A place more destitute than Manchester is not easy to conceive. In size and population it is the second city of the kingdom. Imagine this multitude crowded together in narrow streets, the houses all built of brick and blackened with smoke: frequent buildings among them as large as convents, without their antiquity, without their beauty, without their holiness, where you hear from within, the everlasting din of machinery; and where, when the bell rings, it is to call the wretches to their work instead of their prayers.

Railway travel for [Indian] natives has for a long time been full of the most bitter and serious grievances. The miseries suffered equal the horrors of the ‘middle passage.’ We would beg to draw your attention to the bad treatment of native passengers, with no distinctions being made between them. Indiscriminate abuse is lavished freely without regard to differences in rank and social scale. Passengers have often been struck and otherwise treated with great indignity. Passengers traveling in second class are not even allowed to get to the platform, but are made to herd with the masses outside. We would like to emphasize the painful fact that the most respectable natives are liable to personal ill-treatment and loss from their European fellow passengers in the second-class carriages. Native gentlemen of birth and respectability, in striving to avoid the large crowds to be found in third-class carriages, find themselves even worse off in a second-class seat. In a variety of ways attempts are incessantly made to degrade and insult second-class passengers. We want to draw attention here to the present impossibility of native ladies of respectable birth and breeding taking advantage of railways. The honor of our wives and families is very dear and sacred to us, and the advent of the railway has cut off old modes of transit without providing adequate ones for respectable women.

Unless you have visited the manufacturing towns and seen the workers of Manchester, you cannot appreciate the physical suffering and moral degradation of this class of the population. Most workers lack clothing, bed, furniture, fuel, wholesome food—even potatoes! They spend from twelve to fourteen hours each day shut up in low-ceilinged rooms where with every breath of foul air they absorb fibers of cotton, wool or flax, or particles of copper, lead or iron. They live suspended between an insufficiency of food and an excess of strong drink; they are all wizened, sickly and emaciated, their bodies thin and frail, their limbs feeble, their complexions pale, their eyes dead. If you visit a factory, it is easy to see that the comfort and welfare of the workers have never entered the builder's head. O God! Can progress be bought only at the cost of men's lives?

Unfortunately, many of the potential Javanese workers for the sugar processing factory are already forced to work on sugar fields under the Dutch government's Cultivation System. There is not a single peasant in the district who is not subject to multiple demands on his labor, from the government or from local Javanese elites. I have had one of my factory agents travel around the villages in the district all year looking for workers. Despite offering them good wages, I have never succeeded in getting more than five men per day. When I ask the men to work in the factory full time, they all answer that they would if I could get them freed from government-imposed work.

From morning, while it was still dark, we worked in the lamplit factory till ten at night. After work, we hardly had the strength to stand on our feet. When we worked later into the night, they occasionally gave us a yam. We then had to do our washing, fix our hair, and so on. By then it would be eleven o'clock. There was no heat even in the winter; we had to sleep huddled together to stay warm. We were not paid the first year. In the second year my parents got 35 yen,* and the following year 50 yen. - - - Soon after I went to work in the factory, my younger sister Aki came to work there too. I think she worked for about two years, and then took to her bed because of illness. At that time there were about thirty sick people at the factory. Those who clearly had lung troubles were sent home right away. Everyone feared tuberculosis and no one would come near such patients. Aki was also sent home, and died soon after. She was in her thirteenth year. Aki had come to the factory determined to become a 100-yen worker and make our mother happy. I can never forget her sad eyes as she left the factory sickly and pale.

So we surrendered to the White people and were told to go back to our homes and live our usual lives and attend to our crops. We were treated like slaves. They came and were overbearing. We were ordered to carry their clothes and bundles. They harmed our wives and our daughters. How the rebellion started I do not know; there was no organization, it was like a fire that suddenly flames up. I had an old gun. They—the White men—fought us with big guns, machine guns, and rifles. Many of our people were killed in this fight: I saw four of my cousins shot. We made many charges but each time we were defeated. But for the White men’s machine guns, it would have been different.

"After the discovery of gold in 1886, Black men from different communities streamed into Johannesburg which, at that time, was more or less a temporary mining camp. Men flowed to the mines from the rural areas leaving their families behind to be cared for by the senior woman in every home. Still, in those early decades most Black women lived on land which their communities owned and which they cultivated.

But things changed for the worse in the [early decades of the twentieth century], when communal land was removed from the control of Black people and communities were forced to move from one area to another.^1 So Black women were suddenly plunged into a situation of accepting numerous roles of responsibility. Without warning or training, they became not only mothers, but also family administrators, community counselors, and overall overseers of both home and neighborhood.

For many women, the burden proved too much. Their response came in the form of moving to cities themselves, often in search of their husbands or sons and despite stringent 'influx' regulations.^2 As they were usually not allowed to live with their husbands in company dormitories, they found a solution in domestic work, where they were provided with a room, usually somewhere at the back of their White employers' houses."