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$Title{Impressions Of South Africa
Chapter XXVI - The Economic Future Of South Africa}
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$Date{1897}
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Title:       Impressions Of South Africa
Book:        Part IV - Some South African Questions
Author:      Bryce, James
Date:        1897

Chapter XXVI - The Economic Future Of South Africa

     Though I do not attempt to present in this book an account of the
agricultural and mineral resources of South Africa, some words must be said
regarding its economic prospects - that is to say, regarding the natural
sources of wealth which it possesses, their probable development, and the
extent to which that development will increase the still scanty population.
The political and social future of the country must so largely depend on its
economic future that any one who desires to comprehend those political
problems to the solution of which the people are moving must first consider
what sort of a people, and how large a people, the material conditions which
nature furnishes are likely to produce.

     The chief charm of travel through a new country is the curiosity which
the thought of its future inspires.  In South Africa, a land singularly unlike
any part of Europe or of North America, this curiosity is keenly felt by the
visitor.  When he begins to speculate on the future, his first question is,
Will these wildernesses ever become peopled, as most of North America and a
large part of Australia have now been peopled, and if so, what will be the
character of the population?  Will South Africa become one of the great
producing or manufacturing countries of the world?  Will it furnish a great
market for European goods?  Will it be populous enough and rich enough to grow
into one of the powers of the southern hemisphere?

     Let us begin by recalling the physical features of the country.  Most of
it is high and dry; all of it is hot.  The parts which are high and dry are
also healthful, and fit for the races of Europe to dwell in.  But are they
equally fit to support a dense population?

     South Africa has three great natural sources of wealth: agricultural
land, pasture-land, and minerals.  The forests are too scanty to be worth
regarding; they are not, and probably never will be, sufficient to supply its
own needs.  Fisheries also are insignificant, and not likely ever to
constitute an industry, so we may confine ourselves to the three first named.

     Of these three agriculture is now, and has hitherto been, by far the
least important.  Out of an area of two hundred and twenty-one thousand square
miles in Cape Colony alone, probably not more than one one-thousandth part is
now under any kind of cultivation, whether by natives or by whites; and in the
whole country, even if we exclude the German and Portuguese territories, the
proportion must be very much smaller.  There are no figures available, so one
can make only the roughest possible conjecture.  As regards more than half of
the country this fact is explained by the dryness of the climate.  Not only
the Karroo region in the interior of Cape Colony, but also the vast region
stretching north from the Karroo nearly as far as the west-coast territories
of Portugal, is too arid for tillage.  So are large parts of the Free State,
of the Transvaal, and of Matabililand.  Where there is a sufficient rainfall,
as in many districts along the south and southeast coasts, much of the country
is too hilly and rough for cultivation; so that it would be well within the
mark to say that of the whole area mentioned above far less than one tenth is
suitable for raising any kind of crop without artificial aid.  Much, no doubt,
remains which might be tilled and is not tilled, especially in the country
between the southeastern edge of the great plateau and the sea; and that this
land lies untouched is due partly to the presence of the Kafir tribes, who
occupy more land than they cultivate, partly to the want or the dearness of
labor, partly to the tendency, confirmed by long habit, of the whites to
prefer stock-farming to tillage.  The chief agricultural products are at
present cereals, i.e., wheat, oats, maize, and Kafir corn (a kind of millet),
fruit, and sugar. The wheat and maize raised are not sufficient for the
consumption of the inhabitants, so that these articles are largely imported,
in spite of the duties levied on them.  There is a considerable and increasing
export of fruit, which goes to Europe - chiefly to the English market - in
January, February, and March, the midsummer and autumn of the southern
hemisphere. Sugar is grown on the hot lands of Natal lying along the sea, and
might, no doubt, be grown all the way north along the sea from there to the
Zambesi.  Rice would grow on the wet coast lands, but is scarcely at all
raised.  Tea has lately been planted on the hills in Natal, and would probably
thrive also on the high lands of Mashonaland.  There is plenty of land fit for
cotton.  The tobacco of the Transvaal is so pleasant for smoking in a pipe
that one cannot but expect it to be in time much more largely and carefully
grown than it is now.  Those who have grown accustomed to it prefer it to any
other.  With the exception of the olive, which apparently does not succeed,
and of the vine, which succeeds only in the small district round Cape Town
that enjoys a true summer and winter, nearly all the staples of the warmer
parts of the temperate zone and of subtropical regions can be grown.

     The introduction of irrigation would enormously enlarge the area of
tillage, for some of the regions now hopelessly arid, such as the Karroo, have
a soil of surprising fertility, which produces luxuriant crops when water is
led on to it.  Millions of acres might be made to wave with corn were great
tanks, like those of India, constructed to hold the rains of the wet season,
or were artesian wells dug like those which have lately been successfully
bored in Algeria, and have proved so infinitely valuable to parts of
Australia.  Already about three hundred thousand acres are cultivated with the
aid of irrigation in Cape Colony.  At present, however, it has been deemed
hardly worth while to execute large irrigation works or to bore wells. ^1 The
price of cereals has sunk so low over all the world that South Africans find
it cheaper to import them than to spend capital on reclaiming waste lands; and
there is plenty of land already which might be cultivated without irrigation
if there were settlers coming to cultivate it, or if Kafir labor was
sufficiently effective to make it worth the while of enterprising men to
undertake farming on a large scale. The same remarks apply generally to the
other kinds of produce I have mentioned.  As population grows, and the local
demand for food increases, more land will be brought under the plow or the
hoe.  Some day, perhaps, when the great corn-exporting countries of to-day -
North America, La Plata, central India, southern Russia - have become so
crowded as to have much less of their grain-crops to spare for other
countries, it will become profitable to irrigate the Karroo, on which the
Kafir of the future will probably prove a more efficient laborer than he is
now.  But that day is distant, and till it arrives, agriculture will continue
to play a very subordinate part in South African industry, and will employ a
comparatively small white population.

[Footnote 1: It is, however, still doubtful whether very large areas can be
irrigated by artesian wells.]

     Ever since the last years of the seventeenth century, when the settlers
were beginning to spread out from the Cape Peninsula toward the then still
unknown interior, the main occupation of the colonists, first of the Dutch and
since then of both Dutch and English, has been the keeping of cattle and
sheep.  So it remains to-day.  Nearly all the land that is not rough mountain
or waterless desert, and much that to the inexperienced eye seems a waterless
desert, is in the hands of stock-farmers, whose ranges are often of enormous
size, from six thousand acres upward.  In 1893 there were in Cape Colony about
2,000,000 cattle, in Natal 725,000, in the Orange Free State 900,000, and in
Bechuanaland the Bamangwato (Khama's tribe) alone had 800,000.  Of these last
only some 5000 are said to have survived the murrain, which has (July, 1897)
begun to work havoc in the other three first-mentioned territories also.  In
1896 there were in Cape Colony alone 14,400,000 sheep and 5,000,000 Angora and
other goats.  The number of sheep might be largely increased were more
effective measures against the diseases that affect them carried out.  All the
country, even the Kalahari Desert, which used to be thought hopelessly
sterile, is now deemed fit to put some sort of live stock upon, though, of
course, the more arid the soil, the greater the area required to feed one
sheep.  To the traveler who crosses its weary stretches in the train the
Karroo seems a barren waste; but it produces small succulent shrubs much
relished by sheep, and every here and there a well or a stagnant pool may be
found which supplies water enough to keep the creatures alive.  Here six acres
is the average allowed for one sheep.  Tracts of rough ground, covered with
patches of thick, scrubby bushes, are turned to account as ostrich-farms,
whence large quantities of feathers are exported to Europe and America.  In
1896 the number of ostriches in Cape Colony was returned as 225,000.  The
merino sheep, introduced seventy years ago, thrives in Cape Colony, and its
wool has become one of the most valuable products of the country.  In the Free
State both it and the Angora goat do well, and the pasture-lands of that
territory support also great numbers of cattle and horses.  The Free State and
Bechuanaland are deemed to be among the very best ranching-grounds in all
South Africa.

     Although, as I have said, nearly all the country is more or less fit for
live stock, it must be remembered that this does not imply either great
pecuniary returns or a large population.  In most districts, a comparatively
wide area of ground is required to feed what would be deemed in western
America a moderate herd or flock, because the pasture is thin, droughts are
frequent, and locusts sometimes destroy a large part of the pasture.  Thus the
number of persons for whom the care of cattle or sheep in any given area
provides occupation is a mere trifle compared to the number which would be
needed to till the same area.  Artesian wells might, no doubt, make certain
regions better for ranching; but here, as in the case of agriculture, we find
little prospect of any dense population, and, indeed, a probability that the
white people will continue to be few relatively to the area of the country.
On a large ranching-farm the proportion of white men to black servants is
usually about three to twenty-five; and though, of course, the proportion of
whites is much larger in the small towns which supply the wants of the
surrounding country, still any one can see with how few whites a ranching
country may get along.

     The third source of wealth lies in the minerals.  It was the latest
source to become known - indeed, till thirty years ago nobody suspected it.
Iron had been found in some places, copper in others; but neither had been
largely worked, and the belief in the existence of the precious metals rested
on nothing more than a Portuguese tradition.  In 1867 the first diamond found
in South Africa was picked up by a hunter out of a heap of shining pebbles
near the banks of the Orange River, above its confluence with the Vaal.  In
1869-70 the stones began to be largely found near where the town of Kimberley
now stands.  This point has been thenceforth the center of the industry,
though there are a few other mines elsewhere of smaller productive power.  The
value of the present annual output exceeds Pound 4,000,000 ($20,000,000), but
it is not likely to increase, being, in fact, now kept down in order not to
depress the market by oversupply.  The discovery of diamonds, as was observed
in an earlier chapter, opened a new period in South African history, drawing
crowds of immigrants, developing trade through the seaports as well as
industry at the mining centers, and producing a group of enterprising men who,
when the various diamond-mining companies had been amalgamated, sought and
found new ways of employing their capital.  Fifteen years after the great
diamond finds came the still greater gold finds at the Witwatersrand.  The
working of these mines has now become the greatest industry in the country,
and Johannesburg is the center toward which the import trade converges.

     I need not repeat the description given in a previous chapter (Chapter
XVIII) of the Rand mining district.  The reader will remember that it differs
from all the other gold-fields of South Africa in one essential feature - that
of the comparative certainty of its yield. Accordingly, in considering the
future of South African gold, I will speak first of those other gold-fields
and then separately of the Rand district.

     Gold has been found in many places south of the Zambesi.  It occurs here
and there in small quantities in Cape Colony, in somewhat larger quantities in
Natal, Zululand, and Swaziland, in the eastern and northeastern districts of
the Transvaal, at Tati in northern Bechuanaland, and in many spots through
Matabililand and Mashonaland.  In all (or nearly all) these places it occurs
in quartz-reefs resembling those of North America and Australia.  Some reefs,
especially those of the northern region between the Limpopo and Zambesi, are
promising, and great quantities of gold have in times long past been taken out
of this region. As already explained (Chapter XVII), it seems probable, though
not certain, that in many districts a mining industry will be developed which
will give employment to thousands, perhaps many thousands, of natives, and to
hundreds, perhaps many hundreds, of white engineers and foremen. Should this
happen, markets will be created in these districts, land will be cultivated,
railways will be made, and the local trades which a thriving population
requires will spring up.  But the life of these gold-reefs will not be a long
one.  As the gold is found in quartz-rock, and only to a small extent in
gravel or other alluvial deposits, the mining requires capital, and will be
carried on by companies.  It will be carried on quickly, and so quickly, with
the aid of the enormously improved scientific appliances we now possess, as to
exhaust at no distant period the mineral which the rocks contain.  I have seen
in Transylvania a gold-mine which was worked in the days of the Romans, and is
being worked still.  But mining now is as different from the mining of the
ancients or of the middle ages as a locomotive engine is from an ox-wagon,
such are the resources which chemical and mechanical science place at our
disposal. Accordingly, the payable parts of the quartz-reefs will have been
drained of their gold in a few years, or, at any rate, in a few decades, just
as many of the silver lodes of Nevada have already been worked out and
abandoned.  There will then be no further cause for the existence of the
mine-workers at those points, and the population will decline just as that of
Nevada has declined.  These South African districts will, however, be in one
point far better off than Nevada: they possess land fit everywhere for
ranching, and in many places for tillage also.  Ranching will, therefore,
support a certain, though not large, permanent population; while tillage,
though the profitable market close by will have been largely reduced by the
departure of the miners, will probably continue, because the land will have
been furnished with farm-houses and fences, perhaps in places with irrigation
works, and because the railways that will have been constructed will enable
agricultural products to reach more distant markets, which by that time may
possibly be less glutted with the cereals of North and South America.
Accordingly, assuming that a fair proportion of the quartz-reef gold-fields
turn out well, it may be predicted that population will increase in and round
them during the next ten years, and that for some twenty years more this
population will maintain itself, though of course not necessarily in the same
spots, because, as the reefs first developed become exhausted, the miners will
shift to new places.  After these thirty or possibly forty years, that is to
say, before the middle of next century, the country, having parted with its
gold, will have to fall back on its pasture and its arable land; but having
become settled and developed, it may count on retaining a reasonable measure
of prosperity.

     This forecast may seem to be of a highly conjectural nature. Conjectural
it must be, if only for this reason: that the value of nearly all of the
quartz-reefs referred to is still quite uncertain.  But one cannot visit a new
country without attempting to make a forecast of some kind; and the experience
of other countries goes to show that, while deposits of the precious metals
are, under our present conditions, no more an abiding source of wealth than is
a guano island, they may immensely accelerate the development of a country,
giving it a start in the world, and providing it with advantages, such as
railway communication, which could not otherwise be looked for.  This they are
now doing for Matabililand and Mashonaland, countries in which it would not at
present be worth while to construct railroads but for the hopes attaching to
the mines.  This they may do for Zululand and Swaziland, should the reefs in
those districts prove profitable.

     So much for the quartz-reefs.  As has been observed, the gold-mines of
the Witwatersrand differ in the much greater certainty of their yield and in
the much greater quantity of auriferous rock which they have been ascertained
to contain.  It is probable that gold of the value of Pound 700,000,000 (more
than $3,500,000,000) remains to be extracted from them. Already a population
of at least 150,000 white men has collected in what only twelve years ago was
a barren wilderness; already nearly Pound 10,000,000 worth of gold per annum
is being extracted.  It is practically certain that this production and
population will go on increasing during the next few years, and that the mines
will not be worked out before the middle of next century at earliest.  For the
next fifty or sixty years, therefore, the Rand district will be the economic
and industrial center of South Africa and the seat of the largest European
community.  What will it be after those sixty or perhaps seventy years, when
the banket beds have been drained of their gold to a depth of 5000 feet, the
greatest at which mining seems to be practicable?  It is possible that the
other industries which are rising as ancillary to mining may for a while and
to a reduced extent hold their ground.  Probably, however, they will wither up
and vanish.  The land will remain, but the land of this highest part of the
Transvaal, though fit for pasture, does not lend itself to tillage.  The
probabilities, therefore, are that the fate of Nevada will in time descend
upon the Rand - that the houses that are now springing up will be suffered to
fall to ruin, that the mouths of the shafts will in time be covered by thorny
shrublets, and that soon after A.D. 2000 has been reached this busy hive of
industry and noisy market-place of speculation will have again become the
stony solitude which it was in 1880.  For all practical purposes, however, an
event a hundred years away is too distant to be worth regarding.  The world
will in A.D. 2000 be so different from what it is now that the exhaustion of
the Rand gold-field may have a different bearing from any which we can now
foresee.  Johannesburgers themselves are not disquieted by thoughts of a
future that is even half a century distant.  The older sort will not live to
see it, and the younger sort expect to have made their fortunes long before it
arrives.  Still, it must be remembered that, so far as minerals go, South
Africa is now living, not on her income, but on her capital, and that in
twenty-five years half the capital may be gone.

     There are other metals in the country besides the precious ones.  The
presence of extensive coal-beds in the Transvaal and Natal has been a
circumstance of the first importance for the profitable working of the Rand
gold-beds, and may encourage the growth of some kinds of manufacture. Iron is
abundant both in the Transvaal and in Mashonaland, and has been found in many
other districts, often in the neighborhood of coal.  It is not worked now,
because all iron goods can be obtained more cheaply from Europe; but it may
one day grow into an industry, as copper-mining already has in Little
Namaqualand on the west coast.

     The mention of coal and iron brings us to another branch of the subject -
the possibility of establishing manufactures which may become a source of
wealth and the support of an industrial population.  At present the
manufactures are insignificant.  All the textile goods, for instance, nearly
all the metal goods, and by far the larger part even of the beer and spirits
(intended for the whites) and mineral waters consumed in the country come from
Europe.  The Boers in the two republics and the Boer element at the Cape have
neither taste nor talent for this kind of industry, and such capital as exists
is naturally attracted to mining enterprises.  Nevertheless, it may be thought
that as capital accumulates things will change, and that the English part of
the population in the two British colonies will take to manufactures, as it
has done in Australia. Let us see whether this is probable.

     To enable South African manufactures to compete on a large scale with the
established manufacturing countries, such as those in northwestern Europe or
northeastern America, three things are needed - a large market, cheap sources
of mechanical power, cheap and efficient labor.  Of these the first is at
present wanting, and even should the growth of the Rand mining district raise
the white population of the two colonies and two republics from 700,000 (which
is roughly its present figure) to 1,200,000 that number of consumers will be
still too small to encourage the expenditure of any large capital in
endeavoring to produce articles which the immense manufacturing establishments
of Europe, working for populous markets, can turn out more cheaply.  As to
mechanical forces, there are no rivers to give water-power; and though Natal,
Zululand, and the Transvaal provide coal, the quality of the mineral is
inferior to that obtainable in South Wales or Belgium or Pennsylvania.  But
the most important conditions for success are those connected with labor.  In
South Africa skilled labor is dear because scarce, and unskilled labor is dear
because bad.  As was explained in a preceding chapter, all rough, hard work is
done by natives; not that white men could not, in the more temperate regions,
perfectly well do it, but because white men think it beneath them and only fit
for blacks.  Now black labor is seldom good labor.  The mixed race called
"Cape boys" are good drivers, and quite fit for many kinds of railway work.
They are employed in the building trades and in sawmills, and to some extent
in such trades as boot-making.  The Kafirs of the eastern province and of
Natal are more raw than the "Cape boys." They make good plate-layers on
railways, and having plenty of physical strength, will do any sort of rough
work they are set to.  But they have no aptitude for trades requiring skill,
and it will take a generation or two to fit them for the finer kinds of
carpentry or metal-work, or for the handling of machinery.  Besides, they are
often changeable and unstable, apt to forsake their employment for some
trifling cause.  Their wages are certainly not high, ranging from ten to
twenty shillings a month, besides food, for any kind of rough outdoor work.
Miners are paid higher, and a Malay mason will get from thirty to forty
shillings a week; but a white laborer at twice the price would, for most kinds
of work, be cheaper.  Nor is it easy to get the amount of native labor that
may be needed, for the Kafir prefers to till his own patch of ground or turn
out his cattle on the veldt.  The scale for white workmen is, of course, far
higher, ranging from Pound 2 10s. Pound 8 ($12.50 to $40) a week, according to
the nature of the work and the competence of the artisan.  Such wages are
double those paid in England, treble those paid in some manufacturing
districts of Germany or Belgium, higher even than those paid in the United
States. It is therefore evident that, what with the badness of the cheaper
labor and the dearness of the better, a manufacturer would, in South Africa,
be severely handicapped in competing with either Europe or the United States.
Protectionists may think that a high tariff on foreign manufactured goods
would foster industrial undertakings in these colonies.  Such a tariff would,
however, need to be fixed very high to give the local factory a chance - so
high, indeed, that it would excite serious opposition from the consumer.  And,
in point of fact, there has been hitherto no cry for a tariff to protect home
manufactures, because so few people are at present interested in having it.
Such protection as exists is directed to food-stuffs, in order to please the
agricultural classes, and the tariff on other goods is almost solely for
revenue.

     The conditions I have described may, and probably will, change as the
industrial training of the natives improves and their aversion to labor
declines under the pressure of increasing numbers and a reduction of the
quantity of land available for them.  But a review of the present state of
things points to the conclusion that no great development of manufactures, and
of a white population occupied in manufactures, is to be expected, at least
for some time to come.

     Three other observations must at this stage be made.  Till very recently,
South Africans had what the psalmist desired - neither poverty nor riches.
There were hardly any white paupers, because the substratum of population was
black; and as few black paupers, because a Kafir has had no wants except food,
and is content with the simplest kind of food.  On the other hand, there were
no rich whites.  The farmers, both agriculturists and ranchmen, lived in a
sort of rude plenty, with no luxuries and very little money.  Everybody was
tolerably well off, nobody was wealthy.  There were large stock-farms, as in
Australia, but the owners of these farms did not make the immense gains which
many Australian squatters and some American cattle-men have made.
Accordingly, when capital was needed for the development of the mines it was
obtained from home.  A few successful residents did, no doubt, make out of the
diamond-fields large sums, which they presently applied to the development of
the gold-fields.  But by far the greater part of the money spent in opening up
mines, both on the Witwatersrand and elsewhere, has come from Europe, chiefly
from England, but to a considerable extent also from France, Germany, and
Holland.  Accordingly, nineteen twentieths at least of the profits made by the
mines are paid to shareholders in those countries, and not expended in South
Africa.  Even among those who have made fortunes out of diamonds or gold by
their personal enterprise on the spot, the majority return to Europe and spend
their incomes there.  The country, therefore, does not get the full benefit,
in the way either of payments for labor (except, of course, labor at the
mines) or of increased consumption of articles, from its mineral products, but
is rather in the position of Mexico or Peru in the seventeenth century, when
the bulk of the precious metals won from the mines went to Spain as a sort of
tribute. There are at this moment probably not more than a dozen rich men, as
Europe counts riches, resident in the country, and all of these are to be
found either at Johannesburg or at Cape Town.  Most of them will after a time
betake themselves to Europe.  Nor is there any sign that the number of local
fortunes will increase; for the motives which draw men away from Johannesburg
to Europe are likely to continue as strong in the future as they are at
present.

     Secondly, as the whites are not - except at Johannesburg, where the
lavishness of a mining population is conspicuous - large consumers of
luxuries, so the blacks are poor consumers of all save the barest necessaries
of life.  It is not merely that they have no money.  It is that they have no
wants, save of food and of a few common articles of clothing.  The taste for
the articles which civilized man requires is growing, as the traders in
Bechuanaland have already begun to find, but it grows slowly, and is still in
a rudimentary stage.  The demand which South Africa is likely to offer either
for home-made or for imported goods must, therefore, be measured, not by the
gross population, but by the white population, and, indeed, by the
town-dwelling whites; for the Dutch farmer or ranchman, whether in the British
colonies or in the Dutch republics, has very little cash in his pocket, and
lives in a simple and primitive way.  It is only the development of the mines
that makes South Africa a growing market for European goods.

     Thirdly, there is very little European immigration, except of persons
seeking work at the gold-mines of the Rand.  Agriculturists do not go out,
because farms have seldom been offered by any of the governments on the same
easy terms as those which prevail in Canada or New Zealand, and because the
climate and the existence of a black population deter the agricultural classes
of northern Europe.  There is plenty of land on the south coast of Cape
Colony, as well as in Natal and in the healthy uplands of Mashonaland, which
Englishmen or Germans might cultivate with the assistance (in the hotter
parts) of a little native labor, and which Italians or Portuguese might
cultivate by their own labor, without native help.  The Germans who were
brought out in 1856 throve in body and estate on the farms which they tilled
with their own hands near Grahamstown. Nevertheless, few agricultural
immigrants enter.  Neither do men go from Europe to start ranching, for the
pastoral lands are taken up, except in those wilder regions where no one could
thrive without some previous experience of the country.  The settling of the
newer parts of the country, such as those between the Zambesi and the tropic
of Capricorn, is chiefly carried on by the Boers of the Transvaal and, to a
less extent, of the British colonies; for the Boers retain their passion for
trekking out into the wilderness, while the English, with few exceptions, like
to keep within reach of one another and of civilization.  Accordingly, the
country receives comparatively few recruits from rural Europe, and its own
rural population grows only by natural increase.  There are probably more
natives of India to-day tilling the soil in Natal alone than the whole number
of agriculturists who have come from Europe in the last thirty years.

     We may now endeavor to sum up the facts of the case and state the
conclusions to which they point.

     South Africa is already, and will be to an increasing extent, a country
of great mineral wealth.  It is only in the diamond-fields, especially those
of Kimberley, and in the gold-fields of the Witwatersrand that the wealth has
as yet been proved to exist, so far as regards precious stones and precious
metals, but it may exist also in many other districts.  It is not confined to
precious stones and metals, and when these have been exhausted, copper, iron,
and coal may continue to furnish good returns to mine-owners and plenty of
employment to work-people.  The duration of the gold-fields generally is
uncertain, but those of the Witwatersrand will last for at least half a
century, and will maintain for all that period an industrial population and a
market for commodities which, though small when measured by the standard of
the northern hemisphere, will be quite unique in Africa south of the equator.

     South Africa is, and will continue to be, a great ranching country; for
nearly all of its vast area is fit for live stock, though in large regions the
proportion of stock to the acre must remain small, owing to the scarcity of
feed.  It will therefore continue to export wool, goats' hair, and hides in
large quantities, and may also export meat, and possibly dairy products.

     South Africa has been, is, and will probably continue to be for a good
while to come, a country in which only a very small part of the land is
tilled, and from which little or no agricultural produce, except fruit, sugar,
and perhaps tobacco, will be exported.  Only two things seem likely to
increase its agricultural productiveness.  One of these is the discovery of
some preservative against malarial fever which might enable the lowlands of
the east coast, from Durban northward, to be cultivated much more largely than
they can be now.  The other is the introduction of irrigation on a large
scale, an undertaking which at present would be profitable in a few places
only.  Whether in future it will be worth while to irrigate largely, and
whether, if this be done, it will be done by companies buying and working
large farms, or by companies distributing water to small farmers, as the
government distributes water in Egypt and some parts of India, are questions
which may turn out to have an important bearing on the development of the
country, but which need not be discussed now.

     South Africa has not been, and shows no signs of becoming, a
manufacturing country.  Water-power is absent.  Coal is not of the best
quality.  Labor is neither cheap nor good.  Even the imposition of a pretty
high protective tariff would not be likely to stimulate the establishment of
iron-works or-foundries on a large scale, nor of factories of textile goods,
for the local market is too small to make competition with Europe a profitable
enterprise.  In these respects, as in many others, the conditions, physical
and economic, differ so much from those of the British North American or
Australian colonies that the course of industrial development is likely to be
quite different from what it has been there.

     From these conclusions another of great importance follows.  The white
population will be scanty in proportion to the area of the country. At present
it is, in the two British colonies and the two Dutch republics, only about one
and a half persons to the square mile, while over the other territories it is
incomparably smaller.

     The country will continue to be, so long as the present agricultural
conditions do not change, a wilderness, with a few oases of population
scattered at long distances from one another.  The white inhabitants will,
moreover, be very unequally distributed.  At present, of a total population of
about 730,000, more than one fourth lives in the mining district of the Rand;
one sixth is found in the five principal seaports on the southern and
southeastern coast; the remaining seven twelfths are thinly dispersed over the
rest of the country in solitary farms or villages, or in a very few small
towns, the largest of which, Kimberley, has only 10,000 inhabitants.  The only
towns that are growing are the five chief seaports, and Johannesburg with its
tributary mining villages. Assuming the present growth of the Rand to
continue, it may have in ten years about 500,000 whites, which will be not
much less than one half of the then white population of the whole country.
Stimulated by the trade which the Rand will supply, the five seaports will
probably also grow; while elsewhere population may remain almost stationary.
Unless the gold-reefs of the country beyond the Limpopo turn out well and
create in that region miniature copies of the Rand district, there seems no
reason to expect the total number of whites to reach 1,200,000 in less than
twenty years.  After that time growth will depend upon the future of
agriculture, and the future of agriculture depends on so many causes
independent of South Africa that it would be unsafe to make any predictions
regarding it.  I know some South Africans, able men, who think that the day
will come when the blacks will begin to retire northward, and a large white
population will till their own farms by their own labor, with the aid of
irrigation.  Of the advent of such a day there are no present signs, yet
stranger changes have happened in our time than this change would be.  Other
South Africans believe that minerals not less valuable than those which the
last twenty years have revealed are likely to be discovered in other places.
This also may happen, - South Africa, it has been said, is a land of
surprises, - and if it does happen there may be another inrush like that which
has filled the Rand.  All that one can venture to do now is to point out the
probable result of the conditions which exist at this moment, and these,
though they point to a continued increase of mineral production, do not point
to any large or rapid increase of white inhabitants.

     Twenty years hence the white population is likely to be composed in about
equal proportions of urban and rural elements.  The urban element will be
mainly mining, gathered at one great center on the Rand, and possibly at some
smaller centers in other districts.  The rural element, consisting of people
who live in villages or solitary farmhouses, will remain comparatively
backward, because little affected by the social forces which work suddenly and
potently upon close-packed industrial communities, and it may find itself very
different in tone, temper, and tendencies from its urban fellow-citizens.  The
contrast now so marked between the shopkeeper of Cape Town and the miner of
Johannesburg on the one hand, and the farmer of the Karroo or the northern
Transvaal on the other, may be then hardly less marked between the two
sections of the white population.  But these sections will have one thing in
common.  Both will belong to an upper stratum of society; both will have
beneath them a mass of laboring blacks, and they will therefore form an
industrial aristocracy resting on Kafir labor.