The Jewish Gold Pioneers by Eric Rosenthal

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.