26th April.
As the letter in another column from the Rev. Arnotd Foster shows, the conditions under which efforts are being made to recruit Chinese labourers for the mines in the Transvaal are attracting a good deal of attention in China. Our readers will therefore be interested in a summary of the Ordinance passed by the Transvaal Legislative Cotncil, whose title is " Draft Ordinance to regulate the Introduction into the Transvaal of Unskilled Non-European Labourers," and the full text of; which is given in a recently issued Dlue-book." The first section defines the terms "labourer," "unskilled labour," "importer," "country of origin," "contract," " imprisonment," and " Witwatersrand District." The next three sections provide for the appointment of a Superintendent, who is to be the protector of Chinese, with Inspectors under him, and defines their duties; but, as we mentioned in our remarks on the 5th instant, cases in which importers or labourers have transgressed the ordinance must be brought before a magistrate, and the magistrates represent the Governurent whose great concern is the prosperity of the mines, No labourer can be introduced into, enter, or reside in the colony except under contract, and anyone introducing or employing labourer without, first obtaining licence from the Lieut.-Governor is to be liable to a penalty of £100 for every such labourer and the cost of repatriating the labourer. No labourer may be employed elsewhere in the Transvaal than in the Witwatersrand District, Every labourer must sign a contract the provisions of which have been previously explained to him. This contract provides that the labourer shall exclusively employed on unskilled labour in the Rand mines, and that he shall not be employed on any skilled labour whatever; that he shall only serve his importer or some other licensed person to whom his importer may transfer him; that on the expiration of his contract he shall be repatriated at the expense of his importer; and that he shall be more especially subject to the following provisions (1) He may not get or acquire a liquor, mining, trading, general dealer's, importer's, hawker's, or other licence whatever, directly or indirectly, or acquire, lease, or hoid any house, land, building, or fixed property or mining rights whatever. (2) His importer must obtain for him an identification passport, which he must always carry with him, (3) He must not leave the premises on which he is employed with-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.