Manufactures of Steel, &c.

Locomotives.

Unenumerated Engines.

Cast and Wrought Iron.

Galvanized Sheets.

This brief digest will doubtless be sufficient to prove that South Africa, as a market, is to-day one of the best customers of the Motherland, and, as will be shown later, when dealing with the future outlook for Imperial trade with that country, bids fair to speedily overtop in her demands upon the United Kingdom and her Colonies and dependencies that of any single member of the Imperial family, India—of all our possessions at present our best customer—not even excepted. And what will readily be conceded is a satisfactory feature in our commercial relations with South Africa is the remarkable growth which has characterised the exports thither from British possessions and Protectorates other than the Mother Country itself, the total proportion in 1901 being £4,733,800, as against £4,590,681, the value of the combined trade with South Africa in that year of Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Holland, Switzerland, and the United States.

Why South Africa must, for many years to come, remain our best customer, ever increasing its demands upon our industries, is not difficult of comprehension to those who are acquainted with its circumstances. Although it is more than capable in proper hands and with the assistance of capital of being self-supporting, beyond its gold, diamonds, and coal, it produces little or nothing to speak of. It has one of the finest climates in the world; its soil is more than ordinarily fertile, and only requires water to yield a harvest more than sufficient for its consumptive needs, which could easily be obtained if the ample rainfall were properly conserved and irrigation resorted to on an intelligent principle. Incredible as it may seem, even the mealies or maize, which it could grow in sufficient quantity, without recourse to irrigation, to supply its own wants and leave a margin for export, are imported to the amount of something like £350,000 annually. Its iron deposits are probably unequalled elsewhere; its seas teem with fish, and its orchards and vineyards groan with the yield which nature lavishes with but little assistance from man. Yet on the shelves of every store throughout the country will be found imported canned fish and fruit, mainly from America; and while it is true that here and there jam factories are to be found, and the sugar cane grows almost wild in Natal, probably more than half a million yearly is disbursed on imported jams, confectionery, syrups, and the like. Tea likewise flourishes in Natal, but South Africa imports nearly £200,000 worth yearly; fresh and preserved vegetables, to its shame, are actually landed to the value of £80,000 annually, although, like most other foodstuffs, the soil grows them in luxuriant profusion; and of wine, despite the fact that the huge quantities made at the Cape, if properly treated according to European methods, would be unsurpassed in the world, the oversea product stands for nearly £300,000.

Moreover, as a cattle country many parts of South Africa are probably unrivalled, notwithstanding which both live and dead stock are freely imported, and while it could support millions of sheep it prefers the frozen mutton of New Zealand and the Argentine. Whoever is to blame for this state of things, which, happily, under the new regime and with the influx of population from European countries will gradually be altered, it is certain that, until the old order changes (and this will probably be a work of decades), South Africa must rely upon oversea goods for the maintenance of its growing population, as also for the means wherewith to extract its marvellous mineral wealth. According to Mr. W. Willcocks, C.M.G., if the irrigation schemes which are projected in the Transvaal and Orange River Colonies are ever carried into effect, they will add something like £200,000,000 to the value of the agricultural land, a consummation which, in its own interests as well as for our own industries, is devoutly to be wished. If it be true, as is repeatedly asserted by those most competent to judge, that South Africa’s vast mineral deposits have only been “scratched,” how much more does this remark apply to its agriculture, which, after all, is the staple wealth of all countries, and which has made the United States and Canada what they are to-day?

Enough has probably been said of the South African trade of the past and present, although the subject is of such profound interest to the student that it deserves greater space than is possible within the scope of a single article. It is to the future that we have now to direct our attention, and it is in attempting to forecast the probable trend of the trade in the years to come that speculation becomes positively fascinating. In making this endeavour, it is well to bear in mind that assumption will be based upon such facts as are within our common knowledge, and therefore may be accepted as a reliable, although not infallible, guide as to what may safely be expected of South African commerce in the future. Setting aside for the moment the possibility of the soil being made to yield any greater abundance than is now the case, or that other than its existing insignificant industries will be promoted or developed, we will first of all confine our investigations to how far South Africa’s mineral wealth will beneficially affect trade pure and simple. Altogether, irrespective of the Cape, Natal, Rhodesia, and the Orange River Colony, the mining, exploration, and investment companies at present in existence in the Transvaal alone, or connected therewith, number something like 350, representing a capital of £250,000,000, or about what the war has cost us. Many attempts have been made by competent experts in the past to forecast what the several sections of the Witwatersrand only will yield in gold as interest on this huge sum before the mines at present in working or in process of being worked are exhausted, but few approximate with such exactitude the recent estimates of Messrs. Frederick H. Hatch and T. H. Leggett, both of whom are authorities whose views are entitled to the greatest respect. They have had many years’ practical experience of the Transvaal mines, and owing to the uniformity of the yield, tested at a depth of nearly 5000 feet, to which they limit themselves in their calculations, they are of opinion that the gold yet to be extracted from Randfontein on the west to Modderfontein on the east amounts to the almost incalculable total of £1,310,323,000, and that the life of this section is forty-two and a half years.

Now, as it is indisputable that South African trade is in the main practically dependent upon the country’s mineral wealth, it is not a matter of supreme difficulty to arrive at some definite conclusion as to what effect the extraction of this stupendous amount will have upon its consumptive requirements. Herein lies its supreme significance to manufacturers, and particularly to those who are our countrymen. The experts cited are of opinion that by June 1906 the annual output of gold from this section alone will amount to £30,000,000, which compares with £20,000,000, the estimated yield for 1899, had not the war intervened. According to figures taken from the reports issued by the Johannesburg Chamber of Mines, something like 75 per cent. of the yearly output of but seventy-four of the mining companies producing the £20,000,000 referred to has been spent in the past on machinery, stores, development, labour, &c., which would mean a local disbursement alone of £22,500,000 in 1906 to win the £30,000,000 estimated as the yield in that year by Messrs. Hatch and Leggett. But, according to Mr. A. R. Goldring, secretary to the Johannesburg Chamber of Mines, who bases his data upon information supplied by the leading Rand engineering experts, in 1907 no fewer than 17,000 head of stamps will be at work, being an increase of 11,000 on the number in operation just previous to the outbreak of the war. If the annual output of £20,000,000 involved the expenditure of £15,000,000 on stores, machinery, wages, &c., Mr. Goldring’s estimate of the number of stamps that will be at work in 1907 means the disbursement of the gigantic sum of £42,500,000 as the total contribution which the Rand gold industry alone will expend for the benefit of the merchants and manufacturers of the Mother Country and the world at large. If to this estimate be added the expenditure necessitated by the numerous diamond and copper mines and collieries in the Cape Colony, Orange River Colony, Natal, and the Transvaal, coupled with that of the Rhodesian gold mines and collieries, as well as the gold mines in districts other than the Witwatersrand, such as Barberton and Zoutpansberg, &c., a reasonable estimate should place the total disbursements of the entire mining industry in South Africa in, say, five years at £50,000,000 sterling, which, added to the normal requirements of the country apart from those of mining, would mean an annual outlay of at least £60,000,000 for the benefit of commerce.

It will be seen that no allowance is here made for possible developments in agriculture and kindred pursuits, which may not unreasonably be expected to ensue as the result of the fostering care of the administrations, under the Imperial Government, of the Transvaal and Orange River Colonies, although large disbursements might with perfect safety be placed to the credit of these and other industries which may safely be assumed to be promoted during the interval between the present and the year to which these estimates relate. That the Rand gold industry can never be checked again, short of another war, which is extremely improbable, is as certain as that the sun shines, and the same remark applies to the other mineral propositions. It is therefore well within the bounds of probability to predict that the total purchasing capacity of South Africa five years hence will be at least £60,000,000 sterling per annum (which is an exceedingly moderate computation in view of the fact that the estimated total in 1902 is £42,000,000), a sum which, assuming our other colonies and possessions do not advance in the same ratio, will make that country an easy first as Great Britain’s best market. If Messrs. Hatch and Leggett be correct in their surmise that the life of the Rand is forty-two and a half years—and in the main they are supported by other competent authorities—excluding altogether the possibility of other discoveries of precious metals and minerals in that long interval, and eliminating for the moment, what is improbable, that the remainder of the three hundred and fifty mining and exploration companies above referred to remain idle meantime, or that their number is not hugely increased, we arrive at a total expenditure of two thousand five hundred and fifty millions sterling as South Africa’s contribution to trade in the period in question. As it would be futile to dilate upon what this overwhelming sum means to British industries, it must be left to the imagination. It is worth thinking about nevertheless.

There is, however, always the pessimist to be considered in these matters. While no doubt he will content himself with the satisfactory outlook for British trade which is here unfolded, he may, in anticipation of time, begin to worry himself as to what will happen when the Rand is no more, and when its thousands of stamps are lying idle for the want of further quartz to crush. If one cared or dared to venture upon the hazardous ground of prophecy, one might easily foretell the possibility of other Rands being discovered meanwhile, with the practical certainty that a hundred years hence South Africa’s gold yield, instead of showing diminution, will largely exceed even present anticipations; and here it is justifiable to intrude the remark that every expert, without exception, who is connected with its gold industry, is unanimous in asserting that mining has hardly been begun, and that the future will exceed the expectations of even the most optimistically inclined. But, granted that the pessimist be correct that in fifty years the gold will cease to yield and the Rand be a barren, silent waste, is it quite safe to conclude that meanwhile the country has remained at a standstill except for its mining activities? Are the £200,000,000 sterling which Mr. W. Willcocks, C.M.G., the distinguished irrigation expert, asserts will add to the value of the country as agricultural land if irrigation be resorted to, to be counted as nothing; and is there not the remote possibility of South Africa taking its natural place among the world’s producers of other staples than gold? What of its vast coal and iron deposits, its saltpetre, its petroleum, and its countless other products which to-day are but waiting the advent of capital to bring into being, all of which, like its gold, have yet to astonish the world? Gold or no gold, the country must, as the years unfold, become a teeming hive of industry, the only approximation to which is that of the United States of America. South Africa, then, is no place for the pessimist, and the sooner that is understood, the greater the peace of mind of that misguided individual.

As to the trend of the gigantic trade that is before South Africa, it has been incontestably shown that the proportion enjoyed by the Mother Country, and that of its colonies and possessions, is immeasurably in advance of that of all other nations combined, despite the ravings of the alarmists as to the alleged incursions of our rivals on what are pre-eminently our own domains. This fact must not, however, lull us into the false security of our peaceful slumbers of twenty, or even ten, years ago, when we had the field to ourselves, and which we might have retained even now but for our ignorance of its potentialities. The competition to be faced is a keen one; the trade is there and must remain there, in all human probability, for all time, in increasing quantity—for it can never retrograde; and only the alertness, the unceasing activity of those who are interested in retaining it, will preserve the major portion to our own industries. In endeavouring to show that the future outlook for South African trade is one which our manufacturers cannot possibly ignore, by reason of its incalculable vastness, it is reasonable to suppose that each member of the Imperial family, whether it be the Mother Country, its offsprings, or the humblest citizen of either, will strain every nerve to conserve to it the spoils for which such sacrifices in blood and treasure have been made, thus handing down to our children a heritage of wealth which is their right equally as it is our duty.

Much might be written in confutation of the many alarmist reports as to the decadent condition into which British trade has fallen of late years, but, after all, is this worth while? Admitted that, inflated with our past prosperity, we have slumbered on undisturbed by the thought of what the to-morrow will bring, it would need greater imagination than the prospective garnering of the two thousand five hundred millions sterling which it has been shown is likely to fall into the lap of the world’s traders as the result of the future expansion of South Africa in less than fifty years, to suppose that our manufacturers have suddenly become bereft of their senses not to seize the most of their opportunities. It is easy to decry their enterprise, to compare their alleged shortcomings with the activities and the asserted “pushful” tendencies of their competitors—thus advertising the latter at their expense—but how much of foundation is there in such reports? The brief statistics with which this article is accompanied—and they have been confined to the narrowest possible limits—conclusively show that, so far as South African trade is concerned, British manufacturers are more than holding their own; and there cannot be the least doubt that they will continue to do so in the years of prosperity and expansion that are before the sub-continent, provided they are assisted by the ungrudging efforts of labour. This is a matter which need not be intruded here, but it is one upon which the maintenance of our supremacy in the world’s markets will depend, and it is one, too, which could be more profitably discussed by those whose apparent mission is to belittle everything that is British in favour of those who, in South Africa as elsewhere, are striving to wrest our commerce from us. As has been shown, the future outlook for trade in that country is of the brightest, and that we shall not prove equal to the task of maintaining our position there is a contemplation that does not come within the scope of probability.