THERE is hardly a phase of modern history with which the
race of Judah has been so intricately identified as the creation of the largest
goldfield in the world and the establishment of the strange city, holding a
third of a million residents, that now constitutes its centre and the
"livest" African settlement.
Vasco da Gama met, at Sofala and Malindi, Jewish pilots who
steered his top-heavy caravels across the Indian Ocean to the spice-lands, to
Calicut, Goa, and the rest of the gorgeous Orient. In the venerable East Coast
towns on the shore of Northern Mozambique and Tanganyika lived not only these
seafaring Semites but a small number of merchants—long-robed, bearded men who
dealt with the natives in "ivory, apes, and peacocks." Apart from
such luxurious commodities, the first foreign traders in the Sub-continent
wanted gold—yellow grains picked by dark fingers from the mud in mysterious
rivers flowing out of Monomotapa, Prester John's kingdom, and other fairy-tale
commonwealths.
Manuscripts telling how exactly Hebrew and Arab merchants
conducted this business, what they paid to the naked savage finders, how the
precious heavy powder was taken into the shops of Eastern mintmasters and
goldsmiths, are scarce and incomplete. Many aspects of the trade can never be
explained. But this remains certain—the gold export from Southern Africa is
centuries, maybe millenniums old, and a great deal was always handled by Jews.
Whether the Scattered Tribe actually trekked over the fever valleys to the
Rhodesian and Transvaal highlands is something on which one can not do much
more than speculate. However, it appears very, very likely that a nation so
versed in precious metals never restricted its wide-awake investigations to the
Continent's coastline, but visited, and possibly worked, some of the native
diggings upcountry.
Ere definite names and facts connected with Jewry are traced
in the chronicles of African mineral industries several centuries must be
skipped.
The "Trans-Vaal."
On March the 1st, 1854, a newspaper issued at Graaff-Reinet
told how one Marcus, living near Potchefstroom, the newly-started capital of
the Trans-Vaal Republic (the spelling belongs to the period), had publicly
shown gold which he picked up some distance from that village.
During this decade folk at the Cape possessed many wild
notions concerning the geography of the land populated by the Emigrant Boers.
To begin with, their entire country did not possess more than four other
dorps—Klerksdorp, Rustenburg, Orighstad, Utrecht—so it was not very easy to
convey ideas of topography. Quite possibly Mr. Marcus's discovery may have
existed on or near the Witwatersrand, Potchefstroom being the nearest village
(quite close, according to 1854 ideas of land settlement).
This is borne out by the almost simultaneous finding of gold
on the Yokeskei River. Marais, the Boer who reported this, was forced to keep
the fact a secret by a Volksraad which made prospecting a heavily punishable
crime. At any rate, the tidings in the "Graaff-Reinet Advertiser"
brought no sequel, except of the indirect kind, for many long years.
Ere the same year ended, another Jew, Mr. Benjamin Norden,
of Cape Town, became interested in an attempt at gold mining. This worthy
Peninsula merchant, one of the solid, respectable, Victorian counting-house
proprietors who started the oldest Congregation in this land, was a friend of
Mr. George Livingstone, for a long time a citizen of Burghersdorp, near the
boundary of the Orange River Sovereignty. At Smithfield, in the last-mentioned
wild territory, the precious metal had been found amid a quartz formation, and
several substantial nuggets were actually secured. Old Norden, who behaved in a
venturesome way during the first Namaqualand copper boom (which had occurred
just before), seemed, to the up-country schemer, a suitable promoter for a
possible mineral syndicate. A company obtained subscriptions, a shaft was cut
through the quartz reef, and nuggets, the largest one of 88 grains, another of
63, and a third of 66, were shown to the doubters. The merchant financier
remained useful to Livingstone's concern, but evidently Benjamin Norden failed
to make very much money out of this forgotten speculation.
Jews were oddities in the South African Republic during the
fifties and sixties. Stern religious taboos kept them from the State Service,
and though the ordinary frontier trekker nearly always behaved kindly to the
"People of the Book" there was not enough prosperity and too much
stagnation in the land to lure many "Joodemense" across the Vaal.
Nevertheless, a few adventurous migrants went into the
poisonous Low Veld to buy ivory and sell trinkets from the traditional ox-wagon
or "pens winkels" to the hunters of the wilderness.
The Eighteen-Seventies.
When Pilgrims Rest and other remote goldfields started work
in the eighteen-seventies, Jews from the diamond fields, from the seaports and
the veld dorps occasionally left the older colonies to find good fortune amid
the bushlands up north. President Burgers brought ideas of greater religious
tolerance to the thatched Volksraad Building at Pretoria. The State no longer
looked upon the strangers like Hiawatha's missionaries, as "the Jews, the
tribe accursed." And the idea of letting them flourish no longer appeared
an absurdity to the pious Doppers. In 1875 one already found a Mr. H. H.
Solomon, afterwards Mayor of Port Elizabeth, returning from Pilgrims Rest with
such substantial signs of affluence on his person as a 4½-lb. gold nugget and
some 140 ozs. of the same metal among his luggage.
Throughout this era the characteristics of South African
Jewry altered. Omitting the very few English Jews who had come in the train of
Benjamin Norden, Aaron De Pass and others during the forties, the earlier
congregations possessed a very considerable German element. This originated
with the Mosenthals, who lived in the Grand Duchy of Hesse before the first
one, Julius, thought of sailing to this remote country.
Few South Africans know that the founders of this famous
mercantile firm were closely related to a quite considerable German poet,
Salomon Mosenthal, whose dramas, "Der Sonnenwendhof,"
"Deborah," and others figure in all histories of the Fatherland's
literature, and are even now not entirely out of date as repertory pieces for
Continental theatres.
Because of the success gained in local trade by the
Mosenthals and their contemporaries, such as Isaac Baumann, founder of the
present widespread clan, a whole number of other young German Jews gradually
drifted to the Cape. The Lilienfelds, later notable throughout the world as the
buyers of the "Star of South Africa" (on which, by the way, they lost
a good deal of money), the writer's grandfather, Albert Rosenthal, and his
brother Theodore, which latter pioneer subsequently became chairman of the
Continental Tyre Company in Germany, the Hanaus and Hoffas of Victoria West and
Richmond, the Friedlanders, Goldmans, Abrahamsons, Dreyfuses and others, whose
names afterwards figured outstandingly in Rand history, immigrated during the
fifties and early sixties.
The flow quickened when diamonds were found. Thus the Beits,
the Albus, and crowds of other Continentals who ultimately became
Johannesburgers, saw the Country of Good Hope. But in addition two other
streams of Jews now flowed towards Africa. Of the one kind the great Barney
Barnato appeared an outstanding representative—the London, Birmingham, Leeds or
other English youngsters who went out to make their pile and make it quickly.
Even more momentous was the arrival of the late Mr. Samuel Marks towards the
end of the seventies. He led the imposing invasion of Russian citizens which
has continued and grown for half a century.
Jews in the Transvaal.
Out of these three elements the Jewish builders of the Rand
were to develop. By 1880 a few Jews lived in the Transvaal, principally as
traders, but also as speculators and miners. In 1881 a Mr. Alfred Goldberg
astounded Pretoria by driving up to that town all the way from Durban aboard a
dogcart drawn by four horses. He was present at the outbreak of the First Boer
War and felt fascinated by the Republic in whose development, a few years
later, he was to take a very vital part. The same year Samuel Marks trekked
from the Cape to this State and started his historic friendship with Paul
Kruger, of whom he remained a crony for years. The establishment of the first
manufacturing industry in the Transvaal, the Eerste Fabrieken, 11 miles from
Pretoria, brought into being the settlement Hatherley, where, as originally
planned, there was to have been vastly more than a mere distillery. Mr. Marks
built his home yonder, and during the early eighties it counted as almost the
best residence in the country.
While this happened, Jews became active on the Lydenburg
Goldfields. Documents dated the 10th of November, 1881, record the grant of a
prospecting and digging concession in that wild district to David Benjamin,
who, on payment of £1,000, was to possess for an unlimited period the mineral
privileges over a block of farms. One year later Otto Rothschild, Henri Frank,
Salomon Frank, Adolph Hollard, Adolph Astrowsky and others began a rival
venture, while in 1883 Anthony Goldschmidt and Charles Sonnenberg followed with
another attempt to develop the treasure below the lion-hills of Lydenburg.
The last-mentioned became very active in Transvaal mineral
developments. He was the brother of Isaac Sonnenberg, or "Ikey," as
he was more widely known to tradition. After close on fifty years the yarns
retailed about this pioneer and his dry pungent jokes have not reached
oblivion. To the South African anecdote-teller the figure of Ikey Sonnenberg
became most useful, since innumerable chestnuts which originated overseas could
be safely but apocryphally ascribed to him.
Following the settlement between the Boers and England after
Majuba a humdrum but comparatively active period of development started in the
Republic. Earlier negotiations about the Delagoa Bay railway were again taken
up, and in procuring the needful European backing several famous Dutch, French
and other Jewish bankers indirectly helped South Africa.
Samuel Marks and his partner Isaac Lewis were driving the
foundations of their prospering ventures deeper into the land. When in 1884
diggers, first from the Transvaal, then from Kimberley, then from the rest of
South Africa, and finally from overseas, started swooping into the De Kaap
Valley in order to create the town of Barberton, these merchants and a goodly
number of other Jews hurried with the first throng. Among the structures that
constituted the mining town, old papers specially mention Lewis and Marks
Buildings, one of the very few double-storeyed establishments in the place,
then filled with bustling offices and the premises of the Bank of Africa.
Barberton diggers included some who afterwards became eminent Johannesburgers.
Mr. Harry Graumann lived to be one of the Jewish Mayors in the city which
Barberton at first languidly patronised. Other Jewish names among those
pre-Rand pioneers are Simon Lissack, Freedman, Cohen and Adler.
The Witwatersrand.
While Africa eagerly hearkened to the stamp batteries on the
De Kaap Goldfield, some Jews were trying to prospect another, poorer-looking
district. Sent on behalf of a wealthy Kimberley German, Siegismund Neumann,
Carl Hanau, of Victoria West, took his first look at the empty hill ridge whose
twinkling clean springs gave it the name of the Witwatersrand. On that occasion
this capitalist failed to recognise the marvels hidden below the billowy veld.
He went away again and did not return until a few years later, when the first
overwhelming changes had happened.
Twelve months later, in 1885, another Jew, however, actively
busied himself amid the district whose queer rock puzzled the prospectors. With
Messrs. Green and Bantjes, Isaac Sonnenberg joined in the working of our
earliest local mine at Kromdraai near what is now Krugersdorp. Before the Main
Reef was found a year was fated to expire, but Jewry has the satisfaction of
knowing that it had representatives at the beginning of it. Ere Struben's
fateful strike was made a number of folk were searching the Southern Transvaal
after gold, and Cecil John Rhodes himself helped one expedition. J. S. Masur,
who later worked hard for the prosperity of the disappointing Malmani or
Ottoshoop fields, prospected Doornkop on behalf of Rhodesia's founder during
1885. Evidently he believed in the chances of the Witwatersrand, for he bought
a section of Langlaagte farm. Enthusiasm did not last, since he finally sold
out for £80!
Various other gold ventures were being tried in addition to
the Witwatersrand, and in each case Jews were to be found fighting the
wilderness. At Steynsdorp, that village of great ambitions which is now
completely dead, at Mac Mac, at Klerksdorp, in Swaziland, Jews were present. By
1886 a coach line already crossed the Rand, and travelling upon the lurching,
mule-pulled turnout sat one Lionel Phillips, a youngish engineer born in
London, who, having prospered in Kimberley, went for the firm of Werner Beit
& Co. to examine the Barberton occurrences. This mining expert saw the
Strubens working their first mill but as yet chances farther east looked
vaster. For the French and Desterre Company he trekked in the Low Veld, and
1888 arrived before he moved permanently to the new diggings. More diggers
arrived, and amongst them the Mosaic faith was increasingly represented.
President Kruger no longer doubted which would be the biggest mining town of
his Republic. In the "Staats Koerant" appeared the proclamation of
another urban settlement—Johannesburg. Ferreira's Camp sent forth its
shirt-sleeved buyers in hundreds when Landdrost Von Brandis offered plots
within the new city.
Some Interesting Sales.
And of the very first lots on the sale list, Stand No. 2,
Johannesburg, was knocked down to a Jew, Mr. Lowenstein, who paid the
reasonable amount of one shilling and sixpence therefor. This property still
remains in his ownership; it adjoins the familiar birdshop near Braamfontein
subway in Harrison Street. Soon after the same gentleman, a pharmaceutical
chemist by profession, obtained a plot from a Boer who offered to exchange it
for a bottle of medicine. On this the old Synagogue and Jewish School (now demolished
to secure space for the new central railway station) were built.
Observant and orthodox Jews who belonged to the new-born
community soon enough discovered what numbers of their co-religionists lived in
the canvas shanties, the wattle and daub boarding houses, the tin hotels and
the green-brick office buildings which so frequently became the sleeping places
for their tenants. Every one of the hundred coaches rolling along the veld from
the Cape, the Orange Free State and Natal held one or more Jews. Some were
self-possessed American subjects, others bewildered fugitives from Russian
pogroms, dozens had been born in Germany. Goodly consignments of French Jews,
of Dutch Jews, of Australian, Portuguese, even Turkish Jews arrived. They came
to get rich, and for that purpose showed the entire versatility of the race.
Nearly everybody belonged to the local stock exchange, even though he might
also carry on a business outside the roaring, money-gorged shed on Commissioner
Street. A government of some kind was needed for the camp long before the
Volksraad realised it.
Jewish Professional Men.
The Jewish section of the populace was not by any means
restricted to mere trading. Many Jewish prospectors, engineers, doctors,
lawyers, chemists helped at knocking into shape the system by which the gold
industry is now organised. Brokers spent their week-ends prospecting, merchants
put in hours between the shopping booms at the Stock Exchange. The Rev. Joel
Rabinowitz, one of the most popular and strong-minded ministers who ever lived
in South Africa, the preacher of the Cape Town Congregation for over
twenty-three years, lost his money after his retirement in 1882, and then
provided a most surprising instance of the rejuvenating powers exercised by the
Witwatersrand. At the age of 72 the worthy old gentleman went as an ordinary
student to the South African College in order to became an assayer. Professor
Hahn found him entirely qualified to make gold analyses within three months.
Helped by letters from numerous influential Gentiles to whom he was a genuine
friend—e.g., "Onze Jan," the late J. H. Hofmeyr, the Rev. Rabinowitz
went to Johannesburg and figured as a successful practitioner in a very short
time. His arrival on the Goldfields, however, produced some effects which the
Rabbi had not foreseen. Just before he came, the Rev. S. Rappaport from Port
Elizabeth had been to the Rand on a visit, and evidently the presence of this
reverend gentleman awoke in the minds of certain citizens a realisation that a
town of Johannesburg's size (it already possessed five or six thousand inhabitants)
should possess an organised Hebrew Congregation.
The First Congregation.
In those days, Mr. Emanuel Mendelssohn and Robert Scott were
the proprietors of "The Standard," the editor being Henry Wright. At
that time it was printed in a street off Market Street, and Messrs. Mendelssohn
and Scott had a stationery store next to the present General Post Office.
Another paper, the "Diggers' News," was then printed in Simmonds
Street. It was afterwards sold to I. Susskind, a Jew, father of the well-known
cricketer. These two papers were eventually merged as "The Standard and
Diggers' News."
Together with several other respected Jews, Mr. Mendelssohn
convened a meeting at Weinstein's store, facing Market Square. Names still well
known on the Witwatersrand can be read in the record of that meeting on the
10th of July, 1887, when 88 pioneers decided to constitute what is now the
largest congregation in the land. Isaac Sonnenberg, who even then counted among
the seniors of South African Jewry, presided over the discussion which resulted
in the unanimous resolution "that the time is fully ripe for the present
meeting to form itself into the Witwatersrand Jewish Association." Since
the vigorous intellectual personality of Emanuel Mendelssohn could not be
overlooked, his was the honour of being the first president of a local
congregation.
Meanwhile the Rev. Joel Rabinowitz had become so successful
in the assaying profession that he started the erection of a laboratory
building, but just about the time when this structure approached its
inauguration, and six weeks after the congregation had been founded, an
accident happened at Langlaagte wherein a Port Elizabeth Jew, Mr. Nathan, was
killed. This constituted the first occasion on which the
"Association" had a chance of helping in religious duties, but it
soon appeared evident that the only man competent to carry through a proper
ceremonial burial was the former Cape Town minister. Being asked to officiate,
the old gentleman courteously agreed, and even placed his new building at the
congregation's disposal during the interment, certainly the strangest purpose
to which any scientific laboratory can ever have been applied.
This led to a request by the Jewish Association that Mr.
Rabinowitz should officiate during the High Festivals, for which purpose the
Rand Club, still a large building fringed with a verandah, might be secured.
From the fact that about five hundred worshippers were expected, it is possible
to ascertain the number of Jews on the Witwatersrand during 1887. Women were
few and children even rarer. Allowing for indifferent people who would fail to
attend, and for those who did not consider the ceremony sufficiently orthodox,
one may safely estimate the Jewish population of the Fields to have been under
a thousand: a proportion of the entire populace not very much at variance with
the one still existing.
Minister and Committee did not at first agree too well. Mr.
Rabinowitz admits the occurrence of more than one tiff. Discussions concerning
the rights and wrongs of those arguments would be useless now. One is glad to
know that, notwithstanding his occasionally disagreeable experiences, the Rev.
Rabinowitz "made good." Some lucky purchases of property in a town
that grew like an avalanche put the old gentleman's bank account into a
gratifying position, and he ultimately returned to the Cape, honoured by
everybody, to spend his last years as a friend to all the world, Jewish and
Christian.
Mines and Magnates.
Mines in tens, in scores, in hundreds, were being floated or
developed. On the boards of the numberless syndicates recorded in Stock
Exchange archives sat a multitude of Jews. They kept moving away from Barberton
and Kimberley to the place which seemed so bewilderingly successful. Alfred
Beit, a Hamburger, agreed with his Gentile partner, Julius Werner, to establish
a branch on the new fields. Within a few moons this subsidiary was more famous
than the parent concern—Herman Eckstein & Company, to-day the "Corner
House." Although Herman Eckstein was not a Jew, his right-hand man, Lionel
Phillips, can be thus classed. And throughout the overwhelmingly imposing
progress of the mining house there remained evident the Semitic influence. At
one time Alfred Beit was seriously thought to be the richest man in the world.
It is wrong, however, to imagine that he came penniless to Africa. His
relatives were well-to-do business folk, and when he reached Kimberley as a
youngster he already possessed several thousand pounds. Now, when his name is
chiefly connected with great educational endowments and public benefactions
like the Limpopo Bridge, the country has somewhat forgotten the immense
position which this Jew held during his lifetime.
Edmund Garrett, the famous editor of the "Cape
Times," wrote a noble little poem about him, probably the finest
compliment ever paid to a rich Jew.
A Millionaire's Epitaph.
He gave by stealth, nor rose a new made knight
He worked for England to be dubbed "Herr Beit."
The friends he loved, he served through good and ill,
The man struck down, he served the memory still;
Nor, toiling, asked more recompense of fame
Than to be coupled with another's name.
Thus, in despite of that hard Scripture which
Shuts up the poor man's heaven against the rich,
Devotion learned from Dives to be true,
And Britons to be patriots from a Jew.
A monument which envy cannot shake,
Which millions never made, nor can unmake.
To enumerate all the Jewish financiers who worked in the
opening up of the Rand would mean a compilation filling pages of print. Many
were purely financiers, others actually delved the ground in their search for
ore. Jacob Leopold Ginsberg represented the latter type. He gave his name to a
well-known gold reef and founded the Ginsberg Mining Company. Adolph Eppler,
who came here representing Austrian capital, typifies the former variety.
In laying out the first townships Jews became particularly
prominent. The late Mr. Rosettenstein, Messrs. Goldreich Brothers, and others
belong to the bolder pioneers who opined that Johannesburg would be something
more than a tin camp. "Phillips's Folly" was the name by which
"Hohenheim," Sir Lionel's early Park Town mansion was called in the
later eighties. It appeared on the treeless kopjes miles beyond the
settlement's northern limit, as a forerunner of the square miles of stately
homes which are to-day Residential Johannesburg. Hohenheim still exists, a
token of Jewish generosity to the public. Men call the building the Beit
Convalescent Home.
The Reef.
Not only in Johannesburg but all along the Reef Hebrew
energy helped to make a Greater Transvaal. Portion of Roodepoort farm was being
opened up by Messrs. Jacobson & Kaufman, while among those who exploited
the alluvial deposits appeared the unambiguous name of Goldberg. Krugersdorp
may almost be counted as a Jewish creation. Abner Cohen owned the first
"country house" on the Rand, and assisted in the establishment of
this town during 1887.
With hardly one exception all the original mining houses in
Johannesburg possessed Jewish partners. Barney Isaacs (as Barnato officially
described himself in a court case) arrived here from Kimberley an enormously
rich man. So did Beit, Neumann and a goodly number of others. Nevertheless the
Rand alone gave wealth to others equally prominent. Goerz, the Albu brothers,
Freeman Cohen, Sydney Goldman and dozens whose names are not even remembered,
gained their big money on these goldfields. Numbers of them not only proved
skilful on the Stock Exchange but possessed talents of leadership which, in a
community so totally devoid of anti-Semitism as the Rand, could not be
overlooked by the populace. One job which in those days counted as highly as
any in the State was repeatedly held by Jews—the presidency of the Chamber of
Mines. Mr. Lionel Phillips, Mr. George Albu, Mr. Barney Barnato, thus one reads
in the old annual reports published by the body which stood for all
"Uitlanderdom."
Jews in State Services.
It would be wrong to believe, as numerous people do, that
Jewry stood solidly on the side of the newer populace. Boer ideals found more
than a single supporter among the community. In the railway service, in State
offices, even in the Police were to be found Jews. Disabilities established
during the intolerant Voortrekker era still lingered on, and many were the
resolutions concerning the taboos affecting those who did not support the Dutch
Reformed Church. In practice, however, things were not quite so bad. Samuel
Marks often discussed governmental affairs with the old President, and Jewish
shrewdness repeatedly helped to adjust difficult conundrums of policy. Leo
Weinthal, from Graaff-Reinet, was a good friend to "Oom Paul," and
conducted the Pretoria "Press," a paper that supported him.
Paul Kruger received with his far-famed straightforwardness
a multitude of Jews who wanted concessions, advice, interviews and other
things. Nobody complained that he differentiated in any way between them and
his Gentile visitors. When the year 1888 had been reached, diggers made sure
the Rand would not peter out within the next few years. Local Jews decided to
construct a synagogue. One of the most popular South African
"chestnuts" is attached to the incident, and which I forbear to give
in detail owing to its extreme staleness. One records how "Oom Paul"
refused to grant more than two stands to the congregation, whereas all
Christian denominations obtained four, since he averred the Israelites should
be penalised for only believing half the Bible. A minister still alive, the
Rev. M. L. Harris, father of Mr. Morrie Harris, who was Johannesburg's Mayor in
1924, took office in the President Street Synagogue. Charitable affairs began
to be organised, and that symptom of a developing community, controversy,
livened up Johannesburg Jewry. A Chevra Kadisha started its admirable work, and
almost at the same time a Hebrew school under Mr. S. Bebro collected its pupils
and the very orthodox citizens began to discuss the desirability of a separate
meeting house. Meanwhile, Jews kept streaming into the Transvaal, and the gold
output began to mount into millions.
Charles Sydney Goldman, a convert, wrote the first
comprehensive and authoritative study of the Rand diggings, which retains
unique value for any student of South African industrialism. Overseas
newspapers sent one correspondent after another to "write up" the
Goldfields, and every journalist commented on the plenitude of the chosen
people. Mr. Labouchere, the celebrated editor of "Truth," in London,
featured the letters of Moses Moss of Johannesburg to Benjamin Boss on the
Thames-side, concerning the development on the Kaffir share market. Sir William
Harcourt employed the expression "Jewhannesburg." And Stewart
Cumberland, the great thought-reader, who travelled through South Africa in the
early days, wrote:—
"The trail of the Teuton—especially the Hebraic
Teuton—is distinctly visible—on the Bourse, in trade, in society, in fact
everywhere. Indeed it would be no exaggeration to say the greatest wealth and
enterprise are to be found in the German-Hebrew community. I should imagine in
the upper grades of social and financial life they are in a distinct
majority."
Curiously, the preponderance of German Jews did not by any
means impress other visitors. There are several accounts in which the strangers
assert that every Semite on the Rand came from England, while a different type
of observer ascribes them all to the Pale of Russia.
Actually, however, the West European, as distinguished from
the East European factor, counted much more strongly than to-day, when German,
English, French, Dutch and Austrian Jews are a minority.
In all the public events of the pioneer era they took their
part. The typhoid fever epidemic of 1890 caused the establishment in President
Street of a hospital under Dr. Levine. In the struggle for Swaziland
concessions, the names of N. H. Cohen and Albu are prominent. During 1889 the
former obtained the customs, mint, tobacco, import machinery and tools monopoly
from old Chief Umbandine. Rhodes's "Dash for the Hinterland," again
revealed that Jews preceded the Pioneer Column to "Gubulawayo." At
the latter town, in 1889, one Moss Cohen, a trader, was witness to a letter
signed by Lobengula cancelling the Rhodes-Rudd Concession. In the
well-remembered prize fight between Couper and Bendorff, the latter bruiser was
a Jew. When the Stadsraad, the Rand's earliest civic body, had been appointed
the community again obtained representation.
Deep-Level Mining.
The most far-reaching transaction in which Jews participated
about this time was undoubtedly the development of Deep-Level Mining, the
monstrous gambler's plunge which revealed astronomical tonnages of payable ore
at depths where most experts asserted there could be nothing. When one recalls
that in 1890 the May Deep Mine was deemed a venturesome proposition after its
shaft passed 350 feet below the veld, it becomes possible to realise the
enterprise of Charles Salmon, Alfred Goldberg (the man who travelled from the
coast in a dogcart), Carl Hanau and other Jews who risked thousands and made
millions for themselves and for South Africa.
Enormous corporations such as the Rand now knows became
possible, and the result was the great boom of 1895, in whose every phase Jews
participated. Outputs grew, towns grew, wealth grew. Institutions of a settled
kind looked plentiful, yet on the skyline hovered the thundercloud of Uitlander
grievances. Some Jews were for the Government, but a greater number belonged to
the Reform Association. Dr. Wolf organised Jameson's supplies. Max Langerman
and Edward Birkenruth belonged to deputations which saw Paul Kruger. In the
final turmoil which brought the arrest and trial of the Reformers there figured
many Jews, and one of the four who were originally sentenced to death was Mr.
Lionel Phillips. Among the prisoners were Messrs. Solly Joel, Max Langerman, H.
Bettelheim and Fritz Mosenthal.
On the other hand Mr. Samuel Marks did his best to soothe
the old President, with whom he had so much influence, and together with other
Jews friendly to the Government he helped to adjust the luckless confusion of
1896 and 1897. The shooting of Mr. Wolf Joel by Von Veldtheim brought another
Jew sensationally before the world. Why this millionaire became a murderer's
victim will never be known, since the only witness to the preceding
conversation, Mr. Harold Strange, is also dead.
About the end of 1898, the Johannesburg Congregation invited
Dr. Joseph Herman Hertz, Rabbi of Syracuse, New York State, to take over the
local ministry. The famous preacher accepted, and it was this future Chief
Rabbi who steered the Rand Jewish Community through the disturbed years about
to commence.
A terrific depletion of Johannesburg's population occurred
when the Boer War approached. By October, 1899, thousands of Jews lived as
refugees at Durban and Cape Town. In the latter city a temporary but very busy
replica of our Stock Exchange was created through the admission of exiled
brokers (including, of course, very many Jews) to membership of the coastal
institution. Multitudes of Jews fought in the bloody contest which started
after the Last Ultimatum. Many rode with the Commandos, and still more took
arms for the Queen.
Peace returned. The new age began: Responsible Government,
City Administration, Chinese Labour, Mine Amalgamation, Strikes, a new War and
a new Peace; those were younger interests of the Rand, and in each of them its
Jews took their notable part. But the pioneer times were ended: a modern
Johannesburg existed for whose creation the children of Israel had done their
fullest share.
