"BLACKBIRDING" IN THE ISLANDS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8245, 25 September 1906, Page 3

"BLACKBIRDING" IN THE ISLANDS.

The allegation that thw Government schooner Countess of Raafurly has been engaged in a trade which is ■ on oil fours with the "blackbirding" or old-time labou* traffic, occupied a prominent place during discussion -of the Islands administration on the Estimates. Mr Mills, who, until a month or two ago, was in . charge of the Islands, indignantly denied that the vessel was exceeding the limits of legitimate trading. Captain Champion, who is master of the schooner, asserts that the passenger service run by the sohooner is not only legitimate, but has been a great boon to the natives of the Cook Group. Writing on the general question , of black labour on the Islands Resident (Col. Gudgeon) says the three northern islands of New Zealand's group have hitherto supplied the labour for b,oth planting and pearldiving. Christmas Island will require nearly two hundred men to develop it, and Flint and Suwarrow Island will also require to be worked. The requirements of the Cook Islands will probably absorb all men available in the northern islands, and the Levers Company will probably secure its labuur for Flint and Christmas Islands from the Solomons. Little harm is done to Aitutaki by. fifty men going to Maiden to work for Grloe, Sumner and Co. They would frobably, if Jett to their oia island, bo a nuisance to their own people, whereas, by working they ore a source of profit and supply all the iron and timber for the Aitutaki houses. Col. Gudgeon adds:— "With tho Mangaia people who have beeu at Maiden the effect will bo productive of much good, for tho young men of that island have hitherto been simply he'd in bondage by the chiefs, and have had to work for the benefit of those men only—men who hive done their best to preveut tho young men going away to work, and who have hunted out as vagrants all who would not work for them. The forco of public opinion will now be too strong for the chiefs, and the small people have now a chance of earning some money, for the Mangaiana are industrious."