Maximum Average Violence: Underground Assaults on the South African Gold Mines, 1913-1965

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T. Dunbar Moodie (2005). Maximum Average Violence: Underground Assaults on the South African Gold Mines, 1913-1965. Journal of Southern African Studies, 31(3). Taylor & Francis.

Type	journal article
Scope	Economics and economic history of apartheid
Method	archival narrative
Period studied	1913–1965
Regions	Witwatersrand (Crown Mines, Johannesburg), Eastern Cape / Transkei, Lesotho
Themes	mining migrant labour, labour markets wages, business and state, unions strikes, methods data sources
Citation key	moodie2005

Argument

Moodie argues that endemic underground violence on the gold mines cannot be explained wholly by masculinity, race, school corporal punishment, state backing for whites or the physical dangers of mining. These matter only as background conditions. The structural cause was the maximum average wage system imposed by the Native Recruiting Corporation (NRC) in 1913. By ruling out monetary incentives for black workers, it left assault as the main means of labour control for lashers and trammers for about fifty years. He reads the 1913 Crown Mines inquiry closely. It shows the extreme violence there was specific to amalgamation, hoisting problems and workplace disorganisation. But it also shows the 'normal' background violence and the importance of production organisation. He concludes that violence receded only when the system was replaced in the 1960s, by a skills-based scale (the Patterson Scale) and training.

Evidence and method

Transcripts and handwritten notes of the 1913 Cooke inquiry at Crown Mines (Transvaal Archives Depot), Buckle's Native Grievances Inquiry (1913-14), the Low-grade Mines Commission (1919) and the Low-grade Ore Commission (1930), the Transvaal Labour Commission (1904), Barlow Rand Archives correspondence (Nourse Mines, Central Mining), and Native Labour Bureau files. It also draws on his own oral interviews: Geoff Livingstone in 1998, and Vaal Reefs and Libanon workers in the 1980s. Secondary sources include Breckenridge, Johnstone, Kubicek, Jeeves and Cartwright.

Place in the debates

• Causes of underground violence on the mines (culture/masculinity vs production relations) (see Worker consciousness, strikes and conflict on the mines and shop floor). Disputes Breckenridge's emphasis on masculinity, Fordist piecework and the allure of violence. Treats cultural factors as background and locates the cause in the maximum average wage system and the absence of incentives.
• Cheap labour / 'ultra-exploitation' thesis (Johnstone) (see Cheap labour thesis and the function of the reserves). Accepts Johnstone's account of a monopsonistic wage system as 'capitalist collectivism' but adds that it also prevented competition between high- and low-grade mines. Says Johnstone's account of social relations at the point of production needs refinement.
• Monopsony versus efficiency / scientific management on the mines (see The mine migrant labour system: origins, recruitment, foreign labour and stabilisation). Argues the Chamber sacrificed productivity (piecework, incentives) to keep low-grade mines viable, against the wishes of many managers and even the NRC's Taberer.

Findings

• Central thesis: entrenched industry-wide underground violence is attributed to the maximum average wage system introduced in 1913. (p. 2)

  deeply entrenched industry wide violent work practices underground should be attributed to the maximum average wage system, introduced on the mines in 1913.

• The system's mechanism: it removed monetary incentives, so white supervisors had to secure output through assault. (p. 5)

  The maximum average system made it impossible for mine managements to offer monetary incentives to black workers.

• The 1913 loss of Crown Mines workers stemmed primarily from the wage cut, not violence per se, although violence was also a major grievance. (p. 6)

  it is clear that the primary cause for Crown Mines' loss of migrant workers was not underground violence per se, but the imposition by the NRC of the maximum average wage system earlier in the year.

• The wage system also served a collective economic function for mining capital, preventing wage competition between mines of different grades. (p. 7)

  but, just as importantly, to prevent competition for labour between mines of higher or lower grades.

• Excess violence at Crown Mines in 1913 reflected management organisation rather than the personal characters of individual supervisors. (p. 13)

  Rount's effectiveness as a manager stemmed from organisational restructuring of production processes rather than simply from his more agreeable temperament.

• Even the NRC's own superintendent recognised that high piece-earnings cut costs and raised tonnage, showing managers opposed the cap. (p. 18)

  Some mines as soon as they put boys on to earning what they can, find that the costs go down and the tonnage goes up.

• Chamber priorities: monopsony and protection of low-grade investors prevailed over productivity, and piecework disappeared except for drilling. (p. 19)

  monopsony won out over productivity in order that investors in low-grade mines receive some return on their capital.

• The wage system's contradiction: efficient, non-violent incentives were traded for cheap labour. (p. 19)

  Efficient and non-violent production incentives were sacrificed on the altar of low wages.

• Violence became the main labour-control mechanism in lashing and tramming for half a century. (p. 16)

  the continuation of the maximum average system entrenched violent assault as virtually the only form of labour control in lashing and tramming on all the mines for the next 50 years.

• After the system was replaced in the late 1960s by the Patterson Scale, with skills-based pay and training, productivity rose, which supports the cost of the old system. (p. 21)

  When the maximum average system was replaced by the Patterson Scale (which remunerated black mine workers in accordance with their skills and trained them thoroughly), productivity leapt ahead.

• Concluding judgement: violence depended on structural wage rules, not on masculinity as such. (p. 21)

  the 'endless violence of mine work' had depended, not on particular conceptions of masculinity (although these certainly reflected it) but rather, much more simply, on structural consequences of the maximum average system.

Evidence ledger

Sources used

Source	Kind	Period	How used
Crown Mines Inquiry (CMI): evidence of black workers and handwritten notes of confidential interviews with white officials, Cooke inquiry, June-July 1913	state archives	23 June - c.17 July 1913	Main evidentiary base for close analysis of underground assaults, hoisting problems, gang disorganisation and wage grievances at Crown Mines in 1913.
Native Grievances Inquiry (Buckle Commission), TAD K358, incl. evidence of Theodora Williams, C.W. Villiers, H.M. Taberer, A.W. Stockett, Hugh Mitchell	commission or official report	October 1913 - March 1914	Evidence from missionary, NRC officials and mine managers on assaults, the NRC wage schedule and opposition to the maximum average system.
Transvaal Archives Depot, NTS 207, 98/14/473, Director of Native Labour to Secretary of Native Affairs, 4 January 1914	state archives	1914	Documents the July 1913 black wage strike of 13,000 workers along the Reef.
TAD, NLB 111, 1376/13, McKenzie to Brett, 14 June 1913; NLB 111, 136/13/154	state archives	1913	Documents an assault charge against a skip man at Crown Reef after tropical workers were hoisted.
TAD, NLB 3, 313/09: court records 28 January 1913 and Native Affairs Department Commission Report	state archives	1909-1913	Evidence on gang contract piecework for lashing and tramming and disputes over sharing proceeds.
Transvaal Labour Commission 1904, Minutes of Proceedings (Cd. 1896)	commission or official report	1904	Testimony of farmer van Staden and Chief Umhalla showing disciplinary violence as a normal colonial labour-control practice.
Low-grade Mines Commission (LGMC) 1919 evidence, e.g. Pohl, union representative	commission or official report	1919	Union representative testimony that white supervisors used assault under production pressure.
Low-grade Ore Commission (LGOC) 1930 evidence, incl. SAMWU and Reich	commission or official report	October 1930	Union testimony that falling tonnage led mine captains and shift bosses to push workers violently; also on low-grade ore economics.
Economic Commission - Native Labour: Taberer's Report on Native Labour, 27 November 1913 (TAD COM T2380)	commission or official report	1913	Shows the NRC's own superintendent attacking the maximum average restrictions on earning power.
Barlow Rand Archives (BRA): Nourse Mines Box 382 File 5 Native Labour 1910-18 (Barry correspondence with NRC); Private Letters 128; Central Mining correspondence	company records or reports	1910-1918	Documents manager Barry's piecework gangs, his opposition to the NRC maximum average schedule, and low-grade ore management.
Interview with Geoff Livingstone, retired white mine captain, Stilfontein, 4 November 1998	interviews oral history	1998	Illustrates the physical, masculine culture of mine violence and use of boss boys to discipline.
Interviews with Mpondo miners (with Vivienne Ndatshe, 1980s) and older Vaal Reefs clerks and Libanon worker Robert Mahlati (1984); interviews with black workers who were in the mines in the 1930s-40s	interviews oral history	1980s	Oral testimony that violence was integral to underground work and promotion in the 1930s-50s and that machine-drillers were highly paid.
Participant observation study, Welkom mine, 1975-6	author survey or fieldwork	1975-1976	Notes that some white miners shared bonuses with teams after the maximum average system ended.
Breckenridge, 'The Allure of Violence' (JSAS 1998), informant interviews (e.g. Kathazo Sodlala)	secondary literature compilation	1998 article; interviews of earlier period	Uses Breckenridge's quoted interview evidence and his reading of the 1913 Crown Mines Inquiry as a foil to argue violence was not piecework-driven.
Kubicek, Economic Imperialism in Theory and Practice (1979): Crown Mines dividends, output and working costs	secondary literature compilation	1909-1913	Supplies dividend, gold output and working-cost data showing Crown Mines as the Rand's top producer under cost pressure.
Fraser and Jeeves, All That Glittered (1977): Central Mining head-office correspondence (Phillips letter 26 Nov 1917)	secondary literature compilation	1915-1917	Shows head office dissatisfaction with Warriner's organisation at Crown Mines.
Katz (1995) on Witwatersrand ore grades; Cartwright, Golden Age (1968) on Crown Mines history; Jeeves (1985) on gang piecework; Johnstone (1976) on the NRC system	secondary literature compilation	various	Background on ore grade, Crown Mines shafts and management, gang contracts, and the collective monopsony logic.

Inference

Quantification: Illustrative figures.

Qualitative close reading of a single archival case (the 1913 Crown Mines inquiry transcripts) to separate mine-specific from systemic causes of violence, supplemented by commission testimony across 1904-1930, oral interviews, and a structural/theoretical argument that the maximum average wage system precluded monetary incentives and so institutionalised assault; the post-1960s change is treated as a before/after contrast.

Key claims

Claim	Basis	Strength
Extreme violence at Crown Mines in 1913 was specific to that mine's conditions (hoisting chaos, gang disorganisation, amalgamation pressure), not typical of the industry. (p. 550)	CMI worker testimony and confidential interviews with compound managers and mine captains Rount and Keeny, contrasted with the milder Robinson Central Deep.	Partial data
Violence at Crown Mines was concentrated at hoisting stations and in haulages, and organisational fixes (e.g. Rount's gates) reduced it. (p. 555)	CMI evidence from workers, Howe and Rount, plus Williams's testimony and a June 1913 assault charge file.	Illustrative or anecdotal
The primary cause of Crown Mines' labour loss in 1913 was the NRC's maximum average wage schedule, not violence per se; wage reduction was the first complaint of virtually all workers. (p. 551)	NRC evidence to Buckle (average wages fell about a penny a shift) and quoted CMI testimony.	Partial data
Managers, consulting engineers and even the NRC superintendent opposed the maximum average system on efficiency grounds, but the Chamber upheld it to prevent inter-mine competition for labour and protect low-grade mines. (p. 563)	Nourse Mines correspondence (BRA); Buckle Commission evidence of Taberer, Villiers and Stockett; Johnstone.	Partial data
By removing monetary incentives, the maximum average system entrenched assault as the primary form of labour control in lashing and tramming for about 50 years. (p. 561)	Argument from the 1913 structure plus union testimony to the 1919 and 1930 commissions and later oral interviews.	Partial data
Violence also governed promotion and work rhythm underground (boss boys chosen by fighting), and when the system was replaced by the Patterson scale violence declined and productivity rose. (p. 566)	Oral interviews with Vaal Reefs and Libanon workers (1984) and Breckenridge's informants.	Illustrative or anecdotal
Violence was endemic and taken for granted by both black and white workers at least until the 1970s. (p. 547)	Author's oral interviews with black workers, Livingstone, and white union representatives' commission testimony.	Illustrative or anecdotal

The author's caveats

Notes that the 1913 Crown Mines inquiry covers one mine at one time and cannot show the typical incidence of assault. Also notes that only fragments of the Buckle (Native Grievances Inquiry) and Lansdowne evidence survive in the archives, so the Crown Mines transcripts are the only complete set.

Gaps in the evidence

No systematic quantitative data on assault incidence over time or across mines (e.g. compensation, hospital, court or compound records) test the claim that violence persisted until the 1960s and then fell. Comparison with mines or periods without the maximum average system, or with variation in its application (e.g. drillers on piecework), is only sketched. The oral evidence is retrospective and not systematically sampled. Mine-level compound and hospital records and Chamber of Mines/NRC wage schedules might exist in archives and could be used.

Replicability: Data described but not public.