Germans Did Not Invent
p. 35 · Read in the full issue
The Indenture System
Letter to the Editor
MOMBO of Tasmania (in November “PIM”) asks for information about the indenture system in the. Terri tory of New Guinea, and states that he thinks the Native Labour Ordinance was originated about 1914 or before by the Germans. * Mombo could find out easily enough that the Queensland sugar-growers had Solomon Islanders working under inden ture in the years prior to 1905. and that in Fiji there has been a Native Labour Ordinance since 1889. There is still such an ordinance in Fiji.
It is evident that the Germans did not make any blue prints governing Labour Ordinances (Native) and the indenture system was in force long before 1914.
As an employer of indentured labour for over 30 years, I can say with all con fidence that natives prefer to be inden tured under good working conditions in New Guinea, Fiji or elsewhere. But there are and always will be anthropologists and five-minute tourists of the Ward type who neither understand native labour or natives. Such people wail loudly, at every opportunity, about the down-trodden natives who are being exploited. Yet year after year natives will and do re-sign for the same plantations.
An indentured labourer is far better off than if he were non-indentured. He is housed, Clothed, supplied with good food, medical attention, etc., and his pay is saved for him.
I am, etc,,
Ga Ni Bulu.
Vanua Levu, Fiji, January 23, 1945. [EDITORIAL NOTE: Mombo meant his inquiry as a joke. Indentured labour has acquired such odour in reformist Aus tralian circles that he felt that it would be a good idea to write it off as just another of those Germanic inventions.] Mr. K. V. Macquire, who was acting for a time as British Resident Commissioner in the New Hebrides, has returned to the Fiji service.