Part 21

This man was James Brady, who served in the Spanish-American war, and came over here to serve in the Boer war in a spirit of adventure. Strange as it may seem, many men like soldiering, and the risk of battle. One can hardly refer to James Brady as a patriot; he was simply a restless young fellow who wanted excitement.... Johannesburg’s principal streets are well paved, and they are brilliantly illuminated at night. I believe the town has a greater number of handsome homes, in proportion to population, than any other city I am familiar with. It startles an American to hear that another country has the “greatest in the world” in anything, but South Africa leads the world in gold production because of Johannesburg. The town is only thirty years old, but there is nothing crude about it. Like all exceedingly prosperous towns, its women are homely; in this respect, it reminds one of Kansas City and Chicago. The handsomest women are always found in dull towns like Quincy, Illinois, and Burlington, Iowa. By-the-way, “Burlington” is a popular word in the English colonies, for some reason. In Wellington and Sydney there are handsome restaurants called “The Burlington;” somewhere else I saw a big arcade of the same name, and in London a monthly magazine is called “The Burlington.”... All printed matter in the Transvaal intended for the public, such as railway time-tables, is printed in German as well as in English. Which is not surprising, since the Boers outnumber the English more than three to one.... An American negro would scream his head off in Johannesburg. The negro here is not allowed to ride on the street-railways, nor is he allowed on the sidewalks. A system of Jim Crow cars was tried when the street-railways were first built, but the blacks wanted to ride with the whites, so they were ordered to keep off the cars altogether. A negro servant may ride on a street-car with his master, but he must sit in a modest place pointed out by the conductor. A negro servant may live in quarters in his master’s yard, but if he has a family, and works for himself, he must live in Blacktown.... The Boers were more strict with the blacks than are the English. On Sundays, the streets are black with natives, as there are more than 100,000 in Johannesburg, but not a great many are seen on week days; in the enormous crowds I saw on the streets last night, I remarked the absence of negroes.... The white men here usually speak highly of the honesty of the blacks. If the blacks find a dishonest one, they promptly report him to the “boss.”... A thing that soon attracts your attention in Johannesburg is the great number of negroes who own bicycles. Being refused admission to the street-cars, they buy bicycles. But the old Boers wouldn’t permit the blacks to ride bicycles.... Although the natives are treated so harshly, I saw the statement in print lately that they possess more than one-third of all the cattle in Cape Colony, one-fourth of the sheep, produce three-fifths of all the corn, and own one-third of all the plows. As they are excellent workers, they are really a valuable asset.... The Hindus are not popular around Johannesburg; everywhere I have been in South Africa, the Hindus are severely criticised.... In the Cape Colony, the negroes can vote, and have many other privileges not accorded them in the Transvaal. There are thousands of mulattoes in Cape Colony, but very few in the Transvaal. In Cape Colony, the negroes have about as many privileges as negroes have in the northern sections of the United States, but in most other portions of South Africa they have fewer privileges than the negroes of Mississippi or Alabama. A white lawyer with whom I lately talked, says the race problem here is really a very serious one. Many university educated negroes are coming to Africa from the United States, and making trouble. The lawyer also said that the African M. E. Church is a source of much trouble, and that there has been serious talk of prohibiting it in the Transvaal.... During my stay in Johannesburg, the papers reported a meeting of the South-African Native National Congress. Fifteen chiefs and 200 other delegates were present. The chairman delivered his address in English, and it was interpreted into several native languages. “Gentlemen,” said the speaker, “this land is ours, inalienable, a God-given birthright. We do not begrudge others a fair share in its treasures, but in so doing we do not propose to suffer our inalienable rights to be encroached upon. More than is adequate and just to our reasonable progress and well-being we do not ask, but that we demand with all the strength of our being.” Continuing, he said that he did not consider the natives were being treated fairly by the government. In some respects they were subjected to “an intolerable state of slavery.” They were denied a voice in the country’s government, even in legislation bearing upon their own life and people. They were fettered by pass laws, while illiterate men who could scarcely writes their names, and whose knowledge of the world’s history was limited “to the bare kopjes of their own backveld,” were entrusted with the power of governing the natives and their land. The government of the land granted to Indians, Chinese, Syrians, and other such races, regardless of character, an unrestricted liberty to travel, to trade, and to purchase land, while they (the natives) were denied all such privileges. (Applause.)

MONDAY, MARCH 10.—Johannesburg is possibly the most prosperous town in the world. There are six or seven thousand English and American miners employed on the Rand, or gold reef, which is fifty miles long and one mile wide. Johannesburg is the centre of this great gold district, and the white miners make big wages; they are all either foremen or mine contractors, and some of them make $500 a month; $350 a month pay to a white miner is not at all unusual. The real work is done by the negro miners, who are brought here from all over Africa under what amounts to indenture. More than a hundred thousand of these are employed in the mines, and they receive an average of sixty cents a day, and board. They live at the mines, in great boarding-houses which accommodate, in many cases, two thousand. No women are allowed in these compounds, and the miners themselves may only leave the compounds with special permits. By law, the negroes cannot be worked more than eight hours a day in the mines, and none are accepted as workmen who do not agree to remain at least six months. The white bosses have “stand around” jobs; they do no actual labor. The best white miners in the world are found here, because of the high pay. The gold-bearing rock is hoisted to the surface from a depth, in some cases, of four thousand feet. It is then run through stamp-mills, and crushed, and the gold extracted by the cyanide process. The mountains of lime-rock seen all along the Rand are composed of the gold-bearing rock after the gold has been extracted; in some cases, these dumps are being worked over, the old process of extracting gold having been wasteful. This broken rock is used for concrete work and for street paving, and the mine-owners will pay to have it hauled off their premises.... On the streets this morning I again met James Brady, the Atlanta, Georgia, man whom I met yesterday while he was working as a street-car conductor. As this is his lay-off day, he spent considerable time with us. He says conductors and motormen average about $100 a month. He complained a good deal of the high cost of living in Johannesburg, but it developed that prices are not much higher here than in Atchison.

“Think of it,” he said, “a good porterhouse steak costs a shilling a pound here.”

Investigation will reveal that the best steaks cost twenty-four cents a pound in Atchison. The best bacon costs thirty cents a pound here; that is the price in Atchison, next door to eight or nine packing-houses. Mr. Brady has not been in Atlanta, Georgia, for fourteen years, and said to me:

“In Atlanta, we could buy good butter for fifteen cents a pound.”

I told him he could not do it now, and he was greatly surprised to hear of the manner in which prices have advanced all over the United States.... We took a street-car ride, and the price was fifteen cents each going out, and fifteen cents each coming back, or ninety cents out and back for three of us. It was the longest street-car ride possible in Johannesburg; five sections, at three cents a section.... Last Fourth of July, Brady put an American flag on his trolley-pole, and it remained there peacefully from 6:30 in the morning until noon. At that hour an inspector ordered it down. Brady refused to take it down, and was suspended for three days. There is another American on the line, a motorman, and he tongue-lashed the inspector, and was also suspended for three days.... Brady’s father was Captain in a Georgia company in the rebellion; five of his sons were killed in the battle of Manassas. Of the one hundred men who originally composed the elder Brady’s company, five returned safe and sound at the end of the war. The others were killed, crippled, or died from illness.... You perhaps imagine that because the English whipped the Boers, the English control the Transvaal. As a matter of fact, the present local government, elected by the people, is Boer. The Boers in politics are called Nationalists; the English are called Unionists, and at the recent election the Nationalists won. There is a Labor party here, also, but it is not as strong as it is in Australia, New Zealand, or England itself. The Boer members of parliament are in a big row among themselves. One leader believes in reconciling the differences between the Boers and English, while the other is a fire-eater. The conservative man is much more popular among the Boers, apparently, than the fire-eater.... The Boers frequently quarrel among themselves. There are two branches of the Dutch Reformed Church, and several years ago the warring factions armed, and almost engaged in civil war, over the interpretation of a passage of scripture.... Johannesburg has recently opened a new and very handsome public market on the site of the old Coolie village. The plague broke out among the Coolies, so their village was burned, and now the blacks live in a section further out. Hindus, negroes, Chinese and Malays live there; no white resident is permitted in the village, nor is a Hindu or other black permitted to live in any other section of Johannesburg. Dr. Gregory, a Hindu who was educated in Edinburgh and who married a Scotch wife, had a large practice among the whites, but when the order came segregating the blacks, he was compelled to move from his handsome house down-town to the dirty Coolie village. There are ten to fifteen thousand blacks in this village, and many of the Hindus are rich; but they are not allowed to ride on the street-cars which pass their doors. In Durban, many of the Hindus are gardeners; here, they buy fruit and vegetables, and peddle them in various parts of town, from small carts.... There is a Jew market in Johannesburg which is very peculiar. It is an open field, on valuable ground owned by the city, and everything in the way of household goods, clothing, etc., is displayed in the open air. Nearly everything offered is second-hand, and is bought by negroes. The market occupies an entire block, and I found it very interesting.... At the markets here, eggs that are guaranteed fresh, sell at three shillings, or 72 cents, per dozen, while “farm eggs” are sold at forty-two cents. Penguin eggs are collected in large numbers from the islands around the coast, and their consumption in Cape Town in certain seasons exceeds that of the domestic fowl. The penguin eggs are palatable, nutritious, and easily digestible; the “white” is of a sea-green color, the egg is twice the size of the usual hen’s egg, and must be boiled twenty minutes. These eggs are sent all over South Africa, and to London. Speaking of eggs, one morning at the Langham Hotel I saw a guest bring two eggs to the dining-room, call a waiter, and give orders as to how the eggs should be cooked. In a few minutes the man came in to breakfast, and the eggs were brought in from the kitchen.... Today I passed a place called an “American restaurant.” This sign was displayed: “A complete meal, including a glass of beer, one shilling.”... Another peculiarity of the English: When they drive, they turn to the left, on meeting another driver; but on the sidewalk, when they meet another pedestrian, they turn to the right.

TUESDAY, MARCH 11.—At the meat shops in Johannesburg, pickled beef feet are sold as pickled pigs’ feet are sold in America.... The morning newspapers of Johannesburg sell at six cents each. The best newspapers of New York and Chicago sell at one cent. The Transvaal _Leader_ of this morning says the rain at Durban continues, and that the storm is the worst since 1858. When I was there, it was said at first that the storm was the worst in two years; then it was said it was the worst in ten years, and now the statement is telegraphed broadcast that the storm at Durban is the worst in fifty-five years. It is wonderful what the Atchison hoodoo can do in the way of disturbing nature. The weather in Johannesburg is fine. The days are somewhat warm, but the nights are quite cool. Except a light shower this afternoon, which was agreeable, there has been no rain since our arrival.... The Transvaal _Leader_ has one department I have never seen in any other newspaper. Every morning it prints a list of the loaded railway cars received in Johannesburg the day before. Imagine a Chicago paper printing something like the following: “Yesterday there were received in Chicago the following loaded freight cars: Illinois Central, Nos. 100282, 287689, 159867, 829217,” etc., followed by two dozen or more railways represented in the city. Such a list would take up as much space as the baseball scores.... We have cantaloupes every day at the hotel, and they are surprisingly good. The varieties are new to us. We also have roasting-ears, and the proprietor tells me they cost six to eight cents a dozen, in quantities.... Four of the guests at this hotel we knew as passengers on the “Anchises.”... Warned by the example of Australia, South Africa has prohibited the importation of rabbits, except that they are permitted in one small island near the coast.... The fire department made an exhibition run today to amuse the sailors from the warship “New Zealand,” a favorite trick in all American country towns. The apparatus here is motor-driven, new, and of the best.... All the street and railway laborers, and laborers generally, are negroes, and they receive an average of $22 a month. A negro laborer in the United States receives more than twice that. The Georgia man I met on Sunday says the South-African negroes are no better laborers than the negroes of the South. If the South-African government should decide that the prosperity of the country depended upon the negroes working for a shilling a day, such a law would be passed, without regard to the Rights of Man. Chinese labor was tried in the Johannesburg mines, and at one time there were more than 50,000 Chinese in the country. The Chinese gradually demanded more wages, and as a result they were ordered to leave South Africa, a fate which is now overtaking the Hindus. Many employers of labor favor inviting the Chinese to come back. I saw a statement in a newspaper today that if American miners’ wages were paid along the Rand, the mines would show a loss instead of a profit.... The Transvaal _Advertiser_ of this morning printed a table showing that the gold output of the Rand for February was 734,122 ounces, worth a little more than fifteen and a half million dollars. The same table shows that the average profits of the Rand gold mines amount to $170,000 per day. In South Africa, 184,000 men are employed in the gold mines, 8,000 in the coal mines, and 35,000 in the diamond mines. Practically all these miners are native negroes, so that the negroes are the source of the country’s prosperity. The negroes are compelled to work for whatever the whites decide is necessary to keep the country’s industries flourishing. In many places here, the blacks outnumber the whites fifty to one, but the blacks must work for whatever wages the whites are willing to pay. If they do not, the whites say the blacks are in rebellion again, and send for British soldiers.... The Transvaal _Leader_, the paper I buy every morning for six cents, prints a summary of the news in every issue, and I often remark how little real news there is, considering that the _Leader_ devotes twelve nine-column pages to it. As a matter of fact, there isn’t a great deal of real news; the best the newspaper men can do is to make gossip interesting.... The passion for England here is very marked; the bulk of the reading matter in the _Leader_ seems to be telegrams or correspondence from London. An Englishman will locate in the United States, and at once become an American, but in South Africa, New Zealand or Australia, he is more English than he was in England.... When the new market-house was built in Johannesburg, it was so far out of the way that people wouldn’t patronize it, although it was a magnificent structure 668x230 feet. Thereupon the street-railway company went to the rescue, built a line past the new market-house, and gave free transfers to and from it on all lines. These were the first transfers ever issued in Johannesburg, and the people are already inquiring: “Why can’t transfers be issued in other cases?” I predict that this enterprise on the part of the street-railway company will result in grumbling and agitation that will finally force free transfers generally. The street-railway receipts here now amount to more than an average of $100 per car daily, but with the entering-wedge referred to above, look out for a howl for lower fares. The people here have never experienced the joy of fighting the street-railway, and, when they get at it, they will like it as much as do people in American towns.... All the people in foreign countries have, I think, an exaggerated notion of the prosperity prevailing in the United States. Most of the young men I meet are anxious to emigrate, and they believe conditions in the United States are better than they really are. Ours is a great country, but hard work and poverty are not unknown in the best parts of it.... This morning we called at an office building to see a number of Americans who have been exiled in South Africa many years. An ex-American took us around and introduced us to ex-Americans in the various offices. We looked so “raw” that our conductor was immensely amused. He said to another ex-American, the manager of a bank:

“And yet they are surprised that people everywhere know they are Americans!”

I suppose we are called “raw Yankees” here, as we at home call new arrivals from the old country “raw Dutch.” Our conductor in the office building told us later that the elevator man said to him, after our departure:

“Excuse me, sir, but were those people Americans?”

“No,” the ex-American replied, “they were Russians. Why do you ask if they were Americans?”

“Because, sir,” the elevator man replied, “I couldn’t understand them when they inquired for you.”

When people talk to us, they talk slowly, and use a good many signs, as we do at home when talking to foreigners.... But so far as looks go, I think I have solved the problem. Today I bought a London hat, and wear it with the rim turned down in the back, instead of turned down in front. I imagine that people now say of us:

“The man looks all right, but who is the frowzy-looking woman with him?”

The leading ladies’ tailor in Kansas City is a German named Mendelsohn. If Mendelsohn could hear the criticism his suits attract in South Africa, he would go crazy.... Speaking of the English habit of turning the hat-brim down behind, instead of down in front, as American men wear their soft hats, some Englishmen in Africa go to an extreme, and wear the brim of their hats turned down all the way ’round.... At home, I have noticed the quiet amusement with which a German-American regards a raw Dutchman who has just landed. I think the Americans we meet here regard us in the same way. They are polite, and glad to see us, but they are undoubtedly amused at our appearance, our ways and our talk.... A peculiarity of Johannesburg is that coal mines are operated within sight of the gold mines; and in no other gold camp is fuel so convenient.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 12.—The first Americans we met in Johannesburg are interested in banking, life insurance and real-estate, and occupy a fine building of their own on a down-town corner. One of them is T. W. Schlessinger, formerly of New York. Eight years ago he was a life insurance solicitor. Today he is the controlling power in five different important companies, and we hear it said that within two or three years he may be the leading man of Johannesburg. I. F. Atterbury, manager of the African Realty Trust, is not only an American, but he comes from St. Joseph, Missouri, which we can see from Potato Hill Farm. And what still further endeared him to us is the fact that his wife also comes from St. Joseph. Nineteen years ago Mr. Atterbury was a real-estate agent in St. Joseph, and, as the town was dull at that time, he was greatly interested in the prosperity reports that came in every little while from Johannesburg, South Africa. After his arrival here, he made money, but lost it during the business panic following the Boer war. During a part of the war, he was acting United States consul at Pretoria. When the war closed, he again engaged in the real-estate business in Johannesburg, and has long been a part of the “American influence” that undoubtedly exists here.... Soon after we met Mr. Atterbury, we all started out in an automobile to call on his wife. But we found her out; she had gone to call on an American friend, Mrs. Mark Cary, in one of the suburbs. So we went out there, on the way passing through many of the most wonderful sections of this wonderful town. Mrs. Atterbury and Mrs. Cary had gone down-town, we found, on arriving at the Cary home, so we sat down on the veranda and waited for them. Both Mr. and Mrs. Cary are from California, and their home is one of the show places of Johannesburg; because of its lavish display of flowers, for one reason. The maid served tea on the veranda, and the time passed pleasantly and rapidly in listening to Mr. Atterbury talk of South Africa. He looks like a typical American, in spite of his nineteen years’ continuous residence here.... Presently Mrs. Cary and Mrs. Atterbury arrived from down-town, and Mrs. Atterbury said to us: