‘WARING’ AMONG THE SLAVES

Evening Star, Issue 21820, 8 September 1934, Page 2

‘WARING ’ AMONG THE SLAVES

AN UNPUBLISHED JOURNAL [H. C. Minchix, in ‘The Times.’] Slavery in the British Empire, was abolished by the great Emancipation Act. of 1833, which came into operation on August I, 1934. Six months later a young English traveller landed in Jamaica. An acute observer, he kept a journal hitherto unpublished. Bis name was Alfred Domett; later he was to be the original-of Browning’s ‘•Waring,’ and subsequently Prime Minister of New Zealand. His journal is interesting because of its source, and valuable for the light it throws on the immediate effects of emancipation. ; Ho was fresh from observing the condition and ways of black people in the United States, both bond and free. While hopeful of the capabilities of the negro, ho was carefulto remark that no parallel could be drawn between Jamaica and its neighbour island. The blacks of St, Domingo (ho writes) are often cited as an example of what i» to be expected from free negroes. But tip circumstances in winch those of Jamaica are being emancipated are so entirely different from those attending the liberation of the former that it is a case completely out of point. The. simple facts that the blacks of Haiti were made free without preparation for the change, and becoming masters : of the soil were left to their own > guidance , and management, are enough to remove that country fromany parallelism with Jamaica. r. The safeguard adopted by the British Jpras a system of apprenticeship, which Was to last six years. A , At Kingston Domett’s- first imfressions were of a noisy, vivacious, ut reasonably orderly ’community! “ In ithe unpaved streets numbers of people, chiefly blacks, were . lounging, Mattering, and squabbling,” .he writes,. “ til! the place seems a black Babel revived.” EFFECT ON PRODUCTION. It was in its application to the “ predials,” or plantation workers, that tbo apprenticeship system was bound to be tested most shrewdly. Hitherto obliged to work for long hours every week day, the labourers were how released from toil on half of Friday and all of; Saturday. It was hoped that in their spare time they would work on the plantations for hire, which would gradually teach them independence. If, however, they withheld their labour, the sugar industry would suffer; and if, when the six years were over, they resolutely turned their batiks on the plantations, black and white alike would be faced by economic ruin. Domett found that some negroes were willing to work for hire, others the reverse. Probably.it depended on the degree of humanity with which they had been treated in the various areas. He notes that seven-, teen or eighteen hogsheads of sugar a week were being produced on one plantation! where formerly the total never exceeded fifteen, with no more than the outlay of a dollar (6s 8d) on each hogshead; but he admits that on most of the estates he visited “ production was down by a third or nearly.” Travelling about the island widely, not exclusively in quest of economic facts, he soon became aware of the perplexities which beset the child mind of the negro in a period of transition: —

I think that the town negroes (he writes) are fully aware that on the expiration of their apprenticeship they must work or starve. Om the estates they are perhaps less clear about this. They know even now little about what the law requires of them or their masters, for few if any of them can read; and if the overseer reads them tho law they are apt to imagine (with slave-like cunning) that “it is fun you do make.”

In another passage he: alleges that some of the overseers were almost as ignorant and illiterate as their charges. Other examples of this mental fogginess were noted. Scandalised by the sight of convicts at work in the streets in chains, the diarist mentions the introduction into the gaols of treadmills, which be hoped would gradually take the place of this objectionable practice. But the negroes took fright at this new form of labour. “Hey, Massa,” exclaimed one of them, "what him go do with nigger? ” Once Domett, being thirsty, asked a negress with whom he was talking to cut him a piece of sugarcane. She refused, saying'that if she did she “ would get fum-fum ” —their word for flogging—being quite unaware that the flogging of women, previously customary, had been forbidden by the new law. When this change became generally realised it was followed, for a time, by disregard of authority and contempt of discipline. The insubordinate negresses were reduced to obedience by being made to work in penal gangs and confined to cells when work was orer. There is mention of one, surely a woman in advance other age, who complained that- the overseer would not reason with her. INDIGNANT PLANTERS. The degrading whip had previously been applied to men and women impartially., By the new. law.the decision to flog male slaves was transferred from the jflanter to the stipendiary magistrate. The arrival of this functionary, clad in a blue coat with red cuffs and collar, was regarded by the indignant planter as an interference with his rights and his authority. This attitude struck Domett as » leading obstacle to

the success of the new system. It was widely held that many of these officials were ignorant both_ of negro character and sugar cultivation. Another obstacle was the lack of uniformity of opinion and on the part of the stipendiaries. _ This defect undermined their credit with the planters and also the confidence of the negroes in their decisions. On the other hand, where relations between planter and magistrate were better, the stipendiary was in a position to persuade the negro apprentice that it _ was to his own interest to oblige his master. Again, of the negroes did not do a fair amount of work in the prescribed time, he could compel them to make it up in their own. But the greatest obstacle to the success of the new system, Domett held, lay in the disastrous effects upon character of the old one. Brought up from childhood to acquiesce in the evil practices of unrestricted slavery, many of the overseers and planters were rooted in their prejudices and incapable of adapting themselves to fresh conditions. “The whip—tlie whip—the whip,’’ Domett sums up with growing indignation—

was the solution of every difficulty, the one instrument by which their - authority, was maintained. It seems to them a monstrous inversion of the natural order of things that a negro should be allowed to complain of ' his master to a magistrate, or a master be compelled to call in a magistrate to punish a negro. It will probably take some time to pulverise this unaccommodating stiffness, this narrowness of mind and character, which have hardened round the loath- , some system of slavery like the stone which has gradually, enclosed the living 'toad. They object, too, to the . extra trouble which the new system entails, no Government being so easy for the governor as an absolute one; a lazy ruler may well like a tyranny. There was a shocking instance, during Domett’s stay, of what tyranny could achieve. An overseer had imprisoned, for some trifling offence, two women far advanced in pregnancy. Their cell was ko small that they could not sit upright in it. The wretch stuffed up ’tbo* loopholes intended for ventilation. A magistrate, informed of their plight, had the women released. The incarceration had lasted for two hours, but their condition on being taken out was lamentable. Of course the.overseer is being prosecuted (the diarist comments), and will most probably be severely punished. Such an occurrence is , very rare, .perhaps almost unprecedented. Yet if it could happen even now, when the rights of the blacks are so jealously watched over by the law, one will hardly believe that the accusations of cruelty under the old system made by the Quakers and humanity-enthusiasts at home were quite such cant as their opponents pretended. Croakers in Jamaica vowed that the negro would never work except under compulsion—as if any white man would either, interpolates Domett. He found evidence that even under the old system slaves bad. put .by as much as £IOO by selling fruit and vegetables to the towns, and had entertained visitors to their huts with porter, brandy, and other liquors. He had seen enfranchised slaves in the United States attaining a measure of comfort and prosperity by bard work. Why should not tbo Jamaican negro also acquire a taste for luxuries, and work reasonably hard to obtain them? Not on the plantations, was the rejoinder. Domett was not so sure; there might be a period of unrest, and, search for novelty, but hard facts, might bring the negroes back to the cultivation ot the sugar cane, “ because it was the calling at which they were adepts; because it was ready to their hand, suited to their capacities, and recommended by habit.” This forecast proved over-sanguine. Domett seems to have expected too much of thso children of tbo sun.” The bitter memories of slavery were more likely to detach them from the plantations. So, in course of time, it proved. The defection of the “ predials ” was not the sole cause of tho decay of the sugar industry, but it was one of the causes. The apprenticeship system lasted only four of its six years. This is not the place to apportion tho blame for its failure. It ended; and the negro was left to make what use ho could of his freedom. The task was harder than the enthusiasts for liberty imagined. Only after long years of uneasiness, squalor, and stagnation did a better day begin to dawn.