Correspondents include: Thomas Ratcliffe (3) on subjects including offering to campaign against WSC at North West Manchester; Colonel Sir Howard Melliss; John Norton-Griffiths; Frank Smith, Director of Agriculture for the Transvaal [South Africa]; James Ramsay Macdonald (3) on subjects including Ratcliffe; Sir Edward Grey [Foreign Secretary]; 2nd Lord Selborne [Governor of the Transvaal and High Commissioner for South Africa] (3); Sir Richard Solomon [Attorney-General of the Transvaal]; Walter Runciman [Financial Secretary to the Treasury]; 9th Lord Elgin and Kincardine [Secretary of State for the Colonies] (3); Herbert Asquith [later 1st Lord Oxford and Asquith, Chancellor of the Exchequer]; 1st Lord Northcliffe [earlier Alfred Harmsworth]; Abe Bailey; Sir Gilbert Parker; James Hutton, [Vice President] of the British Cotton Growing Association; Robert Morant [Permanent Secretary] (Board of Education) on the study of oriental languages at British universities; Charles Wilson MP [later 2nd Lord Nunburnholme] asking for clemency concerning a case in Nairobi [British East Africa, later Kenya]; John Redmond MP on the entertainment of the Colonial Premiers by the Irish Party; Francis Hopwood [later 1st Lord Southborough, Permanent Under-Secretary for the Colonies]; an anonymous letter criticising Thomas Bent, Premier of Victoria [Australia].Also includes copy letters and drafts of telegrams from WSC to some of those mentioned above.Subjects covered by the file include: matters concerning Transvaal politics, such as the flogging of chinese coolies, the election results, the success of Het Volk, the mining industry, and the position of General Louis Botha; supplying labour for the Central Africa-Rhodesia railway; the earthquake in Jamaica and the role of the Governor, Sir Alexander Swettenham; the Northern Nigeria railway; Australian state premiers and the Colonial Conference; the Queensland [Australia] Ordinance and its application in the New Hebrides [now Vanuatu]; Orange River Colony [later Orange Free State] affairs.Also includes: cuttings on the Ratcliffe case, chinese labour and land settlement in the Orange River Colony; questions by Macdonald about a Hong Kong railway.