The Town Hall, Parliament buildings, a splendid public garden, good museum, art gallery, colleges and other commendable public institutions are fully in keeping with the natural attractiveness of the Cape Peninsular. Creditable business buildings and good docks are also prominent.
Durban's wide-awake business men, together with Capetown's high charges to shippers, have taken from Table Bay the maritime prestige she once enjoyed. The majority of ships going to India and Australia do not come into Table Bay for coal, but keep steaming until they have reached Port Natal.
Smokestacks about the shore of the bay are not numerous enough to class the place as a manufacturing center. One often wonders what people do to earn a living in some of the cities of South Africa, in view of blacks doing so much of the work. Wages in Capetown, the lowest paid in South Africa, are not enough for comfortable living. Clerks, bookkeepers and clerical help generally are offered $7 to $10 a week. House rent is very cheap, however.
The blacks and colored of the Cape Province participate in the franchise, and a native of Tembuland was a member of the provincial Parliament. Strict laws in the old Boer provinces prohibit selling liquor to natives. While all natives here cannot vote, all voters have a right to drink liquor. So, if a native has money to buy whisky, he need merely say he is a voter and the saloonkeeper will take his word for it. When a black man can drink all the whisky he can pay for, and has a vote, that means insults and danger to life for the white of both sexes. This is the deplorable stage reached, to a noticeable degree, in Capetown. The white population is decreasing and blacks are becoming more insolent. The native of Capetown is not like the Zulu, nor the Barotse. He is copper colored, lower intellectually, of uninviting features and meanly inclined. Instances are frequent when the black of Capetown will not share the sidewalk--the white man must step off or get into a fight with half a dozen of these drunken natives.
To be allowed to land in Capetown one must have a hundred dollars. Englishmen, Irishmen, Scotchmen, foreigners--no one can land if he has not that sum. The tariff charged on foreign goods is from 50 to 125 per cent. The latter figure applies to tobacco. On a pound of American tobacco, which sells in the United States for 40 cents, there is a tax of $1.20.