Page:Travel letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa (1913).djvu/266

 *tractors, 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 motor