Sir Hubert Murray on Indentured Labour

—e.g., desertion and neglect of duty—is not by civil action, but by criminal pro secution, with penalties of fine and imprisonment. The fact that the em ployer can enforce the process by criminal process puts him in a position to exer cise great control over his labour force; but it Is a feature of the system that is most generally criticised, and which will be fatal to it in the end.

“There is the same penal sanction for breaches by the employer, but in actual practice it is the employer who is fined and the labourer who is sent to gaol.

This distinction is based upon the assumption, which is generally borne out by ■ the facts, that the native has no money and that the employer has, and upon the maxim of civil law, qui non hdbet in aere solvat in persona.

“The penal sanction cannot be defended as a permanent institution. It has been violently attacked and has been given up in some parts of the world, as, for instance, in the FMS and in the British Cameroons, but we have retained it for the time being in Papua, and we justify its retention upon the first of our gen eral principles—the well-being and devel opment of the native race.

“This seems at first sight a hard say ing, but* I think that it is a true one.

Doubtless the abolition of the sanction may be fully justified in the countries which I have mentioned, but their experi ence shows that, if we do away with it, we must be prepared to allow the native to break his contract with impunity for as a defendant in a civil action lie is not worth powder and shot. He has no money to pay damages, except the small sum that may be due to him for wages; we cannot seize his land, for that would be his ruin; and, if he is liable only to civil process, he must be allowed to break his contract whenever he chooses.

“It may be admitted that the principle of contract is one with which the native in his primitive state is not familiar, but it is a principle which is an important feature of the civilisation which we are

introducing; and it does not seem con sistent with the highest ideal of native administration that the Papuan should be taught to regard a breach of his agree ment as a matter of no importance.

“Personally, I should be glad to see indentured labour replaced by free labour, but I do not think that this will come about until the native has developed a sense of responsibility that will hold him to his contract without the penal sanc tion; and it appears to me that when we can do without the penal sanction we can do without indentured labour altogether.

It is a fact, however, that many natives prefer to work under 'indenture; their argument is that the indenture prevents any uncertainty about dates or wages, and they feel also, they say, that in the event of a dispute, they have the Gov ernment behind them.”