to the creation of the League ofNations at Versailles.Having entered on the
world stage, Smuts became largely preoccupied with international rather
than local affairs. As Afrikaner nationalists saw it, he had sold out to
imperial interests.!"
The government also lost the support of working-class Whites by inter-
vening in a series of industrial disputes on the Witwatersrand. By 1922,
three-quarters of the white workers in the Witwatersrand gold-mining
industry vvereSouth African-born, but British immigrants still controlled
the Mineworkers' Union. Conditions ofwork and the racial composition of
the work force continued to be explosive issues. Mineowners, though they
did not favor complete replacement of Whites by Blacks, were at moments
of financial difficulty keen to expand the functions of lower-cost black
workers. 'White workers in general favored the expansion of protected
employment for themselves.
Following a series of strikes by white miners about conditions of work
and about black competition in .1907, 1913, and 1914, mineowners
agreed to reserve some semiskilled work for Whites. After World War I,
however, the industry faced an acute financial problem. It was a period of
high inflation. Moreover, mining was taking place at ever-greater depths,