OUR COLOURED BROTHER

Otago Daily Times, Issue 15101, 25 March 1911, Page 5

OUR COLOURED BROTHER

IN VARIOUS ASPECTS.

Br J, Liddell Kelly

No. lI.—JN RELATION TO THE LABOUR PROBLEM.

The principal labour problem at tho present time is : " How is the world's rough, work to be done, in view of the tendency of white workers to insist upon high -wages, shoit hours, and improved labour-conuitijiis ?" A nice ea:y, comfortable, eut-and-dried eolation is at once to hand : " Make the coloured raccs do the hard and menial work, with whits roan instructing, organising, directing, and btssing them." Tho bsatinc vision thus evoked of a world raled by whits men, drawing liberal "wagesof ability,'' while sonic hundreds of millions of servile coloured workers do their behests at rates of pay ranging from a penny to a shilling a day, is a most entrancing one —to the white man! Imagine what an ideal woi'ld we should soon have to live in. Jungles would be cleared, swamps would bo drained, animal and insect pejls would l>e exterminated, and waste places would be made to blossom as the rose. Great irrigation works, stupendous engineering undertakings, rc/:ds, railways, canals, etc., would be executed, bringing untold blessings to humanity. And net the least of these blessings would be the elevation of our coloured brother. In those Millennial days, we whites v.-onld go about with That air of satisfaction, TVliicli good men wear who've done a

virtuous action, as wc pointed out how wo had rcscued our benighted brethren from idlemes and immorality by impressing en them the G-ospal of Work—work which wc, in our own {arsons, had proved to be the best antidote to vice and the surest way to health and haopiners. Unfortunately, there are various obstaclea to the realisation of this glorious ideal, eo clcklv akin to tho vision of the hon and the lamb lying -down together—with tho lamb inside! To begin with, a large section of white men object to handing over the world's work to the coloured racc6, although they thcmicelrcs candidly avow that work is an evil and that they weald be content with a very .modest allowance of it. Eight hours a day, at a shilling an hour, used to be the maximum requirement; but thay arc getting it down to six hoars r.t oro-ard- , sixpence an hctar, and no one knows how much further they will carry the whittling process as regards the ho urn and the augmentation in the matter oi wages. These dog-in-the-manger people actually object to other people; working long hoiiTis for low wages; they have a particular aversion to coloured people doing any of the labour which they themselves shirk; and, "& they are in a position to giive legislative effect to their views,. they will probably succeed in thwarting the benevolent intentions of the preachers of the doctrine of hard work.

In the ssccmd place, tho colored brother is now claiming a right to be consulted as_ to his wishes in the matter. Tho said brother is by no means enamoured ol w(tk. In his natural or " -uncivilised" state, he abhors it; he will work only under tho whip of compulsion or the spur of necessity; and, whatever his state, he would much rather work for himself than for a master. Tho negTo, the Polynesian, and the American Indian ami the best surviving types of the natural man who is in enmity against , work. They are the 1 prototypes' cf . tha civilised advocates -of " the simple life," who contend -, happiness can . better^ 1 be attained 'by -limiting our wants and desires than by multiplying our needs and our pleasures. The negro once was content to sing :

Tho head, must bow and the back will

havo to bend, Wherever tho darkey may go.

He was even resigned to the prospect of having to work in Heaven, " shoving the elouds along"; but we have changed all that-. By the anti-slavery movement we knocked out the ancient theory that the negro was foredoomed to be the bondsman of the white—we abrogated the malediction pronounced on the offspring of Ham: "Cursed be Canaan. . . . God enlarge Japheth, and lett him dwell in the tents of iShemj and let Canaan be his servant." The descendants of Japbetli abandoned their rights when they taught the sons of Ham the ethics of Christianity and the principles of democracy. The Americans, it is true, concede equal rights to the negroes in name only and withhold them in practice; but the coloured men accept the situation under protest, and merely await opportunity to assert themselves. They are ready to act in the spirit of the qualified blessing conferred on Esau: "'Thou shalt serve thy brother; and it shall come to pass, when tho:t shalt break loose, that thou shalt shake his yoke from thy neck." The same happening with the dusky millions of India. They are realising that, after all, it is their brother they have been serving, and they are beginning to ask why they should continue to do so. "If brothers, then heirs"—heirs to the earth and its fulness, just as much as any others! We have also taught the principles of economic justice to the oppressed Egyptians; we have freed 1 them from their hard taskmasters ; we are educating them, ajid they are eagerly imbibing the doctrines of their essential equality with other human beings and their right to order their own destinies. How, in the face of these facts, can we carry out the plan of placing all the world's laborious and menial work on the shoulders of the coloured races?

The Hindus, Chinese, and Japanese are, of course, people with an old civilisation, and consequently they are painfully industrious. Devotion to work is in their case accounted a vicc. The whiie man dreads their competition and doas all in his power to choke it off. And, as Lord Cnrzon said recently, in a speech at Glasgow, thero is " economic justification" for the colonial objection to coloured labour. As a matter of public policy, 110 one desires to see tho white workers degraded to the standards of comfort and decency that suffice for Asiatics. Therefore, while we admire and applaud the untiring industry of the Hindus, Chinese, and Japanese in tiheir own countries, wo deny them tho right to enter into competition with tho workers in wha.t we have decreed shall be "white men's countries." In all this wo are illogical; but the world is not ruled by logic. We tolerate—nay, we pamper, pet, and preserve the Polynesians and American Indians, because thev are not competitors in the industrial field, and because they aro not so prolific, hardy, and multitudinous as the Africans and Asiatics. Illogical, undoubtedly; perhaps unwise—unwise, that is, to strive for the preservation of those who aro unfit to survive in the struggle for existence ; but still we can plead "economic justification" for our attitude. If wo believed in the Gospel of Work, we should hasten the exit from the world of all idlers, and should welcome the advent of millions of toilers, no matter what their nationality or colour; but a higher law than logic compels us to be inconsistent.

The fact is, we are content to dwell in the tents of Shem and the hovels of Ham so long as the children of Shem and Ham serve us as we wish them to do; but we nbioct to their entering our tents and ordering their lives according to their own desires. Shall wo be able to perpetuatc this state of things? All experience gives an emphatic negative to tho query. As the people of European conn, tries iiavo by a t'eries of efforts sl.-nltcn off serfdom, and are now engaged in a struggle for the abolition of class rule, so must it be with all the coloured races. Centuries of servitude have not crushed out the invincible instruct of liberty implanted in even' human breast. Ages of tyrannical domination havo not impofed irpon any. section of mankind tho fraudulent doctrine that one class is bom to

rule and another to be ruled. So, ail the inthienccs of religion, superstition, and self-constituted authority must fail to convinco reasonable human bjings that one race of men, however dark in colour or dolicient in cerU'm qualities it may be, is fore-ordained to ba ior all time the bondsmen and servants of another. Whatever, therefore, may bo the solution of our labour problem, it is not to be found in schemes that contemplate the shifting of the world's rough work on to the shoulders of the. coloured brother. Modified systems of serfdom have been tried in various places, but with only scant success. Indentured Indian labour in Natal, indentured Chinese labour in the Iransvaal, and indentured Kanaka labour in Australia have all failed. 'Australia and the Transvaal were glad to decree the deportation of the workers whom they had deemed essential to the development of the resources of these territories. It would have been well for the United States had llioy, 50 years ago, adopted the same policy with the negro slaves, instead of allowing them to be the cause of a devastating civil war and to, lemain in the country as a perpetual probiem and menace. The Hindus in Natal showed such a genius for abandoning hard worn and taking up other occupations, that n. law was passed prohibiting them from enupon trading pursuits. In the Hawaiian Islands, many thousands of Chinese and Japanese were imported as plantation labourers. The Chinese, .as soon as possible, threw off the yoke of their masters, and went to work as cultivators; traders, or artisans on their own account. Tho Japanese are moro content to work for wages, but they keep up a constant agitation for more pay. Many years ago, a number of Chinese were imported into Tahiti for plantation work; their descendants do no plantation work to-day. The Japanese who have entered Australia as pearl fishers or labourers, and the thousands now going to New Caledonia as miners, will not stick to these occupations if they seo better openings for their energies and abilities. The same applies to the many thousands of Japanese who, are ,in British Columbia, Califor nia, Chili, and Peru. They' will demand the right to choose their occupations, and to enter into competition: with whiti labour, as those in Hawaii have already done. There is no just or equitable way in which this can be prevented. It is possible by law, as in Natal, to bar the. coloured brother from certain' pursuits or, as in the United States, to prevent him from enjoying his rights by means of lawless violence and by rigid social ostracism; but such manifest injustice cannot be a permanent rule of conduct. Bigid restriction or absolute prohibition of the. immigration of Asiatics and Africans into countries that Caucasians claim as then own, is the most effective means of preventing the competition of the coloured' brother. This is neither just nor logical; it is, in many people's opinion, a symptom of Caucasian decadence that such restriction should be thought necessary; )t! may even, as Lord 1 Curzon says,'lead to a racial war ; but, even 'so, it seems the kindest way to deal with .tho dark races, and the soundest in our own interest.

Unless, therefore, we open our doors to a wholesale influx of Asiatics, cr unless such influx should be forced upon us at the cannon's mouth, the coloured brother will not for a long time materially help towards the solution of our labour problem. It is possible that other plans will be tried for the utilisation of coloured labour. For example, European capitalists may set up many factories' in China and India and flood the world's markets with cheap manufactured goods. The reply of the white proletariat to that move would bo the erection of a tariff wall that would exclude tho products of these factories. Such a policy would have every justification, since the economic results of admitting the products of cheap labour are identical with thojo flowing from the admission of cheap labour itself. Thus, while tho potential influence of tho coloured brother on our labour problem is great, his actual influence is likely to be nil. And this because we refuse to apply to his case the principle that wo have been at grea,t >,pains and expense to teach him—that' all. men are tree, and have a right to equality of opportunity on overy part of the earth's surface. Will the coloured brother, much longer be content to accept- the situation? "We shall see. ; !