ographical line.

First let me bring the South African color problem home to America. In
the United States the whites outnumber the blacks roughly ten to one.
Our coloured population represents the evolution of the one-time African
slave through various generations into a peaceful, law-abiding, and
useful social unit. The Southern "outrage" is the rare exception. We
have produced a Frederick Douglass and a Booker Washington. Our Negro is
a Christian, fills high posts, and invades the professions.

In South Africa the reverse is true. To begin with, the natives
outnumber the whites four and one-half to one--in Rhodesia they are
twenty to one--and they are increasing at a much greater rate than the
Europeans. Moreover, the native population draws on half a dozen races,
including the Zulus, Kaffirs, Hottentots and Basutos. These Negroes
represent an almost primitive stage of development. They are mainly
heathens and a prey to savagery and superstition. The Cape Colony is the
only one that permits the black man to go to school or become a skilled
artisan. Elsewhere the white retains his monopoly on the crafts and at
the same time refuses to do any labour that a Negro can perform. Hence
the great need of white immigration into the Union. The big task,
therefore, is to secure adequate work for the Negro without permitting
him to gain an advantage through it.

It follows that the moment the Kaffir becomes efficient and picks up a
smattering of education he begins to think about his position and unrest
is fomented. It makes him unstable as an employee, as the constant
desertions from work show. The only way that the gold and diamond mines
keep their thousands of recruited native workers is to confine them in
compounds. The ordinary labourer has no such restrictions and he is here
today and gone tomorrow.

It is not surprising to discover that in a country teeming with blacks
there are really no good servants, a condition with which the American
housewife can heartily sympathize. Before I went to Africa nearly every
woman I knew asked me to bring her back a diamond and a cook. They were
much more concerned about the cook than the diamond. Had I kept every
promise that I made affecting this human jewel, I would have had to
charter a ship to convey them. The only decent servant I had in Africa
was a near-savage in the Congo, a sad commentary on domestic service
conditions.

The one class of stable servants in the Colony are t