 Smuts identified the inhibiting factor as the relations between Briton and Boer - particularly the effect of the influx of British emigrants to the gold mines of the Transvaal on the deeply conservative Afrikaner population.The relations between these two groups were fraught; the discover of gold and the rapid industrialisation of the Transvaal had done much to disturb the settled ways of the Boer population.With its vast mineral wealth the Transvaal was rapidly becoming the most significant economic unit of South Africa, but the sudden tide of primarily British immigrants caused a great deal of unrest, with the established population decrying the immorality and degeneracy they perceived in the new mineworkers.