in the same sense that England is. The conditions cannot change, and the country is destined to prosper or to languish under this system, because either the black man must be employed, if the civilizing mission of the white man is to be conscientiously pursued, or he must be driven away from the centres of labour into the wilds, where he can live in comparative idleness, as he did in days gone by. In that case, no doubt, it would be possible to carry on the mining industry exclusively with white labourers, but so long as the black man occupies his present position in the industrial life of the country, the white man will not be found doing the same class of work.
It is impossible within the limits here assigned to the subject of mining to discuss the labour question, but it may be briefly stated, as a fact, that white men will not, unless driven by sheer necessity, undertake work which they regard as belonging to the sphere of the Kaffir, and, if they would do so, it would be extremely injurious to the prestige of the white races. The disparity between the scale of payment to the white and coloured workers is so great, and the planes upon which they live so widely different, that the employment of the former in work that, of necessity, would command lower wages than the skilled artisans and overseers receive to-day, would create a class of 'poor whites' looked down on by, and degraded in the eyes of, the Kaffirs.
The mining industry, besides giving direct employment to tens of thousands of men, indirectly supports hundreds of thousands more. In 1870 the total population of the Cape Colony and Natal was estimated at 860,000 souls. By 1887 it had grown to 1,860,000, and according to the census returns of 1904 the population had swollen to 3,518,558. This result is naturally not solely attributable to the mining industry, as it includes the natural increase among the natives, and was partly due to other industries; but a glance at the detailed figures in regard to exports is sufficient to show the
