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pressing questions of the Milner administration was to look for cheap labour
in which he even looked to central Africa. After failing in central Africa, he
looked to Asia in which in 1905, 50 000 Chinese labourers were
imported 526 . That did not solve the problem because by 1910 the Chinese
labourers had been repatriated, mainly for fear of complicating future race
relations.
The mine owners soon realised that the migrant labour system held major
advantages for them. Thus the mine owners, supported by the Milner
administration, did much to stimulate the migrancy of labourers in their
search for cheap labour for the mines. With the migrant labour system,
labourers worked on the mines for a contract period of three to twelve
months and then returned home to their families in rural areas. While the
men were away, the families continued to work on land, growing crops and
raising livestock. If the worker had lived permanently in town with his family,
his wages would have had to cover the total living expenses of the whole
family. The migrant labour system thus allowed the mine owners to pay
lower wages while evading all the responsibility for housing, health care,
education and welfare of the workers’ families. In this way production in the
most backward, poverty–stricken sector of the economy was subsidising the
profits of the mining industry, the most modern sector. For these reasons,
the mine owners wanted to preserve the migrant labour system at all costs.
They realised, however, that workers would stay away from the mines and
526 N. C. Pollock and S. Agnew, An Historical geography of South Africa, p. 200.
302