Indentured Labour In The Pacific

THE editor of the Pacific Islands Monthly has been caned by the Honolulu Star-Bulletin because he has protested against the proposal of the N.Z. Government, in pursuance of its Socialistic ideology, to deport the few remaining Chinese labourers from Western Samoa, and thus deprive the Samoan planters of anything re sembling a dependable labour supply.

The Honolulu newspaper says that our editor “is for the plantocracy” ; that he is guilty of “a particularly cold-blooded non-social utterance”; and that “the human aftermath is of no consequence to those who think only of 30 and 40 per cent.” (in other words, high profits).

The on many occasions, has urged the protection of the interests of the indigenous South Seas natives, as against those of European exploiters.

The editor knows Pacific Islands his tory pretty thoroughly, and is aware of the cruelties and racial perversions which have been forced upon the trust

ing, unoffending Polynesian folk by our

ruthless Western civilisation. There is upon all Europeans an obligation to protect and help these native peoples, if only to provide a set-off to some of the

horrible things perpetrated by white

men in the last 150 years.

But, even if we bury our heads at times in the clouds, there is no need to forget that our feet are planted irrevoc ably upon the brutal, practical earth.

We must take the position v as we find it. Political and strategical necessities say that we must hold these Pacific Islands territories, for our own pro tection. They cannot be left to them selves—if they were abandoned, they would be mopped up by another nation * n a few hours.

Holding them, we are under an obli gation to govern them properly, Government, with its concomitants of roads and bridges and wharves, water supply and health services, and educa tion, means money. A regular revenue means taxation. Taxation means

organised production. Production

means dependable labour.

So there you are. It the land-owning islanders will not hire themselves out as labourers —and why should they?— then labourers must be provided from some other source.

Western Samoa is a very good case in point. When the country came into the hands of Germany and, later, into British possession, it already was partly over-run by European planters and traders. One could then, as now, make out a strong case for leaving the attrac tive brown people in sole control, with their own considerable culture, but already it was too late. Germany and Britain had to take Samoa as they found it—a country subject to Euro pean ideas of government, producing goods for export, and demanding

organised public services—and carry

on. They might, in 1890, or in 1914, have withdrawn all European forms and institutions from the country, ringed it about with warships as a warning to other predatory nations to keep out, and left the Samoans to their own devices. Such a thing has never

been done simply because, for obvious reasons, it is not practicable. The “white man’s burden” is—despite the arguments and jeers of idealists and dreamers—a real thing, and self imposed.

The Samoans would not become plantation labourers, so the Germans brought in Chinese Coolies and Solo mon Islanders. The British continued the system. Some of both classes of labourers took Samoan wives, and the resulting strains, while representing an unfortunate disturbance of the true Polynesian type, were not in them selves bad —and they are by no means numerous. (If the Star-Bulletin wants confirmation of that, let it call next door, at the Bishop Museum in Hono lulu, and ask the learned men there what they think of the Chinese-Poly nesian cross.) The British, recognising the undesirableness of a fixed Chinese community in Samoa, have reduced the Chinese labourers from some thousands to 400; but they cannot further reduce that small labour force without impos ing ruin on the principal plantations, and thus removing the principal sources of revenue and crippling the administration: The Samoan position is repeated, in more or less similar form, in all the Polynesian countries which have been occupied by white men. The Poly nesians in Hawaii, in Tahiti, and in Fiji (for the purpose of this discussion, Fiji may be classed as Polynesian) have been born without either the inclination or the obligation to labour.

The European administrators have been compelled—in every case most unwillingly—to permit the introduction of foreign labourers. The result is that, to-day, there are large and established communities of Chinese and Japanese in Hawaii, of Chinese in Tahiti, of Indians and Chinese in Fiji.

No European likes what he sees in those Pacific Islands. We would, if we could, “shatter it to bits and re mould it nearer to our heart’s desire.”

But it is too late.

All that can be done, now, is to see that Islands territories like Samoa, which have not yet had an Asiatic community fastened upon them, shall not be compelled to accept any such community. There is nothing much wrong with the system of using inden tured Asiatic labour, provided that the indentured labourers are under proper control and are not allowed to settle permanently in the country. That was allowed in Hawaii, Tahiti and Fiji,

with incalculable results, but it has not been allowed in Samoa, New Hebrides and New Caledonia (where very large numbers of Asiatics have been tem porarily employed) and no racial harm has been done to those territories. The use of Asiatic labour, in the Islands, makes orderly and efficient adminis tration possible; but the system must be subject to the strictest form of control.

Mr. A. E. Stephen delivered an address on “Treasure Islands of the Pacific” on November 10 to members of the N.S.W.

Geographical Society in Sydney. He described in detail the development of Ocean Is., Nauru, and Makatea, whose rich and enormous deposits of phosphates have been of such value to the agri culturists of the world.