not to the
cosmopolitan. The British Government might well have taken a leaf
from his book. But they have failed to do so. Instead of making the
interests of the Briton paramount, they have deliberately allowed the
Rand to be overrun by every type of Continental adventurer.
So Johannesburg, up to the summer of 1904, was never exactly peopled by
a moral, law-abiding population.
The fierceness of competition, the keenness to make money rapidly,
seems to electrify the sunny atmosphere of the Rand, and to produce a
community that knows no law.
But since the summer of 1904 the Rand has suffered a change which at
one time was thought impossible; it has changed for the worse. To the
wild life in the mining city has been added the degrading vices of the
Orient. The Chinaman has brought with him all the worst vices of life
in a treaty port. Opium dens and gambling hells, in spite of the most
careful police surveillance, have sprung up. The yellow man has made
his name a terror. He has murdered, raped, robbed, and committed every
offence against law and morality. He has literally terrorized--and
still terrorizes--the Rand. The plutocrat Jew walks the familiar
streets in a state of trepidation; the Boer farmer sleeps with a rifle
by his side, and his farm house is surrounded by spring guns and
alarums. The life of no white man is safe, and the honour of no white
woman.
"The Chinese reign of terror continues on the Rand," cabled the Durban
correspondent of the _Daily Chronicle_ on November 1. "The latest
outrage is that perpetrated by a gang of coolies, who attacked a house
at Benoni, injuring its occupant, Mr. Vaughan, and wounding his wife
with a razor. They ransacked the house and stole the plate." These
are some of the men whose praises were sung by Sir George Farrar
at a political meeting at the Nigel--and whose work as miners, he
declared, had proved "a great success." A "great success," perhaps, for
the Rand lords, but at what a terrible cost to the community of the
Witwatersrand!
The _South African News_ of Cape Town has rendered yeoman service to
the cause of those who are opposed--and their name is legion!--to the
Chinese labour question. The ridiculous contentions of the Rand lords
have been exposed again and again by the Cape Town journal, whose
fearlessness in grappling with the subject has been in marked contrast
to the majority of its contemporaries in the sub-continent, and has
earned, as it has deserved, the thanks of the thinking portion of the
community. Commenting on October 4 on the continuance of the reign of
terror on the Rand, "as it was bound to continue," the _South African
News_ puts the case with unmistakable plainness;--"Unless the Chinese
are confined in such a way as the mine-owners themselves consider
fairly describable as slavery, they are a menace to the public.
Probably slavery would mean further outrages; it is clear that torture
of various kinds has been allowed on the Rand, and it is far less clear
that this is not the real cause of some of the excesses which have
shocked South Africa. Either we must have slavery and exasperation,
or we must have our people exposed to the danger of murder, outrage
and robbery; or we must demand the expulsion of the Chinese, and the
turning down of a disgraceful page in South African and English
history which has brought good to no one, and only serves as another
indication of the strength to which avarice will lead men in attempting
to bend nature into the service of their own greed."
It was understood that the only conditions under which Chinese labour
could be introduced to the Rand was a system by which they were kept
apart, under lock and key, from the rest of the population. But this
system has broken down. Hordes of Chinese, as I have shown, are running
over the country. The utter futility of the compound system is proved
by the fact that as many as thirteen Chinese laundries have been broken
up by the police in one week, only for others to take their place.
It was recognized by the Government that the Chinaman must not be
allowed to be a competitor. This was one of the reasons of herding him
with his fellows like cattle in a pen.
But the Chinaman broke loose. With Asiatic unconcern he sets all the
rules of the Ordinance at defiance, and calmly sets up a laundry in the
town, caters for custom, carries on his business just as if he were a
free man and not a yellow serf, until some frightened cosmopolitan sees
him in the streets, and in a state of fear demands that the nearest
policeman shall see whether the creature has a permit or not.
John Chinaman, who, of course, has no permit, is thereupon arrested,
his laundry business comes to an abrupt close, and he starts once again
his task of gold grubbing for a shilling a day.
The amended Ordinance of August last contained this clause--
"It is provided that labourers being in possession of gum, opium,
extract of opium, poppies, etc., shall be liable to a fine on
conviction of £20, or in lieu thereof of imprisonment for three months,
with or without hard labour."
This ominous clause was rendered necessary by the steadily increasing
growth of opium dens.
Twelve months before, some few weeks after the arrival of the first
batch of Chinamen, the Government had passed what was known as the
Poison Ordinance. The object of this Ordinance was to regulate the sale
of opium. It provided that only registered chemists and druggists might
sell opium, and that every package of the drug must be labelled with
the word "Poison."
Of course, this was ridiculously inadequate, and it was soon found that
more stringent measures must be taken. It was decreed, therefore, that
opium could only be sold to persons known to the seller, and on an
entry being made in the poison-book. These further restrictions were
found perfectly futile. The sale of opium increased enormously.
At a meeting of the Transvaal Pharmacy Board, the secretary of
the board read his report on the poison-books of the chemists in
Johannesburg. It transpired that an examination of the books of one
chemist had disclosed the following sales of opium on various dates in
July and August last--336 lbs., 18 lbs., 28 lbs., 7 lbs., 31 lbs., 48
lbs. All this had been sold to Chinamen for smoking purposes.
One lot was said to have been sold under a medical certificate, but the
doctor concerned denied all knowledge of such certificate. The chairman
of the board said, that while it was gratifying to know that only three
out of sixty-eight pharmacies along the Rand carried on traffic in
opium, the ugly fact remained that two of these chemists had imported
during August two tons of Persian opium for smoking purposes, and an
examination of their books disclosed that only a few pounds were unsold.
In vain have the authorities attempted to put an end to this drug
habit. Recommendations have been made by the Pharmacy Board that any
chemist secretly supplying the Chinese with drugs should be sent to
prison, without the option of a fine. As if one evil were producing
another evil, it has been proved that not only are the Chinamen
demoralizing the Rand, but the Rand is demoralizing the Chinamen. The
majority of the Chinese labourers have been drawn from the north of the
Celestial Empire, where very little opium is used, on account of the
poverty of the people. The comparatively large salaries which these
labourers are now receiving enables them to indulge their inherited
taste for the drug to their hearts' content.
But in addition to this sale of opium by chemists on the Rand, opium
dens have sprung up all over the place. As soon as the police stamp
them out in one quarter they reappear in another. They are accompanied,
of course, by the usual gambling hells. These, too, the police
endeavour to suppress. All the money that they find is impounded; heavy
fines are exacted. But instead of decreasing they increase. The most
dangerous vice of the Orient is thus thriving luxuriantly upon the
favourable soil of the Rand.
One cannot blame the Chinaman for drugging himself. It is difficult
even to blame him for the outrages that he commits. The opium habit, of
course, is a step towards other habits. If the Chinaman merely went to
the opium dens in his off hours, drugged himself, slept his celestial
sleep, and then returned to his labours prepared to work as hard as
any cart-horse, the Rand lords would be the last persons to forbid him
these indulgences. But the opium habit is demoralizing and degrading.
It excites passions almost beyond control.
I have already pointed out that Mr. Lyttelton promised in the House
of Commons that the Chinaman should be allowed to take his womenfolk
with him if he wished, and a great point was made of the fact that the
morality of the Chinamen would be well looked after. No risks were to
be taken. The Archbishop of Canterbury had to be satisfied upon the
point before he made his regrettable necessity speech--"Show me that it
brings about or implies the encouragement of immorality in the sense
in which we ordinarily use the word, and, I am almost ashamed to say
anything so obvious, I should not call the so-called necessity worth a
single moment's consideration. In such a case there could be but one
answer given by any honest man. The thing is wrong, and please God it
shall not take place."
The Most Reverend Primate should be satisfied by now that the system
deliberately set up in the Transvaal has brought about and encouraged
immorality.
The Chinaman is always a frugal feeder, yet the strength of his
passions is notorious. There is no necessity to go back into the past
moral history of the Chinese race to contradict this statement.
Gangs of escaped labourers have attacked farm houses on the veld, and
where they have found no men, or where the men have been overpowered,
they have committed all the most bestial assaults known upon the women
and children. One white woman was known to have been found raped, and
dead. It is not safe for any decent or respectable white woman to go
near a Chinaman. The way he looks at her is sufficient to raise the
most murderous thoughts in the mind of any white man present.
A deputation of miners asked Lord Selborne for protection against the
Chinamen, stating that the way in which they spoke to and looked at
white women was intolerable, and pointed out further that, unless steps
were taken to protect the white population, the most horrible crimes
would be committed.
That warning has proved true.
Lord Milner has called the sentiment, which has arisen in the breasts
of nearly all Britons, of loathing for the introduction of Chinamen
into the Rand, Exeter Hall sentiment. It possibly is the sentiment of
Exeter Hall, but it is to be hoped it is the sentiment also of all
decent people who believe in virtue and morality, and who still cherish
a fine chivalrous ideal of woman.
The Government have again and again declared that the protest of
the Opposition in the House of Commons was dictated purely by party
considerations--that Chinese labour was a good stalking horse. That
people really were concerned about the welfare of Chinamen on the
Rand they refused to believe. As a matter of fact it is really the
Government that are blinded by partisanship; they see everything
through a false medium. What they do not see falsely in the Transvaal
they do not see at all. For it cannot be that they really are in favour
of retaining on the Rand 50,000 Chinamen who commit the most loathsome
outrages on the white population. It is almost passing belief that they
should blind themselves to the fact that the womenfolk of the Transvaal
are absolutely unprovided with any adequate protection against these
hordes of Chinamen.
Every day, as has been shown, desertions grow more numerous, and
with every Chinaman that escapes the terror increases. No steps have
been taken for the protection of his morals. Not even the most human
elementary step of letting him bring with him his wife has been taken.
And but few steps have been taken to protect the white population. The
most ordinary commonplace foresight has been wanting. The carnival
of lust and blood now going on in the Transvaal could have been
prevented. It was bad enough to introduce Chinese labour at all into
the Transvaal. The case becomes more damnable when they are introduced
without those restrictions which had been promised.
"I am opposed," said Herbert Spencer, "to the importation of Chinese
labour, because if it occurs one of two things must happen. Either the
Chinese must mix with the nation, in which case you get a bad hybrid,
and yet if they do not mix they must occupy a position of slavery."
The British Government, at the dictation of the Rand lords, attempted
to make the Chinaman occupy a position of slavery, failed to completely
establish this system, and is allowing the Chinamen to mix with the
population. Thus we shall have in the Transvaal the two evils which
Herbert Spencer raised his voice against. We have already slavery; we
shall certainly have a bad hybrid population. The degrading influence
of the Chinaman is shown in Johannesburg. White women are actually
marrying them. They are even mixing with the black races. The
Transvaal was bad enough before, when merely thronged with the scouring
of Europe. But it will be a thousand times worse before the last
Chinaman is repatriated.
In a morning paper of November 2 I read that Mr. Lyttelton, the
Colonial Secretary, in a letter to Mr. George Renwick, M.P., defends
the action of the Government in regard to the employment of Chinese
labour. He refers to the demand for it in the South African colonies,
and says--"The opinion to which we came was based upon evidence taken
from many sources. That it was correct is borne out by the fact that
we have received not a single petition from the Transvaal for the
revocation of the Ordinance."
Let not Mr. Lyttelton lay such flattering unction to his soul. If it
be true, as he states, that the Imperial Government have so far not
received a single petition from the other side against the Chinamen,
he need only _wacht een beitje_--wait a bit--as they say in South
Africa. The petitions will follow. By and by they will be thick
as leaves in Vallombrosa. Does Mr. Lyttelton never read the daily
papers? Is he unaware, for instance, that at a special meeting held at
Krugersdoorp on October 10, a resolution was carried praying that an
end might be put to the importation of Chinese, and that the Chinamen
now on the Rand might be sent back immediately after the expiration of
their contracts? Does he pretend to be ignorant of the fact that it
was announced at the time that this resolution would be sent to the
Imperial Government through Lord Selborne? I cannot believe it. Let
Mr. Lyttelton note that the correspondent from whose message I quote,
significantly added--"_If this way of protesting has no result, it is
intended to send a deputation to England to discuss matters regarding
the Chinese question._"
Verily, it would seem that nothing short of a measure of the kind will
stir the conscience of Christian England to an appreciation of the
intolerable state of affairs now being endured in South Africa by those
whose lot is cast in proximity to the yellow man!