For the maintenance of the hospital two plans were adopted:  one, the collection of funds once a year, i.e., Hospital Saturday, a source which has yielded steadily between L2,000 and L3,000; two, having in view the immense number of native cases which required treatment and the extent to which a native is responsible for unsanitary conditions, it was proposed to impose upon them a fee of 1s. per month for their passes, the proceeds of this to be devoted entirely to the hospital.  For several years this continued to yield sufficient for the purpose.  The Transvaal Government, although accepting the plan proposed by the Uitlanders and for a considerable time carrying it out faithfully, did not establish the right permanently but adopted the formality of voting the proceeds of the pass-fee year by year.  There came a year when the Raad in its wisdom decided that this source of revenue was too precarious for so worthy an object as the hospital, and they decided to vote instead an annual subsidy of L30,000.  It was then known that the fees of the past year had amounted to over L40,000 and there was every prospect of steady annual increase.  This explains why a seemingly generous subsidy by the Government does not meet with that hearty recognition to which it is apparently entitled.  When a Pass Department was proposed, the Government inquired how it was suggested to maintain it.  The Chamber of Mines proposed to raise the pass fee from 1s. to 2s. per month, the extra shilling to be devoted entirely to the administration of the Pass Law.  With the experience of the hospital shilling in mind particular care was taken to have the agreement minuted and confirmed in writing.  Nevertheless, it transpired in the evidence given at the Industrial Commission that the department was being run at a cost of slightly over L12,000 a year, whilst the proceeds of the shilling reached the respectable total of L150,000 a year.  The Government, therefore, by a breach of agreement, make L138,000 a year out of the pass fund, and L120,000 a year out of the hospital fund; and the mining industry suffers in the meantime through maladministration in the department, and are doubly taxed in the sense that the companies have been obliged to establish and maintain at their own cost other hospitals all along the reef.  It is not suggested that the companies should not provide hospitals, the point is that having established a fund, which although nominally paid by the natives really has to be made up to them in wages, they were entitled to the benefit of that fund.

{17} The story is told of two up-country Boers who applied to the

President for appointments, and received the reply, ’What can I do for you?  All the important offices are filled, and you are not educated enough to be clerks!’

{18} (July, 1899.) The law has been declared by the law officers of the Crown to be a breach of the London Convention.

CHAPTER III.