LABOUR AND SAMOA

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 91, 14 October 1922, Page 9

LABOUR AND SAMOA

TO THE BDITOR.

Sir,—Mr. Holland, "M.P., is a. native politician. He and his party have condemned, in toto, the policy of carrying on the Samoan plantations with Chinese labour. When asked for an alternative to this policy (says the "Post's" report of last night's proceeding in the House), Mr.' Holland said the Labour Party, pointed to a multiplicity of islands in the Pacific whore there was no indentured Chinese labour. That, then, is tho Labour Party's proposal in regard to the Samoan Islands if they should come into power. That is the way theso knights of advanced civilisation would propose to administer the Mandato committed to New Zealand; .how they would car© for the Samoans committed to our charge—send them and their islands back'to nature and slavedom I Mr. Holland had no other alternative to'l offer to how the plantations could bo worked. How easy it is to bo a destructive critic! Mr. M'Combs was rather amusing. After condemning indentured labour and saying that""New Zealand had to resort to a subterfuge to obtain it, he described the subterfuge.; tho natives had to ship as free labour, " and it was only, when they came under the flag of Now Zealand that thoy became indentured labourers." Ho desoribed this as slave traffic. Men who shipped as freo labour were slaves! And it is through men who utter such "argument" as this that some people believe the millonium will come.— I am, etc., WELLINGTON NORTH.

13th October