Editing Transvaal Colony (section)

===Economic issues===
The British administrators set out to place most Boer farmers back on their land by March 1903 with nineteen million [[Pound sterling|pounds]] spent on war damages, grants and loans.<ref name=Readers/>{{rp|266}} The administrators reformed the state agricultural departments to modernise farming in the colony which resulted in a maize and beef surplus by 1908.<ref name=Readers/>{{rp|271}} They also attempted to solve the poor white problem by settling them as tenant farmers on state land, but the lack of capital and labour caused the scheme to fail.<ref name=Readers/>{{rp|269}} An attempt was made to place English settlers on farmland so as to anglicise the Transvaal and increase the English-speaking population but this failed, too, as the policy attracted too few settlers.<ref name=Readers/>{{rp|269}}

By the end of 1901, gold mining finally resumed on the Rand around [[Johannesburg]], having virtually stopped since 1899. Backed by the mining magnates and the British administrators, there was a need to restart the industry but labour was required. Just prior to the war, white miners wages were high and magnates weren't keen to increase the wages and since black miners wages had been reduced before the war and not increased, so black labourers weren't interested in working the mines.<ref name=Readers/>{{rp|267}} Unskilled white labour was ruled out as their wages would be too high for the work done, so the mining magnates and their [[South African Chamber of Mines|Chamber of Mines]] in 1903 sought alternative labour in the form of cheap Chinese workers.<ref name=Readers/>{{rp|267}} The legislation to import Chinese labour was introduced to the Transvaal Legislative Council on 28 December 1903 by George Farrar and was debated for 30 hours and successfully voted on after its three readings on 30 December 1903, coming into law in February 1904.<ref name=Bright/>{{rp|36}} Having been rubber-stamped by the British and mining appointed Transvaal Legislative Council it outlined extremely restrictive employment contracts for the Chinese workers and the idea had been sold via a fear campaign aimed at white miners about the need for this labour or face the possibility of loss of mining and their jobs.<ref name=Readers/>{{rp|267}} By 1906, the gold mines of the [[Witwatersrand]] were in full production and by 1907, South African gold mines represented thirty-two percent of the worlds gold output.<ref name=Readers/>{{rp|268}} By 1910, Chinese labour ended on the Witwatersrand and the restrictive job reservation laws preventing Chinese miners doing certain jobs was replicated for Black miners.<ref name=Readers/>{{rp|268}}