Page:A few facts in connection with the Employment of Polynesian Labour in Queensland.djvu/5

3 His Excellency Sir Henry Wylie Norman, Governor of Queensland and Viceroy-Designate of India, who has during the past five years repeatedly visited all the sugar districts, in an official despatch to the Colonial Office, reports that he had heard of no abuses in recruiting, and adds "I consider that large numbers of the Kanakas who have come to the colony have largely benefited by the civilizing and Christianizing influences to which they had been subjected."

Sir Samuel Griffith, Chief Justice and formerly Premier of Queensland, says:—"No serious complaints of kidnapping have been made since 1885," and "the abuses of former days have long since come to an end."

Mr. Kinnaird Rose, barrister-at-law and advocate of the Scotch bar, the legal member of the Royal Commission on the Polynesian Labour Trade, who drafted the report on which Dr. Paton founds so much, writes:—"Not a single complaint has been made since 1885 of illegal recruiting nor even of practices which by strict interpretation might be called irregular. I can remember from 1885 neither scandal nor outstanding incident connected with the traffic. The wild calumnies about slavery, cruel oppression and so on have been pretty effectually disposed of, Kanakas can now be engaged in their own island homes for a term of years' service in Queensland as much free from constraint and over-reaching as agricultural servants can be engaged at hiring fairs in Great Britain and Ireland, and separation from home ties and family associations is no more morally wrong in the one case than in the other."

Before, however, proceeding to cite the frank and truthful evidence of Dr. Paton's ministerial brethren against him, it may be well to refer generally to his first charge that the traffic had been demoralising and ruinous to all concerned.

The sugar industry, with which of course the Kanakas are alone connected, may have been ruinous to the reckless speculator. But soberly stated, aided by the moderately rewarded and reliable labour of Kanakas, the sugar industry which in Queensland invited the investment of over six millions sterling, 40 per cent of which went in high wages and profits to British (chiefly Scotch) engineers for machinery, &c, has given employment to nearly 30,000 European managers, overseers, mill hands, ploughmen, artisans, &c. It has cleared the ground of jungle and brought under cultivation 50,000 acres of the Delta and coast lands of the colony; has given an impetus to maize growing, to horse-breeding, to cattle raising on the seaside of the coast range; has started foundries and engineering establishments in all sugar centres; has built up a fleet of coastal steamers second to none in speed and accommodation. This year it has produced 80,000 tons of manufactured sugar, valued, including bi-products, at nearly a million and a quarter. As to the demoralisation of the business it may be fearlessly asserted that the proportion of sugar planters who