Railways and labour migration to the rand mines

Constraints and Significance

Datos Bibliográficos

ID4604397
AutoresGordon Pirie (0000-0002-4828-0385, University of the Witwatersrand, autor de correspondencia)
Año1993
Volumen19
Número4
Páginas713-730
Fecha de publicación1993-12-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaJournal of Southern African Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0305-7070 • E-ISSN: 1465-3893
EditorialInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/03057079308708380
OpenAlexW2051784954
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas7
Referencias citadas15

From the start of the twentieth century, southern African railways conveyed vast numbers of miners to and from the Rand gold mines in a fluid and contested political and economic setting. The need for a large, continually replenished and low‐cost workforce was met by tapping new and distant labour pools. Railways mobilised miners by offering relatively inexpensive, quick, long‐distance mass transport. They also curtailed desertion and exhaustion associated with walking. Yet the interests of state‐owned railways and mining capital were not completely harmonious. The contribution of trains to migrancy was limited by the geography of a railway network built for other purposes, by geopolitical restrictions on recruiting, by complex and discriminatory tariffs, and by the inefficiency and disunity of railway operations. In the 1930s the reach of railways was enhanced by flexible road transport; thereafter, non‐rail modes of transport operated by and for mine‐labour agencies, conveyed an increasing share of the stabilising mine workforce. Railways facilitated massive migrancy but might have been even more effective in a better orchestrated and narrower economy. Essential in the first twenty years of industrialised gold mining, railways first entrenched and then prolonged migrancy. Railways were also significant in that they did more than temporarily relocate inert labourers: migration by train was, in addition, a socially and symbolically charged episode

Economics · Political economy · Political science · Mining Techniques and Economics · Transport and Logistics Innovations · Urban and Freight Transport Logistics