were recent arrivals. What further percentage should
strictly be reckoned as importees it is impossible to say,
but a review of the subject suggests a large proportion.”
A labourer who during his last period of service at the
gold mines has had some slight but suggestive symptom
—pain or cough—will not go back to Johannesburg. He
will make for the nearest large town to seek work.
In many respects, food etc., the conditions of work at the
gold mines are now good, but the wages are still practi-
cally what they were before the war. (Native Grieo-
ances Inquiry 1914, p. 36, and Economic Commission's
Report 1925, p. 351.) The employers’ agreement limit-
ing the maximum daily average wage to 2s. 3d. is not
very encouraging to the labourers, considering the grave
risks to health of the work in what the Miner's Phthisis
Medical Bureau calls “ notoriously the most harmful
underground occupation.” (Report 1924, p. 30).
REASONS WHY NATIVE LABOURERS FEAR
EMPLOYMENT IN REMOTE PLACES WITH
UNKNOWN MASTERS.
A Memorandum recently published by the Pretoria
Joint Council on The Administration of Fustice in South
Africa, with special reference to the Natwe population,
contains the following illustrative cases.
* A European, charged with culpable homicide against
his Native servant, admitted that he had hit the servant
with a pick handle and killed him. He was found not
guilty by the jury and discharged. (Transvaal Criminal
Record, No. 383 of 19 5).”
* A Native charged with the murder of his European
master . . . was found guilty and sentenced to death.
. +. . In his report on the case the judge said, inter alia.
“I do not feel that the magistrate’s finding that the con-
demned prisoner was not assaulted by any member of the
police force at . . . . is correct. . . . I think that the ques-
tion of carrying out the death sentence should be dealt with
on the assumption that the accused was illegally thrashed
by the police in order to induce him to return to the service
of an employer whom for some reasons he greatly disliked,
I
