126 THBJ SOUTH AFRICAN INDIAN QUESTION
It is not the additional 'brown burden on bhe top of the black one' wbiob agitate 'the European Colonists in South Africa,' bufc "the orux of the whole question is, as your correspondent puts it*-, "that South Africa cannot be run economically with the Indian in it, and the white people who have made the country, cannot be expected to ootnmit race suicide," This is not the problem that presents itself to the Boer living on the Veldt to whom the Indian trader is a blessing nor to the European housewife in the big towns of bhe Transvaal who de- pends solely upon the Indian vegetable vendor for the vegetables brought to her door. Bub the problem pre- sents itself in the manner put by your correspondent to the petty European trader who finds in bhe thrifty and resourceful Indian a formidable rival, and with his vote wbiob counts a great deal and with his influeaoeas a member of the ruling race he has succeeded in making his own economic problem a race problem for South Africa. In reality the problem is whether the peljty trader for his selfish end is to be allowed to override every consideration of justice, fair play, imperial policy and all that goes bo make a nation good and greab.
In support of bhe gradual bub certain squeezing oub process, what has been called the Smuts-Gandhi agree- ment has been pressed iuto service. Now that agreement! is embodied in two letters and two only of the 30&h Juue, 1914 the first one addressed to me on behalf of General Smuts by Mr, Gorges, Secretary for bhe In- terior, and the second my acknowledgment of ib bearing the same date, The agreement, as the letters conclu- sively show, ia an agreement on questions which were the subject of civil in the correspondence described as pas- sive resistance. Tue settlement stipulates only for an
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