Discipline

Need For Labour

The Problem in New Guinea

THE complaints of private employers of native labour in New Guinea ap pear to increase in number and volume.

The general burden of dissatisfaction both in Rabaul and at Morobe, is that the indentured natives are steadily be coming less amenable to discipline, and more inclined to defy their masters.

A correspondent at Wau says that one of the curses of the native labour system on the Morobe Goldfield is the week-end “singsing". Singsings are parties where native labourers gather, and sing and dance and eat, and on the surface they seem harmless.

But trouble lies in the fact that in dentured labourers from all the innum erable districts of New Guinea—men dif ferent in race, in language and in ideas— come together at these singsings, and get to know each other very well, and des pite the absence of a common language, other than Pidgin, they begin to exchange ideas. It is found that the idea most com mon among them is dislike of the white man, and a wish to avoid the obligations of their indentures.

The New Guinea system of native con trol is very strict. The officials insist that if any punishment is to be imposed upon native labourers it must be imposed by officials, and not by the private em ployers. Any private employer who boxes the ears of a cheeky native, or plants his boot less tenderly in the native’s stern, is liable to severe punishment. The natives know this quite well, and take advantage of it.

Machinery is provided, of course, under which employers with a complaint against their indentured labourers may bring the matter before the officials, and the offi cials do not hesitate to administer a term of imprisonment. But the calaboose has no terrors for the average native— he often comes back from his brief term therein fat and sleek and smiling, and more cheeky than ever. Besides that, the employer has the inconvenience of tak ing his undisciplined servant to Court, and also loses his services during the period in gaol.

An overhaul of the whole system of the control of native indentured labour in the Manadated Territory is overdue and urgently needed. But the overhaul must be undertaken by people who really under stand conditions in New Guinea—not by Australian politicians who are cursed with the “black brother” complex.

Unfortunately, it is verv difficult to find anyone who can properly hold* the balance between those European em ployers who are entitled to a dependable supply of efficient native labour, and those other employers who are only too ready to exploit the unsophisticated native for their own ends.