CLOSED DOORS

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XX, Issue 244, 3 October 1930, Page 3

CLOSED DOORS

PERILS OF EXCLUSIONS EAST AND WEST MUST MINGLE W.E.A. LECTURE IN HASTINGS “We believe that our women are very much happier, going out into the world and learning to take their part in life. But in our relations with other races we cling to the policy of ‘purdah.’ We keep our doors closed against the alien as a danger. When we were babies in inter-racial life perhaps we needed the protection of the closed erib. But I am inclined to think that, as the world is moving to-day, we are only increasing our dangers by shutting ourselves up—that there would be more safety and infinitely more of the adventure of happiness in going out to meet the w’orld of mankind.” Briefly, that is how Mr. J. A. Brailsford summed up his lecture on “White New Zealand” under the auspices of the Hastings W.E.A. There were some 30 people present and Mr. George Bull was in the chair. In his opening renlnrks, Mr. Brailsford said that in the time of our grandfathers, people had become very worried about the ever-increasing number of Asiatic peoples being allowed into the country. To prevent the over-running of the Dominion the people of the time had passed laws absolutely restricting the admission into the country of. any Asiatic-born men or women. This exclusion had been aggravated in 1921 when Parliament passed a Bill excluding Asiatics from entering the country and requiring them to pay £lOO and be limited to a period of six months in their stay except on other conditions. LESS AND LESS NATIONAL. “Last week.” said the speaker, “I was at the luncheon given in honour of Sir Otto Niemeyer in Wellington. During the lunch Sir Otto addressed those present and said in the course of his remarks that things were becoming less and less national and more and more international. For instance, unemployment could not now lie treated as a national question concerning onlv the State. It was an international question which concerned the world!” It had been contended that the bringing in of Chinese and Japanese workmen would lower the standard pf living, continued the speaker. It was held that the Chinese brought in all sorts of endemic diseases and formed Chinatowns where opium smoking and gambling were carried on. Tho dangers of unrestricted immigration were obvious. With their lower standards of wages and pornfort. Asiatic workers could be imported to compete unfairly with those of our own race. Most people were satisfied that this was decidedlv undesirable, but. a few were found to argue that cheap labour was an advantage and that, if Asiatics and other aliens could be employed to do the “nigger” work, all the whites could be “gentlemen” and “ladies.” WORKERS NOT IMPRESSED. The workers themselves were not impressed bv such arguments. They had found that when they were displaced bv Asiatics, so far from becoming “gentlemen” they became unemployed and were held in contempt bv the proud. Moreover, the independent among them rejected the idea that it was noble to become parasites on the labour of others. According to the lecturer, this objection to parasitism was a sound instinct. All history had shown that the lot of the workers had been miserable when people of an alien race had been introduced as a serf caste. In the southern States of America, in Rome at the time of her decline, in all the old Empires, this had been the cause of their decline and eventual fall. Some writers believed that Britain was suffering in a similar wav through living largely on the tribute drawn from foreign countries in the form of interest on investments. Great Britain had about £4.000,000.000 invested in Asiatic countries and America had the same sum invested. In 1902. J. A. Hobson had written extensively on this theme in his book “Imperialism.” ami long before him Oliver Goldsmith had written with indignation of—- “ The wealth of climes where savage nations roam. Pillared from slaves to purchase slaves at home.” SHAW’S IDEAS. “G. 8.5. had nut the same idea in his “Intelligent Woman’s Guide.” He had contended that, when people were withdrawn from useful services to perform flunkey duties and provide luxuries for an idle rich class, then the nation was “breaking its own backbone and exchanging its page in honourable history for a chapter in the Ruins of Empires. It becomes too idle and luxurious to compel the foreign countries to pay the tribute on which it lives, and when they cease to feed it. it has lost the art of feeding itself and collapses in the midst of its genteel splendour.” To the same cause Shaw attributed in large measure the chronic unemployment and the necessity of “doles.” He said: “lie used to moralise over this sort of thing as part of the decline and fall of ancient Rome; but we have been heading for it ourselves for a long while past, and the war has plunged us into it head over ears.” Mr. Brailsford said that this reliance on the services of other races was seen in one of its woist forms in the dragging-in of Asiatics and Africans into the wars of the Western raC e—to help one group of our >wn race in killing another group. This also was a practice followed by Rome in the time of her decline. A NEGATIVE MEASURE. “However.” said the lecture!, “such things can happen without ncople in general realising the trend On the other hand it is obvious that, if Asiatics are brought into this country in largo numbers to take the place of white workers, the evils will be glaring, and people seek to avoid this danger bv exclusion Content with this negative measure tliov fail to see the evils that Shaw has pointed out, or the unfair competition of Asiatics in their own factories competing with those of Lancashire, while others are taking the place of British seamen on British ships and

vet others, induced to fight in white men’s wars, directly aid the work of destruction.” Racial intercourse was inevitable in these days, said the speaker, and he contended that there was infinitely less danger in accepting this fact and meeting the Asiatics with mutual regard and a desire for cooperation than in attempting to shut ourselves off from them. If the contacts between the races were rightly regulated, great gains would come. We had much to learn from the East, as the East had to learn from us. “At the luncheon Sir Otto Niemeyer had said that from the strictly economic point of view we could not allow starvation to go on in China and Japan,” said Mr. Brailsford. “To do so would be to promote war and revolutions and from the economic condition of the world to-day, this could not be allowed.” The speaker illustrated this by referring to factories in Shanghai where girls of seven or eight years of age had to stand all through the night, working They worked for six or seven hours and then had an interval and on again for another six or seven hours. They were standing all the time and sometimes one of them would droop her head sleepily. Her head would fall so low that her hair would he caught in a machine and she would he mangled to death. After hearing that and if no notice was taken, it was bound to react to the injury of the white race. “Tlie East and West have met, said the lecturer. “No matter whether we like it or not, we have to have relations with the East. The time has come when we should go out to meet them in the same way as with children.” REGULATIVE MEASURES. In outlining regulative measures, the lecturer condemned the indenture system, particularly on the ground that it separated the indentured workers from their families, destroyed moral codes and cheated unfair competition with married men. Whatever people were allowed to come to our country, he said, should be encouraged to have their families with them. The morality of the Asiatic peoples depended upon the home life and when taken away from their families the men would work for anything as far as wages were concerned. The indenture system had had terrible results in South Africa and in Fiji. A report on Fiji had stated that there were four men to every one woman in the country and murder and suicides were all-prevailing. Suicides, it was said, were 11 times more numerous among coolies in Fiji before the war than in the home countries of the coolies. TEE LOWER STANDARD BOGEY According io Mr. Brailsford, the standard of living of the Asiatics was nuite as high as the white people Market gardeners were earning from £3 to £4 10/- and keep a week and in Melbourne Chinese laundrymen had been forced to go out ol business liecause of white women undercutting them in wages. “Language should be the real test,” said Mr. Brailsford, “both for Asiatics coming into the country and for white people going out of the country. At present, British people can go all over the world with just the English language at their command, without causing any serious inconvenience to themselves. But do these travellers ever stop to think of the inconvenience tliev cause foreigners?” The lecturer went on to sav that there should be restriction without the present poll-tax, which the Asiatic people deeply resented. Efforts should be made to encourage lecturers to come from China and Japan to New Zealand to give the public some idea of how the Asiatics felt on the question TOO MUCH "GRAB.” There was a policy abroad to-day of “grab.” The Japanese and Chinese who worked in New Zealand produced much and took little. The employers produced little and take much. In conclusion Mr. Brailsford said: “We pity the ladies of India in their

‘purdah’ seclusion—hardly ever going outside the wails of their home, hardly ever meeting strangers and never any men but those of the family—going in closed vehicles or thickly veiled when they are out of doors on rare occasions. But those women believe that their seclusion is the condition of the home, hapnv to close their doors against the dangers of the world. They would shrink in horror from experiences that pur girls regard as giving zest to life. “1 am not suggesting that we should rush into each other’s arms. A crude, sentimental approach to strangers is almost as offensive as the aloofness of snobbery. Infinite delicacy and courtesy are needed to ensure any true friendship,” concluded the lecturer. Mr V L. Westerman gave some views on the question after Mr. Brailsford had finished speaking. A vote of thanks was passed to the two speakers at the conclusion of Mr. Westerman's address