CHINESE ON THE RAND.

Evening Star, Issue 12166, 9 April 1904, Page 6

CHINESE ON THE RAND.

DR MORRISON'S VIEW

Press Association—By Telegraph—Copyright.

LONDON, April 8. I>r Morrison, the Pekin correspondent of 'The Times,' say? that the Transvaal indenture contract has been circulated and widely published in China. It is generally approved, and is certain to attract the best class of "labor. An experimental shipment had been arranged for. A native paper published at Tientsin and edited by a Boer asserts that the coolies will be slaves, and treated mercilessly. THI-: CONDITIONS OF CONTRACT. In a letter to The Tinvs,' the Secretary for the Colonies thus seta out the principal regulations governing the introduction of Chinese labor into the Transvaal: 1. The contract will be certified by a British officer in China to have beer, made voluntaiily, and with full knowledge of i.ll its terms, by the laborer. 2. The laborer will be allowed to bring with him his wife and family to and from China at the cost of his employer. 3. Under statute and regulations his transit from China wil be in ships in all respects well equipped, manned, awl found for the purpose. .

4. A Government '"protector" is to inspect and secure that all sanitary, medical, and other proper provisions for his health, comfort, religious observances, etc., are made in his location during the period of service.

5. The contract can be broken by the laborer at any time, on payment of the cost which the breach has actually caused. And, in speaking in the House of Commons on February 22 in defence of the action of the Imperial Government and cf Lord Milner's policy, the Hon. Mr Lyttelton said •.

What is the contract? I have given pledges in this House, a breach of -which, if I should be so base as to depart from theia, can be visited on me by this House by the condemnation which I shall be worthy to receive if I do break them. The Chinaman, I believe, receives wages in his own country at the rate of about Id or 2d a day. It is proposed that he should receive at least seven or eight, times that amount in the Transvaal. Until I heard the great learning displayed below the gangway I believed I had information with regard to the Chinese from the greatest experts which this Empire can afford, &nd they informed me that it is perfectly easy t» maka intelligible to any ordinary Chinaman a. bargain wliich he is entering into, I think hon. members opposite who know them will admit that they are a highly intelligent race. But in order that there may ba no coercion Mid no misrepresentation—and our experiences in this debate make it very necessary to guard against it. —we have undertaken that there shall be a protect.ir appointed in China, who is to Ik- at the port of departure, or at a place near thereto, who is to go through the eontr.ict with the China-man, explain what he is to get under it, and explain precisely the terms of it and the conditions of labor which he is entering into. If, after the contract -ma been fully explained to him, the Chinaman chooses to embark upon the contract—chooses to earn seven or eight times the wages he can earn in has own country—in order that in three years he may return and be in a far better position than he was before—then he is at liberty to enter into the contract. This is the first step. The next step is that provision shall be made for a proper and sanitary method of transporting him from his own country to the Transvaal. . . . I am informed by the officials of the Board of Trade that the Act of 1855 is still in force. That Act regulates the carriage of Chinese passengers from Chine*"? porta, providinL' for the proper equipment and manniig of ships, a given amount of rp.-.ce on board, and is in fact, a sanitary Act of the kind Sir John Gam vculd have us suppose ih? Pacific Islanders Act was. and it is applicable to the Chinese. So,_ then, first the contract has to be explain od by the. officer who bis charge of the embarkation in a ship properh- manned and equipped, then on the other side we h;.ve a. protector nbo to see thai all sanitary and all necessary medical comforts and appliances are forthcoming, and then having proceeded so far on his way to wbal some hen. members prefer to call slavery, the Chinese laborer can break the contract at any time he thinks fit if the conditions which have been explained to him in China at his own home and again in the Transvaal prove to be snch that they are disagreeable to him. . . . The Truck Act cannot be infringed by this Ordnance unless the law already existing in the Transivaa] is specifically repealed. One other complaint is nv.de—Hint recruiting was going forward in China. Why not? Anybody has a perfect right to enter into preliminary arrangements in order to obtain these coolies, subject to the law which will be made to regulate thix matter. No one in this House or out of it has the slightest power to ston it. I do not suppose that many hon. members arf aware that before this session it would have been perfectly competent for any citizen in the Transvaal to have introduced Chinamen into the Transvaal. The only purpose of this Ordnance was that legal effect, might bs given to such restrictions as appeajed desirable when they were introduced. The hon. member for Wolverhampton, as a former Secretary of State for tndiu. knows this practice very well. I suppose, because cooliesi have left India under indentures—under, I suppose, his actual authority, and under conditions very slightry differing from those we are considering.—(An Hon. Member: Not in compounds.) In the Trinidad Ordinance compulsory residence on the premises of the employer was prescribed for the coolies who were imported under indenture from BritL-ii Indiii. It is true that there is more

holiday for the Trinidad coolie than, ia proposed tinder this Ordinance, but the conditions are not widely different. They cannot terminate the contract as we propose the Chinamen ehould be able to terminate it.