296 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



pean, a place in the " organization of labor " will have to be found for 

 him midway between the white workman and the slave. It is, indeed, 

 being found. As a farmer the negro has totally failed. " But he is 

 a good laborer under supervision. He is a success in the mines. He 

 has found acceptance in the iron furnaces and about the coke ovens. 

 He is in great demand in periods of lailroad construction," and he is 

 a Western pioneer. Above born and bred slaves for life there is the 

 status of imported slaves for a term. For years Kanakas, hired or cap- 

 tured from the Melanesian Islands of the Pacific, were used as slaves 

 by the sugar planters of Queensland, until the outcry in England 

 put a stop to an ill-conducted traffic. It has since been resumed under 

 humaner conditions, which make it as defensible as slavery can ever 

 be. Coolies from India are imported into Fiji and Hongkong prac- 

 tically as free laborers. They are also employed on board the great 

 liners that ply between India, China, Australia, and England, much 

 to the discontent of the working class and to the great satisfaction 

 of the well-to-do, who thus gain cheaper passages and lower freights. 

 The radical opposition is no more likely to prevent this form of native 

 labor from spreading to all suitable environments than the conserva- 

 tive opposition has prevented women from filling the employments 

 within their improved capacities. The ubiquitous Chinaman, again, 

 has imported himself into most colonies, and so long as he takes 

 a place that the white laborer refuses to occupy, he will present the 

 ugly problem of the coexistence of an indestructible alien race with 

 a civilized people whose type of civilization and his are irreconcilable. 

 European colonies have also known white slavery, as Greek and 

 Roman colonies knew it, and slavery of their own race and nation, 

 as European countries knew it. Its most degraded type has doubt- 

 less been Spanish, English, and French convictism. The Australian- 

 English is the most familiar and the worst. The Australian convict 

 was a slave for life or a long term. Like the slave, he was at the 

 mercy of his master, excepting that corporal punishment could 

 not be inflicted by the master's hands. The lash was none the less 

 kept going; in a single year, in New South Wales, nearly three thou- 

 sand floggings were administered. The Roman ergastula were 

 pleasure bowers compared with the convict hells of Parramatta, in 

 New South Wales, and Port Arthur, in Tasmania. Marcus Clarke's 

 terrible fiction proves to be still more terrible fact. Convicts were 

 herded together like pigs; kindness was rare, oppression general, and 

 many fine men died inch by inch. Such was the state of things even 

 after the introduction of the assignment system. According to that 

 system, convicts were assigned as agricultural laborers and shepherds 

 to settlers who cried out for them, as the American planters did for 

 slaves. Craftsmen were allotted to high officials in lieu of salary or 



