There Is An "Indenture" System

In Polynesia

Letter to the Editor

I HAVE been following your work on behalf of the indentured labour sys tom with sympathy and interest, but I have wondered why you have not raised your cudgel against the question asked in July “PIM”: “Why is there no indentured labour system in Fiji and the Polynesian Territories?”

The question is easily answered: there is an indenture system in these islands, and in most, if not all, civilised countries.

Perhaps it is not precisely the same as the Melanesian system, but in practice. I believe, there is little difference.

An indenture, as I understand it, is a contract that binds a person or persons to work for a given period for a master, and likewise binds the master in matters of wages, food, hours of labour, and so on. In the group of Polynesian islands where I now live, a labour contract (in denture) permits both the master and

labourer the right of appeal to Court.

Also, it permits the master to withhold wages for breaches of the contract such as absenteeism or desertion. In this last the master has the right to take the cause to Court for enforcement of his contract.

Should the labourer be ordered to return to work, a refusal would constitute a con tempt of Court, for which he is liable to punishment.

Is there any substantial difference be tween this and the Melanesian indenture?

Anyone visiting the Lau Group will find Fijians and Indians working as in dentured labourers. I cannot say whether or not they would be punished if they deserted—probably their employers would consider it a good riddance—but the point is that they can not desert, for the islands I refer to are privately owned. A deserter would have to steal or starve—and steal ing would result in a jail sentence.

Going farther east, into Polynesia proper, a few months ago over one hun dred natives signed a contract to work for one year on a phosphate island; later, a gang of thirty signed for one year on a copra island; and before that, several hundred signed on for a period of labour for the Army. These natives, as free human beings living under a democratic Government, had, and accepted, the right to hire themselves for a, specified time under specified working conditions.

To name a few other cases of inden tured labour, let me call your attention to the Chinese working on the Crown estates in Samoa, the Gilbert Islanders on numerous equatorial islands to eastward, the Fijian Labour Battalion. (If you say they are not indentured labourers you are splitting hairs. Call them contract labourers if you are squeamish—the two names refer to the same social relation ship, anyway.) Venturing a step farther, why not men tion the British apprentice system? And why would it not be perfectly correct to call all workers in war-plants and ship yards indentured labourers? Howbeit, the European “indentured labourers” have no sentimentalists to weep over them and indoctrinate in them the false notion that they are being exploited. A few of them look upon their forced labour as a war necessity; the great majority of them simply consider them selves lucky to have a good job—the same, I believe, as the Melanesian “slaves” consider themselves lucky.

I TAKE for granted that the native people of Melanesia, like the Poly nesians, know exactly what they are doing when they put their thumb-prints on the dotted line, and that after they have done so they do not consider them selves slaves, but, to the contrary, free men who have, on their own initiative, contracted to work for a certain period of time and who expect to fulfil their con tract. And I believe that most residents of the South Pacific will agree that a year or two in a labour-gang becomes one of the high-lights in a native’s life.

Consider a native in an inland village or on a remote island. There is little hope of his ever seeing anything of the world beyond his own narrow horizon save through hiring himself as a labourer.

This he can do through the indenture system, for an employer can afford to re cruit a labourer from an out-of-the-way place if the labourer will work for a reasonable length of time; but the ex

pense of recruiting prohibits employing the man if at liberty to desert on the whim of the moment.

The native signs on. To him it is the beginning of a great adventure. He may see other islands, civilised ports; he will observe different aspects of life, eat dif ferent foods, learn better methods of agriculture. He may even learn the rudi ments of personal cleanliness and sani tation. That his health and general physical well-being will improve is an unquestioned fact. And, suppose his wages are small, what about it? We should not evaluate his wages according to our standards. If the native from a remote village is able to make a few pounds as a labourer he will be able to take back to his village tools and cloth ing that he could never have come by in a lifetime of native endeavour.

All of us, who have lived in the islands, have heard old men talk of the experi ences of their youth, and more often than not these experiences have centered around the time they shipped as sailors (another form of indentured labour!) or signed on a labour gang. We ask a native: “Have you ever been away from your island?” and, if he has, he will most likely reply: “Yes; when I was young I went to (say) Christmas Island. . . .”

Then his eyes will sparkle as he spins a long yarn of the voyage, the island, the work, the food, the games and dances, the money earned, the treasures pur chased. Never have I heard a native complain of having been exploilted in one of these adventures. 117HICH brings me to the point of this TT letter: Why not ask the natives themselves what they think of the indenture system? We have heard to satiety, the ideas of second-rate theorists; but no one seems to realise that the down-trodden “slaves” may have an opinion. If asked, perhaps they will tell

their misguided well-wishers to mind their own business.

And perhaps, if more attention were given to their education and less to their “emancipation,” they might tell their well-wishers that freedom is a personal subjective quality that vanishes the in stant it is meddled with. To repeat, in part, that which I have already said— they would point out that, as free human beings, they have the right to hire them selves under the terms of any contract that pleases them; that the quality of freedom cannot be forced upon a person, for it ceases to be freedom when coercion is used. In other words, paradoxical as it may at first seem, we cannot force a man to be free by refusing to allow him to indenture himself, for'in doing so we trammel his freedom by our coercive act.

Conversely, a man is free when, through his own initiative, he indentures himself and thereby restricts his freedom.

To sum up: Freedom is a subtle sub jective quality that vanishes the instant a second person tampers with it.

I am, etc.,

Robert Dean Frisbie.

Rarotonga, Cook Islands, October 6, 1944.