city, but a mining district covering 1,600 square miles, whose
population of adult males practically balances the whole of the rest
of the country. The Rand population is not, as some people imagine, a
foreign population. The great majority of it is British, and a very
large portion of it consists of as good, honest, hard-working men as
are to be found in any constituency in this country. But there are
also on the Rand a considerable proportion of Dutch. Krugersdorp Rural
is Dutch, and has always been excluded from the Rand in the
discussions that have taken place in South Africa, and included in the
"Rest of the Transvaal." But in addition to that there are the towns
of Fordsburgh, which is half Dutch, and two other suburbs which also
have a Dutch population; and it is believed that these will afford
seats for members of the Responsible British Party with the support of
Het Volk. I must say further that the British community upon the Rand
is divided into four main political parties. There is the Transvaal
Progressive Association, a great and powerful association which arises
out of the mining interest. There is the Responsible Government
Association; there is the Transvaal Political Association--a moderate
body standing between the Responsibles and the Progressives--and there
are the labour associations, which are numerous. There are three main
labour associations, or really four--the Independent Labour Party, the
Transvaal Labour League, the Trade and Labour Council of the
Witwatersrand, and the Trade and Labour Council of Pretoria. Why do I
bring these facts before the Committee? I do so because I feel it
necessary to show how impossible it is to try to dismiss the problems
of this complicated community with a gesture or to solve their
difficulties with a phrase, and how unfair it would be to deprive such
a community, in which there are at work all the counter-checks and
rival forces that we see here in our own political life, of its proper
share of representation.