THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 5, 1912. THE AUSTRALIAN SUGAR INDUSTRY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 15167, 5 December 1912, Page 6

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 5, 1912. THE AUSTRALIAN SUGAR INDUSTRY.

-♦ . ~» The report of the Australian Sugar Commission is a very formidable document if any exhaustive reply has been attempted to the voluminous and far-reaching questions included in the scope of its inquiry. Nothing of industrial or commercial importance to sugar-producers or sugar-consumers was omitted from the memorandum issued to the members of the Commission by the Federal Minister for Customs. The prodigious collection and assortment of details thus initiated and provided for will doubtless be of considerable national value, and will enable politicians and economists to decide what Australia is paying to protect white labour in its tropical territory, and what it is receiving in exchange for its sacrifices. This national policy of a White Australia is at the bottom of the Federal attitude towards the sugar industry, for it is very generally recognised that without State aid of some kind or another it would be almost impossible to grow sugar in Australia excepting by coloured labour. It may be pointed out, however, that many industries would never have been started in the colonies without fiscal protection, and some would certainly perish it all protection were withdrawn— being not because the climate is against them, but simply because economic conditions arc disadvantageous. In the case of Australian sugar it has been frequently and

repeatedly asserted that climatic conditions make it impossible to regard white labour as capable of permanently carrying on the industry; but if this assertion is correct, it is plain that the Australian tropics cannot possibly be held by a white population, for sugar-growing instead of being a specially oppressive industry is a comparatively ' easy and attractive one. The entire work is done during the cooler months of the year, and the practice of "trashing" or cleaning the old leaf growth from the standing cane during the summer months has never been considered economical excepting where work had to be found for labour engaged by the year. Other tropical industries are largely carried on during hot weather and under circumstances much more difficult than those surrounding sugar-growing. The extremely primitive character of much of the work to be done. in the indus--1 try, has made it particularly suitable for unskilled • and 'unintelligent coloured labour, and the fact that the great bulk o'f cane sugar produced in the world necessarily comes from coloured labour countries has been a strong inducement to all canesugar producers to employ the same cheap form of labour. Australia drifted into coloured labour on the sugar plantations because that labour was the cheapest obtainable, not because it was the best either for the industry or for the country. That 94 per cent, of the labour employed in the industry is now white, and that neither the majority nor '■ the minority report suggests that white labour is unsatisfactory, may be considered to justify, so far,, the White Australia policy.

Hitherto the sugar-growers have been encouraged to employ labour by bounty, and this system has evidently worked well. Both reports recommend the application of prohibition of coloured labour and the abolition of the bounty system, evidently considering the time ripe for placing the industry unreservedly in . European hands. The reports differ as to the effect upon the industry of the operations of the Colonial Sugar Refining Company, but it is interesting to note that neither report favours the nationalisation of the industry or any Government competition with existing concerns. There is, however, a decided tendency to recommend such interferences as will, give to the white workers a minimum wage and to the I State a very considerable power in | the controlling of prices; nor can | the prospect of such interference be ! considered extraordinary when the proposals for protective duties range from five to seven guineas per ton. The aim and purpose of Australian sugar duties is not to raise revenue but to exclude competing importations, so that the Australian public already pays an extra halfpenny per pound on its sugar for the sake of keeping the industry in the hands of white labourers and may have to pay still more. The question is certainly an extraordinary one, but the whole situation is extraordinary and unprecedented. European settlement in North America has been most seriously and dangerously affected by the introduction of coloured labour for tropical industries and by the consequent occupation of a very large part of the United States by an alien and inferior and unabsorbable race. The same policy has led to the same evil in South America, while the great domestic problem of South Africa has been graphically described as the Black Peril, Australia, warned by the experience of other European colonies, is making a sincere and earnest attempt to establish a homogeneous nationality, and to garrison its northern territories against Asia by the only effective and permanent garrison, that of British industrial settlement and agricultural occupation. " The supreme justification for protecting the sugar industry," says the majority report, uncontradicted, " is the part it plays in solving these.problems.'* The assertion that "no reason has been shown why white labour should not be employed on the sugar plantations and in the sugar mills," indicates that if the Australian public is paying dearly for the White Australia policy there is, at the least, some prospect that this policy may attain success. It is a remarkable commentary on the inconsistencies of human nature that Australia, which would indignantly repudiate the suggestion that it might fairly pay a million sterling annually for Imperial naval protection, is contentedly and uncomplainingly paying double that amount for the sake of having its sugar produced by white instead of by coloured labour. Yet if it were not : for the complete selfgovernment assured to the Commonwealth by the Imperial navy, this very interesting experiment would not be possible, for our colonial exclusion laws, unless backed by the navy, would not stand for a day.