“Stagnation In The Solomons.”

Problem of Population and Labour.

We have received the following interesting letter from Mr. J. M. Clift, of Aruligo Plantation, British Solomon Islands. Mr. Clift might have emphasised the point that the apparent decrease in native population, on which he based his argument in 1927, was officially confirmed by the census of 1931, which showed 90,000 instead of the estimated 150,000 natives.

THE attached article entitled, “Stagna tion in the Solomons,” was written in 1927, for The Sydney Morning Herald, about the time when a commission was enquiring into labour conditions in the New Hebrides.

The article is even more applicable to present-day conditions. The population of the Solomons has declined heavily since 1927.

I am just home from a sixty miles’ trip along the north-west coast of Gau dalcanal, and the difference in the num bers and general bearing of the people is pathetic. I had not been in Wanderer Bay (called after Benjamin Boyd’s schooner yacht “Wanderer” and the scene of Boyd’s murder many years ago) for some 13 years. In those days, lots of canoes would come out to a visiting ves sel, and large villages lined the fore shores. Yesterday, no canoes came out, and two old men visited the craft in our dinghy. The houses had a dilapidated appearance, and the whole place a de jected and hopeless air.

The recent discovery of gold in the Solomons will accentuate the planters’ difficulties and, unless some form of im ported labour under contract is allowed, plantations in the British Solomons are as truly doomed as those belonging to Britishers in the New Hebrides.

If the British settlers in the New Hebrides can make out a good claim to the right to bring in indentured labour and live, the residents of the Solomons can state a case hardly less strong.

The area of the group is 14,000 square miles. It is one-fourth the size of Java, and Java supports more than 30,000,000 people. At present, and for some years past, the revenue and prosperity of this group have depended on the product of under 4,000 native labourers. Over a period of 15 years, from 1911 to 1926, the average number at work on planta tions and vessels has been not more than 3780. This force, small as it is, tends to diminish. Every device has been tried to augment the supply and, although the wages were doubled in 1926, there were 300 less labourers than in the previous year.

Due to a decrease in the population, and, in a lesser degree, to the influence of the missions, the small supply of Solomon Island labour is diminishing.

This scarcity of labour has, in the Solo mons, had the same effect as in the Hebrides. In 15 years, recruiting costs have trebled and wages have doubled.

Hardly any planting companies are pay ing dividends, and the day is not far distant when plantations will begin to revert to the jungle. Development has been stagnant in the Group for years, and without development a country is already half dead. Surely a strange thing to say of a country but 30 years or so under the British flag!

Startling figures in regard to the dwindling of the population are supplied by the French Marist Mission. A ledger is kept in which the names of all con verts are entered. If one turns but a few years back in this ominous book, this

cure of souls, whole pages are dotted thick with little crosses, and each cross repre sents a mound by the forest’s edge. In twenty years, the good Fathers say, few people will be left in the Solomons. This then is the prospect open to those who have given the best years of their lives to the development of the Protectorate.

It may be said that the natives are reluctant to work on account of bad conditions on the plantations; but Messrs. Lever Bros, figures go to show that quite 20 per cent, of their native employees, after fulfilling their two years’ term of indenture, “signed on” again to work for a further period. This, in itself, is an effective answer to such a

statement. It must be remembered that all native labour is signed on before a Government official and paid off before him; and, about every three months or so, the labour on the plantations is in spected, and rigid conditions have to be fulfilled in regard to rations, hours of work, housing, etc.

No, the main reason for the dolce fa niente attitude of the native to any long continued endeavour is to be found in the old saying—“The banana is the curse of the tropics.” Where a living can be won so easily there is no compulsion to work, and where wants are so few, they can be satisfied with a minimum of effort.

There is a feeling prevalent through out the Solomon Group that Australia sets her face against Asiatics in num bers coming into the Islands bordering her shores. In view of a White Aus tralia policy, this is natural. Yet there are Asiatics in the New Guinea Man dated Territory; and in the French Is lands of the Pacific—in the French Is lands especially—New Hebrides, Loyal ties, and New Caledonia—the Asiatics are steadily increasing. The Australian Government employs Asiatic labour to

mine the phosphate rock in Nauru, and the New Zealand Government works the State plantations in Samoa with them.

Why, then, deny them to people ready and anxious to develop the Solomons?

At a public meeting held in 1925 in the Solomons, the view was expressed that safeguards quite adequate could be taken to repatriate Chinese labour as soon as their term of contract expired. This would prevent the trouble caused in Fiji by Asiatic indentured labour, which was allowed to settle on the land. The dif ficulty of preserving the morals of the native race, when brought into contact with Chinese, might be put forward as an objection to their employment, but the British Government has already al lowed over 100 Chinese traders to come into this Group, and, since their activi ties are spread throughout its extent, such prudence now is rather like shut ting the stable door after the horse is out, and, in any case, the opinion is ex pressed, by many in a position to know, that the Melanesian native has little to learn from any Chinaman, and that the Chino-Melanesian hybrid is generally a useful citizen.

With proper safeguards taken as to repatriation of Asiatic labour, the bene fit to be derived from it in this poten tially rich Group would be enormous to the Solomons and to Australia. Prac tically all the imports into the Solomons come through Sydney, and would con tinue so to come on a vastly augmented scale as the effect of a settled labour question made itself felt. About 60 per cent, of the exports of the Group go to

Sydney and most of this is converted into secondary products in that city.

Figures may be quoted to show an in crease in the exports of the Group, and people may say, “How can you say you are short of labour when your exports are increasing?” But this increase is the fruit of labour expended years ago in felling the jungle and planting coconut plantations.

The contention is that development is stationary, costs are prohibitive, and that a force of 4000 native labourers is quite inadequate, even if there was an assurance of the numbers remaining constant. As the Commissioner in the New Hebrides pointed out in regard to that Group, there is a strong feeling in the Solomons'also that it is Australia’s attitude which most counts, and that it is up to Australia to give Australians in the Solomons some relief from an intol erable situation. The Australian in the Hebrides can “go French.” In the Solo mons he can only “carry on,” and trust to a fair deal from his people, some day.

And, if some day, why not now, when he has still some fight left in him?