Labourers And Coconuts

Letter to the Editor IN a reply to a letter in the “Sydney Morning Herald” recently, asking why, if the Missions disapproved of the inHortt-nred labour system, they had employed it on their income-raising pro perties, the Rev. J. W. Burton evaded the issue. The point is that the Missions have emnloyed indentured labour, and at the minimum wages. He also evades another point—he says they have no properties in New Guinea. (That, I suppose, could be safely said of the New Guinea planters too, unfor tunately.) And why confine his denial to NG? Is it not a fact that the Methodist Mission has large plantation interests in the BSI?

In 1938 my agent signed on a boy at 10 - per month. After he had worked for a few weeks he was picked up by the police, as he had deserted from Mr. Bur ton’s Mission on the North Coast.

Being in NG solely for the good of the native, the Mission was not satisfied with merely getting the boy back, but prose cuted him in the District Court and got him a month’s gaol before making him return to work for them at a lower wage.

On another matter: When I put in a claim for £125 for coconut trees and cocoa cut down to make an extension to a drome, Mr. Alderman, after making me an offer of £4B (this meant 5/6 for fully grown coconuts and 2/6 for bearing cocoa), ex pressed surprise that I had put in a claim at all, as “it was done in the public in terest.” Mr. Alderman apparently does not consider that his work was “done in £™J? üblic int erest,” hence his claim for £6,000.

I am, etc..

Sydney.

R. C. Willmott.