THE FUTURE OF FIJI.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 10591, 21 October 1910, Page 6

THE FUTURE OF FIJI.

A BRITISH INDIAN COLONY

(From the Sydney illorning Herald.) It was worth coming to Suva to sec a live racial. problem walking up the gangway. About every other man raining up "it looked like a Greek statue; and the ones in between looked like the skinny heathen that children draw with single pencil lines; the odd numbers would be barefooted, bare-kneed. grossed with the clean t.t athletes; the even numbers crammed their skinny, bare legs into crumpled grey socks, and their socks into b( ols that would fit an elephant. Casual odd numbers, if they fancied themselves Ui.it way,'decked their hair with a wreath —some preferred a single flower of hvbiscus;,the even numbers wore a grim'v larrikin straw hat, a lady s ancient wide-brimmed 'hat, a bowler hat with - a past—any" old "hat at all. ; Odd numbers- carried walking , sticks; even numbers" trailed umbrellas bulging like, a Chinaman's' horsed "' - , You met . the problem, -everywhere along the roads. - The Indian passing ,vou said, "Salaam, sahib," the Fijian passengers strolling by the Botanic -Gardens felt 'a tap on his back. ___ Jiy the size'of the being he saw when "he. looked round he suspected it would be murder—but the being -merely grinned "Good day." -"Good day," said the oassengcr. ."Whore are vou going? "Going to post office,", said the being—and grinned again—and went there Fauci ng tapping a stranger on the baas in order to say "Good day! lnat is the Fijian all over. The Indian could not do it if he tried. If you pass a cm" of Fijian convicts on the road, the whole line of them will grin at you •ike schoolbovs, and so will all tlio .v-rders. So will the polic£mcn. bo v. ill the whole Fijian people. They arc. called savages. Perhaps ibo-v are. But it must come as a shock to anyone who knows the Fijian as the - jo rt of man described in the last two articles, to find that it.is at this day on'the card.- whether ho will not dio out, and leav the country belonging to a population of imported East Indians. Perhaps- the.y arc savages. At least theyt have' an excellent system oi Government under their own chiefs m the provinces; they make■ capable clerksall the Government offices arc lull or them • we were told that some of them arc quite able to use the Carnegie Library, latclv built'on the seafront at Suva (and still more lately, unroofed by the hurricane) ; we heard of one chief that read \ oraciously the lives of great soldiers and sailors; they are almost all ifetlu,(Tests;—such as are not Roman Catlicl.c 1 -. Everv village has a church, a <-ie'i", beiutifui, leai'y barn of a place ; a.Tci though their religion ma\ be nene-.-ally skin deep, it is native Fijian readers' that have done the work, in ;he wild islands to tlio west, and knowinylv lain dor. n their lives for it ngiin 'ind again. —Native Itfcdical Practitioners. — Tl.ev are now training their own doc-toi-s in Fiji- There is a hospital of VJO beds in Suva, and they tram them -her"—not Macquarie street specialists, u:L men who have been give a three-veii'-s! course and a good round know-lo'.'-io cl something more than first-aid >r.d '.r; than medicine. They send ."•hem br.ck to the villages as native medic'J practitioners —paid by the Gr\">ni.,onfc about -213 a year. The m".loi'iiv are competent for simple surL,e: \ and simple treatment, and at lea't can iell if a case wanted watching oi- re.-.ding to the hospital. One distrm white rcltler, who had made use of them, told me that their methods were exceedingly and aseptic. They are a clean people. Many-of their "wllagos. are" exquisite 4 —kept like a botanical garden— a, great green in the c?ntre, trll thatched haystacks of lieii .• s around it bordered with bright -.hiiil'i. The houses are bcauUfully ';c pt —carpeted with clean rush mats. Tiie Fijian has a bath once a day, and tifMi twice, in the creek or the sea.

lie alwajs bathes after work. His ra!_;i:ificent chins and feet are bare, his ';ik F."erkless —the whole form of him hire Lis it of an Anglo-Saxon athlete who i'.is uin hir; race, and just thrown on his coat over his vest; and there is no :».:,d"r:i dress that shows a man off so ;ranc'.iy as that. He looks none the v.orse for dressing his hair like a doormat, and bleaching it with lime to a. doormat's color. Ihe one thing ho admires is soldiering; he loves cricket and sailing. We san plenty of his cutters ! ;eii!g" built bvwhito fh'ipbuilders or oalf-ci'rtes in Suva. The sides wore .vhine kauri, but the keel was a hard ■•ediwocl. In \v?s red gum, brought rr:n Australia. ' In ether islands both •cd yam and kauri are now growing. ; —50,000 Died Outright.— Yet those who know best say the Fijian is dying from the loss of his old occupation and .'the lack of a new one. There uere 150,000 Fijians before we came there. Old. King Thakombau's fighting merely kept their muscle up and cut the weaklings down. And then, by the irony of fate, King J liakoiabau accepted peace, and afterwards went to Sydney and brought back on the ship along with, his suite —the measles; and 50,000 of the 1-30,000 Fijians died' outright. They did not understand the fever or, the' irntation. They rushed into the nearest water, and naturally died like flies.

Of course, the figures of those days aiw nll i v rough. But the tragedy was uppallii-g. The natives have scarcely u<r-vcio"d from the shock yet. In the meantime constant peace has been more poweiiul to reduce the people of Fiji than constant war. The 1881 census ga\e 111.924; 1891, 10-5,800,- 1901, 94,377; 1908 (estimated), 87,114. At tiie outside the decrease has now ceased. —Fiftcn Years Hence. — To nerform the work Fijians will not do Indians have been brought in. There v a" not one indentured coolie 28 years ago. riic-re" must bo about 40,000 free and indt ntured to-day. There wore 31,000 in 1907—20,000 permanently settled—and 2000 to 3000 are pouring m ,\early. Almost all stay in Fiji. Their biithratc is 38.6 per thousand, in spite of the Small proportion of women. Tiie is low. At the piesent rate the Indian population will pass the Fijian in 12 to 15 years. That has actually happened in Mauritius. The Mauritians were mostly descendants of old African slaves, taken, .ihcro when it was a French colony. The language is a corrupt French; but in 1907, out. of 376,000 inhabitants, 264,000 were Indians. —The Latest Development.— The report of a committee lately called by Lhe Earl of Crewe on emigration from India to Crown colonies has ar;hcd in Suvi. It advises that in intuie no Indians shall be allowed to

lea re India for a Crown colony Minder nidenture, unless, if they are to stay at Lhe end of their indenture, they arc

a-lniifcrod to full rights of citizenship—to lioid land and practise anj calling the;, wish.. It aims at doing the fair tiling by Indians,- and safeguarding those entering Crown colonies, which, when they afterwards become, selfgoverning, may be inclined to alter the eruditions of the Indians, is Natal did. In future any batch of indentured coolies starting from India' to work in a Crown colony must also be considered as Indian emigrants, starting off from n crowded Jndian centre to make an lut> dun colony overseas —that is practie.illv what the report advises. Of couise it may not be adopted; but if it i«. those are the only terms on whicli Ciown colonies can obtain British-In'-dl.m coolies. If they want them on those terms, they can recruit them from the crowded country, of which the rentro is Benares; if not, they lu.'ve theni. It seems a perfectly fair p;;licv for the Indians.'

Vtii has long ago accepted the India n= on practically those terras. After their indentures or re-indenture's they ,'id entirely free. During their, indentures they can be forced to work, if a 'loetor does not them unK. They may be pimished b"j a magistr.ite if they refuse. Incidentally, the committee reported:—"We find that on Tl-o four large estates belongingto the Colonial Sugar Refining Company. Ltd., O'c average number of davs lost in t-fiiivt and gaol- was respectively 1.02, 1.1.1.,' 1.75, and 2.62 for each immigrant, uliile in the case of the other "large °'ii»ar company it rose to 4.50 days. Tins excessive number is ascribed by the Agent-General to the prosecution of- idlers; but w,e,cannot but think that were more care exercised in recruiting, and more tact in' management, prosecution on this scale should never be r—essary.",' The committee advised

an inquiry, to see whether part'of this prosecution could be avoided. • The Fijian is a man very iriiicli after the heart hoth of Australians and Englishmen. But the people who are going to make something of Fiji are the Indians.

The Fijian keeps clean and looks beautiful. The Indian works. When the Fiji an lias a job lie mates a spasmodic ' game of it. The Indian toils like a cab horse from daylight to dark —it is a magnificent quality iii his people. It is a quality which will ■■weep them through and over the Fijians as a tidal wave might sweep one tit those drowsy little coral islets. It looks a foregone conclusion; against the Fijian. —The Fijian Socialist. — jJhe difficulty with. Fijiaus now is that they are - -fcliprough-going' communists; and there is the same difficulty in> their case as with -every other, sort of so- . cialist—the difficulty of inducing them .to work. It is probably not impossible anywhere—systems of socialism will quite possibly be discovered ,which aTe not simple incentives to . laziness. But ifc would need the most delicate management to tit any such scheme nowadays on to the Fijians. ' The main reason a Fijian won't wont is simply that his'tribe will'not allow him to keep anythfng he gains by working. It is against the s-ystem-T-his poor neighbors will-borrow it, and he .would not be thought a. gentleman if* he refused. Thev might allow him a few mats and his'best clothes. But if he started digging a respectable plantation of vanis or-taro .they "would let him do aTI the digging. The village would-only come in at the eating. -. .. . Conseouently, it ter to sit round the village] green, or in the chief's house, and listen to fairy tales and receive the rent of the lands of the village like a gentleman. The village may put in just enough yams to scrape along v.ith. As for the rest of the land, the present system, hy which the Fijians own nearly all of it, and the Government only allows them to lease it out, and not to sell it, has been often enough discussed in the Herald before. The British Government protects the Fijian well —many white residents think too well. The Fijian lenows he can appeal to the law if' overstepped, and he is not shy of doing so. He does not altogether like being prevented from selling his land, but the rent in settled parts keeps him in- comfort without the necessity <.f working. The way in which the Government has., for very many years past aimed -it inducing the native to work lias been by discouraging the system which prevented him from working.' Keri-keri

is, of course, severely opposed, and everything has been done to promote individual enterprise. I was told in Fiji that the results have not come up to expectation —that the natives have become more lazy and produce less than formerly. —Just a Few Things.— The curious thins is there are just a few things the Fijian will work for. He will work to build the village ■ church or the village cutter. For t strictly village purpose lie will go off and work in the. plantations or the wharf for six months or a year, so as to help to raise the funds. But then you can't keri-keri a church. The [ whole village is working for something \ the whole village will enjoy, and which ' no one oan take away from it. And it | dees seem to give a hint as to how Fijians might he induced to work. Long ago, after Fiji was ceded to ; Britain in 1874, it was decided the 13 ' provinces should pay a direct tax —each " according to its wealth —not in money, ' but in copra (dried, kernel of cocoamits). ' sugar cane, tobacco, maize, and other , thingi. The provincial tax was'apportioned amongst districts; the district ; tax among villages; the village tax [ amongst tribes. It worked out that each Fijian was providing from about ' 7s -a year in a poor district to about ' 18s ; in a. rich one. and the whole tax returned about .£20,000. The tribe in ' common produced its portion of maize or other stuff, and so the system fitted ■ Fijian custom, and, although it had ■ disadvantages, was probably about as popular as any direct taxation can be. 1 European planters, however, strongly objected to this tax in'times when labor 1 was scarce, especially when the native, ' not wanting to work for the planter, ' said he would be glad to. work for him if only he had not to work out his • Government tax. The planter, perhaps • not unnaturally, was anxious that the native should pay the "tax in money. ■ As money was scarce in those days, if the natives •■ had been forced to pay it, the advantage to the trader and planter, and the hardship ■ to the natives-would-have been obvi- • ous. However, the Government believed the tax in kind was fairer, to the and better suited to their system.

After some 20 years or more it is said that an energetic official at the head of the; native tax ; department purged the districts, villages,.- and tribes, to earn is, send in more produce than was necessary for the assessment' —pointing out that the prices obtained by ithe Government were the highest market prices to he had for the produce, although it might take" the villager a little longer to obtain his money. object seenis to have been to encourage the native to be a producer, and it is on record that the amounts sent back to the' natives during two or three years after this exceeded the annual assessment. This money, of course, was spent by the natives at the stores of. merchants and ■traders.