Chief Needs?

What are New Guinea's Chief Needs?

Communications and Indentured Labour Suggested

'\VTHY is more capital not being invested * ’ in New Guinea in agricultural enter prises ?

No country in the world has a richer soil or a wider variety of soil. Every kind of climate can be found, from the heat and humidity of the coastal belt to the comparatively temperate conditions of the high inland plateaux. It is a country of abundant rainfall. richly watered, and its coast is broken every where by deep harbours.

Mr. George H. Murray, Director of Agriculture in New Guinea, who has just returned from a world tour, discussed that question in various countries abroad; and he told the P.1.M.. in the course of a conversation in Sydney, that there ap peared to be two main difficulties which discouraged the investment of capital in planting enterprises. One is the absence of roads, connecting the fertile inland plateaux with the coast; and the other is the absence of any guarantee relating to an adequate supply of labour.

Mr. Murray said that the manager of one company, who apparently was in terested in New Guinea’s possibilities, pointed out that while the agricultural merits of the Ramu and similar plateaux were recognised, nothing could be done to develop them until there was road con nection between those rich uplands and the ports of New Guinea.

Another man. widely experienced in tropical agriculture, declared that the primary industry of no country could be adequately developed by depending on the indigenous population alone for a labour supply. It was recognised that the New Guinea natives were good labourers: but it was believed abroad that this labour supply was limited and not reliable. Mr.

Murray was told that no big company would enter New Guinea to establish new planting enterprises unless it were per mitted to bring in adequate supplies of indentured labour, such as the dependable Tamils of India, or the Javanese. These men might not be so strong as the majority of the New Guinea natives: but they were steady, industrious workers and could be relied upon to carry out the work as it was planned. Tamils were employed in Malaya and elsewhere in agricultural work for 40 cents (5d.) per day and found; and they were quite contented under these conditions and saved part of their wages for transmission to their relatives in India.

Mr. Murray remarked that, so far as he was aware, there had been no official pronouncement of policy regarding the employment of this form of indentured labour in the Mandated Territory, but that obviously the whole matter would have to be con sidered by the New Guinea Administra tion and by the Commonwealth Govern ment before any plan which contemplated the use of Asiatic labour could be for mulated. He felt, however, that New Guinea was so big and so rich a country that large scale developmental enterprises were bound to be formulated in the near future: and these two main questions— indentured Asiatic labour and communi cations —would then apparently have to receive official consideration.

“This matter of the development of New Guinea may also have to be considered

from another angle,” remarked Mr.

Murray. ‘‘While I was in England I was surprised to note the amount of dis cussion that was going on on the subject of the return to Germany of the colonies which she lost in 1914. The matter is being discussed as an abstract principle and not in regard to any particular colony or territory, but it stands to reason that, if and when there is to be a revision of all these mandates, the amount of develop mental work that has been done by the mandatories will form an important item of consideration.”.