Colored Labor.

Hastings Standard, Issue 164, 5 November 1896, Page 4

Colored Labor.

Mr Noel Buxton, a son of the Governor of South Australia, has just returned from a trip to Queensland, lie made exhaustive inquiries into the sugar-growing industry, the colored labor question receiving special attention. lie said that he had no idea that any part of the tropics could suit Englishmen so well as North Queensland evidently does. Except on the coast whites can do all classes of work. Even on the coast- many do very hard work. The white population is rapidly increasing. Sugar could be produced by whites, but the industry would be reduced to small dimensions if only whites were employed. Assuming that the chief desideratum was for the country to support as many whites as possible, apart from the interest* of capital, itmight be good policy to get rid by degrees of all coloured immigrants, but at present, and till the whites multiplied, probably the employment of colored laborers would enable the country to support more 'whites than it otherwise would, while development would be much slower with whites only. Questioned as to the introduction of colored labor in the Northern Territory, he said that he thought that Japanese or perhaps Indian labor should be allowed under strict contract. Many whites would be employed in industries which grow up as in Queenland, and if these afterwards could b>■ carried on with white labor only the importation of colored could be stopped. Japanese were the best to introduce, because they were obliged to return home after three years. So long as Australia was part of the Empire the idea that immigration would help a Japanese invasion was absurd; besides the alarm about a flood of Japanese was unfounded. Less than twelve hundred were working 011 the Queensland plantations, and hardly any at extra industries.