operations of the Federation are drawn from a pamphlet
statement of 1909:
"The membership of the Federation is drawn from practical men
of affairs, whose acknowledged leadership in thought and
action makes them typical representatives of the various
elements that voluntarily work together for the general good.
Its National Executive Committee is constituted of three
factors: the general public, represented by the church, the
bar, the press, statesmanship and finance; employers,
represented by large manufacturers and the heads of great
corporations, and employers’ organizations; and labor,
represented by the principal officials of national and
international organizations of wage-earners in every important
industry.
"There are useful organizations of farmers, manufacturers,
wage-earners, bankers, merchants, lawyers, economists and
other distinct but interacting elements of society, which hold
meetings for discussion of affairs peculiar to their own
pursuits and callings. The Federation, in addition to its
Departments for the accomplishment of specific purposes,
provides a forum where representatives of all these elements
of society may meet to discuss national problems in which they
have a common interest.
"Twelve national conferences have thus been held upon such
subjects as Primary Election and Ballot Reforms, Foreign
Policy, Trusts, Conciliation and Arbitration, Taxation, and
Immigration. These conferences have usually been attended by
delegates appointed by Governors of States and by
representatives selected by various commercial, industrial,
and educational bodies.
"The present activities of the Federation are exercised
through the following agencies:
"Trade Agreement Department,
"Industrial Conciliation Department,
"Industrial Economics Department,
"Industrial Welfare Department,
"Public Employés’ Welfare Department,
"The Woman’s Department,
"Public Ownership Commission,
"Immigration Department,
"Political Reform Department.
"The Trade Agreement Department [John Mitchell, Chairman]
consists of employers and representatives of workingmen, who
make agreements as to hours, wages and conditions of
employment. The membership of the department is equally
divided between employers and labor leaders, the employers
being officers of steam and street railway companies, coal
operators, the publishers of large daily papers, building
contractors, brewers, stove manufacturers, shippers’
associations, while labor is represented by officials in
corresponding crafts. …
"The Conciliation Department [Seth Low, Chairman] deals
entirely with strikes, lock-outs and arbitration. The services
of this department have been enlisted in about five hundred
cases, involving every conceivable phase of a problem
interwoven with or underlying an industrial controversy. Its
membership extends to every industrial centre, and includes
representatives of leading organizations of employers and of
wage-earners. Through this membership information of any
threatened trouble between capital and labor usually reaches
the headquarters, from one side or the other, in advance of
any public rupture. …
{615}
"The Department of Industrial Economics [Nicholas Murray
Butler, Chairman] was formed to promote discussion of
practical economic problems. Its membership is composed of
leading economists, including the heads of the departments of
political economy in universities, lecturers and economic and
legal authors; editors of the daily press, of politico-social
magazines, of trade papers and of labor journals;
representatives of the pulpit; large employers and
representatives of labor. This department has arranged a
programme for the discussion, by the ablest experts to be
procured, of each of the vital and frequently irritating
questions that arise in the Conciliation Department in
connection with the prevention or settlement of controversies.
…
"The Industrial Welfare Department [the work of which is
conducted by a number of sub-committees, at the head of one of
which is the President of the United States, William H. Taft,
as Chairman of the committee which studies the welfare of the
Public Employés of the country, and the general Chairman of
which is William H. Willcox] is composed of employers of labor
in stores, factories, mines and on railroads. It is devoted to
interesting employers in improving the conditions under which
employés in all industries work and live. In extending the
practice of Welfare Work the department has found of especial
value conferences of employers, held under its auspices in
different parts of the country, for the interchange of
experiences. Illustrated literature is widely distributed, and
stereopticon lectures are given. A bureau of exchange is
maintained at headquarters, where descriptive matter, plans
and photographs relating to betterments in different
industries may be obtained by employers.
"Some of the subjects involved are;
"Sanitary Work Places:
Systems for providing pure drinking water;
for ventilation, including the cooling of super heated
places, and devices for exhausting dust and removing gases;
for lighting work places;
and for guarding machinery;
wash rooms with hot and cold water, towels and soap;
shower baths for molders and stationary firemen;
emergency hospitals;
locker rooms;
seats for women;
laundries for men’s overalls or women’s uniforms;
the use of elevators for women, and luncheon rooms.
"Recreation:
The social hall for dancing parties, concerts, theatricals,
billiards, pool or bowling;
the gymnasium, athletic field, roof garden, vacations and
summer excursions for employés, and rest rooms or
trainmen’s rest houses.
"Educational:
Classes for apprentices;
in cooking, dressmaking, millinery;
first aid to the injured;
night classes for technical training;
kindergartens and libraries.
"Housing:
Homes rented or sold to employés, and boarding houses.
"Provident Funds:
For insurance, pensions, savings or lending money in
times of stress.
"The Woman’s Department [of which Mrs. William H. Taft is
Honorary Chairman, Mrs. Horace Brock, Chairman, and which has
a strong corps of other officers] "is composed largely of
women who are themselves stockholders or who are financially
interested in industrial organizations (including railroads,
mills, factories, mines, stores and other work places) through
family relationships, and who therefore naturally should be
interested in the welfare of workers in enterprises from which
they draw their incomes; there are also, among other
influential members, the wives of public officials.
"The object of this department is: ‘To use its influence in
securing needed improvements in the working and living
conditions of women and men wage-earners in the various
industries and governmental institutions, and to co-operate,
when practicable, in the general work of the Federation.’ …
"The Public Ownership Commission [Melville E. Ingalls,
Chairman], appointed by the Executive Council of the
Federation, is composed of one hundred prominent men
representing practically every shade of opinion on the
subject. …
"The Department of Immigration [Franklin MacVeagh, Chairman]
is composed of men selected to represent every locality in the
Union affected by the admission of aliens.
"This Department was organized at the request of the National
Immigration Conference, held in New York City, December 6-8,
1905, this conference being attended by more than five hundred
delegates appointed by Governors of States, leading
commercial, agricultural, manufacturing, labor and economic
organizations, and by prominent ecclesiastical and educational
institutions. It undertook an investigation of all important
phases of the immigration problem, the Department being
organized into seven distinct committees. …
"Largely through the work of the Immigration Department,
Congress was induced to appoint a Commission on Immigration,
which commission has, with unlimited funds at its disposal,
undertaken a large part of the work that had been planned by
the Federation’s department. In fact, two members of that
department are on the commission and have utilized all the
material gathered by the Federation’s experts, relating to
both white and Oriental immigration. …
"The organization of a Political Reform Department was the
practical outcome of a National Conference on that subject
held in New York City, March 6 and 7, 1906, under the auspices
of The National Civic Federation. The Conference was attended
by delegates from all parts of the country, appointed by
congressmen, governors, mayors, municipal and political reform
bodies, and representing all shades of political opinion.
"It is the purpose of the Political Reform Department to teach
practical politics, and especially to organize the young men
of the country and induce them to participate actively,
through their respective party organizations, in governmental
affairs--Federal, State and municipal."
{616}
SOCIAL BETTERMENT: A. D. 1904-1909.
The American Civic Association.
"Organized effort for the systematic making of a beautiful
America did not manifest itself until within comparatively
recent years. Prior to 1904 there had been various short-lived
state associations, a few interstate societies and two
national organizations, working with the same general objects
in view. But at St. Louis, in 1904, the year of the great
exposition, a merger of the two national organizations brought
forth the American Civic Association which, since that time,
has carried on with increasing success and popular support the
greatly needed work for a 'More Beautiful America’; and since
that time it has been recognized as the one great national
agency for the furtherance of that work. With its purpose as
stated in its constitution clearly before it, it has
constantly widened the circle of its usefulness until recently
they were grouped under fifteen general departments, each
department headed by an expert in his or her particular
specialty.
"In classifying its varied activities, the Association
announces that it aims ‘to make American living conditions
clean, healthful, attractive; to extend the making of public
parks; to promote the opening of gardens and playgrounds for
children and recreation centers for adults; to abate public
nuisances—including objectionable signs, unnecessary poles and
wires, unpleasant and wasteful smoking factory chimneys; to
make the buildings and the surroundings of railway stations
and factories attractive; to extend the practical influence of
schools; to protect existing trees and to encourage
intelligent tree planting; to preserve great scenic wonders
(such as Niagara Falls and the White Mountains) from
commercial spoliation.’
"So vigorously has it pursued these activities that it has
seen some of them develop to such proportions that they were
ready to swing off from the parent circle into spheres of
their own. Such was the case with the playground movement,
which for years was fostered most energetically by the
American Civic Association until it grew into an independent
organization known as the National Playground Association, and
which is now an agency of splendid achievements in its one
specialized function."
_Richard B. Watrous,
The American Civic Association
(The American City, October, 1909)._
SOCIAL BETTERMENT: A. D. 1907.
The Sage Foundation for the Improvement of Social
and Living Conditions.
One of the most notable of gifts from private wealth for the
endowment of undertakings to promote the general welfare of
mankind was made by Mrs. Russell Sage, in 1907, when she
placed a fund of $10,000,000 in the hands of trustees, to be
administered under the name of The Russell Sage Foundation. On
the announcement of this endowment, Mrs. Sage, through her
counsel, Mr. Henry W. de Forest, authorized the following
statement, which explains clearly and fully the purposes
contemplated:
"I have set aside $10,000,000 for the endowment of this
foundation. Its object is ‘the improvement of social and
living conditions in the United States.’ The means to that end
will include research, publication, education, the
establishment and maintenance of charitable and beneficial
activities, agencies, and institutions, and the aid of any
such activities, agencies and institutions already
established.
"It will be within the scope of such a foundation to
investigate and study the causes of adverse social conditions,
including ignorance, poverty and vice, to suggest how these
conditions can be remedied or ameliorated, and to put in
operation any appropriate means to that end. It will also be
within the scope of such a foundation to establish any new
agency necessary to carry out any of its conclusions, and
equally to contribute to the resources of any existing
agencies which are doing efficient and satisfactory work, just
as the present General Education Board, organized to promote
higher education, is aiding existing colleges and
universities. While its scope is broad, it should preferably
not undertake to do within that scope what is now being done
or is likely to be effectively done by other individuals or by
other agencies with less resources. It will be its aim to take
up the larger and more difficult problems, and to take them up
so far as possible in such a manner as to secure co-operation
and aid in their solution. In some instances it may wisely
initiate movements with the expectation of having them
maintain themselves unaided after once being started. In other
instances it may start movements with the expectation of
carrying them on itself. Income only will be used for its
charitable purposes, because the foundation is to be permanent
and its action continuous. It may, however, make investments
for social betterment, which themselves produce income.
"While having headquarters in New York city, where I and my
husband have lived and where social problems are most pressing
and complicated, partly by reason of its extent and partly
because it is the port of entry for about a million immigrants
a year, the foundation will be national in its scope and in
its activities. I have sought to select as my trustees men and
women who are familiar with social problems and who can bring
to their solution not only zeal and interest, but experience
and judgment.
"The bill for incorporation of the endowment further provides:
The corporation hereby formed shall have power to take and
hold, both by bequest, devise, gift, purchase, or lease,
either absolutely or in trust, for any of its purposes, any
property, real or personal, without limitation as to amount or
value, except such limitation, if any, as the legislature
shall hereinafter impose, to convey such property and to
invest and reinvest any principal, and deal with, and expend
the income of the corporation in such manner as in the
judgment of the trustees will best promote its objects."
SOCIAL BETTERMENT: A. D. 1907-1908.
The Pittsburg Survey.
A remarkable Investigation of Living Conditions in
a great Industrial Center.
"Under the name of the Pittsburgh Survey, Charities
Publication Committee has carried on a group of social
investigations in this great steel district. In a sense we
have been blue-printing Pittsburgh. Our findings will be
published in a series of special numbers … covering in order:
"I.—The People;
"II.—The Place;
"III.—The Work.
"Full reports are to be published later in a series of Volumes
by the Russell Sage Foundation, and, throughout, the text will
be reinforced with such photographs, pastel, maps, charts,
diagrams and tables as will help give substance and reality to
our presentations of fact. …
{617}
"The Pittsburgh Survey has been a rapid, close range
investigation of living conditions in the Pennsylvania steel
district. It has been carried on by a special staff organized
under the national publication committee which prints this
magazine. It has been financed chiefly by three grants, of
moderate amount, from the Russell Sage Foundation for the
Improvement of Living Conditions. It has been made practicable
by co-operation from two quarters,—from a remarkable group of
leaders and organizations in social and sanitary movements in
different parts of the United States, who entered upon the
field work as a piece of national good citizenship; and from
men, women and organizations in Pittsburgh who were
large-minded enough to regard their local situation as not
private and peculiar, but a part of the American problem of
city building.
"The outcome has been a spirited piece of interstate
co-operation in getting at the urban fact in a new way. …
"The main work was set under way in September, 1807, when a
company of men and women of established reputation as students
of social and industrial problems spent the month in
Pittsburgh. On the basis of their diagnosis, a series of
specialized investigations was projected along a few of the
lines which promised significant results. The staff has
included not only trained investigators but also
representatives of the different races who make up so large a
share of the working population dealt with. Limitations of
time and money set definite bounds to the work, which will
become clear as the findings are presented. The experimental
nature of the undertaking, and the unfavorable trade
conditions which during the past year have reacted upon
economic life in all its phases, have set other limits. Our
inquiries have dealt with the wage-earners of Pittsburgh (a)
in their relations to the community as a whole, and (b) in
their relation to industry. Under the former we have studied
the genesis and racial make-up of the population; its physical
setting and its social institutions; under the latter we have
studied the general labor situation; hours, wages, and labor
control in the steel industry; child labor, industrial
education, women in industry, the cost of living, and
industrial accidents.
"From the first, the work of the investigations has been
directed to the service of local movements for improvement.
For, as stated in a mid-year announcement of the Survey, we
have been studying the community at a time when nascent social
forces are asserting themselves. Witness the election of an
independent mayor three years ago, and Mr. Guthrie’s present
fight to clear councils of graft. Within the field of the
Survey and within one year, the Pittsburgh Associated
Charities has been organized; the force of tenement inspectors
has been doubled and has carried out a first general housing
census, and a scientific inquiry, under the name of the
Pittsburgh Typhoid Commission, has been instituted into the
disease which has been endemic in the district for over a
quarter of a century. A civic improvement commission,
representative in membership and perhaps broader in scope than
any similar body in the country, is now in process of
formation.
"A display of wall maps, enlarged photographs, housing plans,
and other graphic material was the chief feature of a civic
exhibit held in Carnegie Institute in November and December,
following the joint conventions in Pittsburgh of the American
Civic Association and the National Municipal League. The local
civic bearings of the Survey were the subject of the opening
session of these conventions. Its economic aspects were
brought forward at a joint session of the American Economic
Association and the American Sociological Society at Atlantic
City in December."
_P. U. Kellogg,
The Pittsburgh Survey
(Charities and the Commons, January 2, 1909)._
See (in this Volume),
CRIME AND CRIMINOLOGY;
CHILDREN, UNDER THE LAW;
LABOR PROTECTION, ETC.;
MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT;
PUBLIC HEALTH;
POVERTY, PROBLEMS OF;
ENGLAND: A. D. 1907-1908.
SOCIAL DEMOCRATS.
See (in this Volume)
SOCIALISM: ENGLAND, AND FRANCE;
also GERMANY: A. D. 1903;
RUSSIA: A. D. 1905-1907;
DENMARK: A. D. 1906.
SOCIAL REVOLUTIONISTS.
See (in this Volume)
RUSSIA: A. D. 1905-1907, and 1906-1907.
SOCIALISM: AT LARGE: A. D. 1909.
The Socialist Press in all Countries.
According to a list of the Socialist Press, in the world at
large, published in November, 1909, by the International
Bureau of Socialists, at Brussels, fifty-seven Socialist daily
newspapers are published in Germany. English Socialists have
three weekly publications, and one that appears monthly. There
is a daily Socialist journal in the Argentine Republic, a
weekly review in Australia, and in Austria two daily
publications and a bi-weekly review. The Socialists in Belgium
publish four daily organs; those of Bulgaria support two
bi-weekly reviews; and those of Canada one weekly review. One
daily Socialist newspaper circulates in Denmark, and four
weekly publications in Spain. In the United States there are
four daily and eight weekly publications and a monthly
magazine. France has two daily Socialist newspapers and ten
weekly Socialist periodicals. In Greece the Socialists support
a weekly publication, in Holland a daily one, and in Hungary
both a daily and a weekly one. In Italy there are four daily
Socialist newspapers; and a single one in Norway, Poland, and
Sweden respectively. Socialists living in Switzerland have
three daily and three weekly organs; while those in Russia
have 20 monthly or bi-monthly ones, most of which are
published secretly. In Rumania and Sweden there are also
Socialist publications.
SOCIALISM: AUSTRALIA:
Government Ownership of Railways.
See (in this Volume)
RAILWAYS: AUSTRALIA.
SOCIALISM: AUSTRIA: A. D. 1903.
Adoption of a Resolution against Alcoholic Drinking by
the National Convention of the Social Democracy.
See (in this Volume)
ALCOHOL PROBLEM: AUSTRIA.
SOCIALISM: BELGIUM: A. D. 1904.
Socialist Losses in the Belgium Elections.
See (in this volume)
BELGIUM: A.D. 1904.
SOCIALISM: DENMARK: A. D. 1905-1909.
Socialists Contending for Disarmament.
See (in this Volume)
DENMARK: A. D. 1905-1909.
{618}
SOCIALISM: ENGLAND: A. D. 1909.
The Principal Socialist Organizations of the Present Day. --
"There are four principal organizations actively engaged in
gaining adherents to the cause of Collectivism as a practical
policy, all over the kingdom. They are:
(1) The Social Democratic Party, formerly Social Democratic
Federation, and familiarly known as S. D. F.;
(2) the Fabian Society;
(3) the Independent Labour Party or I. L. P.;
(4) the Clarion Fellowship and Scouts.
There are several others of minor importance, though not to be
ignored, for they all represent the spread of the central idea
of Socialism. Among them is the Church Socialist League, which
is significant as being a society of convinced Socialists
within the Church of England holding that the ‘community
should own the land and capital collectively and use them
co-operatively for the good of all.’"
The oldest organization "began as the Democratic Federation in
1881, became the Social Democratic Federation in 1883, and has
recently changed its name to the Social Democratic Party. Its
object, according to the programme as revised in 1906, is:
"‘The socialization of the means of production, distribution,
and exchange, to be controlled by a democratic State in the
interests of the entire community, and the complete
emancipation of labour from the domination of capitalism and
landlordism, with the establishment of social and economic
equality between the sexes.’
"It demands a large number of ‘immediate reforms,’ including
the following:
"Abolition of the Monarchy.
Abolition of the House of Lords.
Payment of members of Parliament and administrative
bodies.
Adult suffrage.
Referendum.
Legislative and administrative independence for all
parts of the Empire.
Repudiation of the National Debt.
Abolition of indirect taxation and a cumulative tax on
all incomes exceeding £300.
Elementary education to be free, secular, industrial,
and compulsory for all classes.
Age for school attendance to be raised to 16.
State maintenance of all school children.
Abolition of school rates.
Nationalization of land, of trusts, railways, docks,
and canals.
Public ownership of gas, electric light, water supply,
tramways, omnibuses, &c., food and coal supply;
State and municipal banks, pawnshops, restaurants,
public ownership of hospitals, cemeteries, and the
drink traffic.
A legal eight-hours day;
no employment under 16 years;
public provision of work for unemployed at trade union rates;
free State insurance against sickness, accident, old age,
and disability;
a _minimum_ wage of 30s. a week;
equal rates of pay for both sexes.
Compulsory construction of healthy dwellings by public bodies.
Free administration of justice and legal advice.
Judges to be ‘chosen by the people.’
Abolition of capital punishment.
Disestablishment and disendowment of all State Churches.
Abolition of standing armies and establishment of
national citizen forces. …
"The Social Democratic Party is the most downright and
straightforward of the larger Socialist organizations. It is
more outspoken and consistent, less hazy and opportunist, than
the Independent Labour Party or the Fabian Society. It derives
its inspiration from the Social Democrats of Germany and
boldly upholds the ideal of revolutionary Socialism."
The Fabian Society, which comes next "in point of age, is at
the opposite end of the scale in regard to policy. It was
founded in 1884, on American inspiration, as a sort of mutual
elevation society, but adopted Socialistic principles from
Germany. Its ‘basis’ is thus stated:
"‘The Fabian Society consists of Socialists. It therefore aims
at the reorganization of society by the emancipation of land
and industrial capital from individual and class ownership and
the vesting of them in the community for the general benefit.
In this way only can the natural and acquired advantages of
the country be equitably shared by the whole people.
"‘The society accordingly works for the extinction of private
property in land and of the consequent individual
appropriation, in the form of rent, of the price paid for
permission to use the earth, as well as for the advantages of
superior soils and sites.
"‘The society further works for the transfer to the community
of the administration of such industrial capital as can
conveniently be managed socially.’
"It is not surprising that thorough-going Socialists denounce
the Fabians as make believe, Socialism-and-water ‘comrades,’
and hardly worthy to be called ‘comrades’ at all, an honour
which the Fabians, for their part, show no desire to claim.
Nevertheless, the Fabians are a very influential element in
the Socialist movement. … The Fabian Society is numerically
small, but growing rapidly, and that largely by the formation
of provincial branches. The headquarters are in London, where
it had in March last [1908] 1085 members out of a total of
2015. … Eleven Fabians are members of Parliament, and the
society supports the Labour party; but its real work lies
outside of politics, and is carried on chiefly by the
distribution of literature and by lectures. It contains
several well-known writers, and may almost be called a
literary society. The output of tracts and leaflets sold and
distributed last year was over 250,000. … Among the best-known
Fabians are Mr. Granville Barker, the Reverend R. J. Campbell,
the Reverend Stewart D. Headlam, Mr. Chiozza-Money, M. P., Mr.
Bernard Shaw, Mr. Sidney Webb, and Mr. H. G. Wells, who has,
however, recently seceded. Many members belong also to other
Socialist organizations. …
"The third large organization on the list is the Independent
Labour Party. It is considerably younger than the Social
Democratic Party and the Fabian Society, but much larger and
politically far more powerful than either or both together. In
character it comes between them, being more opportunist and
supple than the former, less nebulous and elusive than the
latter. It was formally inaugurated at Bradford in 1893, under
the leadership of Mr. Keir Hardie. The following are the
principal [demands] in the official prospectus, revised for
1908-1909:
"‘1. A _maximum_ of 48 hours working week, with the
retention of all existing holidays and Labour Day, May 1,
secured by law.
"‘2. The provision of work to all capable adult applicants at
recognized trade union rates, with a statutory _minimum_,
of sixpence per hour.
{619}
"‘In order to remuneratively employ the applicants, parish,
district, borough, and county councils to be invested with
powers to
(_a_) Organize and undertake such industries as they may
consider desirable.
(_b_) Compulsorily acquire land; purchase, erect, or
manufacture buildings, stock, or other articles for carrying
on such industries,
(_c_) Levy rates on the rental values of the district and
borrow money on the security of such rates for any of the
above purposes.
"‘3. State pensions for every person over 50 years of age, and
adequate provision for all widows, orphans, sick, and disabled
workers.
"‘4. Free secular, moral, primary, secondary, and University
education, with free maintenance while at school or
University.
"‘5. The raising of the age of child labour, with a view to
its ultimate extinction.
"‘6. Municipalization and public control of the drink traffic.
"‘7. Municipalization and public control of all hospitals and
infirmaries.
"‘8. Abolition of indirect taxation and gradual transference
of all public burdens on to unearned incomes with a view to
their ultimate extinction.
"‘The Independent Labour Party is in favour of adult suffrage,
with full political rights and privileges for women, and the
immediate extension of the franchise to women on the same
terms as granted to men; also triennial Parliaments and second
ballot.’ …
"The most prominent individuals in the Independent Labour
Party are Mr. Keir Hardie, M. P., its father and guide; Mr.
Ramsay Macdonald, M. P., who pulls the political strings; Mr.
Philip Snowdon, M. P., who is an active pamphleteer; and Mr.
Bruce Glasier, who edits the _Labour Leader_. This
organization, by far the most important in Great Britain,
takes much less part in international Socialism than the
Social Democratic Federation, with which it has never agreed
very well. …
"The ‘Clarion’ organizations, - which make the fourth of the
more important Socialist organizations, need only a brief
mention here. They are not regular societies, like the others,
but merely propagandist agencies organized by the
_Clarion_ newspaper and manned by Socialists who belong
to other bodies or to none. … The agencies include the
_Clarion_ vans, which travel round the country and
proselytize; the _Clarion_ fellowship societies, which
are social bodies, and the _Clarion_ scouts, who are
young recruits, organized for special purposes."
_From a series of Articles on
"The Socialist Movement in Great Britain,"
in the London Times, January, 1909._
SOCIALISM:
Work of the Anti-Socialist Union.
An Anti-Socialist Union in Great Britain is conducting a
training school for speakers and workers whom the union sends
into the constituencies to controvert the arguments of
Socialist orators. Of the 175 students who entered the
training school soon after the inauguration of the union in
1908 about 50 were reported the next year as qualified to take
an active part in the anti-Socialist campaign. In reply to an
appeal for volunteers, nearly 2,000 applications were received
from men and women who were anxious to enter the training
school.
SOCIALISM: FRANCE:
The Trade Union Version of Socialism.
See (in this Volume)
LABOR ORGANIZATION; FRANCE: A. D. 1884-1909.
SOCIALISM: A. D. 1909.
The Classes to which the Socialist Principle appeals.
Strength of Socialist Political Parties.
Their Leadership.
"The agriculturist loves the land which he usually owns, and
would scout the idea of becoming a farmer under the State,
which would be his position under a Socialistic regime; he is
frugal, hard-working, and thrifty to the point of avarice, but
intolerably narrow, suspicious and bigoted. Among this class
Socialism can hardly make proselytes, nor can it do so to any
great extent among tradesmen and commercial men, who are
either their own masters or who hope to set up for themselves
when they have amassed a small capital. We therefore find
ourselves reduced to two classes, the artisans and the
professions, and it is among these that we must seek the
Socialist voters of France. … In France, thanks to the fact
that members of Parliament are paid, the professional classes
are available for the recruiting of labour leaders; indeed the
younger section is naturally attracted to the Socialist
standard. As regards this particular class, we can find in
Great Britain no parallel. … Young Britons appear to be too
busy with their sports or social pleasures to study political
questions, so that we can hardly compare them with the
continental ‘Intellectuals.’ The ‘Intellectual’ is essentially
a product of modern Europe and is principally to be found in
France, Germany and Russia. He is almost invariably highly
educated, in sympathy with foreign progress, a humanitarian
and imbued with ideas either somewhat or very much ahead of
his time. The French ‘Intellectual’ is at his best in the
twenties; he may then be quixotic, but he generally knows his
subject and is fired with generous enthusiasms. … This curious
factor must never be lost sight of when the Socialist movement
in any European country is examined. In Great Britain members of
the educated classes almost invariably belong to one of the
two great political parties; but in France they are willing to
join hands with the masses, not only as leaders, but with a
view to the true enthronement of the people. It is probably
for this reason that the Socialist party has made so much
headway in France. Such being the soldiers and officers who
march under the Red Flag, it is not surprising that their
political organisation should have grown so powerful. The
Socialist party has hardly suffered from the ups and downs of
political life; every election has sent it back to power with
a greater number of seats to its credit; at the present time
the party has 74 representatives in the Chamber of Deputies,
to whom we must add, in certain cases, 135 Radical Socialists.
… The ‘Unified Socialists’ of the uncompromising type hold 53
seats, and the Independent Socialists 21; if we add these two
figures to the 135 Radical Socialists, we find that they form
a considerable portion of the 591 members. Though they have
not an absolute majority, the weight of these 209 advanced
votes is such as to colour very strongly modern legislation,
and there is no reason to doubt that their progress will
continue up to a certain point."
_W. L. George,
France in the Twentieth Century,
chapter 8 (John Lane Co., New York, 1909)._
SOCIALISM: Germany: A. D. 1902.
The Socialist Congress on Alcoholic Drinks.
See (in this Volume)
ALCOHOL PROBLEM: GERMANY.
SOCIALISM: A. D. 1903.
Gains of the Socialists in Elections to the Reichstag.
See (in this Volume)
GERMANY: A. D. 1903, and 1906-1907.
{620}
SOCIALISM: A. D. 1903.
Opposition among Workmen.
A great Congress of 200 delegates from bodies of German
workingmen opposed to Socialism, said to represent a total of
620,000, was held in October, 1903, at Frankfort-on-the Main.
Its object was to promote effective organization of workmen,
to which end it appealed to "all unorganized German workmen to
join those industrial organizations which do not make enmity
between the classes their principle."
SOCIALISM: A. D. 1908.
Socialists win Seats in the Prussian Diet for the First Time.
See (in this Volume)
PRUSSIA: A. D. 1908.
SOCIALISM: A. D. 1909.
Statistics reported to the Socialist Congress.
The annual report to the Socialist Congress at Leipzig stated
that the German Social Democratic party has a membership of
571,050 men and 62,259 women—total 633,309. The number of men
had increased during the past year by 13,172, and the number
of women by 32,801. There are said to be now only 20 Reichstag
constituencies in which there is no Socialist organization.
See (in this Volume)
GERMANY: A. D. 1909 (OCTOBER-DECEMBER).
SOCIALISM: Italy: A. D. 1904.
Gains in the Election claimed by the Socialists.
See (in this Volume)
ITALY: A. D. 1904 (OCTOBER-DECEMBER).
SOCIALISM: A. D. 1909.
Gains in Italian Elections.
See (in this Volume)
ITALY: A. D. 1909 (MARCH).
SOCIALISM: NEW ZEALAND.
Government Ownership of Land.
Graduated Taxation.
Public Loans to Farmers.
See (in this Volume)
NEW ZEALAND: A. D. 1905.
SOCIALISM: SPAIN: A. D. 1909.
Socialist-Republican Alliance.
See (in this Volume)
SPAIN: A. D. 1907-1909.
SOCIALISM: UNITED STATES: A. D. 1902.
Socialist Platform adopted by the Western Federation
of Miners.
See (in this Volume)
LABOR ORGANIZATION: UNITED STATES: A. D). 1899-1907.
SOCIALISTIC POLITICAL PARTIES.
See (in this Volume)
PARTIES, POLITICAL.
SOKOTO:
British, Capture and Occupation.
See (in this Volume)
AFRICA: A. D. 1903 (NIGERIA).
SOMALILAND.
See (in this Volume)
AFRICA: SOMALILAND.
SONE, Viscount:
Japanese Resident-General in Korea.
See (in this Volume)
KOREA: A. D. 1905-1909.
SONNINO, BARON: PRIME MINISTER OF ITALY.
See (in this Volume)
ITALY: A. D. 1906-1909.
SOUDAN.
See (in this Volume)
SUDAN.
SOUFFRIÈRE, LA: VOLCANIC ERUPTION OF.
See (in this Volume)
VOLCANIC ERUPTIONS: WEST INDIES.
----------SOUTH AFRICA: Start--------
SOUTH AFRICA:
Suitable and Unsuitable Parts of South
Africa for European Settlement.
See (in this Volume)
AFRICA.
SOUTH AFRICA: A. D. 1901-1902.
The Last Year of the Boer-British War.
The Concentration Camps.
Kitchener’s Block-house System and Protected Areas.
The Opening of Negotiations for Peace.
Text of the Treaty concluded.
When Volume VI. of this work went to press, in April, 1901,
and its record of events was closed, the dreadful Boer-British
War had still a little more than another year to be prolonged
through; but it was to be, as it had been throughout the past
year, a sheerly destructive prosecution of guerrilla warfare
by separate bands of the indomitable Boers. The operations of
such warfare,—its raids, its counter "drives," its little
battles and skirmishes, its captures and recaptures, its
breaking of railway lines, and the like,—cannot be detailed in
a work like this. Nothing of any decisive effect was done at
any time, on either side, to constitute an important event in
the war. There was simply a wearing process in operation which
went on, in an inexorable and horrible slow way, till the
country on which it worked was a desert, and the endurance of
its surviving people was worn out.
In November, 1900, Lord Kitchener had succeeded Lord Roberts
in the British command. He decided to empty the contested
regions of their non-combatant population, by gathering it
into "concentration camps," thus resorting to a measure which
the Spaniards had employed in Cuba, and which the Americans
had copied from them in the Philippines. Accordingly, on the
21st of December, 1900, he had issued to general officers a
"Memorandum" in which he said:
"Lord Kitchener desires that General Officers will, according
to the means at their disposal, follow this system in the
Districts which they occupy or may traverse. The women and
children brought in should be camped near the railway for
supply purposes, and should be divided in two categories,
viz.: 1st. Refugees, and the families of Neutrals,
non-combatants, and surrendered Burghers. 2nd. Those whose
husbands, fathers, and sons are on Commands. The preference in
accommodation, &c., should of course, be given to the first
class. The Ordnance will supply the necessary tents and the
District Commissioner will look after the food on the scale
now in use.
"It should be clearly explained to Burghers in the field,
that, if they voluntarily surrender, they will be allowed to
live with their families in the camps until it is safe for
them to return to their homes."
In "The Times History of the War in South Africa" it is
remarked on this order: "The policy was inspired by two
motives. In the first place, it was supposed that the removal
of the families would induce fighting Boers to surrender, and
would thus shorten the War. In the second place, it was a
measure of humanity towards the unprotected occupants of
lonely farms. The decision was taken somewhat lightly. In its
primary object it failed absolutely. Far from providing an
inducement to surrender, it lifted from the fighting burghers
a load of embarrassment. To the British, military consequences
were disastrous. To the Boers the gain was twofold. On the
shoulders of their enemy lay the heavy tasks of removal and
maintenance, involving enormous expense and a grave hindrance
to military operations, while they themselves, relieved of all
responsibility for their women and children, were free to
devote their energies with a clear conscience to the single
aim of fighting.
{621}
While one of the British aims was signally defeated, the
other, that of humanity, was at first only partially attained.
The scheme for the concentration camps was lacking in
foresight. Adequate provision was not made for the hosts of
refugees requiring shelter. The regular medical and sanitary
staff were already fully occupied with the needs of the army,
and men were lacking for the organisation and supervision of
the camps. Sites chosen on purely military grounds often
proved wholly unsuitable. Too much reliance was placed on the
capacity for self-help to be shown by the Boers themselves,
and the Boers proved to be helpless, utterly averse to
cleanliness and ignorant of the simplest elements of medicine
and sanitation. The result was that for a certain period there
was a very high rate of mortality among these unfortunate
people."
_The Times History of the War in South Africa,
Volume v., chapter 3
(Low, Marston & Co., London)._
With better success Kitchener adopted and steadily perfected a
block-house system, by which lines of barrier were drawn
across the country in different directions, and protected
areas were formed. The system and its working are thus
described in the history quoted above:
"One of the first reforms undertaken by Kitchener when he
assumed command in South Africa was the strengthening of the
railways. At that time the defences of the lines were of the
simplest description, consisting almost wholly of open
trenches at stations, bridges and culverts, while the line
itself was patrolled by small parties of mounted men. In
laying out these trench defences, the principal object kept in
view was to render them inconspicuous and thus immune from
artillery fire. The system required enormous numbers of men
both for patrol work and for manning the long lines of
trenches. … It was clear that some form of permanent or
semi-permanent defence must be adopted, if security was to be
gained and the railway guards reduced. Early in January,
accordingly, the first blockhouses were constructed. …
"Planted at first only at stations, bridges, culverts,
important cuttings and curves—at the points, in fact, which
experience had proved to be most vulnerable—blockhouses came
to be established at regular intervals of about a mile and a
half down the whole extent of a line. This interval was
steadily lessened. Ultimately it became as small as 400 yards
on the Delagoa line and was reduced even to 200 yards on some
portions of the Cape railways. A continuous fencing of barbed
wire ran along the line; elaborate entanglements surrounded
each blockhouse, and the telephone linked up the whole system.
A somewhat later development was a deep trench bordering the
line of barbed wire and running to within 100 yards of each
blockhouse. …
"Until July the system was confined to the railways; but in
July the idea first took definite shape of throwing blockhouse
lines across country, and thus creating fenced areas of
manageable size within which the Boers could be dealt with
piece-meal. It is important to note that these lines almost
invariably followed roads, which thus became to all intents
and purposes as safe as railways. In other words, a great
number of additional lines of communication were opened up and
secured, and the striking power of the army proportionately
increased. …
"While a thousand yards, or thereabouts, was the usual
interval between cross-country blockhouses, the rule was
invariably followed that each must be in sight of its
neighbour on either side. The wire fence spanning this
interval always ran in the form of an obtuse angle, so that
fire could be directed along it from both ends without risk to
either blockhouse. In order to secure accurate fire in the
dark, rests were provided for the correct alignment of rifles.
Ordinary barbed wire was used at first, but the Boers became
such adepts at cutting it that a quarter-inch unannealed steel
wire, specially manufactured in England, had to be
substituted. In Cape Colony, an eight-strand cable,
manufactured in special 'rope walks' established at
Naauwpoort, was largely used. Not to be daunted, the Boers
took to uprooting the stays and levelling the fence bodily.
The stays, accordingly, had to be anchored securely to heavy
rocks sunk deep in the ground. As on the railways, alarms of
all sorts were devised to give the garrisons notice of an
attempt to tamper with the fence. A spring-gun would fire,
dangling biscuit tins would rattle, a weight would drop in the
blockhouse, and on any such signal the garrison would fire
down the line of the fence. But, when all precautions were
taken, it was impossible, on dark nights, to prevent
determined bodies of Boers from passing the barrier. The
passage could be made dangerous and difficult; that was all. …
Exaggerated hopes were built on the efficacy of the lines as
barriers to determined men. … The Boers, for a long time to
come, viewed with disdain the eruption of tiny forts. It was
only by degrees that they awoke to the realization that they
were taken like flies in a spider’s web. … Communication
between commanders became more and more difficult;
concentrations on a large scale impossible.
"The ramifications of the blockhouse system and the slow
formation of protected areas were not the only signs that the
day of conquest was approaching. Within these areas, under the
able and energetic administrations of Lord Milner, who
returned to South Africa in August, and, in the Orange River
Colony, of the Deputy Administrator, Sir H. Goold-Adams,
marked progress was beginning to be made in the establishment
of civil industry and in administrative reconstruction. …
"With regard to the Boer non-combatant population, an
important modification of policy was initiated in December.
Orders were issued to all columns that no more families, save
those in actual danger of starvation and those belonging to a
privileged class, … were to be brought into the concentration
camps. Since most of the accessible farms had already been
emptied, the order applied mainly to the women and children
who had preferred, in defiance of hardship, to accompany the
commandos and who lived in nomadic laagers. The Boers, however
much they had railed in the past against the inhumanity of the
camps, were soon to realise and admit the essential humanity
of the concentration system. The embarrassment and anxiety
caused by the helpless non-combatants in their midst was to
grow day by day.
{622}
Finally, at the Vereeniging Conference, the truth received
frank and undisguised expression. ‘To-day,’ said Botha, ‘we
are only too glad to know that our women and children are
under British protection.’ The wretchedness of those who
remained on the veld became, indeed, a powerful argument for
submission."
_The Times History of the War in South Africa,
chapters 10, 11, 14
(London, Low, Marston & Co.)._
It was not until March, 1902, that the men of authority on
both sides of the war began to give tokens of a mutual
disposition to discuss terms of peace. In the previous
January, the government of the Netherlands had offered to act
as intermediary between Great Britain and the Boers, and the
proffer had been declined, the British government repeating
its determination to accept no foreign intervention. At the
same time it was suggested that, inasmuch as Mr. Steyn and Mr.
Schalk Burger, the chiefs of the Orange Free State and of the
Transvaal burghers, respectively, were understood to be
invested with full powers of government, including the power
of negotiation, those gentlemen could open, if they wished,
direct communication with Lord Kitchener, who had already been
instructed to forward to his government any offers that he
might receive. On the 7th of March this correspondence was
sent by Lord Kitchener, without comment, to the Transvaal
government, then established at Stroomwater. The suggestion in
it was rightly taken as an invitation, and acting President
Schalk Burger at once asked for a safe-conduct for himself and
the other members of his government into the British lines,
with intimations of a wish for opportunity to meet the members
of the Free State government, in order that they might concert
proposals for peace. His wishes were readily complied with. On
the 22d he entered the British lines, and all possible aid was
given him in getting together the men whom he wished to
consult. Some were brought away from active fighting, which
went on without them, no pause on the military side being
permitted for a single day, while the parleying of a month
went on.
The Transvaal and Free State governments met on the 9th of
April, at Klerksdorp, under British safe-conduct, and, after
debate among themselves on that day and the next, sent a
telegram to Lord Kitchener, requesting him to meet them and
receive from them a proposal of peace. He replied promptly,
inviting them to his headquarters at Pretoria, and there they
were received on April 12th. Their proposal was on the basis
of political independence for the two Boer states, under "an
enduring treaty of friendship and peace" with the British
government, as well as a customs, postal and railway union
with the adjoining British colonies, and with concessions of
the franchise to Uitlanders in the Transvaal. Kitchener could
give no consideration to a proposal of this nature; but
consented, after much discussion to cable it to London. At, a
second meeting on the 14th (when Lord Kitchener was joined by
Lord Milner, the British High Commissioner in South Africa) he
had the answer of the British government to produce. It
declared with emphasis that the government could not
"entertain any proposals based on the continued independence
of the former republics, which have been formally annexed to
the British Crown." To this the Boer officials replied that
they had no power to negotiate on any other basis than that of
independence, and they asked for an armistice, to enable them
to consult their people. This was refused, but, after some
parleying, it was arranged that they should have free use of
the railway and telegraph, and that military operations should
be so conducted as to allow opportunities for meetings in all
parts of the country, at which thirty burghers from each re-
public should be elected, with authority to act for the
people. These representatives were to meet on the 15th of May,
at Vereeniging, to determine the answer they would give.
Between the 11th and the 15th of May immunity was promised to
all commandos whose leaders should be chosen as
representatives, and this practically operated as an armistice
during those days.
"History records no precedent," says The Times History of the
War, "for the state of affairs which existed in South Africa
between April 18 and May 15, 1902. War went on, but, to borrow
a metaphor from football, the ball of war was continually
rolling into ‘touch.’ Kitchener loyally carried out his
undertaking to the Boer leaders. Commandos were allowed to
assemble and confer unmolested; officers and messengers
scoured the country by road and railway with free passes,
passing through British outpost lines, receiving the unstinted
hospitality of their foes, and occasionally, to the chagrin of
a junior British officer, undergoing accidental capture,
followed by immediate release on the production of the magic
pass. Steyn, indeed, was too ill to take part in all this
activity and had retired to a farm near Wolmaransstad. But De
Wet, with amazing energy, travelled over the whole of the Free
State, inspiring the burghers with his leader’s fiery spirit.
At eight successive meetings he personally addressed
practically the whole of the commandos and secured unanimous
resolutions against any surrender of independence. The
Transvaal leaders were scarcely less active, though the
purport of their activity was by no means the same." These
chiefs of the Transvaal, Louis Botha and others, were disposed
to end the struggle for independence; those of the Free State,
inspired by their unconquerable President, were not.
On the 15th of May the officials of the two Boer governments
met the sixty delegates from the burghers at Vereeniging, and
the question between surrender and a hopeless continuation of
war was threshed out. The Free State delegates and a few of
the Transvaalers had been bound by pledges to vote against any
surrender of independence; but in the end they were persuaded
by their own legal advisers that such a restriction on the
free action of a delegate was contrary to the principles of
law; and gradually the question of independence gave place to
other matters of consideration in the discussion of terms. On
the 19th a sub-committee was appointed to consider those
details, and several days of bargaining with Kitchener and
Milner, at Pretoria, ensued. There was much use of the cable
meantime, to secure assent in London to what might be done.
The result was a draft treaty which Lord Milner assured the
Boer Commissioners was absolutely final, and must be accepted
or rejected without any change, on or before the 31st of May.
{623}
They took it to the convention at Vereeniging on the 29th, and
there, in two days of stormy debate, the no-surrender party,
led by Steyn and De Wet, made their last stand. When the
decisive vote was taken, their ranks were reduced to six,
against fifty-four. The Boer commissioners returned at once to
Pretoria, with the accepted draft-treaty, and it was signed on
the night of the 31st, a little less than an hour before the
expiration of the fixed term of grace. The following is the
text of this treaty, which ended one of the worst of modern
wars:
"General Lord Kitchener of Khartoum, Commander-in-Chief, and
His Excellency Lord Milner, High Commissioner, on behalf of
the British Government;
"Messrs. S. W. Burger, F. W. Reitz, Louis Botha, J. H. De la
Rey, L. J. Meyer, and J. Krogh on behalf of the Government of
the South African Republic and its burghers;
"Messrs. M. T. Steyn, W. J. C. Brebner, C. R. de Wet, J. B. M.
Hertzog, and C. H. Olivier, on behalf of the Government of the
Orange Free State and its burghers, being anxious to put an
end to the existing hostilities, agree on the following
points:
"Firstly, the burgher forces now in the Veldt shall at once
lay down their arms, and surrender all the guns, small arms,
and war stores in their actual possession, or of which they
shall have cognizance, and shall abstain from any further
opposition to the authority of his Majesty King Edward VII.,
whom they shall acknowledge as their lawful sovereign.
"The manner and details of this surrender shall be arranged by
Lord Kitchener, Commandant-General Botha, Assistant
Commandant-General J. H. De la Rey, and Commander-in-Chief de
Wet.
"Secondly, burghers in the Veldt beyond the frontiers of the
Transvaal and of the Orange River Colony, and all prisoners of
war who are out of South Africa, who are burghers, shall, on
their declaration that they accept the status of subjects of
His Majesty King Edward VII., be brought back to their homes,
as soon as transport and means of existence can be assured.
"Thirdly, the burghers who thus surrender, or who thus return,
shall lose neither their personal freedom nor their property.
"Fourthly, no judicial proceedings, civil or criminal, shall
be taken against any of the burghers who thus return for any
action in connexion with the carrying on of the war. The
benefit of this clause shall, however, not extend to certain
deeds antagonistic to the usages of warfare, which have been
communicated by the Commander-in-Chief to the Boer generals,
and which shall be heard before a court-martial immediately
after the cessation of hostilities.
"Fifthly, the Dutch language shall be taught in the public
schools of the Transvaal and of the Orange River Colony when
the parents of the children demand it; and shall be admitted
in the Courts of justice, whenever this is required for the
better and more effective administration of justice.
"Sixthly, the possession of rifles shall, on taking out a
licence in accordance with the law, be permitted in the
Transvaal and the Orange River Colony to persons who require
them for their protection.
"Seventhly, military administration in the Transvaal and in
the Orange River Colony shall, as soon as it is possible, be
followed by civil government; and, as soon as circumstances
permit it, a representative system lending towards autonomy
shall be introduced.
"Eighthly, the question of granting a franchise to the natives
shall not be decided until a representative constitution has
been granted.
"Ninthly, no special tax shall be laid on landed property in
the Transvaal and Orange River Colony to meet the expenses of
the war.
"Tenthly, as soon as circumstances permit there shall be
appointed in each district in the Transvaal and the Orange
River Colony a Commission, in which the inhabitants of that
district shall be represented, under the chairmanship of a
magistrate or other official, with a view to assist in the
bringing back of the people to their farms, and in procuring
for those who, on account of losses in the war, are unable to
provide for themselves food, shelter, and such quantities of
seed, cattle, implements, etc., as are necessary for the
resuming of their previous callings.
"His Majesty’s Government shall place at the disposal of these
Commissions the sum of £3,000,000 for the above-mentioned
purposes, and shall allow that all notes issued in conformity
with Law No. 1, 1900, of the Government of the South African
Republic, and all receipts given by the officers in the Veldt
of the late Republics, or by their order, may be presented to
a judicial Commission by the Government, and in case such
notes and receipts are found by this Commission to have been
duly issued for consideration in value, then they shall be
accepted by the said Commission as proof of war losses
suffered by the persons to whom they had originally been
given. In addition to the above-named free gift of £3,000,000,
His Majesty’s Government will be prepared to grant advances,
in the shape of loans, for the same ends, free of interest for
two years, and afterwards repayable over a period of years
with three per cent. interest. No foreigner or rebel shall be
entitled to benefit by this clause."
The following military statistics of the War, as conducted on
the British side, were published in a Parliamentary paper soon
after its close:
The garrison in South Africa on August 1st, 1899, consisted of
318 officers and 9,622 men; reinforcements sent between then
and the outbreak of hostilities, October 11th, 1899, totaled
12,546. Thereafter the troops sent up to May 31st, 1902,
reached the great total of 386,081, besides 52,414 men raised
in South Africa. The final casualty figures are: Killed,
5,774; wounded, 23,029; died of wounds or disease, 16,168.
A return made to Parliament in April, 1902, of the estimated
amount of war charges in South Africa that had been and would
be incurred up to the 31st of March, 1903, gave the following
figures:
For the first year of the war (1899-1900), £23,217,000; for
the second year, £65,120,000; for the third year, £71,037,000;
for the year in which it ended, £63,600,000. Total,
£222,974,000.
SOUTH AFRICA: A. D. 1902.
Cape Colony and Natal at the Colonial Conference, London.
See (in this Volume)
BRITISH EMPIRE.
{624}
SOUTH AFRICA: A. D. 1902-1903.
Repatriation and Resettlement of the Boers in
the Transvaal and Orange River Colony.
Work of the first Eight Months of Restored Peace.
The following passages from a report dated March 14, 1903,
made by Governor Viscount Milner to Mr. Chamberlain, British
Secretary for the Colonies, will give some intimation of the
task of reconstruction and restoration which the war had
imposed on the victors, and the vigor with which it was
performed:
"The Terms of Surrender were signed at Pretoria on the 31st
May, 1902, but the Civil Government could not really begin to
take over the administration of the new Colonies, and
especially the country districts, for nearly a month after
that date. At Lord Kitchener’s request no attempt was made to
enter into possession of those districts until after the
surrender of the Commandos, and though that surrender was
accomplished with extraordinary celerity and smoothness,
something like three weeks elapsed before any Civil officer
could even set out for the house or tent, generally a tent,
allotted to him in the wilderness which we were about to take
over, devoid, as it was, of crops, of stock, of population,
and, to a large extent, of habitable dwellings. The period
over which this review extends is, therefore, one of about
eight months—from the end of June, when the work of
restoration commenced, till the end of February. …
"To begin with the Prisoners of War. The Vereeniging Terms
entitled something over 33,000 people to be restored to
liberty, and if they happened to be burghers imprisoned out
side South Africa, to be brought back to their homes as soon
as transports could be provided and their means of subsistence
assured. Of this large number upwards of 24,000 were in
prisoners’ camps in St. Helena, Bermuda, India and Ceylon;
upwards of 1,000 were in a prisoners’ camp, at Simons Town,
and about 1,200 were prisoners elsewhere in South Africa. Of
the rest the great majority had been allowed to live in
Concentration Camps, while the balance were on parole in
different parts of South Africa and a few in Europe. The
principal difficulty in connection with the prisoners was, of
course, the bringing back and distribution of the 24,000 odd,
who were at prisoners’ camps oversea. …
"The prisoners of war, on their return to South Africa, were,
in the first place, with few exceptions, sent to the
Concentration Camps of their respective districts, there to
rejoin their families, if they had them, and to return
together with them to their homes. They thus, in the majority
of cases, helped to swell the enormous number of people for
whom the Repatriation Departments of the two colonies had to
provide the means of transport to their homes, and, as a
general rule, the means of subsistence for months after such
return, as well as the seeds, instruments and animals
necessary to enable them to raise a crop. … In the eight and a
half months that we have been at work, we have restored about
200,000 of the old Burgher population in the two Colonies to
their homes, including all the inhabitants in the
Concentration Camps in the Transvaal, the Orange River Colony,
the Cape Colony and Natal, and the Prisoners of War. …
"By hook or by crook we had succeeded by the end of 1902, in
enabling the people to sow a fairly large mealie crop, besides
a considerable amount of forage, potatoes and other
vegetables. The change in the attitude of the farming
population, about that time, was very noticeable. The extreme
depression which characterised them two or three months
earlier had almost completely passed away, and they were
looking forward to the future with much more hopefulness. I
may say that almost the whole time, even when the outlook was
blackest, their attitude towards the Government was not
otherwise than a friendly one. They showed, with few
exceptions, great patience under hardships, and much energy
and resourcefulness in making the best of the small means at
their disposal."
SOUTH AFRICA: A. D. 1902-1904.
Death of Cecil Rhodes.
Survival of his Influence and his Policy.
Dr. Jameson, as his representative, made Premier
of Cape Colony.
On the 26th of March, 1902, two months before the end of the
British-Boer war, Cecil J. Rhodes died at Cape Town, and his
death removed the most powerful of the personal influences
that would have been reckoned on for determining the results
of the war. He had been the master-spirit in South Africa for
nearly thirty years. Indications of the part he had taken in
the expansion of the British dominion in that part of the
world, and in the conflict of British with Dutch ambitions
which produced the war, will be found in Volume VI. of this
work (see, especially, pages 460-466, 470-471, and 475-477, in
that Volume).
Had he lived and been in health there can be no doubt that he
would have been a leading actor in the political
reconstruction of British South Africa since the war. He had
been the Premier of Cape Colony from 1890 to the end of 1895;
then his career was clouded by the "Jameson raid" into the
Transvaal, and he was forced to resign. But the cloud would
have cleared, as it has cleared from Jameson. Indeed, the new
career of Dr. Jameson, since 1904, when a general election in
Cape Colony brought the party of the Progressives into power,
and put the former chief lieutenant of Cecil Rhodes in the
place of Sir J. Gordon Sprigg as Prime Minister of the
colonial Government, is indicative of the new career that
would have opened to Rhodes. It is the Rhodes policy and the
Rhodes influence that has prevailed, as was said by Mr. Edward
Dicey in an article written at the time:
"When Rhodes’ life came to a sudden and melancholy end,
Jameson felt the best way he could show his respect for his
dead friend was to carry on the work of his lifetime. Amongst
the Progressives there were several public men who, in normal
circumstances, might have been selected as leaders of the
party, but there was a well-grounded conviction that the man
who could best carry on Rhodes’ policy, with the least breach
of continuity, was Jameson. Even the few British colonists who
had not altogether condoned the Raid, felt that there was no
one so qualified to lead the Progressive Party as the author
of the Raid. The result was that Jameson was appointed, by
acclamation, the political successor of Rhodes. It was under
the new leader that the battle of the general election in the
Cape Colony has been fought and won.
{625}
The Progressive majority in the Cape Parliament is small; but,
in spite of all disintegrating influences, it may be trusted
to hold together till a Redistribution Bill has been passed.
When the influence of the Bond was supreme in the Cape
Parliament, the electoral divisions were manipulated in such a
manner as to give thinly populated, rural constituencies equal
representation with that enjoyed by the comparatively densely
populated urban constituencies. This arose from the fact that
in the country the Dutch settlers outnumbered the British,
while in the town the British composed the vast majority of
the electorate. The simplest way to rectify this abuse was to
remodel the existing electoral system, by making population
the basis of representation. This reform, however, was open to
the objection that it practically disfranchised a large number
of rural constituencies in which the Boers were in a majority.
On Jameson being appointed Prime Minister, after Sir Gordon
Sprigg’s compulsory retirement, his first step was to
introduce a new Redistribution Bill based on a less invidious
principle than its predecessor."
_Edward Dicey,
The New Cape Premier
(Fortnightly Review, April, 1904)._
SOUTH AFRICA: A. D. 1903-1904.
The Labor Question.
Investigation and opposing Reports by a Commission.
Adoption of Ordinance to admit Unskilled Non-European Laborers.
Beginning of Importation of Chinese Coolies.
The Political Side of the Question.
Debate in the British Parliament.
Early in 1903 Lord Milner appointed a Commission to
investigate and report on the labor question in South Africa,
which is a question between the mining people, who maintain
that the needful supply of labor for profitable mine-working
is not procurable, at rates which mine-owners can afford, from
any other than an Asiatic source, and their opponents who deny
the need of bringing either Chinese or East Indian coolies
into the mining fields. In November the Labor Commission
produced a majority and a minority report, the former agreeing
substantially with the mine-owners, the latter in contention
with them. The signatures to the majority report were ten in
number, the latter were but two. In the discussion of the
reports which took place in the Legislative Council of the
Transvaal late in the year, one speaker made the statement
that he was authorized by General Louis Botha to say that he
and all the Dutch he represented were opposed to the
introduction of Asiatics. A resolution favoring the
introduction of Chinese was adopted in the Council by a vote
of 22 to 4.
Ultimately, against the protests of a great majority of the
Boer population, an ordinance to regulate the introduction
into the Transvaal of unskilled non-European laborers was
adopted by the Legislative Council. It applied to males of
other races than those indigenous to Africa south of 12
degrees north of the Equator. The ordinance was to be
administered by an official superintendent; the laborers were
to be brought in by licensed persons only; they were to be
employed only in the Witwatersrand district, and only in
unskilled labor connected with the production of minerals, and
they were to be sent back to the country of their origin, at
the expense of their importer, at once on the termination of
their contract, which should not be for a longer term than
three years, renewable for two more. Provisions as to their
treatment, their passport identification, their restricted
residence, etc., were very precise and minute. The importation
of Chinese coolies under the provisions of this ordinance began
in June, 1904. At the end of the year over 20,000 had been
brought in.
That the question has its political as well as its industrial
side, and is one which concerns democracy no less than labor,
is shown in the following: "The political and industrial
position of the Rand, and, in some degree of the Transvaal as
a whole, is almost unique. The only parallel that comes to
mind is that of the town and district of Kimberly. A
considerable European community is dependent—on the Rand
entirely, throughout the Transvaal very largely—on a single
industry for the maintenance of its prosperity. This
dependence necessarily places great power in the hands of the
small group of men who are the owners, or represent the
owners, of the capital by which the industry has been created
and is now worked. Their influence is supreme. No law which
threatened their interests could be placed on the Statute
Book. Men who offer any effective opposition to their
wishes—like Mr. Wybergh, the Commissioner of Mines, Mr.
Creswell, the manager of the Village Main Reef Mine, Mr.
Moneypenny, the editor of the chief Johannesburg
newspaper—find it impossible to retain their positions. Two
dangers, and two only, threaten the permanency of this
supremacy—the Trade Union and the ballot, the combination of
the men employed and the possibility of an unsympathetic
majority in the legislature when a system of self government
is restored. Both these dangers would be increased in degree,
and brought nearer in time, by a large and rapid growth of the
white population.
"‘If 200,000 native workers were to be replaced by 100,000
whites,’ said Mr. Rudd, one of the directors of the
Consolidated Goldfields Company, ‘they would simply hold the
Government of the country in the hollow of their hand, and,
without any disparagement to the British labourer, I prefer to
see the more intellectual section of the community at the
helm!’ ‘ With reference to your trial of white labour for
surface work on the mines,’ wrote Mr. Tarbutt, another
director of the same important company and the chairman of the
Village Main Reef Company, in an often-quoted letter to Mr.
Creswell, 'I have consulted the Consolidated Goldfields
people, and one of the members of the board of the Village
Main Reef has consulted Messrs. Wernher, Beit and Co., and the
feeling seems to be one of fear that if a large number of
white men are employed on the Rand in the position of
labourers, the same troubles will arise as are now prevalent
in the Australian Colonies, i. e., that the combination of the
labouring classes will become so strong as to be able to more
or less dictate, not only on questions of wages, but also on
political questions, by the power of the votes when a
Representative Government is established.’
{626}
There have been other declarations of the same tenour; and,
indeed, no one who is acquainted with the views that prevail
among the circles of South African finance would seek to deny
that this dread of a second Australian democracy influencing
the political and economic future of the Rand is one of the
chief motives that direct the policy of the more far-sighted
men among those groups. …
"White labour, coupled with improved mechanical appliances,
stands established as the feasible remedy for the admitted
shortage in the number of Kaffir workers. To reject it in
favour of the introduction of Chinese is a policy which has
natural attractions for the owners of the mines. It is a
policy which should not have won the support of the
representatives of the British people."
_Herbert Samuel,
The Chinese Labour Question
(Contemporary Review, April, 1904)._
The bringing of Asiatic laborers into the mines was resisted
as strenuously in Cape Colony as by the Boer burghers and the
non-mining interests in general of the Transvaal. The leading
colony addressed a petition on the subject personally to King
Edward, saying: "Such an immigration, hampered and restricted
as it is proposed to be by stringent regulations, would, even
if it were possible to enforce such regulations, which is
doubtful, introduce a servile element, alien to the country,
destitute of rights, or interests, either in the present or
future of South Africa, and worked for the benefit of masters,
in many cases non-resident, thus constituting what would
practically be a slave state, in close contact with the other
free communities of South Africa. Your petitioners feel that
the introduction of such a class of labour would place an
obstacle in the way of the natural growth alike of European
and native elements in the population. …
"Such an importation would decide whether South Africa is in
future to constitute one of those great free communities under
the British flag, the growth of which shed so much lustre on
the reign of your august predecessor, or whether it is to be
ranked as a mere plantation worked in the interest and for the
benefit of foreign holders. Your petitioners therefore most
earnestly pray that your Majesty may be pleased to withhold
your sanction from any measure having for its object the
importation of Asiatics into South Africa, and by so doing
save them and those who may come after them from consequences
that will be fatal to their peace and prosperity."
_Parliamentary Papers, 1904
(Cd. 1895), page 133._
Mr. Chamberlain, Secretary of State for the Colonies, returned
to England in March, 1903, from a visit to South Africa, and
made an extended statement in Parliament soon afterwards of
his observations and his conclusions from what he had seen. On
the labor question, then the subject of greatest agitation in
South Africa, he stoutly supported the mine-owners in their
contention that native labor, and supplies from beyond the
Zambesi, to supplement the Kaffir supply, is a necessity of
the mining industry; that white labor is impossibly expensive,
and that the feeling against the introduction of Asiatic labor
seemed invincibly strong. There was not, he maintained, the
slightest foundation for the charge that the mine-owners
wanted forced labor or slavery in any shape or form, but that
they must have cheap labor if the mines were to be worked.
A few days later Lord Lansdowne, the Foreign Secretary,
received a deputation from various missionary societies to
protest against a proposed exportation of native labor from
Central to South Africa. In reply to them he said that the
Government had no more in view at present than an experiment
with 1000 laborers, who would be taken from British Central
Africa to the Rand District of the Transvaal and employed
there under regulations very carefully framed. If
objectionable results were found the experiment would be
carried no farther. This was followed by warm debate on the
subject in the House of Commons, where Sir William Harcourt
and others denounced the greed of the mining companies,
insisting that the mines could not pay fair wages simply
because the rich mines were over-capitalized and the low-grade
mines had been developed only for sale. Mr. Chamberlain again
championed the mine-owners, and defended the policy of the
Government, which sought, he said, to promote the general
prosperity of the country by getting as many of the mines as
possible into working order. The debate had no practical
result.
SOUTH AFRICA: A. D. 1903-1908.
Hostility to British Indian Immigration.
See (in this Volume)
RACE PROBLEMS: A. D. 1903-1908.
SOUTH AFRICA: A. D. 1904.
Census of all British South Africa.
Whites and Natives.
A general census taken in 1904 showed a total white population
in all British South Africa--south of Zambesi—of 1,135,655,
and a colored population of 5,169,338. The distribution of
this in the several colonies was as follows; Cape Colony,
580,380 white, 1,825,172 colored; the Transvaal and Swaziland,
300,225 white, 1,030,029 colored; Natal, 97,109 white,
1,011,645 colored; Rhodesia, 12,623, white, 593,141 colored;
Orange River Colony, 143,419 white, 241,626 colored;
Basutoland, 895 white, 347,953 colored; Bechuanaland, 1,004
white, 119,772 colored.
SOUTH AFRICA: A. D. 1905.
Importation of Chinese Coolies Suspended
by orders from London.
The Liberal Ministry in Great Britain, under Sir Henry
Campbell-Bannerman, which succeeded the Conservative-Unionist
Ministry of Mr. Balfour on the 10th of December, 1905, had
been seated but twelve days when a despatch was cabled by Lord
Elgin, Secretary for the Colonies, to Lord Selborne, the High
Commissioner in South Africa, that "the experiment of the
introduction of Chinese laborers should not be extended
farther until they could learn the opinion of the colony
through an elected and really representative Legislature, and
they had accordingly decided that the recruiting, embarking
and importation of Chinese coolies should be arrested pending
a decision as to the grant of responsible government to the
Colony"—that is, the Transvaal.
SOUTH AFRICA: A. D. 1905-1907.
Fulfillment by the British Government of the Promises
of the Treaty of the Vereeniging Treaty.
Representative Government restored to the Boer States.
The seventh stipulation in the Vereeniging Treaty of May 81,
1902, which ended the Boer-British War (see above, A. D.
1901-1902), contained the promise, on the part of the British
Government, that "military administration in the Transvaal and
in the Orange River Colony shall, as soon as possible, be
followed by civil government; and, as soon as circumstances
permit it, a representative system tending towards autonomy
shall be introduced."
{627}
On the 31st of March, 1905, the first step toward the
fulfillment of this pledge was taken, by the issue of letters
patent from the crown (without action of Parliament, inasmuch
as the Boer States, in the eye of the law, had been under the
suzerainty of the British sovereign, had been in revolt, had
been subjugated, and were directly subject to the crown, as
conquered territory), conferring a Constitution of Civil
Government on the Transvaal. It gave popular representation in
a legislature of a single chamber, styled the Legislative
Assembly. Not exceeding thirty-five of the members of this
body were to be elected, and from six to nine others were to
be appointed by the High Commissioner of South Africa,—in
which office Lord Milner had been succeeded of late by Lord
Selborne. Every burgher of the former Transvaal Republic not
disqualified by conviction for treason since May 31, 1902, was
to be entitled to vote in the election of representatives; and
so were all white males of British birth occupying premises at
an annual rental of not less than $50, or possessed of capital
to the value of $500. The debates in the Assembly were to be
in English—not in English or Dutch, like the English or French
of the Parliament of Canada; but there is a provision that the
Speaker may permit a member to use the Dutch language. No bill
passed by the Legislative Assembly which should subject the
natives to disabilities or restrictions could become law until
it had received the sanction of the Colonial Office in London.
This organization of a partially representative colonial
government extended only to the Transvaal. The Orange River
Colony remained still under the Crown Colony system, which had
been the status hitherto of both the Boer states since the
close of the war.
This limited realization of the promise of representative
government to the Boers was undoubtedly all that could be
expected from the Conservative Ministry in England, which went
out of power soon after it had conferred the Transvaal
Constitution. Its successors, of the British Liberal party,
soon broadened the basis of self-government in the Transvaal,
by a new constitutional instrument, which was outlined to
Parliament on the 1st of August, and issued December 6th,
1906. This made the legislature a bicameral body, having, for
the time being, an upper Council of 15 appointed members,
which, however, it was said to be the intention of the
Government to extinguish at no distant day. The elective
Assembly was to be composed of sixty-nine members, elected by
secret ballot for terms of five years. Every adult male of
twenty-one years of age who had been a resident for six
months, except members of the British garrison, was entitled
to vote. The general lines of the old Boer magisterial
districts were followed, and, on the basis of the census
figures of 1904 the Rand would have 32 members, Pretoria 6,
Krugersdorp 1, and the rest of the country 30. The
constitution prohibited Chinese contract labor, and no more
coolies could be imported into the country after November 15.
Either the English or the Dutch language could be used for
public business, and naturalization was made easy, but the
Boers’ request for woman suffrage was denied.
A Constitution framed on similar lines was given to the Orange
River Colony within the same year.
In the first elections for the Transvaal Assembly there were,
besides Socialists and labor organizations, three parties
engaged in a somewhat embittered contest. "The Progressives
are the party of the great mining houses on the Rand; the
Nationalist party is composed of British electors opposed to
the enormous political influence which the mining houses have
hitherto exercised; while the Boers at Johannesburg and
Pretoria and in the rural constituencies are organized in Het
Volk. There was a coalition between the Nationalists and Het
Volk. These two parties united against the Progressives, and
adopted as the chief plank in their platform a declaration
that the one question on which the election must turn was,
‘Who shall control the Transvaal—the people or the mining
houses?’ The Progressives on their part insisted that the
question was, ‘Shall the Transvaal be governed by the people
of the Transvaal, or from Downing Street?’ They were aggrieved
by the action of the British Government in making legislation
concerning non-European labor subject to review in London, and
in the campaign they made no attempt to conceal their
hostility to the Campbell-Bannerman Government. In this way
the question of Chinese labor was forced to the front. The
Nationalists and Het Volk coalition was successful," and
General Lotus Botha, who has been the leading spirit and
guiding mind among the Boers since the war ended, became the
Prime Minister of the Transvaal Government then organized.
It has been fortunate for the Transvaal, and no less for South
Africa at large, that so large-minded and strong a leader of
the subjugated race was found for the trying period in which
victors and vanquished were to have peace and friendship
established between them.
SOUTH AFRICA: A. D. 1906-1907.
Revolt of the Zulus in Natal.
Their Grievances.
An extensive and determined revolt of the Zulus living within
the Colony of Natal broke out late in January, 1906, as the
consequence of an attempt to collect a poll-tax levied on them
by the colonial Parliament. A police sergeant and two or three
native policemen were killed in the first melée, and from that
time until near the end of the following summer there was war.
That it was prosecuted with fierceness, if not actual
ferocity, by the whites of the Colony, is made manifest by the
fact that about 3500 Zulus are said to have been slain and
2000 taken prisoners. The principal Zulu leader, a chief named
Bambaata, was killed in a battle fought in June, and the
revolt declined from that time. Sigananda, another chief, was
condemned to death, and twelve prisoners, convicted by
court-martial of complicity in the original murder of police
officers, were executed; while thirty-eight others were
sentenced to imprisonment for two years.
A serious question between the colony and the
Imperial-Government arose in connection with these military
trials. The sentences to death, confirmed by the governor and
the Natal ministry, were about to be carried out, when Mr.
Winston Churchill, with the approval of Lord Elgin, Colonial
Secretary, cabled to the Natal premier ordering the suspension
of the execution pending an investigation by the Liberal
government, on the contention that the natives should have
been tried in a civil court.
{628}
Premier Smyth refused to obey, but the governor postponed the
executions, whereupon the Natal ministry resigned. Much
indignation was evident in England, as well as in the colony,
against what was regarded as an unwarrantable interference in
colonial affairs by the Imperial government. The matter was
concluded by Lord Elgin cabling to the governor of Natal that
the home government had no intention of interfering in
colonial matters, and that, upon the receipt of full
information, it recognized the right and competency of the
Natal ministry to decide the question at issue.
SOUTH AFRICA: A. D. 1907 (April-May).
Imperial Conference at London.
See (in this Volume)
BRITISH EMPIRE: A. D. 1907.
SOUTH AFRICA: A. D. 1908-1909.
Formation of the Legislative Union of South Africa.
The Framing of the Constitution.
Compromise on the Race Question of Franchise.
British Imperial Assent.
The Royal Proclamation of Union.
Very quickly after the placing of the Boer colonies on a
footing of political equality with their English neighbors a
fresh desire for South African Union, in which they, who had
fought to the death for its prevention only six years before,
now shared, began to be earnestly voiced. Its genesis was
explained clearly by a correspondent of the London
_Times_ of May 24, 1909, who wrote "Economic causes of a
special character assisted the process. A great wave of
commercial depression, following hard upon the golden
expectations of the peace, passed over the whole country, but
made itself specially felt in the coast colonies. Here the
situation was painful in the extreme. It was a tale of
deficit, of retrenchment, of heroic Budgets. But far beyond
the rolling hills of the Karoo and the flat tableland of the
Orange River there was a wealthy State, a State with a
surplus. The Transvaal, possessing in Johannesburg the
principal centre of opulence and the chief market for produce,
was in a position to exert economic pressure upon colonies
whose principal source of revenue was derived from the profits
upon their railways and from the sale of their goods to the
great city on the high veld. The poorer colonies lived, so to
speak, upon the custom of the Transvaal, and were unable to
ignore, however much they might dislike, their position of
dependence. A rate war or a tariff war between the Transvaal
and the coast colonies could hardly end with a victory for
Cape Town or Durban, and so by a process of reasoning which
was not always pleasantly illustrated the coast colonies came
to accommodate themselves to the view that some form of
arrangement as to railways and Customs was desirable in their
own interests. Other causes contributed to illumine and
enlarge the horizon. A Zulu rebellion in Natal brought home
the common danger to the white community from native unrest or
from mistakes made by a weak colonial Government in its native
policy; the grant of responsible government to the two
conquered Colonies tended, not only to bring the English and
Dutch leaders into habitual communion, but to give to the
progressive section of the community a pressing interest in
the construction of a Government which should be strong enough
to resist the influences of the back veld."
The first action taken to transform the desire for Union into
a movement to that end was early in May, 1908, by a convention
of officials from the several colonies, assembled at Pretoria
to negotiate a new customs agreement and to arrange
intercolonial railway rates. The railway situation was nearly,
if not quite, the most serious one that brought pressure to
bear on some of the colonies, forcing them to seek a union in
which conflicts of interest would be overcome. It was a
situation which the High Commissioner, Lord Selborne,
described briefly, in a review of the many reasons for Union
which he addressed to the Governors and Lieutenant-Governors
of the several colonies, on the 7th of January, 1907:
"Of all the questions fruitful in divergence of opinion or of
interest to the Colonies of South Africa, there is none so
pregnant with danger," he wrote, "as the railway question. It
is not an exaggeration to say that a field more thickly sown
with the seed of future quarrel and strife than the
[State-owned] railway systems of South Africa does not exist.
As long as the Governments of the five British Colonies in
South Africa are wholly separated from, and independent of,
each other, their railway interests are not only distinct but
absolutely incompatible. There is a competitive struggle
between the ports of Cape Colony and of Natal to snatch from
each other every ton of goods which can be snatched. The
Orange River Colony desires as many tons of goods as possible
to be passed to the Transvaal through its territory, but it is
to the interest of Cape Colony that no such tons of goods
should pass into the Transvaal through the Orange River
Colony. … In the same way it is to the interest of Natal to
pass the goods consigned to the Transvaal from Durban into the
Transvaal at Volksrust, and not at Vereeniging through the
Orange River Colony. Thus the interests of Cape Colony, of
Natal, and of the Orange River Colony conflict the one with
the other. But when it comes to considering the railway
interests of the Transvaal, then it will be found that the
interest of the Transvaal is diametrically opposed to the
interests of Cape Colony, of Natal, and of the Orange River
Colony. The Transvaal loses revenue on every ton of goods
which enters the Transvaal by any other route than that from
Delagoa Bay [on the Portuguese coast]. … If the [Transvaal
Government] were as indifferent to the welfare of the three
sister Colonies as every State in Europe is to the welfare of
every other State, the Transvaal would see that all the trade
to the Transvaal came exclusively through Delagoa Bay. And
what then would be the position of the railways and the
finances of the three sister Colonies and of the ports of Cape
Colony and of Natal? This divergence, this conflict of railway
interests, this cloud of future strife, would vanish like a
foul mist before the sun of South African Federation, but no
other force can dissipate it."
That a railway and customs convention should start the action
which united the colonies of South Africa happened as
logically, therefore, as the happenings which derived the
American Federal Constitutional Convention of 1787 from a
River and Harbor Convention at Annapolis in 1786.
{629}
The South African Railway convention, before adjourning,
adopted a resolution recommending the appointment of delegates
from each colony to a convention for the framing of a
Constitution of United Government. Cape Colony led off in
approving the proposal, followed within a day or two by the
Transvaal and Orange River Colony, and a week later by Natal,
where the strongest opposition was developed. The
apportionment of delegates to the Convention was, for Cape
Colony 12, for the Transvaal 8, for Orange River and Natal 5
each. On the 12th of October these delegates assembled at
Durban, in Natal, under the presidency of Sir Henry de
Villiers and were in session there until the 5th of November,
when they adjourned to meet again at Cape Town, November 23.
Their labors were not concluded until the 3d of February,
1909, when all differences had been harmonized or compromised
and a draft Constitution approved, which every delegate signed
that day.
The Constitution was officially published on the 9th of
February, with a recommendation that the several Parliaments
should meet on March 30 to consider the draft, and that the
Convention should meet again in May on a day to be fixed by
the president of the Convention and the Premiers in
consultation. The final draft to be submitted to the
Parliaments in June. Then a committee of delegates appointed
by the Governments to proceed to England to facilitate the
passing of the Act.
This programme was successfully carried through. Cape Colony
and Natal contended for certain amendments to the draft
Constitution, but the Transvaal and Orange River colonies
approved the instrument and instructed their delegates to
support it as a whole. The General Convention was reassembled
at Bloemfontein, capital of the Orange River Colony, on the 3d
of May, when it discussed the proposed amendments and agreed
to eight of them. As thus amended the draft was adopted in
June by the parliaments of each of the four colonies, and sent
with that endorsement to the Imperial Government for the seal
of Sovereign Law. It was followed by an official mission,
composed of nineteen members, who represented, as a London
journal remarked, "almost the whole of the driving power in
South African politics," including, of course, such former
antagonists as General Botha and Dr. Jameson, now shoulder to
shoulder in powerful leadership of the movement for South
African Union.
One feature of the Constitution, as framed by the four
colonies and presented for the imperial approval, was
profoundly repugnant to English feeling. It was the product of
a compromise in the colonial convention, which ran a curious
parallel to that in the American constitutional convention of
1787, which gave the Southern States a representation in
Congress for their slaves. The question of elective franchises
and legislative representation for the colored natives had
troubled the South African union-making, just as the slavery
question had troubled the American. Cape Colony had conferred
the suffrage on its qualified colored citizens, and refused to
disfranchise them; the other colonies had disfranchised all
races but the white, and refused to allow a possible election
from the Cape Colony to the Union Parliament of any other than
members of European descent. The necessary compromise which
secured the Union left the Cape franchise undisturbed for the
present, but exposed to a future chance of being overruled;
and it barred all but European humanity from both houses of
the general Parliament.
This compromise was opposed with unyielding resolution by a
strong party in Cape Colony, led by two former premiers, Mr.
W. P. Schreiner and Sir J. Gordon Sprigg. Mr. Schreiner went
to England to appeal there to the Imperial Parliament against
the sanctioning of these provisions of the proposed
Constitution.
Mr. Schreiner found in Great Britain almost universal sympathy
with the feeling that he represented. In Parliament and out,
it was expressed by all parties; but there went with it a
prevailing opinion that the matter in question and the
attending circumstances were such that the Imperial Parliament
ought not to refuse assent to the action of the colonies. The
Prime Minister, Mr. Asquith, set forth the reasoning to this
conclusion very clearly and concisely, when, on the 19th of
August, he moved, in the House of Commons, the third reading
of the South Africa Bill. "I wish," he said, "in submitting
this motion to the House, to take the opportunity of putting
on record the fact that this Bill, consisting of over 150
clauses and a very complicated schedule, has, after the most
careful consideration by this House, been passed without
amendment. It would, however, be a totally false impression
were it suggested that as regards all provisions of this Bill
there is unanimity of opinion in the House. In particular as
regards some of the clauses which deal with the treatment of
natives—the access of native members to the Legislature—as
everybody who has followed the debate can see, there is not
only no difference of opinion, but absolute unanimity in the
way of regret that those particular provisions should have
been inserted in the Bill. I wish before the Bill leaves the
Imperial Parliament to make it perfectly clear that we here
have exercised, and I think wisely and legitimately exercised,
not only restraint of expression, but reserve of judgment in
regard to matters of this kind, simply because we desire that
this great experiment of establishing free self-government in
South Africa should start on the lines and in accordance with
the ideas of our fellow-citizens there which they have
deliberately and after long consideration come to.
"It is perfectly true that the Imperial Government cannot
divest itself of responsibility in this matter. We do not do
so. I think that if we have yielded, as we have, on points of
detail—on some points on which many of us feel very
strongly—to the considered and deliberate judgment of South
Africa, it has been because we thought it undesirable at this,
the last, stage in the completion of an almost unprecedentedly
difficult task to put forward anything that could be an
obstacle to the successful working of the Bill. Speaking for
myself and the Government, I venture to express not only the
hope, but the expectation, that in some of these matters that
have been discussed in this House, both on the second reading
and in the Committee stage, the views which have been so
strongly expressed, and practically without any dissent, will
be sympathetically considered by our fellow-citizens in South
Africa.
{630}
For my part I think, as I have said throughout, that it would
be far better that any relaxations of what almost all of us
regard as unnecessary restrictions upon the electoral rights
and eligibility of our native fellow-subjects there should be
carried out spontaneously and on the initiative of the South
African Parliament rather than that it should appear to be
forced on them by the Imperial Parliament here."
The Bill had already passed the House of Lords. It received
the royal approval on the 20th of September; and, on the 2d of
December, the Union of South Africa was proclaimed, to be of
effect on and after the 31st of May, 1910.
Soon after the passage of the Bill, announcement was made that
the Prince of Wales would visit South Africa to open the Union
Parliament, as he had done on the opening of the Parliament of
the Australian Commonwealth, in 1901.
In December it was made known that the Right Honourable
Herbert Gladstone would be the first Governor-General of
United South Africa.
For the text of the South African Constitution:
See (in this Volume)
CONSTITUTION OF THE UNION OF SOUTH AFRICA.
SOUTH AFRICA: A. D. 1909.
The Native Protectorates.
Their Condition and Circumstances on the Eve of
the Inauguration of the Union of South Africa.
"It should not be forgotten that the protectorates are in
being to-day not because this particular arrangement of
protection was economically necessary or inevitable, nor even
because the general relationship of the native tribes of South
Africa made it the best that could be devised. The fact is
that they came into existence at different times and as
definite and probably expedient results of various fortuitous
crises in a chaotic native political history, which is at
least characteristic of South Africa. …
"To-day the protectorates are to a considerable degree
isolated native communities, so far at any rate as they are
concerned with any possible united feeling among the other
native tribes of South Africa. They are carefully guarded by
their responsible officials from interference and possible
harm from outside their own territories—that is from taking
any considerable interest or partnership in the real or
fancied troubles of neighbouring states. They are in a
sense—and more than a political sense—inside a ring fence.
"As regards the relationship between the native inhabitants
and the white settlers of the several protectorates, there are
no striking points of difference. In Basutoland no land is
held under white ownership. Such white residents as there are,
apart from officials and missionaries, are there as traders
and storekeepers. No land rights have been alienated to white
men. In the Bechuanaland Protectorate certain areas are held
by white men, but at the same time very large areas are
reserved entirely for native uses. In Swaziland the
relationship was, until a few months ago, upon a very
different basis—a position surely unique in the history of the
British colonial possessions. I have not space to describe
even briefly the extraordinary intricacy of the concessions
troubles or the heroic measures found necessary to effect a
settlement at once just to the concessionaire and the native.
It must be sufficient to say that today about half the area of
the country is held in white ownership, while rather more than
one-third is reserved for the exclusive use and benefit of the
natives. In Zululand certain areas of land are held by whites,
but the bulk of land is held in native possession. In each
case, however, it is not probable that any more land will be
alienated for purposes of sale or settlement by whites. It may
be accepted without doubt, I think, that the natives will
retain in perpetuity the land they hold at present. It will be
seen that the material interests of the natives, at any rate
as regards land, have been well guarded in the three
protectorates."
_R. T. Coryndon,
The Position of the Native Protectorates
(The State, South Africa, September, 1909)._
SOUTH AFRICA: A. D. 1909.
Introduction of Proportional Representation.
See (in this Volume)
ELECTIVE FRANCHISE: SOUTH AFRICA.
SOUTH AFRICA: A. D. 1909.
Native Labor Supplanting the Chinese.
See (in this Volume)
RACE PROBLEMS: SOUTH AFRICA. A. D. 1909.
----------SOUTH AFRICA: End--------
SOUTH AMERICAN REPUBLICS.
See (in this Volume)
American Republics.
SOUTH CAROLINA, and Interstate and West Indian Exposition.
See (in this Volume)
CHARLESTON: A. D. 1901.
SPAIN: A. D. 1870-1905.
Increase of Population compared with other European Countries.
See (in this Volume)
EUROPE: A. D. 1870-1905.
SPAIN: A. D. 1898-1906.
Gains from the Loss of Cuba and the Philippines.
Growth of Close Relations with the Spanish-American States.
"In many a war it has been the vanquished, not the victor, who
has carried off the finest spoils. Cuba and the Philippines
have been like a tumor in the side of Spain, dragging her down
in the race of civilization. They have drained her life-blood
and disturbed all her national activities. Only a serious
surgical operation could remove this exhausting excrescence;
and Spaniards themselves have been the first to recognize that
the operation, though painful, was in the highest degree
beneficial. Not even the most Quixotic of Spaniards dreams of
regaining these lost possessions. The war has been beneficial
in at least two different ways. It has had a healthy economic
influence, because, besides directing the manhood of Spain
into sober industrial channels, it has led to the removal of
artificial restrictions in the path of commercial activity. It
has been advantageous morally, because it has forced even the
most narrow and ignorant Spaniard to face the actual facts of
the modern world.
"The war has had a further result in leading to a movement,
for a closer sympathy between Spain and the Spanish states of
South America. The attitude of these states towards the mother
country has hitherto been somewhat unsympathetic; they have
regarded her as hopelessly opposed to all reform; the
hostility of Spain to the aspirations of Cuba and their own
earlier struggles for freedom amply accounted for such an
attitude. Now there is nothing to stand in the way of a
movement towards approximation which has already begun to
manifest itself, and may ultimately possess a serious
significance."
_Havelock Ellis,
The Spirit of Present-Day Spain
(Atlantic Monthly, December, 1900)._
{631}
"Thoughtful Spaniards will tell you that a change has come
over their country with the close of last century, and that
this change has been developing since the accession of their
young King. The starting-point of this evolution in national
life was the close of the short struggle with the United
States and the loss of what remained of their colonial empire.
That turning-point in the modern annals of Spain caused a deep
impression in the minds, not only of the governing classes of
the country, but of the hard-working middle classes and of the
masses themselves. … Almost immediately after conclusion of
the peace treaty, first a few and then more and more Spaniards
dared to speak out what at heart they felt, however sore and
resentful—namely, that foreign and colonial foes had rendered
Spain a service by ridding her of the colonies that hampered
her revival in Europe and in fields of action and enterprise
nearer home. This feeling spread widely among the masses and
middle classes when they perceived the first-fruits of the
concentration of the resources and energies of the nation in
Spain between 1899 and 1905. Much capital had flowed back from
the former colonies, especially from Cuba and the Philippines,
and promoted a rapid increase in enterprises of every
kind—banks, financial establishments, mines, industries,
syndicates, trusts, shipping-interests that, developing,
perhaps, too rapidly, were led to overproduction, and thus
gave rise to local crises at Bilbao, Barcelona, Santander,
Cadiz, Malaga. The rebound of the last year of the nineteenth
century and of the first few years of the twentieth was a
consequence also of the recovery of Spanish credit, effected
by a vigorous reorganization of Spanish finance and budgets by
the late Señor Villaverde, and by the gallant resolution with
which Governments and Parliaments, backed by the press and
public opinion, undertook to honor both the domestic
engagements of Spain herself, and the engagements that
resulted from saddling her treasury and budget with the debts
of Cuba and the Philippines, and with the cost of the last and
previous civil wars in the lost colonies. The restoration of
Spain’s credit abroad and at home, the successful levelling of
her budgets with a surplus revenue annually of several
millions of dollars since 1900, dispelled the fears of her
native capitalists; and they too, large and small, came
forward to invest in mines, banks, companies and railways."
_World-Politics
(North American Review, November, 1905)._
SPAIN: A. D. 1901-1904.
Four Years of Political Shuffling in the Government.
End of the Queen Dowager Regency.
Coronation of the Young King, Alfonso XIII.
Death of Sagasta.
A New Ministry, of Liberals, was formed in March, 1901, with
the veteran leader, Praxedes Mateo Sagasta, at its head; but
the military party was represented in the Government by
General Weyler, as Secretary for War. Measures undertaken by
the Government against unauthorized religious orders, to bring
them under surveillance, gave rise to anti-clerical
disturbances in some parts of the Kingdom, and were defiantly
opposed by the Church. Legislative elections held in June gave
the Government 280 seats, leaving but 70 to the Opposition;
but any party controlling the conduct of elections in Spain
was said to be able to secure whatever majority it desired.
The general condition of confusion and disturbance was
continued in 1902, and constant recourse was had, in one
region or another, to declarations of a "state of siege,"
involving martial law. General Weyler fought a battle of a
week’s duration in February at Barcelona, with rioting
consequent on a general strike.
See (in this Volume)
LABOR ORGANIZATION: SPAIN.
On the 17th of May, his sixteenth birthday, Alfonso XIII.,
whose father, Alfonso XII., died before he was born, and who,
consequently, had been, nominally and constitutionally, King
of Spain since his birth, entered on the actual exercise of
royal functions. He was crowned that day, and the regency of
his mother came to an end. The coronation ceremonies were
splendid; the oath taken by the young King was very simple: "I
swear by God upon the Holy Bible to maintain the constitution
and laws. If so I do, may God regard me; if I do not, may he
call me to account." There is reason to believe that he took
this oath with a serious sense of the responsibilities he
assumed; but influences at Court, military, clerical, and
otherwise reactionary, were stronger than the influence of his
constitutional advisers for a few years, and the political
distractions of the time were increased. The attempted action
of Government against unauthorized religious orders ended in a
compromise which gave authorization to every order demanding
it.
On the 3d of December, 1902, Sagasta and his Cabinet resigned,
and a Conservative Ministry, under Señor Silvela, was formed.
On the 5th of January following Sagasta died. The liberalism
he represented had no substantial unity left, nor were the
opposing groups in a condition to give more consistency or
strength to the Government. A new Ministry under Senor
Villaverde succeeded that of Silvela in May, and was succeeded
in turn by another in December, with Señor Maura at its head.
Premier Maura, formerly of Sagasta’s party, but latterly more
Conservative, held the reins for a full year, escaping two
attempted assassinations in 1904, and giving place to General
Azcarraga on the 14th of December in that year. The General
was less fortunate, for he enjoyed the honors of the prime
ministry but six weeks.
SPAIN: A. D. 1903.
Agreement for Settlement of Claims against Venezuela.
See (in this Volume)
VENEZUELA: A. D. 1902-1904.
SPAIN: A. D. 1904 (April).
Declarations of England and France touching Spanish
interests in Morocco.
See (in this Volume)
EUROPE: A. D. 1904 (APRIL).
SPAIN: A. D. 1905-1906.
Unsatisfactory State of the Kingdom.
Rapid Succession of Changes in the Government.
Disorders in Catalonia.
The King’s Marriage.
Attempted Assassination of the King.
Proposed Anti-Clerical Law, which came to naught.
In the character of its political parties, in the condition of
its finances and in the general circumstances of the country,
Spain appeared to be in an increasingly unsatisfactory state.
Four changes of Ministry occurred within the year 1905, and no
Government was found able to project any policy that promised
permanency and definiteness of line.
{632}
Don Ramon Villaverde succeeded General Azcarraga as Premier in
January, and was succeeded in the following June by Don E.
Montero Rios, who had Don Jose Echegaray, the eminent poet,
dramatist, novelist, and banker, for his Minister of Finance.
In turn, Señor Montero Rios, after a reconstruction of his
Cabinet in October with the help of the King, gave way at the
end of November to Señor Moret. The Azcarraga and Villaverde
Ministries had been Conservative; those of Montero Rios and
Moret were of the Liberal type. The Parliament, which should
have been convened early in the year, but was not called
together until the middle of June, contained no majority which
any Ministry could trust, and all the leaders in Spanish
politics were afraid of it. Fresh elections in September gave
the Montero Rios Ministry a decided majority; but it had
quarrels within itself, and threatening disorders had arisen
in many parts of the country, especially in half-rebellious
Catalonia, which it seems to have lacked courage to face. An
arrogant, insubordinate temper had been developed among the
officers of the army, who disputed the supremacy of civil over
military authority; and in many ways the conditions in the
kingdom gave cause for grave anxiety to thoughtful minds.
Not much, if any, quieting of the disturbed conditions in
Spain came during the next year. The Government stooped to a
compromise with the insolent military faction, so far as to
allow press offenses against officers of the army to be dealt
with by courts-martial. On the 31st of May, 1906, King Alfonso
was married to the English Princess Ena of Battenberg, who
previously entered the Roman Catholic Church, much to the
disturbance of Protestant feeling in England. The wedding
festivities at Madrid were nearly made tragical by an
anarchist attempt to kill the royal pair. As they returned
from the marriage ceremony to the palace a wretch named Matteo
Morales threw a bomb into the midst of the procession of
carriages, killing a number of attendant people, but missing
those for whom it was intended. The coolness and readiness of
mind shown by the young king, and by his bride, excited
general admiration, and indicated a strength of character that
augured well for Spain.
In July the Moret Ministry found it expedient to resign, and
the administration of Government passed to a new Cabinet,
under Captain-General Lopez Dominguez. Then a strange change
of attitude toward the Church of Rome was given for a brief
time to the Spanish Government, as though it had caught the
temper of France. There had been signs of a disposition toward
some independence of secular policy a few years before, when
the strenuous opposition of the Church failed to prevent the
passage of a Spanish law which authorized civil marriage
between persons legally qualified, whatever their creed might
be. The Church continued its hostility to this law until it
succeeded, in 1900, in securing an amendment which restricted
the right of civil marriage to parties one of whom should not
be a Catholic. Public opinion does not seem to have approved
that concession, and the original provisions of the law were
now restored. This drew on the Government a fierce clerical
attack; in the face of which it brought forward, in October, a
project of law which seems to have been modelled very closely
on that French Associations Law, of 1901, by which all
religious orders, along with other associations, were brought
under surveillance and regulation by the State.
See in Volume VI. of this work,
FRANCE: A. D. 1901,
and, in this Volume,
FRANCE: A. D. 1903.
This Spanish measure proposed to allow no religious order to
be established in the kingdom without parliamentary
authorization. It would empower the Government to withdraw the
authorization of any order or association that it found
dangerous to public tranquility or morals; it would permit any
member of an order to renounce his or her vows; it would
dissolve any order whose members were foreigners or whose
directors lived abroad; it would command monasteries and
convents to open their doors to representatives of the proper
civil authority at any time; it would limit the property held
by religious orders to the need of the objects for which they
were instituted and put a limit on the gifts and bequests they
could receive.
This seemed an extraordinary measure to come even under
discussion in Spain. Some of the Liberal leaders were prompt
in declaring opposition to it, and its passage through the
Cortes was probably impossible; but it came to no vote. Debate
on it, opened on the 27th of November, was brought soon to an
abrupt and not well-explained end. The Prime Minister resigned
suddenly, in consequence of alleged intrigues; Señor Moret,
recalled to office, was forced to retire again almost at once;
a new Ministry was formed by the Marquis Vega de Armijo, and
nothing more appears to have been heard of the proposed
Associations Law.
SPAIN: A. D. 1906.
At the Algeciras Conference on the Morocco question.
See (in this Volume)
EUROPE: A. D. 1905-1906.
SPAIN: A. D. 1907.
Franco-Spanish Bombardment of Casablanca.
See (in this Volume)
MOROCCO: A. D. 1907-1909.
SPAIN: A. D. 1907-1909.
The Maura Conservative Ministry.
Unpopularity of the War in Morocco.
Insurgency in Barcelona.
The Ferrer Case.
The Moret Ministry.
Municipal Reform.
Present Parties.
The Ministry of Marquis Armijo de la Vega held the Government
little more than a month, giving way to Señor Maura and his
party, who returned to power in January, 1907. Five changes of
administration had occurred within a year and a half.
Elections in April yielded the Government a majority, and the
birth of an heir to the throne on the 10th of May gave much
satisfaction to the country. The Liberals, however, were so
indignant at the manipulation of the elections to the lower
chamber that, on the advice of their leader, Señor Moret, they
took no part in the senatorial elections which followed, later
in May; and this proved singularly embarrassing to the
Government. Bomb explosions and other anarchist outrages,
centering in Barcelona, but not confined to that turbulent
city, were being dreadfully increased, and a ministerial Bill
was brought before the Cortes in January, 1908, providing
measures of suppression so drastic, especially in its dealing
with the Press, that a most formidable opposition was stirred
up. The Government stood stoutly by the Bill for months, until
its control of the Cortes was shaken by the coalition that
took form against it.
{633}
In the end it withdrew the Anarchist Bill, but raised another
obstinate and threatening storm by the proposal of a Local
Administration Bill, quite startlingly revolutionary in its
plans for giving more independence to municipalities and
provincial councils. Contest over this Bill went on till early
in February, 1909, when Premier Maura came to an understanding
with Señor Moret, leader of one of the Liberal groups, which
enabled a part of the extensive measure, relating to
municipalities, to be passed. Among other things, this new
enactment made voting in the municipalities compulsory, and
elections held since are reported to have shown a heavy
increase of vote, proving effectiveness in the law. The other
section of the Bill, dealing with provincial councils, was
held over for subsequent action in the Cortes, and had not
been disposed of when Premier Maura and his Cabinet were
driven to resign, in October, 1909.