WHITE LABOUR IN NORTHERN QUEENSLAND.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1748, 6 September 1905, Page 2

WHITE LABOUR IN NORTHERN QUEENSLAND.

Combating the common statement that white men cannot work in tropical Australia, a correspondent of the “Queenslander” writes: — I am neither an authority on sugargrowing nor a cane farmer, but I have lived for nearly half a century in the hottest and, perhaps, most tropical portion of Australia; so from experience ought to know something about what a white man can do in it, and live. Personally I have worked hard at all seasons of the year, through sun and rain, taking all! samples of weather as they came, grumbling of course, but sticking to my work, and, after all, being in good health, and strong, and getting through it without feeling more exhausted than usually follows a hard day’s “graft” in a more temperate and congenial climate.. So far I have written in the first person, but there are other people around me doing similar work, who will contribute towards a large plural. The work spoken of includes splitting, fencing, clearing, and grubbing scrub land, ploughing, and all the other duties incidental to farming and stock breeding in new lands. However, in these duties the daily and unbroken monotony of labouring in a canefield is varied by other employment, such as the riding about, and giving the usual attention to the stock and their welfare requisite on a cattle station. Still, when the clearing and cleaning of ground preparatory to> its cultivation and its planting has to be performed, we find that during even the warmest weather it can be well done without entailing any consequences injurious to health.

At various times we employ South Sea Islanders (Kanakas) —good ones, as under our circumstances there is no opening for a “crawler”- —and have learnt that the right stamp of white man, granted difficult to procure, can work with and “go. one better” than the Kanaka under a sun heat that is supposed to be his especial element, and in which he takes “the stand of ’vantage” over the white. For example, when splitting a heavy “inlocked” log the white man sticks in and drives the “entering” wedge, and the “bursting” and “running out” ones are driven by the two men standing on opposite sides of the log, each swinging his maul blow for blow, keeping time, until the wedges are “heme,” when the white man is always the one to step out, ‘‘cut the strings,” “lead the split,” with his axe, and enter the next wedge, etc. ; while the coloured one stands by, with perhaps “bellows to mend,” leaning on his maul, but never thinks of offering to take his “turn about” share. And towards evening, when, anxious to get through before knocking off, the white man has often to pause in his downward blow in order to let the other get in his, and keep time two to one. And I have no doubt that by “forcing the running” Caucasia would work, as Abe Lincoln once observed, the black man “blind” at any undertaking that required prolonged stamina and grit. To a city sybarite, town loafer, or other delicately fastidious gentleman with a doubtful appendix, we would no doubt be considered to “live hard,” bread,''beef, and eggs being the basis of solids, with as vegetables potatoes, yams, pumpkins, tomatoes, and mangoes, custard apples, pines, bananas, and other tropical fruits; and in their seasons game of some kind is generally procurable; these, with the addition of a few of the usual “store’ trimmings” and luxuries, constitute the bill of fare from year’s end to year’s end ; and with this programme neither do we get sick nor die. Anyhow, during the last past half-century referred to not a single death from natural causes has occurred amongst us, young or old. No anklyostomiasis or other fancy and acquired diseases have sprung up to serve us with trouble or drugs, and in the much maligned tropics, and under all these conditions, children are types of health and energy, activity and sunburn, the boys being always willing and ready (quite ignoring the climate in which the Caucasian deteriorates) for a game of cricket or football, and with the girls have a sufficient stock of energy (and some “for coming up’) to’ enter into and thoroughly enjoy to the full any amusement that may he going; and their physical development dreiv from the late welL-knowa Russian anthropologist, Baron JVlacleay, remarks of wonderment at the physique produced and solely built-up in such a climate. “The General under 14 Flags” (General Mclver) also, after an “omnivorous” life spent in the services and travel, made like remarks, and when alluding to their healthy and clear wholesome complexions threw in “I’ll he darned if I did” as an extra-. But what he did, or did not, is still obscure. E!ven Georgie Reid could, with safety, have responded affirmatively to an invitation in so far as natural causes are concerned; but. perhaps the moral courage to face arguments that he knew to be just -might be lacking : so a scapegoat at the expense of saddcUing a place with a “bad name/’ and ruining the reputation of its climate had to be found to-do duty for his reluctancy to face Cane and its disciples. Many of my neighbours' are abstemi-

ous in their tastes and habits, some of them completely so, and but I myself am neither the one nor the other, drinking spirits, wines, etc.* whenever I feel inclined to do so, and at times when occasion or courtesy expects it—when I do not—and at exceedingly happy and joyful gatherings it might be said that I did not drink too little. However, I have never accuse myself of this shortcoming. From a long and “assorted experience,” supplemented by that of others around me living under like conditions, I know that white men can and. do work under all phases of our climate, »n.d if anxious to do so, can get through more of it than a Kanaka; but to accomplish this the man must be of hereditarily sound constitution, steady, thoroughly wholesome in his life and mode of living, and devoid of a hatred of water. This type of man is, I admit, not numerous in these parts, chiefly for three reasons:—First, he is born, etc.; second, he can always command more congenial employment, better wages, and preferable environments than labouring in the stinking humidity and itch that flourishes in a canefield can hold out to him; therefore, the third reason is that, he won’t. And now, amongst other, subjects, I think I have touched on the three oft-quoted obstacles and drawbacks to success in hard manual' labour in a tropical climate—namely, heat, liquor, and physical incapacity (possibly I should include mental). The first is but a “bogey,” the second, if carried to excess, .will most certainly incapacitate the most robust constitution, and the last is an infirmity, of course unalterable ; but I think the primal contra factor is inuring those who have been brought up in a cool climate to the change under a hot one.