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20~ ECONOMIC INQUIRIES AND STUDIES
result is no new thing in war experience. At the points
where opposing armies are in actual contact, the circum-
stances are inconvenient and injurious to the people in
the neighbourhood; but in those other districts form-
ing the base of operations it is not a bad thing for a
country to be the seat of war where the troops concerned
come from a distance and bring with them a great deal
of money to be expended in the country. The position
in the Transvaal is not quite the same. In this case
there is no introduction of money from abroad to be
spent in the country. The people here must be using
up their cilpital and resources generally. But they are
probably not much worse off for the present than they
were in time of peace, excepting so far as they are
affected by the diminution of their share of the income
from the gold mines. The male white population is
mostly fighting in the army; but even if they had been
at home they would not have been adding much to the
product of the industry of the country, which goes on very
much independently of them-at any rate for a time.
Thus, the war is very far from having been an un-
mixed loss in an economic sense to the communities of
South Africa. The temporary interruption of the gold
mining industry of the Transvaal and the minor inter-
ruptions of industry elsewhere are made up for very
largely to the local communities by the new industry
of carrying on the war itself,- bringing with it in Cape
Colony and Natal a large expenditure by what is really
an immigration from abroad. The loss and waste of
the war have thus not fallen upon the communities of
South Africa as they have fallen elsewhere. 1

We come secondly then to the question of the precise
effects of the war as far as the United Kingdom and the
Empire are concerned. And the point here is, that
while a considerable interruption to trade has to be
taken note of, an interruption which would be very
1 This was written in 1900, before the extensive interruption to the
agricultural industry by the guerilla warfare occurred