KANAKA LABOUR QUESTON.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXIX, Issue 3121, 16 July 1892, Page 2 (Supplement)

KANAKA LABOUR QUESTON.

Sib Hbnry Pakkks has once more "bobbed up serenely " with a bold bid for the suffrages of the ignorant and prejudiced section of the working classes. The inteutiou of the Queensland Government to resume the importation of Kanaka labour, for the sugar plantations, has afforded him an opportunity, which he has taken advantage of with characteristic promptitude. It-doesu't make much difference to Queensland whether Sir Henry approves of her action or whether he does not. Therefore he can makt, his declamation as severe as he chooses without any fear of doing any real harm to the sugar industry ; whilst on the other hand he may succeed hi improving his chances for office at the next 'general election, if not sooner. On the merits of the question it does I not appear that Sir Henry and those who

take similar ptround have a leg to stand upon. The gravamen of their deliver- | ances (apart from the appeal to class prejudices, which of course is beneath notice) is that the importation of Kanaka labour is in reality slavery, and that it is likely to lead to results as evil as those which have followed the introduction of slavery in America. An attentive consideration, however, will show that beyond the mere accident of the labourers in both cases being black, and their employers w hif.e, there is no similarity between the two, and that therefore "the denunciations which have been so liberally dealt with, ara little more thau rant and fustian. They are very acceptable to long-tongued agitators who are at their wits' end for some fresh grievance with which to irritate the rapidly-subsiding " working man " ; but anyone with the experience

of Sir Henry Parkes ought to be able to discern their fallacies. What was the slavery of America ? The unfortunate negroes were sold wholesale by their chiefs or by their captors-at-war to the slave traders. They were not consulted in the matter at all, and on the passage they were treated with so much cruelty that a large proportion of them lost their lives. Those who survived were put up to auction on arrival like so many cattle or sheep, and knocked down to the highest bidder, from the moment they were kidnapped to the day of their death they had no

more legal right to take their own course in life than had the animals they tended. Slaves and captives in a strange land they reared up a progeny which has' multiplied enormously, and which now, as Nemesis most righteously decrees, is a standing menace to the security of the community which so cruelly wronged them. The power of the State on all occasions supported and endorsed this remorseless

and systematic outrage. The negroes could be hunted with bloodhounds or even flogged to death. Their women might be, and were violated at the whim of their owners, and the law said that their oppressors were well within their rights. ' This then is the essence of slavery—the taking away by force of the liberty of an individual and keeping him deprived of it In no single instance does the engagement of Kanaka labour answer this description. The men are engaged of their own free will—not for life, but for a brief term, at the end of which the employer is bound to return them to their native island. The power of the State, instead of being used to secure their enslavement, is specially exerted from the moment of their engagement to that of their return to see that no undue advantage is taken of them. Moreover, all the time they are employed in this country each and all of them enjoy the same rights as any other citizen, and any violence to their persons or depredation on their property would be as promptly punished as if it had been done to thenemployer himself. Such a system is grossly slandered when it is saddled with the odium of " slavery." Those who lend themselves to the misrepresentation show, either that they do not know or do not care to remember what slavery really is. Asa matter of fact, the opportunity of working on Queensland plantations is highly prized bv the " boys." Not only do they earn a quantity of " trade " which makes them persons of imjjortance on their-re-turn, but they escape the galling tyranny of their own chiefs. Instead of being slavery to them, life on the plantation is often an escape from slavery. No one who has seen them iu Queensland towns fat, glossy, and jolly, and as much their own masters as auy other person, can deny that they benefit by the change, or that it would be a great deprivation to them to be deprived of the opportunity. Nor can it be truthfully maintained that they displace white labour. On the contrary they make a great deal more employment for white labour than would be possible without them. The work which they do. the cultivation namely of the eane, the white man cannot do. They can toil in the cane without distress, at

temperatures which leave the white man gasping, exhausted and utterly unable to do continuous manual work. It is not merely a question of the higher wages demanded by white labourers, as compared with black. They cannot do the work, and, if the Queensland Government had been so foolish as to insist that only white labour should be employed, the sugar industry in ; the northern portion of the colony would have come to an end, the large number of white men who find employment in con. nectiou with it would be turned adrift, and the prevailing depression would have been intensified and the progress of the colony checked for decades to come, it is all very well for zealots and fanatics to cry " Perish the sugar industry." Perish the sugar industry means : perish those who are connected with it. It means :

perish the prosperity of the districts which depend upon it. If adopted by responsible statesmen entrusted with the guidance of the affairs of the colony it would mean a deliberate step towards national suicide. Pandering for the votes of the more ignorant and prejudiced section of the working classes commends itself to some politicians as the proper and legitimate course which is to "be followed whenever opportunity arises. It is evident, however, that in this case the price could not be paid without involving national disaster. If Sir Henry Parkes were a Queensland statesman, instead of a New South Welsh one, we have sufficient confidence in his clearsightedness to believe • that his sentiments, would take a very , different shape.