JOHANNESBURG.
It is a delicate matter to indulge in platitudes about a city. For a
city is an organism more self-conscious than a state, and a personality
less robust than an individual. Comments which, if made on a nation,
would be ignored, and on an individual would be tolerated, awaken angry
reprisals when directed to a municipal area. The business is still more
delicate when the city concerned is not yet quite sure of herself.
Johannesburg is a city, though she has no cathedral to support the
conventional definition, or royal warrant to give her dignitaries
precedence; but she is a city still on trial, sensitive, ambitious,
profoundly ignorant of her own mind. Her past has been short and
checkered. She has done many things badly and many things well; she has
been the target for universal abuse, and still with one political party
fills the honourable post of whipping-boy in chief to the Empire. Small
wonder if her people are a little dazed--proud of themselves, hopeful
of her future, but far from clear what this future is to be.
At first sight she has nothing to commend her. The traveller who drags
his stiff limbs from the Cape mail sees before him a dusty road, some
tin-roofed shanties, with a few large new jerry buildings humped
above them: a number of straggling dusty pines and gums, a bit of bare
hillside in the distance, and a few attenuated mine chimneys.
Everything is new, raw, and fortuitous, as uncivilised and certainly
as ugly as the desert ridge on which an old Bezuidenhout planted his
homestead. The chief streets do not efface the first impression. Some
buildings are good, but the general effect is mean. The place looks as
if it had sprung up, like some Western township, in a night, and as if
the original builders had been in such a desperate hurry to get done
with it that they could not stop to see that one house kept line with
its neighbours. It is a common South African defect, but there is here
no _mise-en-scene_ to relieve the ugliness. Looking at Pretoria from
the hills one sees a forest of trees, with white towers and walls
rising above the green. The walls may be lath and plaster, but the
general effect is as pretty as the eye could wish. For Johannesburg
there is no such salvation. Looked at from one of her many hills, the
meanness and irregularity are painfully clear. She has far more trees
than Pretoria, but she is so long and sprawling that the bare ribs
have pushed aside their covering. An extended brickfield is the first
impression: a prosperous powder-factory is the last.
Yet in her way she has many singular beauties. Doubtless in time to
come she will be so great that she will contain more cities than one
in her precincts, and there may well be a residential quarter as fine
as any in Europe. The Rand is a long shallow basin with hilly rims,
within which lie the mines and the working city. The southern rim
shelves away into featureless veld, but the northern sinks sharply on
a plain, across forty miles of which rise the gaunt lines of the
Magaliesberg. What fashionable suburb has a vista of forty miles of
wild country, with a mountain wall on the horizon? Below on the flats
there are many miles of pine woods, valleys and streams and homesteads,
and the Pretoria road making a bold trail over a hill. In winter the
horizon is lit with veld-fires; in summer and spring there are the wild
sunsets of the veld and soft mulberry gloamings. The slope behind shuts
out the town and the mine chimneys, and yet the whole place is not
three miles from Market Square. Whatever happens, nothing can harm the
lucky dwellers on the ridge. Though the city creep ten miles into the
plain beneath, there is still ample prospect; and not all the fumes
from all the industries on earth can spoil the sharp vigour of the
winds blowing clean from the wilds.
But the place has not yet found itself. The city proper is still for
the future; for the present we have a people. What the real conception,
current in England, of this people may be it is not easy to tell, the
whole matter having been transferred to party politics, and presented,
plain or coloured, to partisan spectators. So we are given every
possible picture, from that of Semitic adventurers nourishing the fires
of life on champagne, to that of a respectable and thoroughly
domesticated people, morbidly awake to every sentiment of Empire.
"Judasburg," "the New Jerusalem," "the Golden City," and a variety of
other pet names, show that to the ordinary man, both in and out of
parties, there is something bizarre and exotic about the place. And yet
no conception could be more radically false. Johannesburg is first and
foremost a colonial city, an ordinary colonial city save for certain
qualities to be specified later. You will see more Jews in it than in
Montreal or Aberdeen, but not more than in Paris; and any smart London
restaurant will show as large a Semitic proportion as a Johannesburg
club. For a "Golden City" it is not even conspicuously vulgar. For one
fellow in large checks, diamonds, and a pink satin tie, you will meet
fifty quietly dressed, well-mannered gentlemen. A man may still be a
beggar to-day and rich to-morrow, but less commonly and in a different
sense. The old mining-camp, California-cum-Ballarat character of the
gold industry on the Rand has utterly passed away. Gold-mining has
ceased to be a speculation, and has become a vast and complicated
industry, employing at high salaries the first engineering talent of
the world. The prominent mine-owner is frequently a man of education,
almost invariably a man of high ability. In few places can you find men
of such mental vigour, so eagerly receptive of new ideas, so keenly
awake to every change of the financial and political worlds of Europe.
The blackguard alien exists, to be sure, but he is rarely felt, and the
hand of the law is heavy upon him. That Johannesburg is made up wholly
of adventurers and Whitechapel Jews is the first piece of cant to clear
the mind of.
The second is the old slander that the people think of nothing but the
market, are cowardly and selfish, indifferent to patriotism and
honour. It says little for Englishmen that they could believe this
falsehood of a place where the greater part of the inhabitants are
English. The war meant dismal sufferings for the artisan class, who
had to live in expensive coast lodgings or comfortless camps; and it
is to the credit of Johannesburg that she stood nobly by her refugees.
The old Reform movement was not a fortunate enterprise, but there was
no lack of courage in it; and even those who may grudge the attribute
can scarcely deny it to the same men at Elandslaagte and Ladysmith.
There have been various sorts of irregular regiments--many good, some
bad, one or two the very scum of the earth; but no irregular soldiers
showed, from first to last, a more cool and persistent courage than
the men who for years had sought to achieve by persuasion an end which
required a more summary argument. The truth is that the Johannesburger
has suffered by being contrasted, as the typical townsman, with the
Boer, as the typical countryman. Dislike the particular countryman as
we may, we have at the back of our minds a feeling that somehow, in
George Eliot's phrase, an unintelligible dialect is a guarantee for
ingenuousness, and that slouching shoulders indicate an upright
disposition. It is Johannesburg's misfortune that this anomalous
contrast should be forced on us. It is as if a sixteenth-century
peasant, without enterprise, without culture, wholly un-modern and
un-political, believing stoutly in a sombre God, were living side by
side with a race of _intellectuels_, scientists, and successful
merchants. Whatever reason or, as in this case, patriotism may say,
most men have a sneaking fondness for the peasant.
In every community which is worth consideration we find two forces
present in some degree--the force of social persistence and the force
of social movement. Critics of Johannesburg would have us believe that
the second only is to be found, and in its crudest form: the truth is
that, considering the history of the place and its novelty, the first
is remarkably strong. The point is worth labouring at the risk of
tediousness. It must be some little while before a mining city shakes
off the character of a mining camp. Men will long choose to live
uncomfortably in hotels and boarding-houses, looking for their reward
on their home-coming, discomfort none the less unpleasant because it
is tempered with unmeaning luxury. To its inhabitants the place is no
continuing city,--only a camp for the adventurer, who, when he has
made the most of it, returns to enjoy the fruits of his labour in his
own place. And then, after many years, there suddenly comes a day when
a man here and a man there realise that they have lost the desire to
return: they like the place, settle down, and found a home. Whenever
there is any fair proportion of this class in a mining city, then we
have a force of social persistence. The tendency is found in every
class of society. At one time the miner from Wales or Cornwall saved
his earnings and returned home; now he has his wife out and settles
for good. There is also a large commercial class, traders and small
manufacturers, who belong as thoroughly to the place as the South
African born. And with the more educated classes the same thing is
true. The price of building sites in the suburbs and the many pretty
houses which have arisen show that even for this class, which was most
nomadic in its habits, domesticity has become a fact.
This, then, is the cardinal achievement of Johannesburg, an unparalleled
achievement in so short a career. She has in a few years changed
herself from a camp to a city, acquired a middle class and a decent
artisan class,--both slow and difficult growths,--and shown a knack of
absorbing any species of alien immigrant and putting them on the way
to respectable citizenship. She has but to point to this solid
achievement as a final answer to the foolish calumnies of her enemies.
The mines are her staple industry, but the mines, so far as she is
concerned, are an industry and not a speculation; and she is creating
a dozen other industries of quite a different character, and may well
create a hundred more. She has become a municipality, with all the
traits, good and bad, of a nourishing municipality at home. She has
become colonial, too,--as colonial, though in a different way, as
Melbourne or Wellington. Formerly she was a mixture of every European
capital plus a little of the Dutch dorp: now she is English in
essence, the most English of all South African towns.
The future of the chief municipality of South Africa cannot be without
interest, for most problems will concern her first, and receive from
her their colour and character, and, possibly, their answer. She must
continue to represent one of the two foremost interests, and though it
is idle to distinguish political interests by their importance when
both are vital, yet we can admit that Johannesburg has for the moment
more obvious difficulties in her problems, and that her answer will be
more stormily contested. So far her development has been continuous.
The difficulties which she met with from the Kruger _regime_ were a
blessing in disguise, being of the kind to put her on her mettle. But
the present stage in her history is more critical. Formerly the
question was whether she was to remain a foreign cesspool or rise to
the status of an English city. Now it is whether she will go the way
of many colonial cities, and become vigorous, dogmatic, proud,
remotely English in sentiment, consistently material in her outlook,
and narrow with the intense narrowness of those to whom politics mean
local interests spiced with rhetoric; or, as she is already richer,
more enlightened, and more famous than her older sisters, will advance
on a higher plane, and become in the true sense an imperial city, with
a closer kinship and a more liberal culture. The question is a subtle
and delicate one, as all questions of spiritual development must be. A
year ago much depended on the attitude of England. Johannesburg had
suffered heavily in the war. Time and patience were needed to repair
the breaches in her fortunes, and to permit her to advance, as she
must advance, if the Transvaal is to become a nation. She was rightly
jealous of her reputation and future prosperity. If taxation was to be
crudely imposed, if her just complaints were to be met with the old
nonsense about a capitalists' war, if she was to be penalised for her
most creditable industry, then there was a good prospect of a serious
estrangement. There was no issue on the facts. She never denied her
liability, and she was willing to pay cheerfully if a little common
tact were shown in the handling. A man who may have his hand in his
pocket to repay a debt will withdraw it if his creditor tries to
collect the money with a bludgeon. Happily the crisis has passed. A
scheme of war contribution was arranged which, while still bearing
heavily, almost too heavily, on the country in its present transition
stage, is yet a small sum if contrasted with the lowest estimate of
her assets. But much still depends on the attitude of England. A
little sympathy, a little friendliness, a modest diminution of
newspaper taunts, some indication that the home country sees and
appreciates the difficulties of its daughter, and is content to trust
her judgment: it is not much to ask, but its refusal will never be
forgotten or forgiven. For Johannesburg in this connection represents
the country on its most sensitive side, and acts as a barometer of
national feeling.
In this imperfect world there can be no development without attendant
disorders. A dead body is never troublesome, but a growing child is
prone to exasperate. A young city which is perfectly reasonable and
docile deserves to be regarded with deep mistrust, for it is likely to
continue in a kind of youthful sensibility till it disappears.
Ferment is a sign of life, and the very crudeness of the ideals which
cause the ferment is a hopeful proof of vigour. Municipalities since
the beginning of time have been the home of aspirations after
self-government, however ill-suited they may have been to rule
themselves. At this moment the Transvaal is a Crown colony, which is
to say that a mode of government devised for subject races is being
applied for a time to a free and restless British population. The
justification is complete, but we need not be shocked when we find
Johannesburg chafing at her fetters. The less so when we reflect that
in one aspect she is a colonial city, full of the exaggerated
independence of the self-made. The fastidiousness which comes from
culture and tradition, the humour which springs from unshaken
confidence, must necessarily be absent in a municipality which is
still diffident, still largely uneducated. Politics must begin with
the _schwaermerisch_ and the vapid,--"that vague barren pathos, that
useless effervescence of enthusiasm, which plunges with the spirit of
a martyr into an ocean of generalities." Embryo cities are drunk with
words, with half-formed aspirations and vague ideals; wherefore the
result must be sound and fury and little meaning till by painful stages
they find themselves and see things as they are. So far this unrest has
taken two forms--a continuous and somewhat unintelligent criticism of
the Administration, and an attempt by means of numerous associations to
give voice to popular demands in the absence of representative
institutions; and the beginnings of a labour party. The first is as
natural as day and night. Many grave matters, chiefly financial, are
being decided above Johannesburg's head, and it is reasonable that she
should wish to state her own case. This is her strong point: the
weakness of her position is that it is also a criticism of a
reconstruction which is still in process, still in that stage when the
facts are far more clearly perceived by the man on the watch-tower than
by the crowd in the streets below. A pawn in a game is not the best
authority on the moves which lead to success. Patience may be a
distasteful counsel, but why should she disquiet herself when all
things in the end must be in her hands? "The people," to paraphrase a
saying of Heine, "have time enough, they are immortal; administrators
only must pass away." But we cannot complain of this critical activity,
however misplaced. It is a sign of life, and is itself the beginnings
of political education. The second form of agitation is less reasonable
and more dangerous, though perhaps less dangerous here than anywhere
else in the world. There must exist on the Rand, in mines, railways,
and subsidiary industries, a large white industrial population; and the
imported agitator will endeavour to organise it in accordance with his
interests. There is little theoretical justification for the movement.
There are no castes and tyrannies to fight against in a country which
is so new and self-created. The great financial houses will not develop
into Trusts on the American model; and even if they did, the result
would have small effect on the working man, either as labourer or
consumer. There are dozens of false pretexts. The working man of the
Rand may try, as he has tried in Australia, to stereotype his monopoly
and prevent the influx of new labour; or he may use the necessary
discomforts of a transition stage as a lever to raise his wages; or the
idle and incompetent may grumble vaguely against a capitalism which has
been built up by their abler brothers. The pretexts are light as air.
He lives in a free society, and within limits can secure his comfort
and independence beyond a chance of encroachment. But unhappily it does
not require a justification in reason to bring the labour agitator into
being. That type, so well known in Australia, has already appeared, the
unreasoning obstructionist, who, armed with a few platitudes and an
entire absence of foresight, preaches his crude gospel to a class which
is already vaguely unsettled by the intricacies of the economic
problem. There is almost certain to be an attempt to organise labour on
Australian lines, and to create a party like the Sand Lot agitators in
San Francisco, in order to do violence to the true economic interests
of the land on behalf of a prejudice or a theory. Yet I cannot think
that there is more in the prospect than a temporary inconvenience. No
labour party can be really formidable unless it is based on profound
discontents and radical grievances; and the annoyances of the
Johannesburg proletariat are, as compared with those of Europe, like
crumpled rose-leaves to thorns. There is too strong a force of social
persistence in the city to suffer it ever to become the prey of a
well-organised gang of revolutionaries; and if such a force exists, the
experience of Victoria in its great railway strike of 1903 would seem
to show that in the long-run no labour war can succeed which tends to a
wholesale disorganisation of social and industrial life.
But if Johannesburg shows a certain unrest, she also reveals a
curious solidarity--the strength of narrowness and exclusion, which is
partly natural and due to the struggle for self-conscious existence,
and partly accidental and based on a profound disappointment. Her
citizens believed that the end of the war would begin a golden age of
unprecedented prosperity. Money was to flow into her coffers, her
population to grow by many thousands each year, and she herself was to
stand out before an envious world as a type of virtue rewarded. She
miscalculated the future, and the facts left her aghast. Conservative
estimates, a few years back, put the value of the gold output in 1902
at between 20 and 30 millions: the actual figures during the first
year of peace show little over 10 millions--a reduction on the output
of 1898. Hence the almost hysterical concentration of interest on the
one great industry. Men who in other matters are remarkable for their
breadth of view, are to be found declaring that everything must be
made subordinate to mining development,--not in the sense in which the
saying is true, that the prosperity of the country depends in the
first instance on the mines, but in the quite indefensible sense that
any consideration of other things, even when there is no conflict
between them and the mining interest, is a misapplication of energy
which should go to the greater problem. It is fair to argue against a
programme of public works which might draw native labour from the
mines, because, unless we cherish the goose, there will be no golden
eggs to pay for our programmes. But to condemn schemes of settlement
which are no more a hindrance to the gold industry than to the
planetary system, is to show a nervous blindness to graver questions,
which is the ugliest product of the present strain and confusion. This
trait, however, cannot be permanent; and we may look to see the gold
industry in time, when its own crisis is past, become that enlightened
force in politics which the ability of its leaders and the weight of
its organisation entitle it to be. For the other form of narrowness,
which consists in the limitation of citizenship, there is ample
justification in present circumstances. A new city must begin by
drawing in her skirts and showing herself, perhaps unwarrantably,
jealous and sensitive. More especially a city which has hitherto been
rather a fortuitous gathering of races than a compact community, is
right in straining after such compactness, even at the cost of a
little injustice. The only danger lies in the perpetuation of this
attitude when its justification has gone.
The fault of Johannesburg, to sum up, lies for the moment in a
certain narrow hardness of view: her hope is in the possession of
rich elements unknown in most new cities; while her greatest danger
lies in the fact that she cannot yet honestly claim those elements as
her own. She is apt to judge a question from a lower point of view
than the question demands--to take up a parochial standpoint in
municipal affairs, a municipal standpoint in national affairs, a
national standpoint in imperial questions. In spite of her many
splendid loyalties, she will find it hard to avoid the assertive
_contra mundum_ attitude which seems inseparable from flourishing
colonial cities--a dogmatism natural, but unfortunate. On the other
hand, her history and her present status give her a chance beyond
other new cities. She starts on her civic career already rich,
enterprising, the magnet for the first scientific talent of the world.
A fortunate development might give her a cultivated class, true
political instincts, and the self-restraint which springs from a high
civilisation, without at the same time impairing that energy which she
owes to her colonial parentage. The danger is that her ablest element
may continue alien, treating the city as a caravanserai, and returning
to Europe as soon as its ambition is satisfied. So far the intellect
has not been with the men who have made the place their home, but,
subject to a few remarkable exceptions, with the men who have never
concealed their impatience to get away. If she fails to make this
class her citizens, then, whatever her prosperity, as a city she will
remain mediocre. Nothing can deprive her of her position as the
foremost market; but if she is to be also the real capital of South
Africa, she must absorb the men who are now her resident aliens. There
are signs, indeed, that the process has begun in all seriousness. As
she becomes a more pleasant dwelling-place, many who find in the
future of the country the main interest of their lives will find in
Johannesburg the best field of labour for the end they desire. And the
growth of such a leisured class, who take part in public life for its
own sake and for no commercial interests, will not only import into
municipal politics a broader view and a healthier spirit, but will do
much to secure that community of interest between town and country by
which alone a united South Africa can be created.