DEVELOPING THE ISLANDS

Waikato Times, Volume 102, Issue 17221, 3 October 1927, Page 6

DEVELOPING THE ISLANDS

Mr Walter Nash, addressing a Hamilton audience last Friday on the recent conference on Pacific relations at Honolulu, opposed the importation of indentured Asiatics as labourers in the Pacific Islands. He claimed that New Zealand's policy in island administration should be to encourage the native inhabitants to develop *their own resources. The Asiatic workers, he said, tended to drive tne natives away from the working of the land, and though payment might be made in rents, it was enervating to any people to live on rents. Another serious objection to indentured labour, whether of imported Asiatics or of natives (as in exGerman New Guinea) is that it removes the labourers from those family associations which are the highest safeguard of morality. It is indeed open to question whether Chinese families coming freely into Samoa would not help greatly in the development of the natives, in their social as well as their economic life. It is generally admitted that the Chinese who have reared families in Hawaii have proved a desirable element in the population. However, Mr Nash is unquestionably right in his main contention —that great care must be taken to- encourage the Samoans themselves to play their part rather than drive them into the position of unemployed labourers or unemployed rent-takers. To force them to labour at the white man's sweet will is equally out of the question from any humanitarian point of view. In this regard a notable example is before the world. The Gold Coast and other regions of British West Africa have been developed by the natives themselves, the British acting simply as administrators, teachers, traders and providers of transport.. The development of the territory has been far more rapid than in East Africa, where the system has been to &ui white men in possession and engage the natives and others as employed labourers, with a certain amount of compulsion. On the Gold Coast the cocoa industry has developed in a single generation to produce an export trade of about £7,000,000 a year. The natives at the same time are coming to play a larger and larger share in the work of the towns and the administration. The contrast between this region and the British territories in East Africa under the "plantation" system has been shown very clearly in the writings of Mr J. 11. Harris, secretary of the British AntiSlavery and Aborigines' Protection Society. Australia and New Zealand are, unfortunately, largely committed 'to the plantation system of island development. However, an effort is being made to protect the natives in possession of at least a part of their estates, and Mr Nash's plea on their behalf is timely.